Tim Truman
From DevilshireWiki
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 Jason Dohring as Tim Truman | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Tim Truman is a freshman enrolled at Devilshire University. Also? Bounty hunter for Hell. Side businesses, y'know?
History
Who Are You?
Timmy Truman.
He was born. He lived. He died.
I mean really, what else could I have expected? That's just how lives go, right? One day you're nothing, then out you pop and you are someone with a life and a purpose (well, maybe not a purpose) and you're growing up and things come at you and you deal with them and eventually it's school and college and a job and a car and a picket fence and a wife and two and a half kids and retirement and AARP and the grandkids coming over for your 70th and rassen-frassen neighbor kids on the lawn and why doesn't anyone ever call and then you die surrounded by your loved ones.
I mean, I'm not really sure that's how I saw it all playing out, but shit, I certainly didn't see it all coming together this way! C'mon. Who would?
So I guess it all sorta starts a few years before I even came along. It all starts with my parents, and there's no need to get to know them any better than 'my parents'. I barely knew them, so why should I pretend otherwise? Ten years, man. Ten years and I barely knew them. Though having talked to a few other guys my age, I guess I've found out that hardly anyone really knows their parents. Makes me feel a bit better, but really, finding out late in life that your dad toked up in the sixties or that your mom fucked Jim Morrison isn't quite the same as finding out at age eighteen that your mom and dad sold your soul to the Devil in exchange for beauty, wealth and power.
Mako, a friend and I'll get to him in a bit, tried to make me feel a bit better about it all. He said that they'd done it before I was born, so they hadn't really even gotten to know me. So, hey, it wasn't anything personal. I have to admit, as much as I appreciated Mako and everything he'd done for me, I kind of wanted to smack him right there. I was their kid to be, man. It doesn't matter if they knew me or even thought of who I might be, I was an inevitable responsibility and they sold me out just like that.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not an emotionally maladjusted guy. Sure, this is a pretty fucked up thing to have happen to you so early in life (we're talking, what, negative two years old) but I'm not all messed up from it. I don't get all mopey and listen to Fallout Boy and cry softly to myself while posting to my MySpace page. (Livejournal doesn't count, right? It's more erudite, right? Right? Hell.) I'm just trying to say that I'm a normal kid. Well, mostly normal. Pretty well-adjusted. Had a decent life.
I donno, maybe I'm trying too hard.
So my parents. From what I'd find out later, they were just a pair of stupid amateur occultists who hooked up in college and decided to conjure up evil spirits for kicks. I guess all that stuff they say about experimenting in college is true, huh? Eventually the pair of them decided to take their show on the road together and dropped out. At one point one of them gets this bright idea. Hey, let's call up the Prince of Darkness, His Infernal Majesty, the Dark Lord of Eternal Night, Satan.
Now I've seen enough in the year or so since my eighteenth birthday to know that there are a lot of demonic powers out there, and not a whole lot of them really ascribe to any sort of Judaeo-Christian concept of Hell or God or the Devil. I've seen a whole lot of demons, but I've never seen an angel. It's a whole big universe and our human ideas of what's out there is kind of laughable. So it's hard for me to say whether or not the thing that they really summoned up was the Devil or one of the so-called True Demons, one of those crawling creatures from the lower limbs of the qlippothic paths, or even something altogether different, something from the Outside. Really, when I met it? It looked like Gary Busey. So who the hell knows what the hell it was? It doesn't really matter. What matters is that it was something far beyond their power to call upon and they had nothing to offer it in exchange for what they wanted.
It was the standard Faustian bullshit, really. Beauty. Folks, my parents were amateur occultists. Amateur occultists are not beautiful people. They're the kind of acne encrusted fatties who become amateur occultists because the fantasy life involved in Dungeons and Dragons just didn't cut it. Money. Is it any surprise that amateur occultism doesn't pay the bills? Power. Oh, God, do people love their power. I would later find out first hand that power is a really vague concept when it comes to bargaining with the infernal powers. Despite how easy it is for the person you're dealing with to screw you over, people come back time and time again and ask the Dark to give them power. It's a little sad.
The Devil was all too willing to give them everything they wanted. All they had to do was provide something worth it all. Unfortunately, being poor, ugly and pathetic, they didn't really have anything of any worth. Even their souls were pretty useless, having been given away bit by bit over the past few years of early diabolism. I donno whose idea it really was, in the end. My mom's, my dad's or Old Scratch. I guess it's not too important, right? By the conclusion, my soul was offered up and in exchange they were given everything they wanted.
Hey, I try to have a sense of humor about it. I mean, it's a pretty funny idea, right? Parents giving up their kid's soul to the Devil on a lark. You could do a comic book based on an idea like that. It'd be like Harry Potter, but all turned inside out and upside down and really, really fucking awful. Y'know what, gimmie a second here. I've got to, uh, got to go to the bathroom.
Sorry 'bout that. You know how it is. I had, um, one of those Hungry Man meals earlier. Burritos. You wouldn't think that microwave burritos with Spanish rice and refried beans would be any good, but man, you would be wrong. Anyway, where was I?
Oh yeah. Mom and Dad and the baby boy that wasn't. So overnight, Mom's skin clears up and her hair straightens out and Dad loses his mantits and the hair on his back moves to cover up his early male pattern baldness. I can remember how they looked when I was growing up, and I gotta say, the Devil delivered. Dad ended up looking like Harry Hamelin in that Clash of the Titans Movie, 'cept with proper pants, and Mom - hell, Mom looked kinda like Rita Hayworth and Veronica Lake. Money? Sure, we were always pretty comfortable. And power. Well, that's hard to say. Remember, trading anything tangible away for power is never a good idea. Eventually you realize you're not sure what you gave it all up for and then... then someone like me shows up.
Anyway, they had each other and their beauty and money for a few months and that's about as long as it took for them to start fucking around on one another. Did anyone seriously expect that the kind of people who would give away the soul of their unborn child would really manage any degree of loyalty to one another once they had everything they ever wanted? Seriously, we're not talking about a pair of really morally grounded individuals.
Black Wings
Most of this I know second hand. Hell, most of it I only really found out about last year. Mako had to explain a lot of it to me, and I almost felt bad for him for it. I wouldn't want to have to tell myself about any of this stuff. From what I understand after a few months of living dangerously, the pair of them realized that the other was doing and decided to just go ahead and formally call it quits on one another.
I guess that'd be the first time that Mako intervened in my life to play a major part, and there I was, not even among the quick. The day my dad was preparing to leave my mom for good, Mako shows up at their door. He was spare with the details, but I understand dad wound up with a few teeth fewer than he had before and his arm was never quite the same. Mako's a dude with a sense of humor, blunt as it may be. I don't think he wanted to tell me so, but I kinda bet he did the 'stop punching yourself' bit with my dad. The message was clear. The two weren't going to be allowed to welch on their deal with the, uh, the Master of Despair. I'm trying to think of new euphemisms here, so give me a break with the faces.
