Strawberry Mansion

A hot August dusk, humid and gray. The Strawberry Mansion neighborhood, east of Fairmount Park in North Philadelphia. 4125 Albert Pike Avenue to be precise... just a quick stroll from the John Coltrane House. Right there - the corner building on that row of disrepaired brick homes sitting on the intersection of North 31st Street. Two floors deep and going nowhere. Last patches of a coat of dull red-brown paint hug darkened window frames. Tufts of dead weeds sprout from the granite cracks before a two-step front stoop leading to a gaunt white wooden door. No sign of life within or without - no trash bags on the curb, no graffiti tags on the wall, no tell-tale television glare seeping through the empty frames. This is unquestionably a grave for many a story with a decidedly unhappy ending.

Never-Know lurches through the opening between passenger and driver of the cramped Coupe deVille parked right outside the property. He takes the space in with a glance, bites his lower lip thoughtfully (a habit frequently indulged in) and just has to ask - "So, you sure this is the place?"

Adam sighs a plume of cigarette smoke in response. Never-Know doesn't see its coiling tendrils solidify briefly into a disembodied floating hand flipping him the Finger before dispersing out the rolled down window.

Never-Know continues, rancid breath wafting through the bloodied nubs of meth ravaged teeth - "I mean I'm jes sayin' it don't exactly look like no one's home from where we're sittin'."

"This is the place" Adam huffs squirming uncomfortably in the passenger seat, leaning his face towards the window in hopes of gasping some fresh air.

"What, because the ghost of some gutter punk told ya so?"

"Nnnnoooo... because the City's Dreaming told me so" Adam corrects through a repressed gag, "Crusty Pete's ghost was just a vessel for me to contact her with..."

"Pffft... 'her'!" Never-Know leans back in his seat with smug triumph, "C'mon guys, the kid's obviously trippin'!"

"Hey, man..." Adam starts to protest but Never-Know cuts him off as if he wasn't even there.

"I mean what? We're s'posed to buy that some asshole's been dealin' fucked-up magick acid out here in the heart of Shit Hole Central without Carlos or any of the other Covens hearin' so much as a 'boo' until today? Meanwhile, Adam-fuckin'-Last here, fresh off a three day coke and pussy binge, pops into an alleyway and the talkin' fuckin' city hands him the right address just like that. Yeah, okay... that makes sense."

"Tim..." Skinhead Dan turns around in the driver's seat and with visibly willed calm addresses Never-Know by his rarely used real name, "enough already, okay? I'm not goin' to tell you twice."

"I got a quessstion..." Phil Fuck's syrupy rasp trickles through the ensuing awkward silence, "... shouldn't one of usss have seen something by now? I mean realllly seen something. I've checked the place out for the last twenty minutes now and I'm not picking up anything. No auras, no lingering energy patterns, no orgone stink... nothing. My guess is neither are you guys, am I wrong?"

No one answers, not even Never-Know who begins to... but thinks better of it catching the wise, old skin's single brow arching up at him in clear warning through the rear view mirror.

"So?" Adam snorts frustrated, unable to see their point.

"Sssooo..." Phil hisses in a way unique only to iguanas and their human hybrids - an old cassette tape that slows down and speeds up intermittently whenever played - "...wouldn't you think that cookin' up several batchesss of Enochian grade LSD would leave ssssome kind of sssignature in the air? I mean from what weee know this ain't your typical fucking dealer... there's a plan here, a ritual at work. A big one from what Carlos wassss tellin' us... and I dunno, it doesn't seem the sssort of thing that would go down without leaving some kind of trace to those of us who know how to look."

Dan takes in Phil Fuck, sprawled lethargically across his corner of the back seat with his face flatened against the side of the window. If not for the periodic blink a casual observer might mistake him for passed out or at worst in the creeping stages of a post-mortem nap. Dan looks back over at the address Adam provided them. His eyes roll into the back of his skull and the milky white sclera begins to mist over into a sheen of blue topaz. Dan blinks once and the pupils return, immediately darting over towards Adam - "He's got a point."

