Chapter 2: Moist and Steaming Boysenberries, Multiverse

Little did Roquefort know that his arch-nemesis, Tarin the Righteous, was wending her chain-mailed way through the night to find him. Tarin was a dedicated and lascivious vampire-slayer, sworn to rid the world of the blood-sucking pleasure-mongers who beset it.
But first, breakfast. As soon as the sun set, Tarin would rise in search of wholesome non-human sustenance. She sauntered, clinking, into IHOP.
“Pancakes, orange juice and… sausage,” breathed Tarin, through pouty, ripe lips.
“Ummmm… maple or boysenberry syrup?” asked the waiter.
“Boysenberry. Always boysenberry,” purred Tarin. “Zounds! Is that—but it couldn’t be---” She gazed over to the next table, where a mysterious figure wearing all black sat alone.
“What kind of toast?”
“Sourdough. Sour like my heart. And…. Extra butter… dripping butter…”
The waiter left, and Tarin called to the figure across the table: “Lucretius! Is it truly thou?”
Lucretius turned, his hair falling over his black eyes, which absorbed the light in the room, then reflected it back, darker, more swollen with potential and charged with pheromones. “Yes. May I… join you?”
Tarin pouted, her lips growing yet fuller for no discernable reason. “Perhaps.”
But Lucretius had already made him self comfortable across the table. “How long has it been?”
“My life has been hell without you—but not as bad as it was with you.” Tarin refused his gaze.
“Which way I fly is hell,” quoted Lucretius.
“Don’t be such a whiner,” Tarin replied. “You are a demon.”
“Pancakes, sausage and toast?”
“…Yes,” Tarin murmured.
“Why are there so many ellipses in your speech?” asked the waiter.
“Don’t question!” snapped Lucretius.
Tarin moaned in anticipation of the meal. The steam rose from the plate. “I can barely wait,” she whispered.
“Just put it in your mouth,” replied Lucretius, running his forked tongue over his lips. “Right between your lips.”
“I’m going to,” quipped Tarin.
“And then pull it out again—and then back in--- ah!”
“I can’t very well eat if you’re going to thrust against the table like that,” complained Tarin. “Uuuuhhhh. Uhhuhhhhhhh.”
“Darling, our lives must be united once again. Our powers combined were unstoppable, and coated with tight tight leather.”
“But you belong to the forces of darkness, and were threatened by my constant stream of lovers.”
Luctretius growled. “I hated your constant stream of lovers!”
“But no man was able to satisfy my appetites… I constantly search for the final, ultimate companion, able to quench the burning within my loins--- and always, always disappointed!” A faraway look had come into Tarin’s eyes.
At that moment the door to IHOP swung open. In walked Fr. Stephen, the Latin-spewing and weapons-crazed priest. Lucretius met his eye and hissed. “By the vas deferens of Satan! That nerdtacular priest stalks me yet again!”
“How do you know he’s not stalking me?” quipped Tarin.
“Stop quipping! I hate that fuck!”
“Pace, filiae,” said Fr. Stephen to Tarin. “Cur ad deamonem dices?”
“He has a forked tongue. You figure it out,” quipped Tarin.
“Oh, I WARNED you about that quipping,” snarled Lucretius, leaping up. “That is it. I will treat with you no longer, slut of sluts, or with you, sordid priest of Babylon!”
“Yea, fly, perfidious one, into the oily night which bore you,” Fr. Stephen said, standing his ground against the sardonic, demonic and Byronic creature. “You are unworthy to gaze upon this worthy’s face.”
“I only gaze on it when she won’t let me gaze on anything else,” said Lucretius petulantly. “You wouldn’t know, though. You are God’s eunuch.”
“I beg your pardon!” Fr. Stephen said, “Would you be so good as to stuff it up your ass?”
“Watch for me on wild nights, priest, for I will not forget the remarks of this evening, or your campaign of thwarting my schemes.”
“Know this, Demon: I carry guns in places that even you, with all your worldly and dark knowledge, would tremble to imagine,” said Fr. Stephen.
“I hope they all go off at once,” said Lucretius, and stalked, darkly and stormily, from the IHOP.
Tarin had by now finished her meal and was looking very satisfied. “Won’t you join me for a cup of coffee, Father? There is much with which I must speak with you with which about, about the demon with whom we have just been conversing with.”
“Your breasts are lovely, but your grammer is terrible,” said Fr. Stephen, sitting down. “Do they serve scotch here?”
“No,” said Tarin. “Boysenberry syrup, though.”
“I’ll struggle by on mere coffee, then,” said Fr. Stephen, “And now, my child, what can I help you with?”
“A matter of both personal and cosmic importance. A matter which covers the most private desires of the human soul and the all-consuming passions of the multiverse. A matter, in short, which we can only discuss here, in the privacy of IHOP.”
“Well, if we’re dealing with the moist and steaming passions of your multiverse, perhaps we should go to a bar,” Fr. Stephen said. “Man shall not live on pancakes alone, you know.”