Mister Posted and the Brain Freeze Goddess: Parabeing, #1

Chapter One

The sun was going down on this summer’s day, turning it into a summer’s night, with the option for poetry later, depending on how much you wanted to get into the pants of your local librarian. While darkness was rushing in with all the speed of chilled molasses into a frozen mug, the sun had just enough time to rally some energy for one last boisterous flare before bedtime.

Unfortunately for Sharon, this energy seemed to be exclusively focused on her. Sweat was causing her far too big t-shirt to awkwardly stick to her body. It made her look as though she was a lizard whose scaly skin had not shrank with her body’s recent extreme weight loss, and was now only tentatively attached in places. Somehow, to her eternal fury and annoyance, the spots beneath her breasts took the brunt of the sweating. She was sure she was developing a rash. She wasn’t even sure how that was even possible.

For many people this would only be a minor inconvenience, remedied with the use of a deodorant and a shirt change. But as a former winter goddess, this was a major issue for Sharon.

She sat on the still warm concrete sidewalk in the shadow of a building; the large, faded Going Out of Business sign in the window now shouting the obvious to an empty street. The nearby street lamp had looked at the long night’s work ahead of it and decided that it was going to call in sick. The shadow was doing very little to keep her cool, but the semi-darkness helped Sharon convince herself that it had more of a work ethic.

Strange rules seemed to govern corporal occupation—some characteristics of a body were unavoidable, some could be skirted around. She had had quite a long time to muse and lament about this and had determined that which was which appeared dependent upon what would cause her the greatest inconvenience at that time. Susceptibility to heat extremes did not appear to be one of those characteristics that could be avoided at the present.

Sharon dragged one brown forearm across a matching forehead in an effort to stem the torrential flow of sweat, but only managed to mix gritty body sweat with greasy face sweat. The combination was as tactile as sandpaper. If one were observing Sharon—invisibly, from a third person perspective, say—they would see that her skin was, primarily, the kind of color that would mark her as clearly of non-European decent. This was, broadly speaking, true, but not in the typical way that people think of. This observer would further discern that it was the kind of dark that one only receives when generations of their family lived in the space between bright blue sky and bright white snow. This, too is inaccurate; but, again, not in the way one would think. There was an underlying and rather disquieting hint of paleness that was usually only attributed to malnutrition. This observation was completely accurate, but, for a third time, not as one would expect. It made her appear as though a sepia filter had been laid over her body by a trainee video editor.

Said forearm brushed aside the strings of hair that stuck to her face. They were already soaked beyond tolerance and dripped as if they, too, were far too hot. It was black hair, or had been black hair at one point. It had faded in a way that bore striking similarities to the Going Out of Business sign on the building she was sitting against: sun faded, leaning more toward the graphite end of the greyscale than black.

Footsteps approached. Sharon looked up to see a young man walking on the sidewalk, toward where she sat. He seemed to have just made it in the post-college age bracket: his flashy, tailored linen suit spoke of the rare former student who had become immediately successful in finance upon graduation; his cleanly shaven baby face was lit up by the screen of the phone he gazed at as he walked, undoubtedly on his way to an exciting night of unwholesome pleasure obscenely mixed with seedy business opportunities.

Sharon took all this in and thought him cute enough for her purposes, if a bit haughty looking. Though, in certain circumstances, that could be useful. His smooth, non-shiny brow showed that he had somehow not been touched by the heat that weighed so heavily upon her. Heat-resistant. Another in the plus column.

Reaching where she sat, the young man, out of the corner of his evidently busy eye, saw her splayed out legs. Sharon smiled at him, pouring on more than a dollop of charm with the promise of fun naughtiness later on if he played his cards right. It had been a while since she enjoyed company, anyone’s company, and hoped that she could do more than catch his glance.

Her hopes were for naught—she didn’t even merit a glance. Although she was an unusually short and slight person, the young man made an exaggerated wide curve in his path around where she sat. Before he passed by Sharon saw a disgusted frown mar his handsome mouth and heard him mutter something about the detestable nature of the filthy homeless.

Sharon looked down at herself. Her sweaty, misty turquoise t-shirt, with its printed wolf head on it, was clinging to her in a way that was so far from appealing that it might have accurately be called anti-lingerie. It hung so low that it covered her cut off denim shorts, chosen out of a necessity to help keep cool more than any fashion statement. Her thin, smooth, jogger’s legs were toned from being her main means of transportation from town to town. The impromptu self-re-assessment finished at her feet, where two extraordinarily filthy canvas sneakers looked forlornly back at her, the laces untied (and had in fact never been tied in their time of occupation on her feet). They had, at one time, been the brand to own. The logo that increased the price by fifteen times had long been worn away, and they were more socks now than anything else.

