[ WHAT HORRORS AWAIT?! ]
by Wusai

AUTHOR'S NOTES Bwahaha. Second chapter. It has somehow morphed from a parody to a semi-serious fic? The first chapter is under heavy revision (already!) as this is somewhat serious now.

IMPORTANT NOTE This note is ONLY for people who, when they scroll down, see a shitload of weird characters instead of umlauts (two dots over the letter). If you can see the umlauts already, proceed without any troubles!

When viewing this chapter, set your character encoding to Unicode (UTF-8), otherwise you can't read some of the dialogue! To do this, right click on the page, select 'encoding', then choose Unicode (UTF-8) from the list. You'll be sorry if you don't read this and didn't. ;;; For some reason, umlauts just don't appear in ANSI, and Fictionpress doesn't allow me to upload Unicode. Sorry!

-=-

"Erm . . . What's your name?" Jely Faze asked.

"I am Apo'stra'phe's R. K'ool," he said seriously, words accented by the random insertion of apostrophes. He clapped his hands together, which required some contortion because of the fact that one arm was where a leg was supposed to be, and the other protruding from his waist. When he drew them apart, a black portal appeared, a little taller than him. He grasped Jely's hand with the one protruding from his waist, and dragged her into the portal.

Jely had the feeling as though she were being stretched by the vacuum of force in the portal, dragged to the clichéd 'light at the end of the tunnel.' The only thing she could hear was the 'whoosh whoosh' of power around her.

POP!

"What the fuck was that?!" Jely screamed over the din. Apo'stra'phe's detached eyes traveled back to look into hers, then looked down and back up.

"Oh, did I forget to mention? The force in here's rather powerful; I'm afraid your arm is dislocated . . . Don't worry; we've got people to pop it back in over on the other side. They usually do it without any difficulty. Unless your leg dislocates too; every time they pop a leg back in, they manage to squeeze some flesh in between the leg and the joint, which means that the person would be screaming bloody murder while they dislocate the leg again and pop it back in, usually successfully the second time. The newbies have to take about seven tries, though. But I assure you, that usually doesn't happen with the arms, as they're pretty experienced in that." Thankfully, the whooshing drowned out all the flapping from his mini-speech.

"That was a big comfort!" Jely yelled, looking frantically at her arm trailing behind her. She tried to move her fingers, and they responded weakly.

After a short while, they arrived at the other end of the swirling vortex. Apo'stra'phe stepped out of it gracefully, though Jely stumbled from the change in pressure and force. Her arm hung limply by her side. Apo'stra'phe's eyes drifted around, looking for the nearest relocater. He waved his leg-hand at one, who walked over. There was a large red R on the left shoulder of his jacket.

"This," he said grandly, "is Ümläüt."

"Gesundheit?" Jely said, confused. She assumed what Apo'stra'phe just said was the person's name, but he said it as 'eewwm-lay-ewwoot' and she wasn't sure if Apo'stra'phe was having stomach cramps (wherever his stomach was at the moment). No matter that he didn't sneeze.

"No, that's his name. His mother was suffering from chicken pox when she gave birth to him, which is probably why he suffers from misplaced dots, more commonly known as umlauts." Flap flap flap. "Well, he's a pretty good relocater; no need to worry about misplaced flesh."

Ümläüt strolled over to her, took hold of her limp arm, and pushed it against her shoulder. She tensed. With another loud 'pop!', it was back into her socket without any casualties. She sighed, relieved, then swung her arm around, cracking her elbow in the process. She grinned; Christina Aguilera's head morphed into Jennifer Lopez's gratuitous posterior.

"Well, now that that's done, we should be getting to the tavern. You always overhear important news there. I've got to get to the agency to get body back in its proper form . . . Ümläüt, you go with her." With that, Apo'stra'phe strode off. Ümläüt nodded.

"Wëll," he said after a pause, words accented by other mysteriously misplaced dots, "wë shöüld bë gëttïng tö thë tävërn nöw. Wë'll bë göïng tö Blöödÿ Hëll, äs thät's clösëst."

Jely nodded, barely understanding. Thankfully, Ümläüt was not a particularly talkative person. If he was, then the author's keyboard would be battered to bits by now.

They followed the dirt path to a shabby little pub with a sign saying "Bloddy Hell" hanging askew above the doorway. Entering, the roar of chatter ambushed Jely's ears, beating them into a metaphorically bloody pulp. They sat at the counter, stools creaking ominously beneath them. The bartender staggered over.

"Hey there, Ümläüt," he greeted, showing more rotting gums than teeth. "I see you've brought a new one! What's her name, eh?"

"Jëlÿ Fäzë," Ümläüt replied. The bartender paused a moment, processing the name in his mind, removing the excess dots. Once he was done, he grinned, popping out a yellowed tooth in the process. It skittered on the wooden counter, then fell to the floor near Jely. She recoiled, looking at the yellow, mossy thing in horror.

"Well, Jely! Name's Phart," he said, extending a hand. She looked at it, disgusted. It was gray with only the tracest tones of flesh color, and bits and pieces were peeling off here and there. The nails were cracked and the color of a coffee stain, some (yellow) bone showing through gaps in the flesh. There was a short, ominous pause before he let rip a massive one of his namesakes. Luckily, the smell of booze hanging around him like an aura masked out most of the other smell.

"Oh, eww," Jely said.

"Ü?" Ümläüt questioned.

"No, eww," Jely repeated. "It means, 'oh, gross!'"

Phart looked offended. He drew back his hand, muttering something about 'damn ingrates' under his breath as he cleaned a dirty glass with a rag dirtier than the glass itself. Ümläüt scowled.

"Nöw wë'll bë chärgëd döüblë," he muttered. A waitress sauntered over to the two, tray in one hand. Her skirt was impossibly short, its length calculated to the millimeter to just barely cover her gratuitous rear. It was not so much of a skirt as a butt-flap.

"What is it that you desire?" she asked. Jely looked alarmed, parsing the sentence as having a deeper meaning.

"Um," she stammered. Ümläüt raised an eyebrow.

"Önë vödkä för më," he said. The waitress smiled after she removed the dots. Jely understood what she thought as something a prostitute would say to mean what a waitress would say.

"Oh," she said at last. "What do you have?"

"Are you enquiring as to what is on our carte du jour of repasts? Or our large variety of refreshments? Appetizers?"

"Um, um, the second one?!"

"Ah. Well, we are famous for our 'End of the World' beverage."

"Why's it called that?" Jely asked, intrigued. The waitress pointed over to a bunch of hooded figures, probably the 'Mysterious Hooded Figures who Eavesdrop in Taverns' clique on their day off. One of them took a sip from a fizzy red drink that seemed to glow.

"The end of the world is fucking nigh!" he screamed out at the top of his lungs. The pub quieted for a short while. Then someone chuckled nervously, and conversations resumed.

"Ah . . . no thank you . . . Can I just have some water?" Jely asked, not wanting to rupture her vocal cords from screaming every time she took a sip.

"Of course! Would you like just water, or water with some in its solid form, or water with a splash of citric acid?" the waitress asked in her continuous jargon. Jely paused to translate it. She was never that great in science.

"Umm . . . the second one?!"

"Ÿöü sëëm tö lïkë thë sëcönd chöïcës," Ümläüt commented. Jely scowled.

"So that's one vodka and one water with some of it in its solid state, correct?" the waitress asked. Ümläüt nodded, red hair that defied gravity swishing a little. "They will arrive shortly!"

"God," Jely spat after taking a sip of her ice water about five minutes later. "Why can't they just speak in English?"

"Shë wäs," Ãœmläüt remarked. "Ã