Too Old for This

Something. There was something. It was important. Well, crap.

I have a hard time focusing these days. I'm not a young man, to say the least, and the battering I received as a young man taking on the Dark, well, yes. That made my memory recall worse than it would have been otherwise. The Dark was a nasty piece of work and it definitely liked to work me over. When it got its shadowy mitts on me.

The worst was when the smoky Darkness had possessed some of my team without the rest of us knowing it. The Possessed had attacked the others with the intent of capturing or killing me. My poor team. Jasper was such a nice young man, so bright and idealistic...but...well, what they did to me makes my skin crawl even today.

Just thinking about it is making my skin crawl. right now. Spooky, huh?

How powerful the mind is, I mean. It can make you feel things that are not there. Hide things from ourselves even. Give us hope when there really appears to be none. Make you feel are there that are not.

That reminds me of something. I should be remembering something. Do you know? No? Well...

The most powerful mind I ever met was Jezebel Kerrigan. That woman could tear open a demon with her mind alone. She blew a hole in a mountain once. That was incredible. One moment a horde of foul half breeds and undead were advancing down the hill, going to overwhelm and consume us all, corrupt us to their cause and the next...BOOM! All gone.

Explosive needlers and ice bullets made from holy water are great and all, but ammo supplies can be rather insufficient...

She finally fell though. Hubris killed her. She became ever more powerful. More powerful than even most Demon Princes! And then, something, someone convinced her to bore a hole to hell itself and try to slay the Darkness herself. To say that didn't work, would be an understatement worthy of the Queen of England.

It took the Catholic Holy Order of St Peter, the Lutheran Rite Knights and, us, the American government's Office of Spiritual Services six months to seal up that Hellmouth, I can tell you. Yes, yes, it was intentional we had the same acronym as those yahoos. They came after us and were used as a cover. When they changed to the CIA, we continued and folks just made the wrong assumptions. Heh.

Something about poor Jezzy though...I need to remember it. That tickled whatever it was...

ummm. yes. well.

The worst mission I was on, other than the Jezzy Incident, was the attack of the afrit in 1961. The world knows it as Hurricane Carla. Damned air elementals wanted to bring down the US and attacked us really bad that year with storm after storm. They actually road in on one and assaulted the mainland. You think those 100 odd tornadoes from a single storm was natural? No, not even close. We had every affiliated priest, rabbi and even our first imam help us with that. We shot them, bagged them and tagged them for banishment by the holy orders. Have you ever seen what overpressurization of someone's lungs looks like? So many agents dead. So many...still gives me nightmares.

Did you feel that? I felt something. Was it a draft? Ha! Funny.

Skin crawling. Drafts. Jezzy.

ah.

Be a trooper and reach under your seat, please. There's a box there. Can you pull it out for me. I'd appreciate it. My back and knees are not what they used to be.

Thank you. Let me have it.

There we go.

Revelabitur.

There we go. Opened up. Please, each of you. Put these on. Quickly now, we don't have a lot of time. Thank you.

Stand over there. Thanks.

***

He turned to the door and pulled a pistol, an old revolver from the same box he'd just given us talismans. We were trained agents, but we were archivists here to record his memories of his missions to allow others to learn in the future from the old man's life, beyond what was in the official reports.

He inched to the side and pointed the gun at the door.

That door blew inwards and in came a demon, with winds and rain. We reached for our own sidearms, since no agent went without, but the Old Man fired once. Hitting the creature between the eyes. It dropped and the water droplets whirling through the air drenched everything.

The Old Man walked over and cuffed! cuffed! the demon. Then he looked at us, the camera crew.

"Well, call a clean up crew. I want my place properly cleaned. Damned Focalor has been waiting for over fifty years since Hurricane Carla when he stirred up the afrit against us to get revenge. He was one of the ones that got away when Jezzy opened the Hellmouth.

"I'm glad that got wrapped up. I'm too old for this crap."