Homeless? Sharon thought. Confusion morphed into hurt, which was immediately channeled to fuel a perpetually present background rage. The process would have been fascinating to a psychologist specializing in anger management if any had been present. All that was there was the faded Going Out of Business sign, and they aren’t generally known for applying themselves.

Sharon’s rage elbowed all other emotion and consideration out of way in its effort to take a solo place in the foreground. She looked after the suit clad young man from out of two narrowed eye lids, the muscles in her jawline twitching. If said psychologist specializing in anger management (or a remarkably ambitious Going Out of Business sign) had been around at that time, and seen Sharon’s expression, they would have been able to warn the suited young man to take cover. This would have to have been said in a shout, because they themselves would have been quite some distance away at this point and rapidly increasing that distance.

She stood, calling on the stores of divine energy afforded to her as a goddess. The sweat stopped its continuous dripping and chilled on her face. Her hair stiffened and began to sparkle as it chilled. She pointed a slender finger at the young man’s calmly retreating back. The gesture had a meaning indistinguishable from one that would typically cause a red dot to suddenly appear on the back of the suit coat: the classic precursor to a loud noise, a large splatter of blood and unidentifiable pieces of organs, and a sensational story in the news.

Sharon focused, concentrated, and with an extreme effort of will an ancient and brutally cold power spectacularly failed to manifest at Sharon’s command.

It had been quite some time since those stores of divine energy had been sufficiently replenished.

Despite the lackluster results, the attempt still took a tremendous amount out of her. Sharon’s vision wavered as though the darkness of the night was beginning to pour, uninvited, into her mind like a gang of gate crashers at a celebrity wedding. She put a steadying hand on the building next to her, closed her eyes. The darkness receded, replaced by flashing purple spots. In time, those stopped too, replaced by the normal darkness of the inside of her eyelids.

When she opened her eyes again, the young man had nearly reached the end of the street and would soon be out of range of any retribution forever. She gritted her teeth and looked down for something, anything, she could lay her trembling hands on.

As if it was divine providence (although it couldn’t have been because she was divine and had never once provided providence randomly to anyone), a small chunk of brick lay practically at her feet. It was only a piece of the nearby building that had been carelessly knocked off and forgotten long ago, but Sharon picked it up in the manner of one drawing an arrow from a quiver.

Taking a steadying breath, Sharon sighted on the young man in the distance, judged the arch that she would need, reached her arm back, and viciously chucked the piece of brick.

Where deific vengeance failed, worldly pettiness succeeded. The chunk sailed true and struck the young man on the shoulder. The piece didn’t have enough weight to make much of an effect, but the surprise from being hit caused him to drop his phone. It was, naturally, the latest model, the kind with a price tag uncomfortably close to four figures. It had every new innovation that the company’s caffeine addled engineers could conceive of. That included a guaranteed shatter-resistant screen that was, in the miniscule font of legal terms, absolutely not guaranteed to be resistant to any damage at all. This discrepancy between marketing and reality was demonstrated when the screen hit the sidewalk at just the wrong angle and shattered. He looked down at it in open-mouthed horror, as one would look at a dropped child whose future life prospects had now been drastically narrowed due to the dent in its head.

Sharon laughed triumphantly and directed a well-known rude hand gesture toward the young man, who had knelt down and was too busy cooing and sobbing over his dropped phone to notice. Unfortunately for Sharon someone did notice. They had also noticed her throwing the piece of brick. This someone had just gotten out of their car, splitting the dark blue and blocky POLICE lettering that decorated the doors. The designer had gone even farther in their feverish desire for this car to be noticed by putting a flashing blue light bar on the roof. Some would have considered this gauche, but law enforcement agencies across the country seemed to find it the height of good taste and bought cars with just such a design in bulk.

Sharon looked around at the sound of the closing door. Somehow she had spectacularly failed to notice the police officer parked in the alley across the street. She silently blamed and cursed the unreasonable heat for fogging her head. The officer, on the other hand, had been sitting in a comfortably cool, air conditioned environment, and noticed her as soon as she sat against the building, threatening to besmirch the good name of generic-small-city-ville with the contemptible crime of loitering.

Without waiting for the officer’s shout of, Don’t move, Sharon jumped the script and went straight to the part where she ignored his order and ran away anyway.

THE SUN HAD JUST GONE down officially, but the horizon was still a splash of color: bruise purple, artificial orange juice orange, throat lozenge red, and new denim jeans blue all fought for space in the sky. At the edge of this artist’s mixing palate was the ink black of approaching night, patiently waiting for a brush to wipe it across the canvas of the world. Or, at least, this part of the world, while daytime was pulling duty in another part.

