5-13-17 Cu Sith, Cu Sith, Cu

Byline: Gary Llewellyn

Dateline: May 13th, 2017

Cu Sith, Cu Sith, Cu

To make a long story short, I'm back and salaried. 21.5 a year, no bennies, but the slow nickel and all that. And I get my name in the byline. None of this intern shit. Of course, there's conditions; Mort wants me to drag the new intern around and show her the ropes so she doesn't get herself killed and I have to lay off the hard stuff. You may ask, ‘How is one supposed to drag that kid around without the hard stuff?’ That’s exactly the point I made, but that's the only deal Mort was offering. Take it or leave it. Besides, when Mort starts to get irritated he does that glowing red-eye socket thing and I figure I can get my fill of that bullshit in the field. So here we are.

I ask my new millstone to point out the sticker on her Trapper Keeper of the creature she’d like to see and of course she says fairies because I guess Frankfort never happened. I was hoping she’d say unicorns. The look of horror on her face when she discovered what those perverts are up to would be delectable. For our destination, I was torn between Scotland or Wales. I figured if I swatted her with a mouthful of Gaelic or Celtic that would be enough to tucker her out and give me a few moments peace. I chose Scotland because I didn't want to have to explain the whole plane ride over about how ‘w’ was a vowel.

When the plane landed in Scotland, it was it was early morning. I wanted to catch a few z’s, but the girl insisted we head out as soon as possible. She just couldn’t wait to see her fairies. I hotwire a car and tell her it’s a rental. I don’t need her stressing me more than she already is. Not only was it too early, but it was way too bright out for my liking and I had forgotten my shades. We stop the car and she goes running off into the wilderness. Not only does she make me jog after her, she’s pummeling me with questions. This was much easier when this was a solo gig. Thanks, Mort. On the bright side, we were exactly where we needed to be. We only needed to wait. After a spell, or a quiet incantation or two, I hit pay dirt. The distinctive call of the legendary Cu Sith. So I set my Cu Sith bait. She didn’t like that very much.

“O.M.G,” she yelled copping her best vocal fry, “What are you doing?”

“This will lure the Cu Sith here and it’ll take you back to the mound of the Daoine Sith. That’s where I need to be.”

“[More incoherent millennial babbling],” she yelled.

“Relax, I fitted you with a GPS chip,” I said.

Of course, she didn’t know what that was and had thrown the damn thing away. How am I supposed to secure the future of the human race chained to Debbie Debutante? With all the complaining and explaining I had missed the second howl. Obviously, the one I had just heard was the third, because there was the ugly bastard staring me down. Of course, she tried to run, but you can’t run from the black dog of the moors.

5-13-17 The True Account of the Unwinding of Gary Llewellyn

Byline: Stephanie Morgan

Dateline: May 13th, 2017

The True Account of the Unwinding of Gary Llewellyn

Hey, SEG-ers, I’m back from my vacation in India and somehow Sri Lanka, and back to the Page Five Ghoul. Uncle Mort seemed pretty impressed with my rescue of Gary Llewellyn and as some strange form of ‘thank you’ punishment he’s making me follow him to make sure he doesn’t go off the rails again. How am I supposed to tell? First of all, the whole time he’s rubbing his nose and sniffing, ranting about how ‘Uncle Mort has been planning this the whole time’ and he’s ‘a puppet master, sitting up there pulling strings.’ After he repeated ‘pulling the strings’ about a million times I asked him why Uncle Mort would do that. But, then he just rambled on about a band called ‘Foreigner’. Oh, and then he’s like, ‘we were going to Wales, but the language would blow your mind.’ Excuse me? Great-grammy Morgan taught me Welsh when I was three, Llewellyn. He spent most of the flight getting drunk and explaining to me what a ‘w’ does, interspersed with the same story about the time he made four hundred dollars selling a sandwich bag full of talcum powder. The flight itself was fine.

We arrived in Scotland around noon. Gary insisted we head out immediately. He was babbling about ‘timetables’ and ‘the end of the world as we know it.’ At this point, that sounds good to me. We hop in our rented car and he just drives for what seemed like hours. Finally, we stop in the middle of nowhere, what little of the sun I had seen since I got there had disappeared and the sky was a uniform white. He drags me out into the middle of a rocky field. I think this is what they call a moor. And here we just wait. What are we even looking for? Every time I’ve asked since before the flight all he says is ‘them’ or ‘I'll tell you when you need to know.’ And that's when we heard it. A blood chilling howl from an indeterminate direction. That’s when Gary pulled out a spray bottle and started squirting me.

“What are you doing?” I screamed at him.

“Dousing you in pregnancy pheromones,” he said.

Another howl, except this one was closer.

“You hear that?” he asked.

“Yeah. I'm not deaf.”

“It's a Cu Sith. It smells the pheromones and on the third howl it'll appear right here and take you down below the mound of the Daoine Sith, the fairy folk...Where they will attempt to feed on your lactating breasts.”

“You idiot, burnout. I'm not lactating. I'm not even pregnant.”

“They don't know that. The Cu Sith is just responding to the pheromones. Don't worry I gave you a tracker.”