Mako leaves and I guess my parents decided that they should get it all over and done with. Roughly nine months later (give or take a couple of weeks for biology to get to workin' properly like they taught us in health classes) out pops me. Happy birthday baby boy. I really have no firm idea of how it was back then. The boss, my boss, told me that my parents refused to name me and when the doctor insisted, they just named me after him. Tim. It might not be true, though. My boss is kind of a dick. Saying things to hurt peoples feelings is sort of part of what he does, y'know?
For the first few years, my parents were pretty distant. I didn't notice it at first. Why would I? First I was a baby, then I was just a dumb kid. The fact that we didn't celebrate my birthday just wasn't something that really struck me 'til I was old enough to see on television that other kids celebrate their birthdays. Even then it wasn't until I ended up in grade school that I realized just how different my home life was from that of the kids around me.
I tried to make up for it any way I could. Every day I came home with drawings I'd done for my mom or my dad. I wanted to put them on the fridge, or up in my dad's office. I made them cards for mother's day and father's day. I made friends with other kids and had them over for sleepovers to try and show my parents how other kids lives differed from my own. I mean, it was all pretty stupid, I guess. But... but but.
But eventually it worked, I guess. I couldn't say when it was, what it was I did, but I can remember my eighth birthday like nothing else. If for no other reason than the simple fact that it's the first time I actually knew when my birthday actually was. Before that, I'd always just reckoned my age by my year at school. Then one day in June my parents threw me a birthday party and all my friends were there and it was like, hey Timmy, you're eight! Hey Timmy, you're eight and your parents love you and you have friends and fuck if you're not living a normal life.
We did have a normal life after that. For a while, anyway. For maybe a year, a year and a half. We'd go out to eat on Fridays and Saturdays. Every other night my parents would split up cooking duties. We'd watch TV together and they'd read me stories before I went to bed. My drawings went up on the fridge and in my dad's office. For mother's day, Dad and I gave her breakfast in bed and made a huge mess in the kitchen. These ... these little things stick out in my mind from that time. Every one of them so good. Such unbelievably sweet moments in my life. God. Thinking about them too much is like having a knife slide in through my navel, man.
First time I met Mako was birthday number nine and actual birthday party number two. We all went to Chuck E Cheese. They still had those animatronics back then, remember? Well, maybe you don't. Anyway, it wasn't just some douche all dressed up in a giant rat costume. It was a full band, rocking out to some hideous filk versions of classic rock tunes, but with the words all changed to reflect the fact that pizza is apparently awesome. So I'm opening up my gifts and I just got a GameBoy from my mom and that first Pokemon game from my dad and all my friends are jealous and I look up and my parents are smiling and the smiles freeze on their faces. Freeze and fall and are gone. I look over and there's this man standing there, maybe six and a half feet tall, skin black like coal and not a hair on his head. He gives me this big white toothy grin and says, "Kia ora tatou." with a wave to everyone.
I'm not really sure what's going on, so I move on to the next present, but I can tell my parents are getting nervous. Jumpy. After opening a couple more, the man sets down a package on the table and gives me a nod. "Tena koe, kid. Happy birthday, right?" I remember wondering what the accent was. He kinda sounded like that guy from that Crocodile Dundee movie and I was going to ask if he was from Australia, but my dad got between us. Dad and the guy, who I might as well note is Mako just in case you didn't get that, they have this quiet fight off to the side while my friends are eating pizza and my mom is looking scared shitless. Eventually Mako shrugs and starts toward the door. Before he leaves he looks back at me and says, "Ka kite ano, Timmy." Many years later I'd discover that this meant 'seeya later' and while I doubt my parents could speak Maori, I have to imagine they got the message.
For the next few weeks, my parents did a lot of that thing people do when they're really upset and nervous about something, but they don't want you to know so you're always walking into rooms and getting the impression that everyone just suddenly got quiet. It's disconcerting as an adult, but it was way worse as an eleven year old. Especially when the conspirators appeared to be your own parents. I could have hoped they were planning something awesome for the fourth or maybe for Christmas (we'd gone to Walt Disney World the Christmas before and let me say, holy shit!) but I think I was a smart enough kid by that point that I realized it had something to do with the tall black man.
Strange Weather
After about six months of my parents being all worried and concerned, my dad suddenly became very grim. Very determined. I still wasn't sure what was happening at that point, but now I realize that he and Mom were starting to pull out of their lives. Dad was cashing out as much of his earnings as possible and Mom was pretty much doing the same. 'Investing in canned food and shotguns', as I once heard it put. They were both preparing for the end of the world they'd built for themselves. They were preparing to run. Sixth grade had only been in session for a week and one day I came home to a new car, a big ugly Ford minivan, the back of it packed with boxes 'til you couldn't see in the back windows. When I went inside our house, I asked Mom what was going on and she just said that we were moving. She had been crying, was crying. She said that we had to go far, far away.
I didn't understand. Why would I? She was crying and scared and saying we had to move, so I was getting scared too and I started crying too. I didn't want to move. I didn't want my mom to be sad. I thought it must be Dad's fault, so I yelled at him, but he looked so miserable too. Both of them stopped what they were doing to hug me, to calm me down, to tell me it'd all be okay and I could go back to school when we got to where we were going.
We never got to where we were going, wherever that was. It was pouring as my dad sped down the highway. I was caught between staring out at the scenery occasionally caught in profile by lightning flashes and catching 'em all on my Gameboy. At one point I was straining against my seatbelt in the back and leaning up between the front seats to look out the windows in front of us, almost completely obscured thanks to the sheets of rain coming down. Lightning flashed again and I saw a man standing on the road ahead of us. Lightning flashed again and it seemed we were about to hit him. Then there was the sound of thunder and everything went white.
When I regained consciousness, I was resting on the side of the road. My wrist hurt, but other than that was I was okay. As I sat up, I saw the same tall black man who had been at my birthday party, though this time he wasn't smiling at all. His skin was so dark he blended into the night around him, though he had paint on his face that was brought into sharp relief against the blackness. A tribal design that started at his chin and went wide around his eyes, like the head of a hammerhead shark.
