Nictate

Vera was an average girl visiting a bar after attending her favorite art gallery in a densely populated part of Minneapolis. She had chose a seat by the bar with a view out the window so she could watch cars pass by. A tall bald gentleman named Jeremy took the seat next to her and hailed the bartender. “Bacardi 151, for me and the lady” he requested. He turned to Vera and said “Please, don’t run” as he sat a briefcase on the table in front of her. This took Vera a minute to process, as she considered why she might have a reason to run from this scenario.“My name is Jeremy. I was recently rewarded for a job I performed where I was to assassinate a target in this city. The nature of my job was particularly unusual, because the man who hired me introduced himself as a member of the Order of the Dervishes, and the task was to assassinate a man renown as a racist and murderer, and was referred to as an acolyte of purgatory”. “The acolytes” Jeremy explained, “were equal in number to the amount of dervishes in the order and each one had a reputation as a racist, killer, rapist, or otherwise a detriment to society. Them and the dervishes were separated by laws of nature, but the dervishes knew about the existence of the acolytes until they started dying by natural causes”. Vera nodded slowly, looking at the closed briefcase on the table. “The Order of the Dervishes” Jeremy continued “were also separated by the laws of nature, but they communicated through their reflections by communing around purgatory, which was observed as a dimension of purple static reflected in their eyes”. Jeremy opened the briefcase revealing six bands of 20 dollar bills, totalling 20,000 dollars each. “This was my reward” he explained. “Each band of bills is represented by a different colored serial number consisting of 11 numbers, each number one, two, three, four, five, or six. When the money is stacked on top of each other, the 6th number of the serial code turns into a six, and the head on the bill has a telepathic pull connecting it to the other bills with this unique serial color index. If the bills are separated, the number 6 indicates which direction the other bills are until the 6 is aligned in the center of the serial number. So if the 6 is on the far right left of the serial number, the bill has to be turned sharply right in order to center the six and lead the bills to each other. When an acolyte of purgatory acquires of these bills, the rest of the bills eyes turn black and transparent, and when looked through, a red orb can be observed, indicating the direction of the acolyte possessing the money.” “The catch is the dervishes are the only ones who know how to utilize the serial numbers to track the rest of the bills”. Vera acknowledged this and asked “What does the money have to do with me?” and Jeremy replied “My task after I was paid by the dervish was to find and protect a breed of women called the Oni, who are targeted by the dervishes in purgatory in order to avoid the attention of the acolytes. I want you to take the money, and this little black book and associate each band of 20 dollar bills with a talent. Leave this talent and the stack of money at locations of your discretion and document the coordinates in this black book. Hide the talent for the innocent to acquire in the real world”. Jeremy took his drink and walked to the elevator, taking it to the roof. He poured his drink out onto the sidewalk below, and stepped off the roof of the building, following the liquid to the impact below. He landed in front of the window Vera was at and she started to panic. She clutched the briefcase of money and and the book and left the bar, working up to a run as she made her way home.

As she came to a halt, she felt a plume of purple static consuming her vision and the sensation of falling came upon her. She heard the voice of Jeremy in her head. “I’m communicating with you from purgatory where I’m combatting a species called the Leviathan. The Leviathan breached purgatory to travel through the real world utilizing money as a method of transportation. When each leviathan touches a human with the money, they reveal their form as a head with a large gaping mouth, a split tongue, with a row of teeth like a shark, no eyes and no nose. They lure the humans with money, then consume them. I’m in purgatory to avert the Leviathan from your future and resist their feeding on the human race.” Vera looked around and tried to shake off the vertigo of this purple static consuming her mind, and immediately decided to take the task of hiding the money within talent. She started at Calhoun Square, where she left the a bundle of money under the seat of a piano. Then she went to the local transit station where she left a bundle of money and a ukulele. Next, she left a basketball at a basketball court on a bench next to the band of money. Next she went to her favorite art gallery, and left a canvas, paint, and paint brush inside a pyramid with an open top and seats on the inside. Her next stop was a neighborhood skate park where she left a skateboard and the band of money to be found by someone. Finally she went to a coffee shop in her neighborhood and left a crochet and knitting kit next to the band of money in a secluded part of the shop.

