Anne's Diner

Anne's Diner, a lovely family-owned hole in the wall that hardly got enough credit for being a restaurant. Let alone the best damned place to get a home-made cinnamon roll made by Anne herself; a charming old woman that always greeted all of her customers with a smile on her face that furthered the deep wrinkles adorning the corners of her eyes. Vadim loved the diner, even as he sat in the tattered red-and-white booth, elbows on the table that had been dressed in shattered glass and tossed food. He was too clean for the space, garbed in a black suit and frameless glasses. His pale skin too clean, his ebon hair too groomed. His hands were folded as though he were deep in prayer, pressed against his furrowed brow. “What a damned mess,” he commented quietly to the gloom. The power had failed some time earlier in the week, leaving the place to smell of rot, old food, and gore.

The stink of iron stung his nose, and flies hummed excitedly around his head, delighted by the prospect of breeding in fresh mortal carcasses and last week's pot pies. He'd chosen a booth by the window, as he'd normally done before everything had gone to literal Hell outside, though the raids had quietted to fewer and farther between as the population dwindled to a sparse few holdouts. “When do you think they'll realize this wasn't worth it?” A feminine voice came from immediately beside him, perched on the blown out windowsil. He canted his head slightly to regard her from under the drape of his hair. A deep black raven of significant size rolled her head to one side.

“Probably never,” he returned, “but what am I going to do? Everything I've done until now has been for nothing.” He gestured towards the retro countertop across from his booth, where a dozen bar stools lie in various states of disarray. “Everyone's been reduced to nothing.”

The raven took form, a dark skinned gal dressed in a beige short sleeved T shirt with the words, 'I'm Allergic to Mondays,' stricken across the front. She wore black leggings and slippers, and crossed her legs as she perched on the sil, producing a book and a pen from nowhere with a brush of her fingertips. “Not everyone, there are people that are fighting. You'd know that if you weren't wallowing in self-loathing, Volod. Why aren't you fighting?”

The man sighed and slid out of his booth, then padded for the door. The woman skipped off her spot and flounced after him, the tight curls of her hair skipping in time with her steps. Where his footsteps crunched on the broken ceramic, hers made no sound. “I tried.” As he stepped outside, the woman was immediately in front of him, delivering him a harsh smack atop the head with her book which made him flinch sharply, his shoulders hitching up to his ears. He glared at her, but didn't dignify her assault with a response.

“Excuses. Go fight harder where the Reapers can't, start at Anne's house.”

As Vadim opened his mouth to respond, she was gone, and he huffed a breath. “Damnit, Zivii.” Anne was alive, however. It was welcome news, and it renewed him with a sense of purpose. His shoulders rolled, and he shucked out of his suit jacket and pitched it to the ground. As though no longer bound, two pairs of great black wings spread from Vadim's back like webbed fingers, and he launched himself into the air with a few heavy beats.

Reapers and demons didn't often work together, but under the circumstances, with the world suffering through Armageddon, Vadim had long since made an exception-- as did Zivii. He was against the merging of the Otherworlds and the mortal plane, it having ended life as mortals knew it on Earth, the very place he got his kicks, enjoyed sin and temptation, enjoyed the suffering of mortals, and occasionally pitied the unfairness that their Gods had shown them. Anne was one of those humans Vadim had once pitied, and his wings carried him as fast as he could go through the neighborhood towards her home.

Most homes had been ransacked during the first weeks of the Exodus, in equal parts by human and monster. The difference was that the monsters sought food, and the mortal element sought riches and chaos. Base instinct versus greed. Vadim should have been elated by the insanity ripping across the world, but instead he only felt anxiety and rage. Anne's home was a modest little cottage down a street dotted with similar homes, beige brick front, and a gable roof tiled in chocolate brown. She'd once tended a cute little garden in front, but it had since been trampled over a dozen times and the flowers lie in dead tatters strewn across the unruly grass. Her wood fence even circled her back yard without so much as a crack in the slatting. Vadim was quietly hopeful as he landed in her driveway and curled his wings back against himself where they dissipated into a thin black mist.

For a demon, terror was something to be inflicted upon others. Temptation, sin, pain, everything that would damn souls to an eternity of torment in the afterlife. He reminisced briefly on what brought him to this point; the concern for mortal lives. The college where a suffering girl had taken her life, and the small act of rebellion within him the moment he helped a struggling soul find her way to a second opportunity.