Mako was squatting over the body of my mother when he looked over and saw me sitting there watching. With a rueful expression, he dropped my mom's hand and pushed himself to his feet. After walking over to me he said, "Sorry, kid. They run, I follow. It's just-" he paused here and turned, drawing a small black pistol, and put two bullets into the head of my father, who had been crawling toward us both. Looking back at me, Mako frowned and said, "I think you sprained your wrist in the crash. Not exactly part of my plan. Shouldn't sit forward when you're in the back seat, though. Cops are coming. Ambulance too. They'll take you away from this." Mako looked back at what he'd done, the twisted wreckage of the minivan, the boxes of our belongings burning merrily away in the back, my parents' corpses. Looking back to me he said, "I'm really sorry, Tim," and despite it all, I believed he was. "Look, I'll be seeing you. Take care of yourself, kid." and just like that, he was gone.
A Brief Interlude
It was hot. This wasn't really much of a surprise to Professor Stanley Gerald Lawrence, what with it being the middle of summer in Israel and all. A cool breeze blew in off of the Mediterranean, but all it did was dry the sweat on his forehead to a salty crust. It'd been over fifteen years since he'd come from Harvard University to start the dig on the ancient seaport of Ashqelon that had been found only a rock's toss away from the modern city of Ashkelon. Fifteen plus years that had built a career for him and seen dozens of young students on their way through college and into MLAs and PhDs in history and archaeology.
Word had just come to him that one of the students had found a pot and there was some considerable excitement. Everyone wanted him to come down and have a look before they did anything else. On one hand, a pot was a great find and everyone should be excited when they found a pot. On the other hand, it was an archaeological dig site from a four thousand year old city, so of course they're going to find damn pots. Then again, at least he wasn't being called down because some student had stuck their hand in a hole and come out with a scorpion sting. That happened at least twice a summer and it was never fun. Either way, though, Stan decided he wasn't going to go running down, not in this miserable heat.
Upon reaching the dig site, Stan could tell that there was more to this than just another pot. Not only were the students all excited, but his own assistants were. Men with PhDs were dancing around like giddy little schoolgirls. When he descended into the pit, he could see why. They weren't clay pots. Instead, when Stan went to the wall, he found, partially uncovered, a bronze jar. A bronze jar inlaid with gold in the shape of Hebrew lettering and whose cap was sealed with entirely intact wax.
Behind him, Stan could hear his assistant, Killian Patrick, bouncing on the tips of his toes. "Stan, look at the lettering. Look at the symbol. Could that really be?"
"No. There's no way in hell. We're not down that far."
"What if... what if someone else dug here before us? What if they were looking for-"
"Then we would have seen it before now. Before this. Look, there's..." Stan slowed to a stop and leaned in close. Moving as quickly as he dared, he began working around the partially revealed jar. Seconds turned into minutes and within the hour he had revealed another three jars, each almost the same as the first, though with slightly different lettering. Still, each bore the symbol of one of the nation's greatest kings. A thousand or so years out of proper context and several hundred miles away from where it would make sense to be found, Professor Stanley Lawrence would discover seventy two bronze jars, each carrying, in iron and brass, the Seal of Solomon.
A Return to the First Person Narrative
Sure enough, police and paramedics arrived. They took me away before I could see what they were doing to my parents. Time passed quickly then. It turned out a lot of things weren't right about my parents and their identification. Apparently power, money and beauty change you enough that you decide to start all over with new identities, and when trying to figure out who my parents were, it was sort of decided that they were nobodies. Rich, beautiful nobodies, which made them grifters and drifters and made me a kid with no one and as such a ward of the commonwealth of Massachusetts.
Eventually I ended up in a home for kids like me and then I was bounced from foster to foster. I knew enough other kids who were part of the system to have heard some real horror stories, but I didn't have any of my own. Most of my foster parents were either older people whose actual kids had left, or people who'd never had kids of their own. I never ended up with anyone who was just after the stipend or looking for someone to do chores around the house. All of them knew my story, or at least some variation thereof. Car accident, dad shot to death, possible retribution hit for some con job. They all took pity on me and let me into their lives.
It wasn't until I was about thirteen that I actually got placed in a home where the people decided to go ahead and adopt me. After all, I was a good kid and bright and friendly and hard working, so what's not to like, right? For the next five years, I'd live in Brookline, in one of the old mansions up on the hill with an awesome view of Boston. You can't really know you're in Boston unless you can see the Pru, I always said that and damn if I didn't know I was in Boston every morning.
My adopted parents, Henry and Janice Truman, were just great people in general. They'd had two children, though both had since gone off to college. They'd fostered a few kids, but something about me made them decide to make it official. I had a birthday party every year. I was a bit too old to be making them cards or drawings, but Henry was an art professor at Boston College, so I went from drawing to painting with his help. At school I had friends again, a whole group of new friends. And as life went on and I got older, things started feeling normal again. Things started feeling right.
November
And so they would. Five years. Five pretty damn awesome years. I don't really need to go over 'em. I was a kid. A normal kid. Smart, kind of goofy, a little artsy, a little talented. Didn't join in any sports, wasn't really a clique kind of guy, but I had friends in every group and everyone knew me. Not the popular guy, but the guy everyone had a friend who was a friend with. You probably knew a kid just like me. So imagine that. I was a happy guy and I had great parents, a coupla brothers who treated me like I was really a Truman. I even had a girlfriend or two. Hey, I said I was a normal high school guy, and I did normal high school things.
Being the kind of guy everyone likes and who isn't too much of a clique specialist was really the best way to get by at a place like Brookline High. We're talking about a Bizarro-verse high school where the jocks were kind of the jokes and kids on the debate club and culture squads were cool, so my eventual involvement in stuff like student council despite being the kind of guy who read comic books and was all excited about the Star Wars movies was less surprising than it might have been at any high school actually in the city.
I did specify five years, though. All of this pretty much came to a halt about a year and a half ago. All my normalcy. All my friends. Prom was coming up and some friends and their girlfriends and myself and my girlfriend, Wendy, had all decided to rent a limo and do it all right. The prom was being held at the Hyatt in Cambridge, right on the river, on the top floor with an insane view of the skyline. The theme was something stupid, but prom themes almost always are it seems. Really, it should have been a perfect night with, based on Wendy's having checked out a room a the Hyatt, a particularly spectacular finish. What could go wrong?
Yet Another Diversion on the Road to the Grave
The job seemed easy enough and the pay was outstanding. The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston was apt to have good security, certainly, but Kincaid and his crew had been performing high profile heists for years without any real problems. The only thing that itched in the back of Kincaid's mind was the fact that they had a new guy and every time they had a new guy, they always had some sort of an issue. Issues resolved themselves by the new guy's second job, because by that point the new guy wasn't new anymore or he wasn't on the team anymore. Tonight was a first job for the new guy, though, and tonight was a big job for the whole team.
