Into The Abyss

“Let me try.” My voice came out more gruffly than I wanted it to sound. I wasn’t really a calming presence to anyone. I knew that. Yet, I was trying to help Sam, so I knelt beside her and the doggy body and put my hand out to stroke its fur.

I hadn’t noticed this earlier because I was preoccupied with preventing my body from being stolen and inhabited by the denizens of hell but…It was so soft. The dog, not my body. My body was hard. (What? I work out.)

Like, man, I did not have anything to compare the feeling of this dog’s fur with. Silky smooth while fluffy and warm at the same time. Not gonna lie, I was little bit worried that I might accidentally squish the thing by petting it too hard, so I was super focused on being careful with it.

Sam soothed the dog in her incorporeal state. Petting the little doggy soul, which she could do since they were both incorporeal, she gently coaxed it toward its body. And once it was close enough, she got it to lay down inside its own body. Never thought I’d be thinking that phrase ever in my life. Also, talk about a well-trained dog. AmIRight?

I kept stroking the little fluffer as Sam kept stroking the incorporeal fluffer and something strange happened. With little twitches, parts of the soul doggy started snapping into alignment with the physical body the way a good session at the chiropractor gets all your vertebrae back into the proper place. Before I knew it, Baby had chiropracted herself back together again.

She jumped up with a happy little wiggle, her butt shaking in time with her tail. Wigglebutt! Freak! She was cute. Baby tried to jump back into her mom’s arms but ended up sailing right through her and landing haphazardly with her head and front paws sticking out the back of Sam’s shins.

“Eeeeww!” Sam exclaimed with a shudder. “I can feel her slobber in my soul.” Deadpan. Straight-faced seriousness. Covering my mouth, I snorted at how funny it was. Then I lost it and laughed. Bent-over, knee-slapping, tears-in-my-eyes laughter erupted from my chest. And here I was worried that Sam might crack? Sheeze. Did I call that one wrong!

“It’s not funny.” Sam hissed at me. Her foot stomped in aggravation, but I could see the beginning of a smile quirking the corners of her lips.

“No. No.” I cleared my throat and tried to be serious but lost it again when she sniggered at me. “It’s…not…funny.” I managed to gasp between chortles. She stuck her tongue at me making it even harder to not laugh. “Fuck! Stop making me laugh.”

“Come on.” She turned saucily on her heels and headed for the driveway. “We need to get to my mom’s place before that thing gets there and kick it out of my body before Caleb sees it.”

I jogged to catch up with Samantha who was suddenly all business. The second I thought that; I realized that I was too. The idea of that creature wearing a Samantha coat wreaking havoc in suburbia was sobering. I did not like it. I did not like it at all and I briefly considered calling some of the boys from work for backup.

What would I say though?

Hey, grab the gear you’ll need to fight Hellmouth demons and remove them from a possessed body? Does anybody know how to seal a Hellmouth? They’d call the cops on me for a forty-eight-hour psychiatric hold and my boss would give me my pink slips when my blood tests came back negative for drugs, is what they would do.

The gate had swung mostly closed after I had rushed in to the rescue. Sam walked right through the fence gate and the garden supplies I had strewn about the front yard and driveway in my haste. I, like the corporeal lug I am, had to open the gate and then pick my way carefully through the catastrophe I had left behind.

“Should I pick some of this up before we go, in case we need to get through here quickly later?” Spirit Sam turned slowly. Her face was eerily blank as she blinked at me.

“NOoooo.” One eyebrow arched as she said the word without emphasis or emotion. “We are going to get my son first without anydelays.” The very concept of slowing ‘The Quest for Caleb’ -- that was what I was calling this whole adventure in my head -- was nonsensical to her.

“No. You’re right.” I reassured her as I jogged up to the car having finally extricated myself from the chaotic carnage of her once neat and tidy suburban lawn. “That was a dumb question.” I reached a hand into my pocket and fished for my keys. Shit. My keys?

They were nowhere to be found.