“What tracker? All you've given me so far was shit and stories about how much cocaine you can do.”

“That fairy sticker. I told you to put it on your Trapper Keeper.”

“I don't have a Trapper Keeper and I threw that stupid sticker away.”

The third howl pierced our ears.

“Ah shit,” Gary groaned.

We turned around and behind us was a large, but emaciated black dog, with glowing eyes and curls of smoke drifting from its nostrils.

“Think you can outrun that?” Gary whispered.

“Seven years of track and field in highschool and college. Plus, I only need to outrun you.”

5-20-17 Daoine Sith Me Rabbit

Byline: Gary Llewellyn

Dateline: 5/20/17

Of course, you can’t run from a Cu Sith. I was just trying to be supportive. They’re extra-dimensional beings. If you turn your back on one you’ll just see it sitting right in front of you. Just so nobody thinks I’m a complete monster, I doused myself in the pheromones as well. Stephanie had thrown the tracker away, so there weren’t many other options for getting into a Daoine Sith mound. I don’t remember much of the trip. I came to with a splitting headache and some angry-looking fairies hovering over me pointing spears in my face. It was definitely not the worst situation I’ve woken up in. And certainly not the first time I woke up with a pissed off monster waving a weapon in my face. I figured, by this point, they probably figured out Steph wasn’t pregnant and I wasn’t even a female of my species. Fairies are clever. What was a surprise is that I woke up at all.

“The human is awake, Your Majesty,” one of them said in a ridiculous helium voice.

Oh shit, the king of fairies? This is serious business.

“Should we feed him to the Cu?” said another.

“Later,” said a slightly deeper helium voice, “Leave me with it for now.”

It? Asshole. The deep-voiced one walked up to me. Tall and thin, he was dressed in full regalia and had a crown of holly and ivy around sitting on its head. Kind of stupid looking, but my interest was in the amulet hanging around his neck. That was what I was here for and this tool was bringing it right to me.

“Why did you trick the Cu into bringing you to our kingdom, human?”

“Well, to be honest, that wasn’t the plan. I was supposed to trick it into taking my ward down here, then I’d use the tracker I gave her to find the place and storm in Jack Reacher like, but she threw it away...best-laid plans and all that.”

“Why? What do you want?”

“That goofy bling around your neck.”

“You would dare to lay hands on the Amulet of the Fae?”

“You wouldn’t believe what I’ve dared to lay hands on. That claw-machine trinket would be the least threatening. And nowhere near the most disgusting. Look, I’d explain it, but I don’t have the time and you’re brain is, what, the size of a walnut. A Brazil nut, if I’m being generous.”

He seemed unfazed when I ripped on the size of his brain.

“I will decide on the manner of your execution in the morning.”

He twirled around, making his cape flap around real dramatic like and left the room. Guess he wasn’t that unfazed.

5-20-17 My Dad’s a Lawyer

Byline: Stephanie Morgan

Dateline: 5/20/17

“I was being facetious,” Gary said. “You can't outrun a Cu Sith.”

“Have you tried?” I asked.

“Turn around.”

I turned around and saw another one bearing down on us.

“There's another one,” I gasped.

“Nope. Same one.”

“But…”

“They're extra-dimensional. If it wants you, it knows where to find you.”

I grabbed the bottle of pheromones from Gary, unscrewed the pump and dumped the rest on him.

“There. Now he’s pregnant. It's a two-fer,” I said, trembling. The Cu Sith looked back and forth between us and plopped down on his haunches.

“Isn't he a male of your species?” the Cu Sith growled.

“It's 2017. Don't impose your rigid cis-gendered standards on us,” I replied.

“Are you even pregnant?” the Cu Sith hissed, “Or did you two come all the way out here to waste my time? I have hungry Sith to feed.”

Gary dropped to the ground, passed out. Pretty sure it wasn’t from fear, but just the handfuls of pills he’d had for breakfast finally kicking in.

“Alright,” the Cu Sith sighed. “C’mon.”

He began walking away and looking back. I felt something push me from behind. I turned to look and saw it head butting me.

“Let’s go,” it said. “Haven’t got all day.”

It led me to a mound of dirt covered in clover. It walked to the top of the mound, pawed at the dirt and waited. After about a minute it pawed again and waited.

“Let’s go, Sean,” it groaned. “Some of us have things to do.”

After a bit the top of the mound opened up and a stairway descended into the Earth.

“Right, down you go,” it said. “Mind the first step, innit. It’s a bit dodgy.”

He was right. The first step was a lot further down than it appeared and I stumbled.

“Steady on,” it said, biting down on the hem of my shirt. “There’s a lass.”

Once at the bottom two fairies dressed in armor and holding spears grabbed me and led me to a small room.

“Terry,” I heard the Cu Sith say, “Could you and Trevor go and fetch the other one? Passed out cold. Smells like he’s off his tits on Xanax. I’m going to have a bit of a lie-down.”

I wonder if Cu Sith circled around for an hour before they finally lay down. They closed the door and I waited. For what, I had no idea. But what I did know; I’m so over fairies.