100 Ghost Stories Counting Down To Halloween 2018 - One more

THE STRANGER

You know me, we've talked before. Well, I talked, you listened. You know what it is that I do. I don't have a boss that I report to. I work for myself and my services are such that I can set the terms of my contract in whichever way I choose.
Basically, I'm a killer for hire. Here's today's contract. The woman's name is Sherelle Launui; the contract is on her mother who Sherelle claims is possessed. Sherelle's father left her a rather lengthy note written in a composition book alerting her to her mother's demonic condition. In it, he thought that he could remove the demon from the girl's mother but it had to be done when she least expected it. Things must have gone wrong because after one of their routine evening walks only Sherelle's mother Carmen returned. She claimed that her husband told her to wait while he walked over to the park bathroom in order to take a leak. Carmen claims that Albert never came back. Later, his mangled body was found under the wheels of a duty truck just fronting the Waikiki Aquarium. After reading her father's note, Sherelle went to confront her mother but found that she was gone. She's not been seen in and around the house since then and Sherelle has not been able to track her mother down. That's where I come in.

.............

POKE' STOP

Where would anyone think that you were supposed to find a woman who is possessed? Certainly not at church and certainly not at the Poke' Stop but there she was, just like in the photograph that Sherelle sent me. The venue was popular for its different varieties of Poke'. Shoyu Poke' with a dash of inamona is my personal favorite. Today there was a combination of locals and Japanese tourists standing in a very long line to get their order. Carmen wasn't in that line, she set off to the side with a cup of cold-brewed iced tea in her hands. I couldn't be too obvious with this one so I decided that an easy blue colored Geoffrey Bean number with dark blues slacks would be alright. The Doc Martens notwithstanding, it could end up being my new uniform of the day. I got myself a drink as well and approached Carmen.

"Would you mind if I sit here?" I asked cordially.

"It's your contract," she replied. "Sitting here or hiding somewhere at a good distance, it's your contract." Her arms rested on the table and the surface slowly began to turn black and rot.

"Okay," I said after taking a sip of my drink and feeling the rush of hot air coming off a passing trolley, "no formalities I guess?"

"The real bad guys don't make speeches, they make impressions by just being the bad guy," Carmen said with a straight face.

The eagle talon round that I fired from my Kel-Tech P11 sat in a clip with other bullets like it that were sanctified in pure rainwater mixed with turmeric and red Hawaiian salt. She was right, the bad guys don't waste time talking and so to validate her point I shot her in the head. It's the last thing she or whatever it was that possessed her body would have expected. They count on our human compassion considering that if we harm the body of the person who is possessed, the demon could leave mere seconds before the trauma occurred and the offender would more than likely be arrested for murder. Not me, I believe if the inner core is rotten then the rest of the fruit suffers. People may not see it right off, but the rotting stench from inside is there, festering, corrupting, and waiting to be let out.

Today, I just nipped that process in the bud. Score one for the bad guy.

.............

LATER

"I asked you to hunt her down and get rid of the demon inside her! I didn't ask you to kill her!" Sherelle's face was red with fury and her temples were decorated with bulging veins that looked like cracks of lightning.

"I suggest you read the fine details of our contract," I could see her frustration but as I've said previously, people don't really know what they're asking for. I pulled up the contract on my phone and enhanced the last few lines above the place where my signature and Sherelle's signature were.

"Oh," she said as her entire body pulled back from my device. She reached in her bag and removed the folded up manila envelope and handed it to me. She was heartbroken more than she was disappointed, she stood there with one hand on her hip with the other covering her mouth.

"Look, if it makes you feel better....she didn't feel anything and because the bullets I used were blessed? That demon died with her....there was no other way to do it. That thing was smart because it kept itself out in public where it knew that no one would perform the rituals of exorcism in front of a crowd of people. She wanted to hide in public so she had to be dealt with publicly." I lowered my head so that I could make eye contact, "do you get it?"

She glanced at me and nodded and said, "I get it."

"Good," I decided to offer Sherelle a morsel of wisdom before I left. "This world that your parents were involved in? You've seen how it works and you've seen the kinds of things that happen to everyday people. Horrendous things. You don't have to be a part of that, you've got siblings and I'm sure you'd want to start your own family one day right? There's nothing wrong with a normal life; this kinda stuff is what's left up to guys like me. Not every fruit falls near the tree. You can be the exception."

"My parents were the exception," Sherelle cried.

"They were," I agreed with her. "They really were until something went wrong. You can have a life where when something goes wrong it's not fatal. It'll just be a life thing, and you get to go on after that. That's what you want."

There was no reply from her, she just put her head down and walked away. If she's smart she'll heed my advice if not.........yeah.

.............

Aloha!

Thank you all for following our 100 stories as we counted down to Halloween 2018. This year marks 300 hundred stories overall. That's quite the achievement and we've all gotten through it together! Please congratulate yourselves, you should be proud! Although we are already planning for future events, no one can really say what things are going to be like next year, or in the very near future. Between now and then, please be good to yourselves and please know that we appreciate each one of you. For without you, there would be no us. Tanya and I will continue to bring all of you the best that we have to offer and we thank you for trusting us with your imaginations where we've scared you and have reduced you to tears. What also makes us proud is that we have earned every single one of your 'likes' through diligence, hard work, and loyalty. Not one of you is a bought 'like' or a robot 'like.' You are all real and tangible and you matter to us. Please continue to be real and we will be as true and as sincere to all of you as we've always been. We are in no way perfect but all we can do is continue to do what we do best and that's what you'll get from us, our best. See you all at HawaiiParacon 2019!

Mahalo

Lopaka & Tanya