Beneath a tiny length of the brush stroke sat a farmhouse with a wrap-around porch. It was clearly a farmhouse to any casual viewer and not, say, a pretentious bed and breakfast trying to cage the rustic crowd. For one, it was in dire need of a new coat of paint, and had been for years now; no B&B that expected to attract customers would have let it get to such a state.

The second clue to the observer was that there was a classic red barn, white truck, and green tractor not far from the house. To the right observer, the colors came together to make something that would have looked quite patriotic. To the wrong observer, those colors came together to represent the colors of an enemy; one that they were not entirely sure why they were hostile towards, but went along with it because it the hate-filled rallies got you out of the house at weekends. All showed the years of hard use they had been subjected to without cosmetic maintenance of any kind.

The last and most obvious sign was that there was an actual farm nearby: tall stalks of corn rolled over nearly imperceptible hills and seemed to rush to meet the horizon. They didn’t—the farm wasn’t that big—but the illusion gave a decent representation to the size all the same. Though an experienced farmer could see that the crop wasn’t as tall or dense as it should have been for this time of year.

The only farmer present, this land’s farmer, was a man by the name of John Greene. He was christened a little more than fifty years ago by caring if unimaginative parents. Baby’s names weren’t as important as things such as market prices of sweet yellow or precipitation predictions for the following year. That mindset, as well as their dedication to growing, had been passed down to John. A lifetime of solid agricultural work had not only given John a solid, muscle-filled agrarian physique, but confirmed to him the value of stable if bland over creative and uncertain. It manifested physically in his simple farmer’s overalls, overworked boots that were in dire need of replacing, and the white undershirt.

He had taken full possession of the farm itself by way of the ancient tradition: when both his father and mother had gotten too old and too dead to tend it properly. Making Last Will and Testaments also not being among the things his parents thought of as worthy of consideration.

As one would expect from such an upbringing, the land had formed the center, sides, and outlying regions of his life since he was old enough to walk and carry an ear of corn simultaneously. Though he didn’t have the vocabulary to articulate it, he thought of the farm as his family’s legacy; he wouldn’t have sold it even if someone had offered him a seven figured sum. Though no one would have given him that much money for this land now. Not with such a poor result it had been giving him lately. That performance, occurring despite all the tricks in his repertoire, was the reason that he was up past his bedtime and sitting on his porch.

He rocked slowly back and forth in his grandfather’s well-used rocking chair, staring off into the distance along the dirt road leading to the house, right up until it met the paved county road. All but the opening where they met was mostly obscured by anemic and stationary cornstalks. Occasionally he would spit a gob tobacco juice on the ground in front of the porch with the impressive arc and distance of a long-time chewer. The brown, viscous glob joined many others that were soaking into the dirt—John had nearly worked through the entire brownie-like plug of tobacco whose remnants rested in the front pocket of his denim overalls.

The wait, and its accompanying anxiety, stemmed from an event earlier that day. At the farmer’s market in town, he had approached a man sitting slouched a little way off from the crowd, on a decorative and otherwise useless low brick wall.

John knew who he was immediately; nearly any farmer would have known who the man was on sight, as sure as if he was a key feature in the Farmer’s Almanac. Although John had watched the man as subtly as he could for hours anyway, just to make sure. He was a man of rumors, passed along the stalls of the market faster and with more excited intensity than a dry wheat fire.   And, surprisingly for a rumor, he was just as they had described him: incredibly tall, gaunt, and clad in a long brown duster coat. It was filthy and ragged around a hem that only reached to his mid-calf and the sleeves didn’t reach to the end of his wrists; big, mud caked boots were at the end of long legs covered in jeans that were worn through at the knees; a red flannel shirt, too heavy a fabric in the heat of the day, covered a broad chest.

The final and most noticeably unusual two garments were what solidified John’s certainty that this was the man he had heard about.

On the man’s head was a straw hat with a wide, floppy, tightly woven flat brim. It was the kind that grandmother’s usually wore when gardening on warm Sundays, complete with a flowery patterned band around it. The dust that covered it prevented it from looking like something a casual gardener would wear and marked it as a working hat. It kept the man’s face in a deep and perpetual shadow. As John got closer, the head raised up slightly to look at him. Far from removing the shadowy veil, there was only a gradient of lesser darkness in the general shape of most of a face. John couldn’t see the man’s eyes because they were covered by the second peculiar item: a pair of cheap sunglasses with lime green frames that stood out in