Adam stares down passively into his lap. His face registers defeat through a poor facade of apathy. It occurs that maybe the City's Dreaming had just been fucking with him the whole time. After all the city was just a little over two hundred years and change. A hatchling compared to some of her European and Asian brethren. Probably not above steering a common 'gutter-mage' wrong for shits and giggles. Recollects old war stories the other metromancers wove around the bar to whoever was buying. Tales of senile old London drunk on ghosts or bat-shit crazy New Amsterdam devouring amateur 'mancers whole in her shifting alleyways. There was no shortage of the hallowed and broken walking the streets, babbling incoherently the secrets of the cities they had sought at a great price to their sanity.

And it is with that thought that the corners of his lips slowly tighten into a smile - the first faint rays of realization dawning upon him.

"Hnh... of course" he mutters.

"What?" Dan demands with cautious optimism for the apprentice. Adam could be a precocious little shit at the best of times... but he was blessed with an almost accidental charm that often made him if not likable, at least a tolerable curiosity worth keeping around... all despite the best efforts of his proudly worn caustic personality.

"So what you guys are saying is that you don't see anything, right? Nothing magickal with a 'k' about the place. Least not according to your special warlock sight or whatever the fuck you call it?"

"Uh-huh" Dan agrees waiting patiently for a point to be made.

"There you go then..." Adam smirks savoring the point his wizened elders have failed to grasp, "... ain't no such thing as a 'non-magickal' part of this city. Any city for that matter."

"I don't follow" Dan's patience is wearing thin - rubbed to the raw by equal parts mission grind and the company it's forcing him to keep.

Adam pulls out his black sharpie. He quickly dawdles a poorly drawn eyeball on the top of his left hand. He goes to place it over Dan's eyes, pauses for a moment when he catches the look this gestures elicits from Dan and with a diplomatic cool, offers - "Here, see for yer'self!"

Dan the Skinhead nods only after a roll of his eyes. Adam ignores Never-Know's muffled snickering and cautiously masks his palm over the big skin's face. The doodle eye sizzles with an arcane crimson phosphorescence (stink of burnt bacon and aerosol) before the black dot of a pupil begins to roll side to side in awareness.

"Okay, now look at the building cross the street and tell me what'cha see."

Dan pivots his head with an exhausted sigh. He peers over Adam's shoulder towards the opposite street. A faint outline of the building's structure burns from within with wavering shades of Kirlian purple and astral red. Flocks of radioactive green silhouettes film flow from the doorway - vanishing and re-appearing on an endless tape loop. Amoeba graffiti blobs migrate along the walls, bumping into and devouring one another whole. The darkness of the windows is not the static darkness of graves and tunnels, but rather seem to whorl in currents of shadow that suckles off the light that falls upon it. The bricks of the building's shell are a shifting pattern when observed long enough, a constant shuffle of code that seems to be signaling something... a song or a story perhaps. Luminescent orbs of electric white drift and bubble off the roof, before dispersing into the ultraviolet glare of the sky above.

"Alright... now look back over at our building" Adam comes dangerously close to ordering.

Dan obliges.

The house sits there cast in a gray outline almost resembling a meticulous pencil sketch of itself. A lifeless husk in contrast to the phantasmagorical light show of the neighborhood around them.

"Nothing, right?" Adam removes the hand suddenly, carelessly so, as the readjustment leaves Dan momentarily blinded before knuckle rubbing his vision back into focus. "Which is straight up impossible. Even the newest building's gonna have some sort of spark to it, an ember of the life to come..."

"Meaaaning...?" Phil Fuck begins to catch on.

"Meaning... someone's trying to hide the place from us. Well maybe not 'us'... but you know what I'm saying. Did a real good job apparently... too good in fact... which was where they fucked up. It's like someone tried hiding a bank from getting robbed by draping the place over with a giant blanket. If you weren't looking for it you probably wouldn't notice anything... even with the whole crazy warlock x-ray vision you guys got going... but the absence of magick up close makes it almost painfully obvious."

"Couldn't you just have told us that in the first place?" the big Skin grunts, impatiently strangling the steering wheel in place of the apprentice's neck.

"Seeing is believing..." Adam snickers.

"I don't get it!" Never-Know interrupts.