Vera ran home, and noticed as she was running, the sense of vertigo and purple static consuming her mind dissipated as she ran to her next destination. She flipped through the black book looking at each color as it corresponded with the bands of money, and the coordinates she logged for each location she left the talent at. People started noticing the money and the things she left behind, and as they took the money, they acquired the talent of the associated object. The person who discovered the piano learned piano magnificently; the person who found the ukulele gained the talent of playing the ukulele. The person who stumbled upon the basketball acquired the talent of playing basketball; the person who discovered the canvas and paint learned to paint; the skateboarder learned how to skateboard, and the one who found the knitting utensils learned to knit and crochet professionally.

Each person who discovered their new talent ripped open the band of money they found, and immediately found their talents became invisible. The piano turned invisible, the ukulele turned invisible, the basketball turned invisible, the skateboard, the canvas and paint, the knitting and crocheting supplies turned invisible, but each person was still able to utilize their talent, just invisible.

Vera went home and before showering looked into the mirror and saw her eyes reflect a purple static back at her, and she heard the voice of Jeremy again. He said “Each talent has been hidden to be wielded until the desire for money expires. Your task now is to use the talent of your voice, which is invisible, to embrace the order of the dervishes and prevent new acolytes from spawning around them. You renounce talent by accepting your voice, and acknowledge that it separates you from the Leviathan breaching into the real world”. Suddenly Vera noticed her reflection started moving faster than her, and when she looked into her eyes, she caught the sense of vertigo and sensed the purple static consuming her vision. She put on her clothes and decided to run to escape the purple vertigo engaging her visual focus.

Vera ran to the store, and through the window noticed someone paying for their groceries in cash. As they paid, the clerk took it’s form of a huge mouth with no eyes or nostrils and ate the person in the store. Startled, Vera continued to run to shake off her sense of vertigo and to get away from the monster she just witnessed. She had to warn the talents about the money. She backtracked to each coordinate she left the money at and tried to explain to each person, that they are being targeted through purgatory by the Leviathan, and they need to forfeit their talent so they lose all the money they believed came as a result of it. Each person had a reaction she hadn’t expected. They said that it is their life's purpose to pursue this hobby or talent in order to decorate purgatory with the blossom of their talent and ward away the Leviathan from vision.

The pianist had a rolling piano, which somehow managed to stay within the range of vision wherever she ran. The ukulele started playing itself, the sound of the basketball echoed in Veras head. The sound of skateboard grinding reverberated her thoughts. As she ran down the block she saw canvases covered in paint, and crocheted dolls and knitted clothing littering her path.

This composure of sights and sounds was explained to her by Jeremy’s voice as the distinctions between heaven and hell, bordering purgatory’s apparence in the real world. This hodgepodge of talent was the ward keeping humans safe from Leviathan in the real world.

Vera noticed that these sights and sounds all started leading back to the corresponding coordinates of where she left the talents in the first place. This revealed points of travel where people would walk through and continue about their daily business, trading and discussing the talents they acquired and how they associated with each other but they disappeared in the vertigo when she started to run.

She stopped at the same bar days later, and in the bathroom she noticed her reflection looking back at her with transparent purple eyes of static. Her reflection said “You, the talentless one, are now one of the Oni, vulnerable and observable by the Leviathan, and must run to protect the talent that is your voice from being raped by the Leviathan.” Vera splashed some water on her face and darted out the door of the bar and started running again. She ran as far away from the money as she could, running through the sounds of the paint brush, basketball, the feeling of knitted clothing, the ukulele and the piano harmonizing her reality.

Around the world, the Order of the Dervishes worship the voice of the talentless as it escapes the clutches of the Leviathan. Money is distributed and each woman who contacts it starts to experience the vertigo and purple static when they aren’t running from the Leviathan.

The talents obscure and protect the Oni while they flourish against purgatory, creating a safehaven for humans who have died and lost the vision of the purple static. They are stuck in their worlds seeking love around the obstacle of money and Leviathan infesting the population in lieu of the purple static that followed Vera's path. The Oni continue to run from this day from the shapeshifting leviathan, leaving a quake of purple static and vertigo to stifle the Leviathans hunt. A man in the Czech republic, with a 20 dollar bill with a colored serial number on it, paid the bartending man before asking him, “Please don’t run”. The bartender took the money and the Czech man opened his mouth wide and consumed the bartender, taking on his human shape and form. In the now, Oni run through the world among talent and from money to divert the Leviathan and the plume of purple static initiating vertigo and consuming human life.