Jobe: Tall people are the enemy
Remy: I can’t even see you hating all the way down there
Jobe: I will tie your shoelaces together and you won’t even know until it’s too late.
“Get us out, get us out, get us out!” Harley’s screeching was not, in fact, helping, but he seemed to think it was.
Brian grabbed half of a porcelain plate from a dumpster knocked sideways onto the ground as they ran, and smashed it over Harley’s head. It only made him more hysterical.
“WHY DID YOU DO THAT? WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT? YOU COULD HAVE KNOCKED ME OUT! THEY WOULD CATCH ME! I WOULD DIE! WHY DO YOU WANT ME TO DIE?”
“Because you won’t SHUT! UP!” Brian looked like he was about to continue when Nate grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and yanked him into an open doorway, covering his mouth with his hand. Remy grabbed Harley in a similar fashion, but Harley seemed to get over his need to destroy his own vocal chords and did not need to be smothered. The four slowed their breaths and listened to the sounds of footsteps--multiple people running after where they’d been shouting.
The hunters almost ran right past their admittedly rather terrible hiding place, but pivoted on their feet to face them. Time slowed around them and instead of whipping out their weapons and killing them instantly, they sluggishly reached for their knives and guns.
Nate released Brian and sauntered over, reaching into their pockets and removing anything of interest, either breaking it or keeping it, tossing the broken, useless remains onto the ground. The hunters’ faces moved achingly slowly in reaction--horror, annoyance, the like. A few of the group had the audacity to look afraid.
“It’s almost like they’ve never fought a demon before,” Remy noted, chuckling. With a wave of his hands they all fell asleep, oh-so-slowly falling to the ground in varying levels of discomfort. They would awake once the demons were good and far away.
“Why don’t we just kill them?” Brian whined.
“Do you want a whole pack of hunters after us, instead of a few strays?” Remy asked. Brian backed down, but grumbled under his breath.
“We can’t feed from them anyways,” Nate muttered. “They’ve poisoned themselves. Drank holy water.”
Remy let out a string of curses that would singe any self-respecting angel’s ears. “What the hell else are we supposed to eat? The people here are too damn paranoid to go out at night. And unless you wanna get maced, I don’t think we should try any of the dealers around here.”
Harley huffed. “Can’t even try a decent prostitute. Stupid city council cracking down on it being illegal, and all.”
“I mean, there’s that homeless shelter downtown,” Brian said. “We could try breaking in. They’re probably all asleep anyway.”
“I actually looked into that the other day,” Nate spoke. “They’ve got a silent alarm. We wouldn’t even know it before the cops were on us. And these days, they’re worse than the hunters.”
The rest muttered sounds of agreement as an uneasy silence settled on them like a sticky child’s blanket. As in, they really would rather be doing anything than continue to be touching such a silence.
“So…” Brian bounced on his heels. “What are we gonna eat?”
-
Nate and Remy met at the turn of the century, at a millennium new year’s party. There were a few raised eyebrows exchanged, at first. After all, they both wore the same sunglasses indoors, and both wore leather jackets--although Nate kept his sleeves rolled up to his elbows at all times. Aesthetic was and is a crucial part of both of their lives, so the fact that they matched was an unpleasant revelation. And as they met in the corner of the room to discuss such pleasantries as who would be leaving and coming back in another outfit, they both recognized the indisputable, if hidden via powerful glamour, aura of a demon.
As the ball dropped in Times Square and on the TV, the humans around them cheered and drank and Nate and Remy removed their sunglasses for the first time that evening and made out until the last of the human partiers vomited onto the couch and resolved to fix her alcohol problem this year. (She didn’t, but it’s the thought that counts, and at least she got the two weirdos in the back to stop snogging each other and leave.)
-
Their apartment didn’t have a lock, but it did exude residual demonic energy, and that worked well enough to ward off potential burglars. Not that they had much worthy of pilfering. Harley jiggled the door handle and slammed his full body weight into the door in an attempt to budge the stubborn thing. Remy leaned against the doorframe and ‘helped’ until it actually opened, and the four went in.
Inside, a dented old red boombox played ‘Best of Queen’, and a pair of identical young boys played Mario Kart on the stolen TV. They didn’t bother to look up at the adults as they wandered in. Nate sat on the couch next to them, humming in mild amusement as one boy blue-shelled the other.
