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I fled through the corridor, pursued by monsters in human form who were nearly translucent, scarcely there at all save for the exquisitely tailored black suit, white shirt, and black tie that each of them wore.
The moment I could be out of their sight for but a few moments I could ditch my ceremonial black robes, black hat, and smiling mustachioed white masked and I'd be home free once I was outside.
But while the dank powers I served were chaos incarnate, the monstrosities were creatures of order.
The hallway I ran down would stretch on forever in a straight line until I got so far ahead that their unnatural reality-warping powers could not alter the world around me.
"such fast. very speed. much hasten. wow." I murmured under my breath in the dark tongue. It's a real bitch to learn how to wiggle your tongue and do the thing with your throat where you can actually give voice to the lack of capitals or their all caps equivalents to power the incantations, but I was a pro.
My gun only had a single bullet remaining, and I'd been saving it for myself just in case I failed in my escape.
Capture from these things was worse than death.
But I was so close to getting away, and in these narrow confines the chances were greatly increased to be able to pull off the dankest of invocations.
The attachments to my gun made it heavy and somewhat unwieldy, but the raw power that they granted by being able to tap into the dankest of powers more than made up for their added weight.
I turned, running backwards for a few moments before I leaped into the air and pivoted before firing my shot.
It hit the first one just below the chin, too low. Fuck!
The bullet went through them all, their insubstantial bodies giving about as much resistance as the cloth suits that covered them.
There must've been a short one in the back or something, as a distortion of the air was my first hint of the invocation going into full effect.
Then the hallway behind me exploded into a prismatic brilliance as light of all colors filled the air, shortly followed by a hellish cacophony of air horns.
The 360 No Scope, hard to pull off, but the effects were always reliable.
I tossed aside my cloak, hat, and mask, the beasts disoriented from the visual and auditory assault and drawing upon a store of my innate misfortune, managed to accidentally out of the hallway, through the wall.
I regained my feet in a public restroom, keeping myself as far away from the stalls as I could. You could call down some pretty nasty things there if you found yourself with a wide stance.
It was an old meme, but you never knew when they might experience a resurgence.
I hit the streets, whistling in just such a way to summon myself an unholy vessel of conveyance. It's license plate said "FRESH" and there were dice in the mirror. But the form of the thing changed upon every summoning, and one unfamiliar with the proper ways could find themselves stranded and forced to, shudder, take public transportation.
A tiny watercraft appeared around the corner, the diminutive skeletal form of its rower, the asphalt parting for craft and oar alike as if it were water.
The ferryman looked up at me with eye sockets in a too-large skull.
I had to sit down cross legged in order to fit in the small craft, and I attempted to relax my jaw, knowing what was coming.
"Itty bitty baby," I nodded to the ferrymen, and then to his craft, "Itty bitty boat."
"I don't believe it!" the animated infant's skeleton said with disgust.
I had been kind of overusing this particular invocation to commute to and from my day job.
"Habeeb it!" I replied, proceeding to the next stage of the ritual.
"TWINKIE HOUSE!" shouted the ferryman, leaped up into the air and slugged me in the jaw.
Three pounds of bones in a robe should not be able to hit that hard.
But with payment complete, we were on our way.
I tipped the ferryman with the customary tree fiddy and left the otherworldly conveyance, brought to the temple of my order, which just so happened to be in Bel Air.
Locking these books away would do a lot of good for the world, though they were incredibly numerous. Just reading the texts was a massive endeavor as they were filled with unnatural, unholy language that could drive lesser minds mad.
But mastering them and writing your own individualized variation of the abominable works could allow you to bind someone or something to your will with terrifying ease.
The fewer people that were enslaved by the dreaded Tomes of Service the better.
"Hiiiii Brother Brian!" a familiar voice cried shrilly, addressing me by my rank in the cult.
She was my first incantation that I had used upon learning the Dank Arts. I'd been a teenaged boy with a lot of hormones and an equal lot of having been beaten about the face with the ugly stick.
"I heard you were coming and I made your favorite soup. And sandwiches. And desert. And cookies. And pasta. I just know you'll looooooooove them!"
"Uh, thanks." I said, trying to ignore the monstrosity that I'd summoned and bound to myself.
"I photoshopped our heads onto the topper on a wedding cake, so we look like bride and groom and made it my phone background, see?"
She pulled out a phone and showed me.
"Can we go golfing later, Brother Brian? I washed all your sweater vests just in case you might want to go golfing!"
My name is Brian, and I have all the bad luck.
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