The small kindness threw him from Hell's graces and landed him in the eyes of the organization that had been trying to stop the Apocalypse since the dawn of time, the cluster of deities and monsters and angels and demons that all knew that the Earth was home. It sent him on a dozen missions much like this one to intervene in mortal affairs where demigods and certain entities couldn't. The power of influence was a demon's greatest weapon, nudges in one direction or another. He too was being movcd in his direction, down his path, by a powerful momentum.

A creature nearby took note of him from the road, shrieking at him with its maw agape. Gore and saliva clung in strings to its teeth and slopped out of its mouth. The creature itself was about the size of a german shepherd, about a hundred pounds of twisted muscle coiled under a thin layer of reddish brown, naked flesh. It had grizzly, taloned claws and vestigial wings that served only to make it more grotesque looking, and Vadim peered back at it.

It hadn't charged yet, but he heard more coming down the road, scrabbling and screaming at the promise of meat. Behind him, a curtain was briefly brushed aside the sidelite by the door. “You're really going to try this? Has your food source run dry, truly? Did you think of this when you sided with your masters?” Vadim shouted, pivotting fully to face them as his body erupted in a black mist, twisting and coiling like a great serpent. His demonic body was a black horned monster of mythology, reminiscent of a dragonwith four massive wings and six legs. His physical body wasn't particularly impressive, no larger than that of a moose in height, but his tail lashed and twisted angrily from side to side, and he bared his fangs and bellowed deeply, “leave while you still have your life.”

The impressive-- to him-- posturing, was cut short by a shout from just under his wing and a shotgun blast that flashed in his periphery. The blast shocked him as it blew off the upper torso of a monster that came sneaking up on his flank. His body slithered aside to make room for the lone woman at his side, coiling like a surprised rattlesnake in his movement. While he regarded her with disbelief, a cacophony of noise sounded around him as the creatures made their charge upon the house. Gun blasts from the windows of the house, from the front door. All he thought to do was shield his head with his wings and hunker over. “HIIII HONEY!” The woman beside him trilled in her sing-song voice over the sound of gunfire and screeching entities.

“HOW ARE YOU?!” A beaming smile blossomed over her wrinkled face, now pitter-pattered with the crimson droplets from her slain foes. No more than a half dozen of the monsters had charged the home, and a great many bullets had ripped through their bodies before it was quiet, and Anne turned a look at the monsterous Vadim. “Why don'tcha come in? Have some coffee!” It wasn't a request. She waved at him, and made for the front of her home.

Dumbstruck, Vadim's form dissipated like a wash of black sand down his body, and he was left a man, huddled in the fetal position in front of a house full of gun-toting geriatrics. He righted the glasses on his face, cleared his throat, and snapped into a standing position, “ah, sure.” Was all he thought to comment, and he made to follow her.

The distant sounds of all manner of creature of the night; the decayed, the damned, sounded in the distance and made their way towards the house. Vadim knew very much that the location was about to become a hotspot, and he paused, “oh, and wipe your feet, honey.” The welcome mat just inside the front door read; BLESSED. And he promptly scraped his shoes against it, sucking in a deep breath as to not giggle at the irony of everything that had transpired.

He was greeted not just by Anne herself, but by seven other individuals, all in their late sixties if not mid seventies. “Come in, come in, have a seat. I've got coffee made. How do you like yours?” Two other older women were sipping coffee and having cookies in the living room immediately to the left of the entryway. An older gentleman had promptly fallen back into a nap with his gun on his lap on the couch, and another squinted out the window behind the curtain with the utmost scrutiny, and three more women went back to fussing about the kitchen, drinking margaritas as they tended to some things in the oven and on the countertops.

“Black is fine but wait, Anne, you have power?” Vadim pointed out, noting the scents of cooking.

“Of course! My late husband – God rest his soul – insisted on getting a generator last time the power went out on the block, said it was wasteful having all the meat go bad in the freezer.” She pulled out a chair in the dining room, just off the kitchen and living area, and set a full mug of coffee on the table for him. “How's my little Vadim baby? Did you talk to Nancy yet? She's a real nice girl that works at the diner with me, I said you were single and that you were very handsome. She's dating some guy right now, but he's not as good as you are,” her voice lowered, though not enough, into a judgy whisper, “he's in a band.”

Vadim stared at Anne for a good minute and popped his lips, “Miss Anne--”

“Grandma Anne.” She corrected.

A pause, and Vadim continued, “Grandma Anne. Nancy is married and has a toddler, the world is ending, I'm also not human.” Anne huffed and glared at Vadim like he had just summoned the Devil himself to her home.