“Not sure how you can win or lose this one, Jobe,” Nate ruffled one boy’s hair, laughing as he was swatted away.
The game ended and the duo turned to their brother in the same kind of unison one would expect of twins in a horror movie, but not in real life.
“Did you bring food?” The image of two boys blurred until it seemed as though there may not have been any boys on the ratty old couch at all, and maybe it was just a smudge on your glasses? Only for the smudge to reform itself into one singular boy in-between where the separate boys sat, holding both controllers.
“No luck,” Nate admitted. From somewhere in the barren kitchen, (for though food was a luxury, it was not one they could afford) he heard a frustrated huff that could have been from any of the other three housemates.
Jobe frowned, then tried to hide it, then decided it wasn’t worth it and just frowned. “We’re all gonna to starve at this rate!”
“Nah,” Nate reached out and took one of the controllers from the younger’s hand. “Ain’t gonna happen. Wanna play against someone who isn’t you?”
“Finally. Do you know how hard it is to beat myself?!”
“You’re such a braggart.”
-
Jobe was a surprise. But he was Nate’s baby brother, and while it may be the norm for humans, siblings are spectacularly rare among demonkind. (This is for various reasons, including but not limited to: demonkind’s lack of loyalty to former partners, often betraying each other before the opportunity to reproduce presents itself a second time, as well as their general dislike of children, particularly demonic ones.) So Remy accepted that as long as he and Nate were… whatever they were, he’d have to be around Jobe.
It turned out to be easier than he thought.
“I didn’t picture you as good with kids,” Nate had a towel wrapped around his waist, his hair still dripping from his shower. Remy looked up from the carpet, where he and Jobe had taken toothpicks and rubber bands to set up a witchburning with Barbie as the accused. As it was, Elmo the witch hunter had already burned such known witchcraft practitioners as Potato Head Man, all three of the minions, and a particularly feisty Beanie Baby who had laid a curse upon all of Elmo’s descendants that probably wouldn’t come into play until after Jobe had taken a bath. However, the townsfolk were starting to get suspicious of Elmo’s credibility, as Barbie is a well-respected figure across all cultures. (That part had been Jobe’s idea, and Remy had wholeheartedly agreed. Elmo was getting greedy, and greedy humans--or muppets--had to pay eventually.)
“Sorry, we borrowed your cigarette lighter,” Remy handed back the object in question, gesturing to the melted remnants of one of Potato Head Man’s arms. “We’re having a witch hunt.”
Nate nodded solemnly, handing the lighter back to the closest of his five brothers, two of whom decided to reform one, bringing the count back down to four Jobe. (The plural of Jobe, of course, is Jobe. This is because no matter how many of him there is, at the end of the day Nate only has one brother, even if there are several of him.)
“I always knew the minions were something unholy,” he commented, heading back to his room to get into his pajamas.
-
After some cajoling, Jobe eventually went to bed, leaving the four adults to ponder their tragically familiar situation over the kitchen countertop.
“I’ve heard LA’s got a pretty good food chain system going,” Harley suggested.
“Big cities, easy no-go. Besides, I heard that’s a rumor the local hunting family there’s been spreading,” Brian rested his head in his hands, staring down at the fake marble as if it had snatched away his only birthday present.
“Ontario’s been quiet lately,” Remy mused dryly.
Harley shivered. “Canada’s too cold for me.”
“You don’t have to come,” Brian rolled his eyes.
“Please. What would you do without me?”
“Sleep, maybe.”
“Shut up,” Remy took off his sunglasses, rubbing his forehead to stave off a headache. “Nate? Anything?”
“...Orlando?”
“Big city, same problems,” Brian repeated.
“Florida’s not too bad, though. Not a lot of hunting.” Remy considered it. It could be nice. Maybe they could take Jobe to Disney. He’d be ecstatic.
“That’s because all the humans down there are old,” Brian huffed. “It’d be so… boring.”
“Boring is good, though.” Nate spoke to Harley and Brian, but he’d moved his sunglasses onto his head, and his eyes were having a silent conversation with the other leather-clad demon. “Boring is safe.”
Harley and Brian shared their own look: one of mutual distaste for the inherently romantic route this conversation had involuntarily taken.
Jobe: Fuck capitalism. It’s a rigged system that keeps the poor down and it isn’t fair. You shouldn’t need to work three jobs to afford basic necessities.
Jobe, playing monopoly: Sorry, if you wanted to win you should have tried not being poor