There was an exhibit of seventy two bronze jars that some guy from Harvard had dug up in the middle east a few years back and the MFA had paid out top dollar to be the first to display them. They were certainly priceless, Kincaid couldn't argue with that. The papers had been all excited about them for the past few months, calling them the Lost Treasure of King Solomon. Never one for history, Kincaid couldn't see the value. They weren't gold, they weren't jewel encrusted and they damn sure weren't sellable. No fence would buy something like this supposed lost treasure. So he figured their employer was likely some sort of collector. They got jobs like that now and again. A rich person who just wants to own something, even if he can never show them.
On the other hand, it was really hard to argue that they were totally valueless to him. After all, he and his crew were being paid a sum that topped more than their last three jobs combined. For him, it meant retirement. Or at least the possibility of retirement. After a few years on his own desert island, Kincaid figured he'd want to get back out there and get to work again. He had that sort of ethic, y'know?
So far things had been smooth. The six members of his team and himself had easily penetrated the MFA through the roof, outwitted security and evaded technological measures. This night, Kincaid thought to himself, would be the cleanest hundred thousand dollars he'd ever made.
All comforting thoughts such as these ceased as soon as he got the first of the seventy two jars in his hands. As his fingers touched the ancient bronze, Kincaid could hear something whispering in the back of his head. Something resonating in the very bones of his skull. Though he could just barely make out the words, there was nothing hard to make out in the maliciousness of the voice's tone, the lies that lay in its promises of wealth. Calling out to his team, Kincaid directed that none of them should touch the jars directly. They'd brought a special bag for each of the jars and a six cases, each capable of holding a dozen. He told them to use the bags to handle the jars, claiming that the jars were more delicate than he'd initially thought.
Of course, there's always a problem on the first job with a new guy. Kincaid had known that going in. It's never different. There's always a problem. The last thing Kincaid would think as he saw the new guy holding one of the jars between his elbow and his side while trying to break the wax seal and remove the top was a distant realization that he would never, ever get to retire.
The police would respond to the calls of a break in at the Museum of Fine Arts less than ten minutes later. Front doors and windows shattered, the entire museum in horrible disarray. The exhibit room in which the Lost Treasures had been displayed was a total loss, the ancilliary art on the walls destroyed and the treasures themselves out of their display cases, scattered about the floor, wax shattered, jars cracked, tops missing. Most of the bodies of the seven thieves could be located, though the damage to their remains was so complete that there was no identifying them. There was no explanation that the Boston PD could discover for just what had happened.
For nearly three thousand years the seventy two demons of the pseudomonarchia daemonum had waited to be freed. For the first thousand each had sworn treasures untold, power unimagined and immortality for whoever so freed them. For the next thousand they swore that whoever freed them would be the only one gifted with life, so great was their rage. In that last thousand, they knew that the only gift given to their liberator would be a swift and horrible death. On that promise they were only too willing to deliver.
No More of That
Everything went wrong. Haven't you been paying attention? Weird shit keeps happening to me and this was the night of weird shit to end all weird shit, okay? So we're at the prom and I'm dancing with Wendy and I'm trading off and dancing with some of my buddies' girlfriends because we're all friends and it's just fun. It's the last big hoorah for high school before the real world intrudes, so it's all just supposed to be fun, right? But all night, all through the dancing and the music and the illicit boozing, I have this itch on the back of my neck, like some insect has burrowed into the skin there and no scratching will get it out.
Eventually I have to take my leave of the fun and go outside to catch a breath. A few of my friends follow me to have themselves a smoke and Wendy follows to get some alone time with me. We cross Memorial Drive and hang out on one of the Hyatt's pagodas, watching the boats pass by along the Charles, kindly getting on with the makeouts. And that's when everything just goes to hell. Kinda literally.
The itch in the back of my neck gets itchier and itchier. Hotter, too. I'm thinking it's just the kissing that's doing it, but no. Something is coming closer. Finally I look up just in time to see a terribly familiar face. Mako, and he's got this look on his face like all of Hell's legions are coming after him. "Kid," he shouts, panting for breath and looking for all the world surprised that he's winded after running for who knows how long. "Kid," he starts again, "it's all down to you. You're taking over tonight. Old fucker shoulda told me he was retiring me. It's all passed on to you.'
None of that made any damned sense to me. Why would it? I mean, this is a man I saw execute my biological parents and now he's talking to me about retirement? What the hell? I was just about to tell him where he could stick his gold watch when the itch in the back of my neck flared to a burning flame and coursed down along my spine and radiated out to my entire body. Instinctively, I turned and looked down near the water, where I know the quarry that had sent Mako running to me for help was approaching. After calmly directing my friends and Wendy to rejoin the party (though Wendy seemed concerned for me, and I appreciated it) I called out to the thing in the darkness, and in a braying voice it answered.
I am Buer of the pseudomonarchia, called a voice from the darkness. Hand over the hunter and call me lord and I shall teach you wonders that you had never known possible. Submit to me, it promised, and I shall show you the philosophies of gods.
Mako looked to me and offered a shrug, which wasn't too helpful. I'd later learn that in over a century of hunting the worst of the worst, Mako had never quite seen anything like Buer, never experienced anything like it, and certainly hadn't realized that one day his strength and speed would simply abandon him. Except it hadn't really abandoned him. It had just moved to me. Without bothering to deny Buer verbally, I leapt over the edge of the pagoda and, running entirely on sense instinct, moved to punch the demon in the face.
Well, that was sort of the plan. I was very new at this and honestly had no idea what I was doing and was still pretty confused. It was only the itch in the back of my neck that pushed me forward to fight, gave me the instinct to know what I was meant to do, filled me with a hatred of the thing in front of me. All of that was well and good, but it didn't change the fact that I never expected to jump down and come across an honest to God demon. And even if I had, I wouldn't have expected the demon to look like a lion's head resting in the middle of five goat heads, of which was vomiting out goat legs, and which was rolling along on the goat legs like the weirdest goddam wheel in the history of history. My imagination simply wasn't that good.
I'm not going to go into any details on the fight. It wasn't very dramatic. It was clumsy on my part and not that hot on Buer's, what with him only really having goat legs to hit me with. Without any real formal training in fighting, I had to go on what my body told me to do, which wasn't anything it had done in the past, but I could feel the new strength and power that had been passed to me by Mako. Eventually I ripped off one of Buer's legs and beat him to death with it. It was pretty ugly. I mean, yeah, Buer started out pretty ugly, but in the end it just got really gross.
After defeating the demon, I felt a tingle cross my chest and a flutter in my stomach. It was kinda like the feeling I got first time I got to first base, but a lot creepier. When I finally climbed back up onto the pagoda, Mako ran over to me to make sure I was okay. Even as he checked over my many bruises, they began to heal. Mako was damn surprised at that and I'd later find out that he'd never had any sort of a gift. Eventually we'd work out that, due to the unique nature of the demons of the pseudomonarchia, each would gift the one who defeated them with some aspect of their being. As a spirit of medicine, Buer had apparently passed to me the gift of a speedy healing.
