“You already knew,” the hallucination said with a smirk. “If you know that, then it’s a short, obvious hop to what I am.” He grinned as he wiggled his curly toed shoes.
“Bullshit,” Bruce fumed. “My brother is not a werewolf, and you aren’t some demented Christmas elf.”
“Elf!” the guy cried as he straightened up to his full half-pint size. “I am a fairy prince, and the only reason I look like this is because you lack imagination. This is the only image of a fae that exists in your limited thoughts, and so here I am.” He gestured disdainfully at himself. “And wearing salad!” He pulled off a leaf and chomped on it with an angry grumble. “Did you get hit with a head of lettuce when you were a kid or something? Who dresses like this? Even in your imagination?”
That’s when Bruce remembered the Christmas decorations at his mother’s favorite restaurant. Every year they put elves in the salad bar. His sister had thought they were adorable, especially the ones wearing leaves for clothing and fake cherry tomatoes for hats. He looked at the so-called prince beside him and yes, his hair did indeed look like half a cherry tomato.
“This isn’t real,” he said out loud. “I’ve hit my head. I’m dreaming. I’m—”
“You’re a moron, that’s what you are.” The elf dropped his head back against the seat. “My mother told me to stay away from humans. They’re all stupid and have rigid minds. They self-destruct and take everything else with them. But even she said they make really good ale. So I had to find out. One day I went to a human bar, and sure enough, the ale was spectacular. But then a bar fight erupted, all because I started gifting the idiots with better looks according to their imagination. Was it my fault one of them was a Shakespeare scholar? One donkey head later, and suddenly I was about to die. Nero saved my life, and wham, now I’m stuck in a cheap car wearing iceberg lettuce with big brother Bozo beside me.”
If this was a hallucination, it was damned persistent. Bruce tried to ride it out. He tried to count his breaths, calm his heart rate, silence his thoughts—all that meditation stuff that did absolutely no good at all. The fairy prince was still there when he finished counting to ten.
He sighed. “What do you want from me?”
“What do I want?” the fairy taunted. “I want this thing to be over. I’m tired of you mortals screwing up every plan I make.” He leaned in close enough that Bruce could see the bright red radicchio leaves that made up his undershirt. “And I want you to pay for the problems you’ve caused me.” The threat was delivered in a chilling way that would have been terrifying… if it hadn’t been said by a salad elf.
Bruce rolled his eyes, pretending to be unimpressed when, in fact, he was completely freaked-out. “You get that line out of a bad movie?”
The fairy held his gaze for a moment, then another, but Bruce was an old hand at intimidation games. This didn’t faze him in the least. In the end, the hallucination broke first. He sighed and held up an old dime novel. “Wisconsin short story. Author never made it big except locally, and now his creation is eating up the entire state.”
Bruce rolled his eyes. “Either start making sense or get out of my car.”
The fairy glared at him in disgust. “Have you heard about the big black hole in Wisconsin that used to be a lake? It’s expanding into a death zone that will kill the planet in a matter of months. Any of that sound familiar?”
Of course it did. It had filled the news for weeks now. But what did that have to do with him or his brother?
The fairy tucked the book away beneath the layers of lettuce. “That’s what your brother and Nero are trying to fight—a demon created in a bad short story that became legendary enough to end the world. Don’t tell me it doesn’t make sense. You mortals create all sorts of nonsense, not us. We just….” He wiggled his fingers at Bruce’s face, and his skin suddenly felt like it had seven pounds of makeup on it. “Play with what you imagine.”
“Get this shit off my face,” Bruce growled. He didn’t want to look in the mirror, but he couldn’t help himself. Hell. Now he was a salad elf too, and his face was made up of sunflower seeds.
“Why should I?” the fairy taunted.
Bruce couldn’t think of a damned reason, so he gripped the steering wheel tight in celery-stalk hands and tried to tell himself he’d simply have to ride out the hallucination.
“This is real,” the elf said.
“You’re a real ass, you know that?”
“And you’re so jealous of your brother, you don’t know a fairy gift when it’s being offered to you.”
Bruce’s eyes shot open. “What the hell are you talking about?” Then he saw it—bright red and on his dash. A glowing cherry. It appeared to be a normal piece of fruit, the kind he’d find in any grocery store, but he knew it wasn’t. He could see how much it wasn’t. It was too perfect, it glowed with unearthly light, and most telling? He wanted it like he’d never wanted anything before in his life.
“You want what your brother has?” the elf said. “Eat that.”
“Hell no. You think I’d touch anything from you?”
The fairy snapped his fingers, and suddenly everything was normal again. Bruce wore the same clothes as before, his face was made of flesh, not sunflower seeds, and even his reflection showed the normal bags under his eyes. Everything was the same… except for the salad fairy sitting beside him and the glowing cherry on his dash.
“Your brother has found his power.”
“Says