“Honey that's not nice to say about yourself, now sit down and drink your coffee before I put another crack in your ass.” She slapped the table and pulled up a chair to sip her own coffee, while Vadim reluctantly complied with her demands. The dukes of Hell would piss themselves laughing if they knew he was so easily placated by a fussy old mortal.

“Big bird outside.” The peeping man at the window grunted, “big horde of dead. Couple reds, sniffing around.”

“Oh honey leave it be, if they start scratching up my house we'll just kick 'em off my lawn again.” Anne giggled and took a swig of her coffee. “So what brings you here, honey?” She asked Vadim directly, while he tried to gather why there was so many coffee grounds in his mug.

His gaze settled on the liquid swirling in his mug for a minute, and he peered up at her, “I wanted to make sure you were alright.”

She immediately responded, “oh honey, I'm fine. That's so sweet of you to worry, but I'm fine.” She nodded at him and regarded the strewn weaponry across the tabletops like she was inspecting her nick-nack collection.

He sighed gently, “you really are, I suppose I was worried for nothing.” There was a handful of thuds against the door, and the slowly mounting moans of the dead coming from the horde outside. “I saw the diner in shambles and I wanted to protect you.”

Anne smiled broadly and reached out to pat his hand, “Vadim, if I wake up dead tomorrow I'll have lived a good life. I'll be pissed, but I know I had a good life. I actually waited to give you something at the diner, next I saw you. Can I give it to you now?” The demon perked up, confused, but nodded slowly at her as she stood and shuffled across the way to a portrait covered in dust on the mantle over her fireplace. The women in the kitchen were set off in a fit of laughter over something that had happened, and the man on the couch snored softly while the pair of coffee drinkers in the living room gossiped and kept their eyes peeled on the door.

The old woman plucked something from a small decorative trinket box, and made her way back over to the table where she sat down again, and held her hand out for him. Vadim regarded her with a mixed basket of confusion and curiosity, reaching out to collect what she offered. A small, tarnished gold locket shaped like a heart. “It's not much but I want you to have it,” Vadim peered down at the delicate piece of jewelry in his fingers, and carefully thumbed the clasp that held the locket shut. Within was a picture of a young girl, blonde and blue eyed with glasses. A graduation photo in one side, and a small picture of her smiling face some years later in the other.

He immediately recognized her, and his heart jumped into his throat. “I know what you did for her, honey.” Anne said quietly, “her father and I never knew about what she was going through, and her friend blamed herself for years. We all blamed ourselves. Our hearts broke over and over when we thought about her being so sad.” Vadim couldn't tear his eyes away from the photo of her smiling, he'd seen it on her wall, a cut-out of her with her two best friends at a party. It had been so many years since he'd seen Anne's daughter, that when he thought of her all he could recall was the weight of her soul.

“Thank you, Anne.” The demon murmured gently, “are you certain you want to give this to me?” He asked her carefully, worried that she would decide last second to take back her gift.

“Of course, dear. I'd rather give it to you while I'm alive, than have you get it when I'm dead.” Anne continued to pretend that wills would matter, despite the world going to hell just outside her door. Her cheery disposition was admirable to the end. If not possibly slightly delusional.

“Bird's at the window.” The man at the window rumbled, “fat sum'bitch's blocking my view.” Vadim turned, seeing Zivii at the window waving at him. To mortals, she appeared as a large raven and nothing more. She made a heart with her hands at him, and moved from the window. “Bird flew off, about ten dead outside, reds staring at the house.”

Anne regarded Vadim a moment, then took another gulp of her coffee, “well dear, are you going to help us or not?” She stood from her seat and snatched up her shotgun, padding for the door. It wasn't a question.

Vadim took a final look at the locket in his fingers, closed it tight, then maneuvered the chain around his neck and tucked the whole thing into his shirt. The warmed metal sat flush against his skin, and gifted him some comfort. If he'd had any reservations about helping mortals struggle to survive when the odds were insurmountable, they were dashed by the resolve of this cluster of rebels, and the small trinket of the girl that caused his world to change. He loved mortals for their capacity to fight, even when there was so little hope left. Their ability to adapt and change and grow. He envied them for their love and comraderie at the best of times. Of course, he loved their vices, and the suffering of the cruel and deserving even moreso. “Of course, Anne.” He spoke as she stood from his own chair.

“Grandma Anne.” She corrected, while the rest of the rebels creaked and groaned and gathered up their weapons to continue their fight.