The Ghosts of Saturday Night
Which brings me back to that night. I never made it to the hotel room with Wendy (damn it) and instead walked Mako back to his apartment in Dorchester. He told me a story, his story, that started in the 1860s in New Zealand. He'd been a member of one of the Maori tribes that resisted the biggest attempt by the British to take Maori lands. During the Waikato War, Mako had called on his gods to make the British leave, but they didn't answer. As such, he offered up his soul to whatever would call itself enemy to the god of the white men, and the Devil answered. In exchange for his soul, Mako was given the strength to fight back against the Brits. However, it was a bad deal, as it always is. His insurrection only made the British redouble their furor to take the land and hundreds of his tribesmen were killed in revenge.
Eventually Mako would give up in his desire for revenge, at which point he was called upon by the Devil to fulfill his end of the bargain. For next hundred and thirty years, he would serve as a sort of bounty hunter for Hell. Apparently there'd been one before him, a French Revolutionary who quailed to find his head on the chopping block, and before that a Dutch pirate facing the gallows. And now, according to Mako, the duty had passed to me. He wasn't sure just why I was activated so suddenly, but he thought that the sudden appearance of Buer would have something to do with it.
The next day in the paper, we read about the break in at the Museum of Fine Arts. With a little research, and a little intuition on both out parts, we discovered the connection. And in so discovering the connection, I knew in my gut that I had been activated to hunt down the remaining seventy one spirits and destroy them. Mako said that usually his duty was to hunt down and kill normal people who had made a bargain with the Devil and then welched on it (such as my own parents) now and again he was also tasked with taking on demons who would challenge the sovereignity of Hell in all realms infernal, as well as those humans or demons who had somehow fled their rightful place in Hell and returned to the middleworld of the living.
Mako also told me that I might as well make a break with my friends and my family. None of them could ever really understand what I now was and even if I made them understand (and even if they could accept that I was now and inherently evil being, despite my generally awesome tendencies and good nature) that I would be endangering them. While generally my job would be to hunt down and destroy the Devil's foes, sometimes they might come looking for me. Demons and demon hunters alike.
Despite his warnings, I insisted on finishing out the last two weeks of school, but I became withdrawn from my friends. How could I really face them knowing what was to come? How could I explain to Wendy why I'd never made it back to the Hyatt with her? I told my adopted parents that I was going to use some of the graduation money they'd given me to take a walking trip of Europe. Henry was enough of a hippy to think it was a great idea, though Jan was more than a little worried. I assured her I'd be fine and before the weekend, I was gone.
House Where Nobody Lives
And I was gone, though not to Europe. Mako had tracked one of the sloppier pseudomonarchia down to Newport in Rhode Island. As we drove down there, he told me more about his life, his adventures and told me what to expect. What I would need to learn to survive. This man who had bullied my parents into conceiving me and then ten years later killed them had now become my friend and my mentor. It's a strange world, man. I am not kidding you about that.
In Rhode Island we pretty easily found our target. Zagan called himself a president of Hell, but I really couldn't imagine who'd elect him. At first we found him in the form of a man, conning tourists out of cash. Pretty low for a president, right? When we cornered him, he turned into a bull with an eagle's beak and big eagle wings on his legs. What the hell was up with these demons? Demons are supposed to be big red dudes with wings and tails and horns. They shouldn't look like the San Diego Zoo threw up.
It wasn't much of a victory. Despite looking like a total badass, with Mako's help we pretty much stomped on him. I felt the tingle again and it lasted a little longer this time. I figure these days that that's the gift of the pseudomonarchia passing into me. I didn't know what it was this time at first 'til later when I spent my last twenty bucks buying lunch for Mako and myself at a greasy spoon just outside of Newport. As we walked back to the car, I found a wallet with no ID and two hundred dollars in it. Ever since then, whenever I spend money, I seem to find enough to keep me at right around two hundred bucks. Which is hardly rich, but keeps me in decent hotel rooms. Or cheap-ass hotel rooms and decent food.
After that, it was mostly time spent with Mako showing me how to apply my new strength and speed in between our tracking more human targets. He tried to show me how to use a gun, but I couldn't even touch it. I didn't hold it against Mako for doing what he'd done, but I couldn't forget the kick of the weapon as he emptied two bullets into my dad's head. I couldn't even think of holding it without getting queasy.
The first human we went after didn't just result in making me queasy, but had me throwing up for the next couple of days. As much as I knew he deserved to die for what he'd done, the sort of degenerate person it takes to sell his soul for something as temporal as money or good looks, and in this particular case, what he'd afflicted on the people around him. No matter how much I tried to say to myself that he deserved what punishment I would be meting out, I just couldn't do it. Mako wouldn't do it for me, though. And as I thought of leaving, the impression of what had happened to my own parents filled my head, the enormity of who owned my soul filled the rest of my and I turned before I could think too hard on it, snapped the neck of the poor, deluded idiot who had given away his most precious gift in exchange for the freedom to do whatever he wanted to the neighbor kids without ever being caught.
I was so sick. So sick that I'd had to ever meet a person like that, so sick that I had to do what I had done. As much as I might try to tell myself that anyone who had me show up at their doorstep had done something wrong to deserve it, I couldn't help but think that the person... the thing I now worked for was the one who made it all possible for these people to be as degenerate as they were anyway. I wasn't punishing the pedophile for being a pedophile, but I was punishing him for welching on a bargain he struck with a force that allowed him to be a pedophile, unabated. It made me ill for days.
Talking with Mako didn't exactly make it better, but it made it a little more palatable. Everyone who makes a deal with the Devil has it come due and tries to run sooner or later. They'd do their badness one way or another, he said. We just make sure that eventually they'll be punished. You just have to look at it a way that allows you to be a good man. Though as he said that, I could feel the parts of me that had had the gifts of the pseudomonarchia latch onto them and I could feel how dead they had become to the concept of being a good man. I would say that I feared for my soul, but by that point I knew I no longer had one.
Potter's Field
A few months later, I heard a snatch of rumor on the street which lead me to believe that another of the pseudomonarchia had made himself at home right there in Boston-town. I admit, I wondered about just how coincidental it was for me to hear something just mentioning something like that. I wondered how much of it was actually a sixth sense directing me toward my target. Mako mentioned that when it came to his prey, he could just tell when they were near and he just knew who he was after. I wondered if that was finally crystalizing for me as well.
