Renfaire Fantasy: Persona Non Grata (Patreon)

    The moment the Entering Seneca sign with its Population 37,600 came into view, Judas pulled off of the road and crossed the shoulder until their black SUV was coasting to a stop in the grass. He was a handsome but nondescript man in a dark suit and tie, the mirrored sunglasses he wore reflecting only the large green Seneca sign that represented one of the few boundaries he didn’t dare to cross. In the passenger seat was his new partner, a young girl—perhaps in her late teens or early twenties—with short, choppy hair who went by the moniker ‘Red Herring.’ While Judas himself appeared every bit the quintessential clean-cut but ominous government letter agency spook, the thin and frail Red Herring looked much worse for wear in her set of rumpled businesswear and with a bloody bandage concealing one of her dark eyes.

    “We need to keep going in,” Red Herring said.

    “Keep going in?” Judas let out a laugh. “Kid, that’s stupid. That’s beyond stupid. This right here’s the line—cross any further, and we’re in Seneca itself. There’s no turning back from that. Actress doesn’t roll out red carpet for anyone, and she don’t do friendly meet and greets. We’re too fucking close for comfort here as it is, already. Really don’t want the epitaph they finally put on my gravestone to read ‘this could have been an email.’”

    “Do we… have an email address for Actress?” Red Herring asked. “Any contact information? Does anyone even know her public persona? Her normal identity?”

    “Don’t think she has one,” Judas grunted as his fingers tapped against the steering wheel. “A public identity. I mean, like a specific, singular one. She’s Actress. She could be anybody, everybody, nobody. The true chameleon, she makes your little outfit and masks quickchange bullshit look like actual amateur hour shit. Yeah sure, and I don’t have her email address in my fucking contact list, but I do have a couple friends up on high. Inner circle suits, somebody would know something about how to get in touch in that roundabout more diplomatic way. Anything other than driving right into the heart of fucking Seneca. This is like… it’s her fuckin’ turf, Red. I don’t think you really get that.”

    “She’ll at least talk to me,” Red Herring said with confidence.

    “Yeah? Well, you’d better be real fucking sure about that,” Judas said. “Because if you’re not—well. I’m not gonna say I’ll shed a tear for you, but it would reflect poorly on me as your partner, yeah? ’Cause this is just fucking stupid. Seneca is one of the no-go zones, everyone knows that. Actress aside, if she doesn’t scare you enough? This used to be Bedlam fucking Jack’s stomping grounds. I’m sure you’ve heard of him.”

    “I have, but—” Red Herring insisted. “I um, I can say with very reasonable confidence that he’s not around anymore, or at least not in any way that matters. Bedlam Jack, I mean.”

    “What, just because he’s dead?” Judas scoffed. “Don’t matter if he is, or if he isn’t. Bedlam Jack is beyond big leagues compared to us, that level is on another whole fucking planet. Do you know baseball at all? If I’m double-A league, and you’re an up and coming rookie, that guy is Hall of Fame—he’s one of those major causality warping motherfuckers. You don’t just ‘try your luck’ against the guy who’s literally hoarding all the fucking luck.

    “In my opinion? Dude’s only ever really as dead and gone as he decides he wants to be at any given moment. Actress, Nurse, however many of the rest of his surviving thrall lieutenants that were caught up in his orbit? They’re up there with upper circle masters. His fucking thralls. Man in Black had a run in with them some ten years back, and you know what he said? Said he didn’t even want to fucking talk about it. So, even if whoever the fuck your papa dearest is a Master who can contend with monsters up on their level, that’s got nothing to do with us. I mean no offense, but even if you’re not a total complete newbie, you are a nepotism Master, right?”

    “Technically,” Red Herring conceded. “I guess. It’s my mother who’s a Master. Mastress? Masteress?”

    “Not exactly filling me with confidence,” Judas griped. “Inner circle? Who? She’d better be a fucking someone to make you think you have that kind of backing. Anyone I’d have heard of? I get around a fair bit, I keep up with who’s who. Morgan? J.B.K.? Barbara Rossel? Cosette la Cruelle? Janey Toppan? Beth Bathory?”

    “You wouldn’t know her name,” Red Herring shook her head. “But, she is… extraordinarily powerful.”

    “Fuck,” Judas paused to turn and give her a wary look. “Powerful, a Master, and no one knows her name? You’re not the brat of that super freaky priestess, are you? The one who took out her own eyes, added new ones, whatever, the cultist chick? I know you know the one I mean. Hell, you’re fuckin’ weird enough…”

    “Cult of the Hole?” Red Herring guessed. “No, I’m not. I have met her, though! She’s not that freaky…”

    “Think that’d depend on how much you love holes,” Judas muttered. “I mean, I’m a guy and all, but any more holes than usual gets squicky pretty fucking fast for me.”

