The Stranger and The Visionary

It was precisely five minutes past noon on a regular Wednesday when the stranger slid into the seat opposite her. The library was mostly empty, besides a few students huddled intimately together in one of the dimly lit corners, and she had an entire glorious table to herself. She cursed inwardly, choosing not to look up and encourage any kind of interaction. With so many other chairs available, the stranger had to have chosen hers for a reason, and she was not in the mood. Not after a week of cleaning the streets of bodies. Another category five was on the loose, and it was hungry.

She tried to focus on the book in front of her, but found herself unable to read any of the words. It was raining outside, rivulets of water coursing down the tall, narrow windows and drumming on the flat roof. Somehow—and the implausibility of it stumped her—she hadn’t heard the stranger’s shoes squeak on the linoleum as they’d approached. They were quiet and incredibly still, and she could feel their eyes burning holes in the top of her head. This wouldn’t do. With a resigned sigh, she looked up.

What she noticed first was the neatness. The stranger, a man, was impeccably neat, to a ridiculous degree. He wore a complete suit—which was the very least of the curiosities—pressed to perfection, his black hair slicked back against his scalp with military precision. His gloves were tight and black and looked like silk. His moustache, glossy and wet-looking with gel, was superbly symmetrical. He even sat neatly, his back ram-rod straight, knees together, palms resting lightly on the tabletop. He was staring at her with a reserved kind of intensity, his eyes dark and fathomless. He had excellent eyebrows.

Ah, she thought wryly. He’s definitely one of them. A client. It was perhaps the stillness that tipped her off. Real people never sat that still. They fidget and hunch their backs and pick at their faces; play with their hair. They are never that clean, so clean that even the nail-beds were devoid of any signs of wear, the skin absent of a single blemish. It was that and the general sense of newness he gave off, like a cologne. He looked brand new, squeaky clean, fresh out of the oven. There was an awkwardness there, in the way he held himself, an uncertainty, like a colt learning how to walk. A hopefulness too. Dangerous, she thought. It’s dangerous for you to be walking around like that, so spotless. Go home fairy, before you get hurt.

She stared back at him, tapping her fingers on the desk impatiently.

“Well? I’m presuming you have something to say?” She said eventually, when he did not speak.

He pursed his lips, and then un-pursed them, as though he were trying to get them to work, unused to the sensation.

“I...” He said, tentatively, quietly.

“Yes?”

His eyes widened, lips in a pout, an emotion like panic behind his eyes.

“I need you to put me in your book. Put me in your little black book. Please make space for me there. Please. I need your services. It’s a life or death situation.” He blurted, the words tumbling over one another to get out, jumbled and strangely pitched. She was silent for a moment, puzzling him over in her mind. It mildly unnerved her that he knew what she was, and had known where to find her so easily. She’d thought she was being careful. Apparently not as careful as she’d thought.

“I see that someone has been ratting me out. You knew I come here on Wednesdays, didn’t you? Who told you?”

He shook his head, and the motion was robotic and slow. Reaching down, he picked something up off the floor and slid it across the table. It was a brown leather briefcase, a metal clasp at the front. It was worn and tatty and didn’t suit the rest of him at all, and she berated herself for not noticing it sooner. Perhaps she was losing her edge. The thought concerned her.

“I need a Warring Visionary.” He said, each word heavily punctuated, the S of visionary drawn out like a hiss. “I have a...problem.”

“A problem? What kind of a problem? Have you not been to the Bureaux?”

He shook his head again, in that weird mechanical way. He didn’t answer, and instead averted his eyes to the briefcase. It was the first time he’d looked away from her since he’d sat down, so she turned her attention to the beaten thing. Was she supposed to look inside? He’d pushed it all the way over to her half of the table. She snapped the clasp open with one hand, apprehensive. She couldn’t imagine what a creature such as he would need to be toting around in a briefcase. Lifting the lip slightly so that she could just about see inside, the answer quickly became obvious. It was money, lots and lots of money. Crisp new bills, all bound together in tidy little bundles. She shut the bag, and then opened it again. It wasn’t an illusion. They were still there; something like twenty thousand American dollars.

The stranger was looking at her expectantly now, like a dinner host waiting for their guest’s opinion on the food.

“There’s a lot of money in there.” She said. More money than she made in a slow year. “How big is your problem, exactly?”

“Big. A big problem. I need a Visionary. Not just a Visionary from the bureaux. There’s no time for bureaucracy.” The word sounded like it tasted bad in his mouth, and he stumbled over the vowel sounds. “I need one with haste. My problem is a monster. Quite a terrible one.”