Mako and I made our way down to the old docks, where the USS Constitution was was more or less permanently moored. There we found ourselves facing a number of sailors gone mad. Wearing naval outfits from out of Pirates of the Caribbean, they tried to gun us down with muskets. Fricking muskets! Whichever of the pseudomonarchia it was that waited for us was a lot sneakier than the first two, defending his new home with man whose minds he'd warped. I tried to deal with them as politely as I could, but the butt of a musket to the forehead is never really welcome. I didn't want to kill any of them, but quick healing or not, I didn't want to take lead ball to the gut, either.
Past them, aboard the ship, we found him. Malthus, who was styled an Earl of Hell, though he declared himself the armorer and weaponsmith for the legions under his command. Though initially he looked a blacksmith in a general's garb, when confronted with my nature, he revealed his true form, that of a twelve foot tall pelican with swords for feet, wing feathers made from axes and pin feathers made from spears. Really, the fucked up infernal menagerie just never gets any easier to buy. As epic as my battle with Zagan wasn't, this battle was. Malthus was a bloodied warrior, a soldier, and I was a teenager in way over my head.
Exactly how I won isn't all that important. Let's just say that it was a ten minute long duel fought on all surfaces of the USS Constitution, from belowdecks to the crows nest, and was as awesomely dramatic as any fight between an unarmed teenager in a Superman t-shirt and a twelve foot tall duck could possibly be. Pelicans are ducks, right? Man, I'm gonna have to look this up later. God bless you, Wikipedia. Anyway, at the end of the fight I turned one of the USS Constitution's suddenly functioning cannons on Malthus, pulled the cord and it fired. It really shouldn't have done that. The whole boat seemed to've been empowered by Malthus' smithing, 'cuz once the big bird had taken a load of grapeshot to the face, the whole structure creaked ominously.
That fluttering feeling again and this time the gift was immediately evident. I held in my hand a sword that looked to've been cut from glass. With a flick of my wrist, it disappeared. When I flicked again, it was replaced with a glass axe. Again and it was gone. Again and I was holding a glass cudgel. Deciding I'd have to figure that one out later, I went to find Mako, only to discover that he'd been wounded in the fight. Not mortally! It's not all that dramatic! Still, I had to carry him out before the cops, fire trucks and, of course, military police showed up.
Back at his place, Mako said that that was pretty much his last outing with me. "I like you kid," he told me, "and I'm damn sorry that I've caused you pain. But I've been doing this for a hundred and thirty years and if the boss has seen fit to retire me, then I'm going back home, I'm gonna raise myself a fine brood of kids and I'm gonna die an old man."
It wasn't logic with which I could argue, so I didn't try. He was my friend and he'd been hurt. He wasn't supernaturally strong anymore, that was me. He wasn't fast and didn't heal quickly. All me. I couldn't keep endangering him anymore. So after making sure he was asleep, I left and started walking. I donno where I was going, his place was where I'd been crashing for the last nine months, but I had to walk. Had to clear my head.
Chocolate Jesus
See, at this point I was realizing that this meant the rest of my life. Or at least the next hundred and thirty years of it, if I was as lucky as Mako! And at that point I had a crisis of faith. Well, maybe not faith. Anti-faith? It was a damn crisis. Stopping in the middle of an area of Roxbury where a gawky white nineteen year old probably shouldn't be stopping, I looked down at the ground and I hissed, "I can't do this."
Unexpectedly, a craggy old voice responded, "Well, you're gonna."
I turned around and stared. Standing not fifteen feet away from me, smoking a rumpled Marlboro, with a big stupid grin on his face, was Gary Busey. Gary fucking Busey, man! Unsurprisingly, I said, "Holy shit! You're Gary Busey!"
Gary Busey shook his head. "Naw. This is just the form I'm taking now. I think you know who I really am."
I know what you're thinking. Duh. It's the Devil. Still, I was sitting there looking at Gary Busey, so it was a different perspective than hearing about it later. "I... what?"
"I'm your boss, kid. Your boss from now 'til whenever I say you can retire. That's all a part of the bargain. It wasn't your bargain, but it was a bargain nonetheless. You've got it good. There're people out there whose souls I end up with who don't get a deal quite this sweet. There are many worse places you could be. Many, many, many."
The argument didn't really hit my brain at speed, though. Instead of responding to what he'd said, I said, "But you're Gary Busey."
"No. Damn it! I'm not Gary Busey, I'm Lucifer Morningstar, the Fallen Angel, the Prince of Darkness, the King of Tears Unnumbered and you are my damned, only too literally, employee."
"Wait, so Gary Busey is the Devil?"
"No! I'm just taking a form that you can relate to!"
"Oh. Okay. I get it. So what do you really look like?"
"You're not quite ready to handle that, kiddo."
"C'mon. I just fought a giant goose."
"That was a pelican."
"Isn't pelican a goose?"
"No. You're no ornithologist."
"Is that a dentist?"
"I thought you were smart, slick."
"I joke when nervous. This Gary Busey thing is freaking me out. Try me with your real shape."
"Well, okay, but don't blame me for what happens next, son."
I can't exactly describe what it looked like, guy, but imagine a big ol' pile of tentacles and vaginas with teeth and eyeballs and giant centipedes with fetuses for heads and the fetuses are trying to talk to you, 'cept you can't hear them over the sound of someone screaming and it turns out that someone is you. Yeah, I am not too proud to admit that I spent the next five minutes shrieking like a small child with a stubbed toe. Tears poured down my face and when I came to I realized I was poking at my eyes with my fingertips, trying to unsee what I'd seen.
Finally Gary Busey gave me a good slap and said, "Calm down, son."
"Yeah, yeah. I'm calm. It's cool, Gary. Er. Sir."
"Timmy, I like what I've seen of you so far. You just need a little discipline. You need to hunker down and stick with it and just get the job done. You can do it. I know you can. I've known you since before you quickened in the womb, son. I plucked you out of the well of souls and cast you into your mama's belly and I picked you special for the job I knew you'd have to do one day. You got me? You've got it in you 'cuz I've seen it in you. Got it?"
I didn't get it, but I didn't want to see the centipedes again, so I replied, "Uh. Got it."
"Now here's what I think you should do. There's a place north of here, little town called Devilshire. Yes yes, clever name. I count at least seven of your bounties in that area. Plus, there're a couple of people who owe me and haven't paid up and at least one escapee. It's a veritable bounty of work, kiddo. Now you watch yourself. I don't like making appearances like this. Maybe I'll contact you, maybe I'll have someone contact you, but this is the last time I make a personal visit and it's friendly. You got me?"
"Yessir."
"Now just so we're clear. Who am I, Tim?"
"Um. You're the Devil, sir?"
"You bet your ass I am, kid. Don't you forget it for a second."