    “People used to worship the sun!” Red Herring said. “Worshipping holes isn’t that much different.”

    “Yeah it is?” Judas argued. “The sun is big and obvious and out of mortal reach, untouchable. The sun, the moon, stars—easy to chalk them up to the divine or divine provenance, and I’m not even any kind of believer in anything. Adding hundreds of holes to yourself, on the other hand, is just fuckin’ creepy.”

    “Oh, are you trypophobic?” Red Herring blinked in surprise. “I didn’t think another Master would be so… bigoted.”

    “What?” Judas made a face at her. “Think you’re thinking the wrong kind of phobic, there.”

    “...I really don’t think that I am?”

    “And—if you don’t think your fellow Masters can be bigoted, you’ve clearly never, ever been around any part of the circles.”

    “I suppose?” Red Herring hummed. “Anyways, the priestess was nice with me when I met her. Well, I think she felt sorry for me? Holes don’t really take, with me, not in any lasting way.”

    “Rightttt,” Judas drawled out the word. “Because you’re ‘mysterious.’”

    “Because I’m mysterious!” Red Herring agreed, adding jazz hands for effect.

    “No offense kid, because yeah you do seem like you have some kind of good gimmick going on…” Judas shook his head. “But you’re like a rule-bender, not a rule-breaker.”

    “I’m not a rule bender or a rule breaker,” Red Herring said. “I’m just—different.”

    “Okay, real talk then, so you’re, what—physically out of phase?” Judas conjectured. “That was gonna be my first guess, from the way my spatial sense can’t get any kind of a solid lock on you. Either that, or you’re like a… localized… astral projection? Or maybe, you were born partway phantasmal? Your momma fuck a ghost? Some-fucking how? Am I getting warmer?”

    “I’m very mysterious!” Red Herring wiggled her hands again.

    “Sure, okay, whatever,” Judas gave her a dismissive shrug. “You’re a cocky little shit, because of course you are. What I’m saying, is—whatever your gimmick is, it’s not gonna stand up to Bedlam Jack or any of his goons. Teacher, Nurse. Lotus. Actress. Whatever it is you…is, for lack of a better word, you’re anchored in to reality and causality and all that somehow, and monsters of their caliber eat that shit for breakfast.”

    “Flower,” Red Herring corrected.

    “What?”

    “Flower, not Lotus,” Red Herring said. “No one called her Lotus. My mother knew them, she’s met them. Believe me, I wouldn’t just…go right into Seneca, uninformed!”

    “If you’re strolling into Seneca with that kind of attitude, you are uninformed,” Judas countered. “Fucking nepo kids. Christ. Where the fuck do you get your confidence, huh?”

    “I have a letter of introduction,” Red Herring said. “Sort of. It’s complicated.”

    “Yeah?” Judas said. “Okay. Alright. That’s… something. Well, let’s see it.”

    “It’s not a… literal kind of letter of introduction,” Red Herring admitted. “It’s more like… a metaphorical one?”

    “A metaphorical letter of introduction,” Judas sounded even more skeptical than before. “Wow, that sure put all my fears to bed. You should have just led with that. I feel better already.”

    “No, it’s… in a certain manner of speaking, I’m the letter of introduction?” Red Herring struggled to explain. “It will make sense to Actress, at least. Mother was very, very sure.”

    “This isn’t some kind of weirdo vendetta, is it?” Judas groaned. “Your mommy dearest beefing with Actress over some decades-old feud they might have? With us caught up in the middle? I know there was a lot of that going on, back in the day. What are you, some bastard child of Bedlam Jack? Yeah, Actress will just love that. Because fuck, I really do not want to keep being collateral damage in everyone else’s bullshit. I’m trying to climb up past all that.”

    “I don’t have a good way of explaining it,” Red Herring admitted. “It’s just—complicated.”

    “Fuck me, that’s exactly what’s going down, isn’t it?” Judas swore, fingers drumming upon the steering wheel in iritation. “Your mother, Mrs. whoever-the-fuck, sent you on a suicide mission as some kind of gotcha, to spite Actress. Letter of Introduction, hah. Yeah, I’m turning us right the fuck around.”

    “No! No, it’s not like that, exactly,” Red Herring sputtered. “It’s just, it’s complicated!”

    “Even if you have some kind of inexplicable assurance that Actress of all people won’t trap all nine of your senses in the fucking putrid feces dimension for the next ten years—I don’t have those same assurances for me, pertaining to my own person! So, nah. Fuck that. You want permission to search Seneca, have at—you can go in there and talk to her your own damn self.”

    “She can’t trap your senses in the putrid feces dimension for ten years,” Red Herring argued. “That’s—that’s a total exaggeration. It would be like… two or three months, at the very very most. The absolute maximum. And, in the end the putrid feces dimension isn’t even real!”