Oh, a monster was it now? Of course, she dealt with monsters regularly, that was part of the job. Monsters in all forms, human and beast, natural and supernatural, like the one terrorising the suburbs. Sure, sometimes she worked off the books. It was tough making money as a Visionary these days. Oftentimes clients called in the guns to deal with the big problems visionaries used to deal with on their own. Such was life now that the whole world knew all about the metaphysical.

Sometimes you had to turn a blind eye to some of the things happening in the city underbelly in order to work at all. Take this fella sat in front of her for example: obviously new to his human form—he was wearing it like a straight-jacket—but he had to be drawing considerable power from somewhere to be achieving such a perfect disguise as a newby. Who or what was the somewhere? Did she want to risk it? Hell, what did she have to risk? She had twenty dollars in her pocket, a half scrap-metal car that hardly ran and housed all of her worldly belongings, no family to speak of. The money would set her up for a good long while, at least until she was on her feet again.

Slowly, she reached into her front pocket. She always kept it close to her body—as a Visionary, there was no better place to keep it. A Visionary’s book was their lifeblood, their livelihood. Within it sat their very own souls. Without a book, a Visionary was nothing. As her fingers brushed the spine where it sat nestled safely close to her heart, she felt it hum to life, the small engine of destiny that governed her every move. She pulled it out. It was small, smaller perhaps than they usually were. The cover was simple, black, and she had chosen it for it’s suppleness, the way it felt when it was in her hands.

The stranger grew visibly excited at the sight of it, his eyes wide and bright, fingers restless, like a junky. She knew he could feel its power too. He didn’t seem to be disappointed at the way it looked. It wasn’t embossed with gold, encrusted with gemstones or painted in lush colours, like they sometimes were.

She flipped it open, and the stranger gasped like he’d been given an electric shock.

“Well then, I’m going to need your name.” She said, reaching into her pocket for a pen. Just a plain old biro, nothing fancy. “Your true name, of course.”

The stranger swallowed nervously. He told her, very quietly, and she let the sound of it wash over her, into her grey matter and down through to her fingertips. Her knees turned to jelly, all her muscles suddenly relaxed and buttery. Hearing a true name always felt like getting a shot of serotonin to the heart.

She found a place at the bottom of a crowded page. Naturally, her handwriting was minuscule. It had to be, after all. Once the book was finished, so was she.

“Is there going to be enough...room, on the page?” He asked, tentatively. He was right to be nervous, she supposed. If the names weren’t written side by side, linked to one another with a small, unifying dash, the contract wouldn’t be valid. The name of the client and the name of the creature the client wanted her to destroy, tied together until the job was done, or she was dead. Such was the price a Visionary had to pay.

“I don’t usually make silly mistakes. Tell me, then—what’s the name of this monster you so desperately need my help dispatching?”

The stranger spoke the name, and she wrote it down. She wrote it down and froze. She froze because she’d heard the name before, and she’d heard it only moments before, when he’d given it as his own.

She met his eyes. He had the gall to look contrite, guilty even. He knew exactly what he was doing. On the paper, between his names, was the tiny unifying dash—so natural to her she’d put it there without hesitation. The stranger shrugged with one shoulder, noncommittal, a little sad. Suddenly it made sense.

“The monster is you then, I’m guessing.”

He nodded earnestly. She could see now the sickly pallor at his temples, the dried blood on his wrist, just above his glove, his eyes dark, so dark and empty.

“This is definitely a first for me, I have to say.”

“I couldn’t do it myself, I tried. I don’t have the self control.” He said, and she was surprised by that, at least.

“You’re the one they’ve been looking for, aren’t you? The beast leaving bodies in the streets. A fondness for entrails. Category five, or so I’ve heard.”

“Yes, that’s me.”

“I’m angry I didn’t notice. Perhaps I really am losing my touch.”

“I really hope not.” He said. “I’m relying on you.”

She tucked the book back into her pocket. She could almost feel it pulsing there, whirring away like a little clock. Tick tick tick, it said. Get the job done. The briefcase slid off the table easily, and the handle felt strangely tacky in her hand. She didn’t want to know why.

“We should probably do this outside.”

He nodded, not solemnly but with an expression of great relief. She didn’t wait to watch him awkwardly rise from his seat, straighten his tie, adjust his gloves, or to check if he was following along behind her, silent as before.

I’ll do it quickly. She thought. Then she remembered the earnest nodding, the clean suit, the sad eyes. Perhaps she would make him run. It sometimes took her a little while to catch up.