And with that, he was gone. So with my universal weapon carrying, money finding, infernally powered, regenerating self, I bought a junker and started driving north. And, well, you know the rest of the story. I was driving through Danvers and got that itch in the back of my neck. I walked into Kappy's, saw you and knew we'd need a little quality time together.
I'm really sorry, man. I'm sorry I have to do this. Then again, I'm sorry you decided you needed to trade away your soul to Gary Busey in exchange for whatever the hell it was you decided made it so worthwhile. I'm sorry I found that body in the back of your car and I'm sorry I won't be sick later, when we're done. What I'm really sorry about is the fact that I think I'm becoming one of those people who loses himself in his job.
No matter. I've got places to be, m'man. So close your eyes and think of Heaven. I mean, you ain't goin' there, but pretend. It'll make this a little easier on us both.
Personality
Powers and Abilities
| Devilshire Character Sheet | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ||||
Having been empowered by a hellgod-level demonic entity (whatever said entity may be) Timmy has surpassed peak human physical conditioning and, contrary to all appearances, is supernaturally strong, fast and hardy. Additionally, one of the many gifts of the psychomonarchia has given him a rate of healing that allows him to recover from all but the gravest wounds in mere minutes.
Then there's what he, in a fit of Marvel comics nerdishness, has dubbed his Universal Weapon. It's only there when he needs it, it's always there when he needs it and it's always different. Sometimes it's exactly what he needs. Big demon? Big axe. Sometimes it's pretty much the opposite. Vampire horde? Baseball bat. While the weapon is in fact an extension of Timmy's own soul manifest in a solidified form, it almost seems to have a personality of its own at times, a personality that has a questionable sense of humor.
Timmy has also been 'blessed' with two forms of supernatural senses. The first is the one that many supernatural creatures seem to share. The simple ability to know something strange when he sees it. On the other hand, there's his bounty sense, which is a bit more refined. Generally the fact that he has a bounty is conferred to him on a subliminal level, but it's his bounty sense that lets him know when he's getting close. It works a lot like the Slayer's ability to sense vampires, though since it cost a quality point, it's somewhat more reliable.
Finally, despite not having a job, Timmy seems exceptionally lucky when it comes to finding money. So long as he doesn't get too greedy, he's capable of living a life of non-notable comfort.
People He Knows
Family
The Trumans (NPCs) - Adoptive parents Henry and Janice and brothers Fred and Thomas, they are the family Timmy grew up wishing he could have. All it took were his parents being killed and a year bouncing around the Boston foster care system and he finally ended up with them. Henry teaches art at Boston College and Janice is a teaching doctor at Dana Farber, so the years Timmy spent in their Brookline home were more than comfortable. Fred is off at college in Roanoke, VA and Tom has long since graduated and moved to New York.
Fred Truman (NPC) - Fred is the younger of Tim's two brothers. He's mentioned above, but he gets a special mention here due to recent events. Apparently Tim's not the only Truman in the supernatural business. Unfortunately for Tim, all evidence indicates that Fred is working for the other side. While Timmy's stuck working for someone or something down below, Fred seems to be working for the Powers That Be. While Fred knows about Tim, they're still brothers and that's more important than company loyalty. What makes the whole situation even worse for Tim is that Fred's that annoying brother who is better than him at everything. Stronger, faster and with a better magical sword. Also, his Lechery drawback goes to eleven.
Friends
Mako Hanakawhi (NPC) - The man who murdered Timmy's parents and who would eight years later become his best friend and mentor. Having offered up his soul during New Zealand's Waikato War to whatever powers opposed the god of the British colonials, Mako would see his people defeated and serve the next hundred and forty years as an infernal bounty hunter. While his strength and speed have been passed to Timmy, Mako's years of experience are still an asset to the neophyte hunter. Believing his soul to be his once again in return for his decades of service, Mako has retired to New Zealand to live the rest of his life and die an old, old man.
Sean Raubenheimer - Tim's roommate and instant BFfL. Sean loves learning about pop culture and Tim knows way too much about it already. Toss in graduation money squandered on a high-def TV and an X-Box 360 and you've got a recipe for horrors uncounted. A week after Tim broke up with Marley, Sean let Tim know that he was leaving Devilshire for good. Tim misses his friend. A lot.
Amy Nichols - A girl who lives in the same co-ed dorm as Tim and Sean. She seems nice, but given her tendency to ask a lot of questions and jump from subject to subject, Tim's convinced that there's something more to her, something nefarious. His half-baked theory? She's a plant put in place by a corporation to conduct undercover polling and guerilla marketing. For now she just appears to be doing covert questioning about the brands Dev U college kids prefer, but he's sure one of these days she'll start mentioning how much she enjoys the cool, refreshing taste of Diet Pepsi which is perfectly complimented by Doritos Collisions, two awesome Doritos flavors that explode together in extreme flavor combinations! (see figure 1) While Tim has recently come to the realization that Amy is a robot, he's still not convinced she's not a droid sent by Pepsi Co to hook people on Frito-Lay products.
Marley Moore - First they hated eachother. Then they were teammates. Then they were a couple. Then they shared secrets. Then they hated eachother again. Then they were a couple again. Has now broken it off with her after a disastrous few weeks. Recently Tim has heard some alarming stories. He refuses to believe them, even if he isn't particularly happy with Marley even on the best of days.
Beatrice Vaughn - She started out by being overly nosy. Then she spent a lot of time asking about Sean. He knows she's involved with Marley and Sean's stuff to a degree. He probably wouldn't tell her that she's a friend of his, but she's something fairly close. He recently told her that he was a demon, trying to prove a point to Marley. She claimed she didn't believe him, but she also started crying and threatened to shoot him in the face. That's not cool!
Cassie Shepherd - One of those people you meet late at night. Well, not one of the ones you have to stab. He talked to her about lots of stuff. Kind of a lot. He'd had a lot of things to talk about and no one to talk about them with for a while, okay! Anyway, Cassie was a good listener, if a somewhat weird talker. Tim recently took her on a date for a picnic in Salem Common. It was a good time, and he's looking forward to another.
Phillip Harget - The Professor. Tim likes the guy, even though he's terrified of everything. Also, a total pyro. So far as he can tell Phillip's the local expert on all things paranormal. Possibly not the best guy to have at your back when the demons come a-callin', but probably the best to tell you what those demons' hobbies might be. Recently, Tim had the Professor over for a few days while Beatrice and Marley were out of town have a girl's weekend. Tim and Phillip enjoyed some guacamole and air conditioning.
Alyson Edwards - Photographer. Has her own mysterious and dark past. Tim's run into her several times and after she told him that he reminded her of her dead brother, he told her a somewhat revised version of his own loss of his parents. Since then he considers her a friend, which he's decided is a good thing. He could use more friends.