"Nah, you wouldn't now would ya..." Adam sneers, "...clever thing that y'are!"

"Yeah, well we can always jes' step on outside and see how fuckin' 'clever' you feel when you're not hiding behind Carlos' rep!" Never-Know growls - all signs of his usual stoner drawl gone.

"Kids! You don't want Daddy to have to pull this car over and whip both your asses now, do you?" Dan barks cutting short the pissing fest before it can start.

When Adam and Never-Know capitulate with brooding quiet, the big Skin gives the order: "Right, then... everyone out! We got a job to do."

Doors open. The five exit the deVille as one. Huddle around the trunk with a sense of begrudging duty reminiscent of office drones assembling listlessly around a time clock. Dan hammers his flattened fist across the trunk, popping it open with practiced ease. He doles out the arsenal. Three wooden baseball bats for Phil Fuck, Never-Know and Bob the Eunuch. The bats are banded with three copper rings apiece at their handle and each possess eleven copper nails driven into their sides touching the steel rod burrowed through their center. Polished in blood and chipped with use, a single ruby is embedded into their tips - sparkling in the last dregs of light. The three men take practice swings slicing through the air or carrying them over the shoulders in the manner of lumber jacks and axes.

Skinhead Dan clicks open a compartment concealed under the floor of the trunk. From it he withdraws a bundled object wrapped in white silk. Folding it open his magickian's wand is revealed - a .500 Smith & Wesson Magnum, known as 'the Vest Buster' by law enforcement officials everywhere. The revolver's grip has a golden Unicursal Hexagram engraved into the side of the handle. The Lothar-Walther Custom German rifle barrel is painted with a series of personalized sigils that luminate with a soft red glow when placed in the meaty fist of the skinhead's hand.

Finally Dan withdraws a S&W Sigma 9VE double action 9mm from the inside of his bomber and tosses it to Adam.

"The fuck, man?" the apprentice asks, catching the pistol with exaggerated urgency, as if the barrel would bark at the slightest provocation.

"You'll need it if you're going in there with us... and make no mistake, you are going in there with us."

"Aw hell no, Dan!" Adam steps back instinctively, "Carlos told me to help you find this guy and that's exactly what I've done."

"Yeah, well we ain't found him yet..." Dan snorts slamming the trunk closed, "and as far as I know and don't know Carlos didn't say shit about you getting to sit in the car while we do all the shit work. You got a problem with it? Take it up with the Big Man when we get back... meantime your ass in on my clock and I say we're going in. That means everybody."

Adam breathes in a protest but exhales surrender instead. He buries the 9 down the back of his drawers the way he's seen them do in the movies.

"Okay, you guys know the drill... Adam you stick by me. Keep your mouth shut and try not to do anything too stupid. Everyone got it?"

Nods and bobbing heads all around.

"Good. Now let's go see if the doctor is 'in'!" the old skinhead grimaces and the five men make their way as one over to 4125 Albert Pike.

Saturday Morning Bonus Round (and last call)!

1- In the above image, Captain James T. Kirk (pop culture icon and protagonist of endless volumes of online bi-curious slash fiction) is clearly suffering from...

A) a dreaded outbreak of the 21st century virus DC9N1... more commonly referred to as 'Con Crud'... contracted when the good captain was stranded in Earth's pre-warp drive past and forced to sell his autograph at over a hundred dollars a pop in order to escape back into his time.
B) an esoteric telepathic Vulcan martial arts maneuver whose title translates roughly into - 'Why are you strangling yourself... it is highly illogical... stop strangling yourself...'.
C) spending his entire shore leave at countless karoake bars singing 'Rocket Man' for drinks and laughs (a sight as unforgetable as it is pitiful I can assure you).
D)being referred to as 'that guy from the Priceline-dot-com commercials'.
E)_______

2- What episode is this scene from? If you don't know you are encouraged to make up a title of your own no matter how silly it may sound days later when you wished you hadn't responded to this post.

3 - What the hell is Uhura laughing about, anyway? Seriously, I could use some cheering up right now...

4 - Did he spit... or swallow?

5 - Imagine if you will... that this is the lost cover art... to a rare Shatner LP... what would the name of this amazing album be?