    “Red,” Judas warned, pointing outside of his SUV towards the side of the road. “Get the fuck out of my car. The higher ups ask me what the fuck happened to my newbie? I’m gonna tell ‘em she chose suicide. Suicide by putrid feces.”

    “Wait, no, wait!” Red Herring protested. “We’re partners. You’re my very first partner—and that means something. We need to stick together! We’ve already finished one job together! And, Seneca is the way forward for us, I know that it is. If-if you really need to, I can have you talk with my mother, and she can explain better than—”

    “Mother really is God in the eyes of a child, huh?” Judas shook his head. “Do you even hear yourself? Like, I know you nepotism shits aren’t exactly famous for breaking the mold, but you’re literally being the nepo-baby stereotype. You realize that, right? Oh, everything will work out fine, because mommy or daddy said so!

    “Red, listen. You’re gonna get yourself killed thinking like that. So, you need to cast all of those kind of thoughts right the fuck out of your head. Out here in the real world, nasty magical shit will immediately kill you and not ask questions or care who your mama or papa is. You’re gonna get yourself killed, or worse,—you’re gonna get me killed.”

    “I’m really, really hard to kill!” Red Herring insisted. “I mean it. I can—”

    “So am I, and I’m at the top of my game,” Judas said. “Doesn’t mean I go out of my way to take stupid, pointless risks. Big part of staying alive and climbing the ranks is knowing what will put you in over your head. You realize I only even have a new partner, because my last one got hisself lobotomized on what should’ve been an easy recruitment run, right?”

    “Was he even all that powerful?” Red Herring asked. “Chad. I thought that… well, I was told you guys ran into an unaffiliated coterie of vampires, or something?”

    “Kind of?” Judas shrugged. “But, Chad, he had some kind of innate chaotic disposition that bent all kinds of rules that I can’t. Sound fucking familiar? You know the circle assigns partners up all asymmetrically like that on purpose, just look at me and you. Point is, he got cocky, and it made him sloppy, wasn’t careful enough—and yeah again, just like you.”

    “I could take on a coterie of vampires myself,” Red Herring said with confidence.

    “Ones warded with bullshit powerful anti-magic?” Judas pressed. “Part of someone’s off the books snatch and grab team? With a fucking full precog calling their shots?”

    “They were… probably bluffing?” Red Herring couldn’t help but frown, because anything antimagic or magic disruption would indeed be her personal anathema. “I don’t think you can even ward vampires against magic like that. They’re partly magical beings in the first place, that’s how their dead bodies stay animated. Antimagic wards on them would be like… like setting yourself on fire, to prevent anyone from touching you. No, more than that, it would be like throwing yourself into a giant furnace, or a volcano. To prevent others from getting to you. Stupid, prohibitive, too costly to ever justify any means. No one would do it.”

    “Right, exactly, before a month ago that’s what I would have thought, too,” Judas nodded. “But, that’s how things shake out sometimes. Maybe this Misandry bloodsucker had some absurd innate trait, or someone in her little psycho squad could parallel process their own special ability over onto her. Man in Black and Spook have both run into that kind of thing, before. There’s rule-benders, and then there’s rule-breakers. All sorts of weird shit out there, you never know.”

    “So what specifically is our mission then, in the first place?” Red Herring tilted her head. “Are we trying to hunt that team down—or are we trying to find the Josh Doe they snatched and grabbed?”

    “Both,” Judas said. “Neither. We’re just after some answers, anything more conclusive than someone’s snatch and grab team steamrolled us out of nowhere, on what should have been a routine run. We’re investigating. People up the ladder from us don’t like loose ends, they hate being blindsided, and that kinda action, persons unknown playing so hard for some random Joe Schmo catches all kinds of interest. What makes that son of a bitch in particular so fucking special, you know?”

    “Okay,” Red Herring nodded. “Investigating. I’m good at that. I’m great at that.”

    “Even more than that, the snatch and grab team itself. Like you said—vampires, definitely at least one but probably more, warded for antimagic. That’s not normal. Casually claiming they have a legit precog—that’s not normal, that’s bait, that’s practically waving a flag. Those up on high tend to prefer to have a total monopoly on the future, and they get real fuckin’ antsy when some new player they’re not aware of starts fucking around with it. And hell, if it’s like we all suspect, and this is all someone or certain someones right there in that highest circle that are playing fast and loose with the Rules?

    “Well. I’m not so naive as to say those who’re in positions of power might ever face any kind of dire consequences for whatever wheeling and dealing they’re up to. But, us? We’ll dig, and we’ll see what turns up, and the blame for circumventing the Rules by proxy will probably point towards someone important, and then that someone will have to grudgingly make concessions, or owe some huge debt, or have to trade away his rights to the pocket dimension of sunshine, strawberries and sloppy blowjobs, something like that. All nonsense at incalculable levels beyond our paygrade.”