Jenny Caltro - Artsy hottie. Tim has shared a class with her every semester since he showed up last fall.
Acquaintances
Angela Bradford - Amy's roommate. So far as Tim can tell she's very nice, but kind of dumb. Her hair is terrifying. He once got face-raped by her teddy bear, but that's not really her fault.
Oliver Fox - Some kind of pyro. Tim likes him, even if he's a snooty British prick. He got involved in the whole ghost thing and saw it through to the end.
Zachary Malven - One of the few people with a human response to the bloodbath in Himdel's during the demon crisis. Tim feels bad about (what Tim presumes to be) the guy's first exposure to the supernatural. For a time Tim felt a sense of responsibility toward Zachary, but has since decided that the guy has landed on his feet and gotten pretty much used to life in Devilshire.
Dallas Murphy - Boston badass. Tim knows a demon when he sees one, but sometimes one has to ignore the flaws of others for the greater good. Dallas joined in on the right side of the fight at Himdel's and that counts for a lot.
Dix Roberts - Sociopath.
Skitch Maxwell - Nice enough guy. Tim was assigned guard duty on the Maxwell house after the opening salvos of the recent demon war predicament. After the death of Mark Thrice, Tim stopped in to speak with Skitch for the first time and to tell him the bad news. In return, Skitch snuck him some grub to eat while on duty and let him access the Maxwell stake stash.
Employers
The Devil (NPC) - It's anyone's guess just what this being really is. It calls itself the Devil, which few Hellgods would bother with doing, but few lesser demons could get away with doing. It has managed to empower Timmy with physical capabilities nearly on par with those of a Slayer and it has an agenda that has clearly spanned centuries. Perhaps it is some being of the Outside, wearing a mask for its own purposes. Perhaps it is the First. What's not likely is that it's actually Old Scratch, no matter what anyone, especially it, might say.
Kalush Moore - Kalush, whose name Tim does not seem to be able to pronounce the same way twice in a row, has agreed to show some of Timmy's work at the Moors Gallery. While this isn't the job to which he's accepted his life will be dedicated, it's closer to what he really wants to do than just about anything else and if it actually pays, it beats the hell out of waiting tables or tending bar. To top it off, Kalush herself is way hotter than Gary Busey.
Professor Griffon - Tim will be TAing for The Griff come September. If it weren't for this fact, Tim might put this particular professor under the a-holes and d-bags category!
Assorted A-Holes and D-Bags
Wentworth Moore - Assface. While Timmy has never much liked the guy, these days Tim would kind of like to beat him until he stops breathing so much. Marley may have something to do with this.
David Bianco - ...is a jerk is the end of that sentence! No wonder he's friends with Marley. They grow on the same tree. Which is dendrologically impossible as there are no trees that grow both fruits and nuts.
Vincent Carrel - Haunted Tim for several months. A complete shitheel of a person. When he found out that his girlfriend was cheating on him and someone was stealing from him, he blamed his only friend and killed him. Turns out his trusted accountant was stealing from him and his girlfriend was gay. Oops. Tim enjoyed reminding him of these facts at every opportunity. This meant a lot of spilled drinks for Tim. When the haunted group managed to banish their ghosts, Vincent revealed something absolutely horrible. Tim doesn't like to think about it.
Recent Unfoldings
|
1. Baal |
13. Beleth |
25. Glasya-Labolas |
37. Phenex |
49. Crocell |
61. |
| Pseudomonarchia remaining | 66 |
Trivia
Some Startling Fun Facts About Gary Busey
- The 2003 film "Ong-Bak: Thai Warrior" was based mainly on an anecdote that Gary Busey told a group of Thai film producers regarding his family vacation in Bangkok the previous year. To this day, Busey remains the reigning champion of the Khaosan Road Fight Club, although it should be noted that he achieved this status by murdering most of his competition with black widow spiders that he controls with his mind.
- Gary Busey frequently swims in open water off the southeast coast of Newfoundland, Canada, as he claims that the cold, fresh water "gets the Buse's juices flowing" (a notable side effect of the continuation of this exercise is that Gary Busey is unable to tan, rendering his skin a very pasty white). During one of these swims, Busey saw a large ocean liner and challenged himself to swim towards it. However, Busey misjudged the speed of the vessel and it collided into him, rendering him unconscious. While sinking to the depths of the ocean, Busey claims he was saved by the beautiful song of a mermaid and wound up washing ashore in Hyannis, MA. Years later, Busey would discover that the ship that had collided into him was the RMS Titanic and the mermaid's song he believed himself to be hearing were the screams of agony from the dying passengers and crew.
- While interpreting ancient Sanskrit text in northern Baghdad as a child Busey discovered the true burial site for Jesus Christ. He wandered through mountain ranges and ancient temples deciphering clues and puzzle boxes created by Pope Innocent II himself. Busey when he finally opened the crypt to the tomb of Jesus and found Jesus’s final resting place when he peered inside he found only a mirror and a message stating “Jesus is in all of us”.
- Gary Busey's will states that, upon his death, he will have a Viking funeral wherein his body will be sent out to sea on a Viking ship while on fire. He insists on historical accuracy for the events with the only deviations being that he will be sent out to sea on top of a 1983 Chrysler LeBaron floating on an intricately-laid series of inner tubes. After the funeral, Busey has formally requested that the Russian government display his remains in place of Vladimir Lenin's body in the Lenin Mausoleum at Red Square in Moscow; Busey's application is currently pending, as the Russian government wants Busey to cover the entire cost of removing from the entrance the words "Lenin Mausoleum" and replacing them with "Busey's Body: Catch the Magic!" in 24 karat gold lettering (per section 4.1b of Busey's request).
- During the summer of 1914, Gary Busey was backpacking through Europe by himself. When he arrived in Sarajevo, Busey fell in with a group of jokesters who had been playing pranks throughout the city. When one of the other "Trick Ticklers" (as they were called - a name that Busey had invented and then laughed about for seventeen hours straight) dared Busey to throw a water balloon at a visiting member of the Austro-Hungarian royal family, Busey misheard "throw a water balloon at him" as "shoot him in the throat with a Fabrique Nationale M 1910 semi-automatic pistol". The Archduke Franz Ferdinand was shot and killed on June 28, 1914.
- Gary Busey refuses to ever play 'Snakes and Ladders' because he says that it's 'too realistic'.
- Gary Busey is so afraid of breaking a leg that he wears a bulletproof vest and a custom-engraved Medi-Alert bracelet that says 'NOT A HORSE.'
And presenting the craziest thing Gary Busey ever snorted cocaine off of.