    “Saying all of that, you want to warn me about getting in over my head??!” Red Herring sputtered, throwing her hands up. “Almost none of that is like mom described this job! She just told me it was going to be an important part of my future, like—like a stepping stone for me. Which means we’re supposed to be fine. We should be.”

    “Yeah, well,” Judas sighed. “For me, I slipped up, and people are trying to kick me while I’m down. And, you? Heck, your mother is probably just trying to get rid of you, or something. This whole job was a shitshow from the beginning, and no one’s gonna bat an eye if we wind up dead or redacted. Oh, they’ll keep sending more unlucky sods to finish whatever we start, sure. But personally? I think you and I both need to be extra fucking careful, paranoid, even, about this whole jinxed fucking operation.”

    “All the more reason we need to speak with Actress!” Red Herring insisted. “We can explain all of that to her. She should be delighted to help see some, uh, some figurative heads roll in the highest circle. Right? Since she’s so oppositional to the Masters. There’s no reason for her to bother putting us in the putrid feces dimension for months, because we’re not major players. We’re nobodies. Supposedly.”

    “Kid, have you ever even smelled real poop before?” Judas sighed. “You’re a half-shade or a hallucination or whatever, you’ve probably never even used a toilet before. Didn’t you grow up in your momma’s ivory fucking tower? It—”

    “It wasn’t ivory, no,” Red Herring shook her head. “And, okay so I haven’t personally—”

    “It’s bad, there’s no way to really undersell it,” Judas continued. “Shit stinks. Literally. Putrid shit stinks the most. That was just a random example from the archives, too—I’d wager Actress has all kinds of other more imaginative lovely sensory hells in store for whoever wanders into her web. You know you can’t block her out of your senses, right?”

    “An antimagic vampire might, though!” Red Herring said. “Block her out. Which might catch her interest. What if she has a whole coterie of them, squatting there in her territory that she didn’t even know about? In Seneca. Antimagic is too hard to detect, there’s really no way of knowing for sure. Maybe she’ll appreciate us passing along that information? A friendly warning. Maybe she’ll not appreciate that whoever’s behind all this made sure that their trail runs cold right through her area there in Seneca. There’s no way that was an accident.”

    “Hey, be my guest,” Judas gestured for the door. “You want to parlay with Actress, you go right on ahead and try. You’re the one with the ‘metaphorical’ letter of introduction. Right? Not me. Far as I know, Masters are persona non grata anywhere near her turf. The sheer fact that the circles respect her boundaries should tell you everything you need to know about how dangerous she is. It’s the same for everyone associated with Bedlam Jack. Just, at least with Jack himself, he’d have the common decency to just have you trip over your own foot and twist your own spine somehow. Rather than trap all of your senses in the putrid feces dimension for years and years.”

    “Months, at maximum—and most of all that about Jack is hyperbole,” Red Herring said. “Mother was clear on the fact that yes, while he was certainly a power to be reckoned with in the past, a lot of the stories are over-exaggerated. She’s met him before—she knows what she’s talking about.”

    “Sure, that’s always possible,” Judas shrugged. “But, every couple years someone gets that same idea in their heads. That oh, all the legends about Bedlam Jack and his stacked deck of thralls must be overhyped. Then, they go to Seneca and immediately disappear, get redacted, and are never heard from again.

    “But, I’m sure that’s just a funny coincidence every time, right? Maybe your momma got off easy, or he was just feeling forgiving that day. Who the fuck knows? That group isn’t bound by the Rules, so there’s no way of telling what they’ll ever do. You can’t trust in anything there with those unaffiliated types. They’re really not like us.”

    “I’m going into Seneca,” Red Herring insisted. “Alone, if I have to.”

    “Your funeral,” Judas grunted. “I’ll be waiting right here. Soon as you’re dead, or all blotted over in the Akashic Records? I’ll go and explain to your momma dearest how this wasn’t my fault. Whoever the fuck she is. You gonna even tell me who she is, before you throw yourself oh so gallantly onto the chopping block?”

    “She’ll know what happened before you do,” Red Herring said, unbuckling her seatbelt. “Don’t worry about it. Just, um. Kinda embarrassing, but. Can I borrow a car, or something? I had to walk all the way along the interstate last time, and it took me forever.”

    “You’re a Master, master something up,” Judas said. “You’re a lady, put on a big ol’ pair of tits and stick your thumb out, hitchhike into town. Compel one of these idiots going on past us here to very generously offer you their vehicle—just don’t forget that the magic word is please. Christ, even a dumbfuck like Chad kept a goofy little moped in one of his stupid pockets. Beep beep, and all that. How the fuck are you an actual Master if you can’t even get yourself around?”

    “Fine then,” Red Herring huffed, popping open her door. “I’ll just… walk. Wish me luck. I guess.”

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