The Chosen Ones

Jason came trudging home after another dull day of work down at the factory. It was a day much the same as any other working at that ice box they called a manufacturing plant. Jason didn't mind the cold too much, but on some days it really brought him down. He always made sure to wear extra warm clothing and he found that the cold helped keep him awake during the long boring hours of his 11am to 9pm shift. Jason neither liked nor hated his job; it was just another crap job in a long string of them. It paid well enough, kept him off the street, kept him fed, kept him clothed and housed. But he had no love, nor passion for the work he did. It was repetitive, mind numbing and he had the sneaking suspicion that a trained monkey could do it just as good as him. His boss probably felt the same.

"Buddy, it's just not in the budget this year." Greg had said when Jason had come into his office asking for a bigger raise. "I wish I could but you gotta know the economy is in the toilet right now." Greg said with all the sympathy of a man ordering a sandwich.

"Come on Greg, I only got a measly $0.25! Make it a dollar, I'm begging you!" Jason hated how desperate he sounded, but he couldn't hide the need in his voice. He really could use the money right now.

Greg favored him with a shrewd glance of a man assessing the worth of an object. "You ain't got the seniority guy. You know how this works." Greg had said dismissively.

Jason hadn't been willing to give up that easily. "Come on, there must be something I can do to change your mind. Anything!"

Greg pinched his nose with his fingers. "Look, we can talk again in six months. If your numbers look good..." Jason had fully tuned out after that because he had heard similar claims before. It was always the same: bust your ass, toe the line, suck up to the boss and in six months they'll tell you it wasn't good enough and you'll have to wait till the end of quarter four. At which point they throw you the bare minimum raise they can get away with and tell you to be grateful or get lost.

Unfortunately Jason didn't have the education needed to get a better job doing something more worthwhile (and higher paying). Worse, he didn't have the cash to return to school to get said education. So he just continued on, one day merging into the next, creating an endless blur to his life's story. To tell the truth, Jason felt like he was waiting for his life to get started, but then again Jason had been waiting for his life to start for the last 20 some odd years. Ever since he graduated from highschool, he had bounced from one crappy job to the next, eventually settling here in a job that was halfway decent. But now it was the end of another long week and he felt drained.

He had no real plans for that weekend. Kari was long gone, having dumped him two weeks ago. "I'm sorry Jason, but... It's just not working out! I feel like I need to do something with my life and..." She had trailed off but Jason finished her thought for her.

"And I'm not going anywhere. Tell me about it." He had said with hurtful resentment in his voice. He had known things had been rocky between them for months, ever since she had gotten accepted into her internship at that new company, Z Tech.

Kari had shifted uncomfortably towards the door during this whole conversation. "Come on, don't take it like that." She had whined at him.

Jason had snapped back at her, "And how am I supposed to take it?" But he had regretted his moment of anger almost instantly. Because the truth was he really did feel like he was going nowhere fast. He had given up after that and Kari hadn't so much as shot him a 'how are you doing' text since then.

Jason's best friend was out of town on a vacation and everyone else he had called up this week already had other engagements. So he was looking forward to a long few days of sleeping in, lounging on the couch and binging TV shows. All that changed when he saw the invitation in the mail.

He at first thought it was some kind of postcard, possibly from his aforementioned best friend, but quickly discarded that notion when he saw the thick and heavy embroidered paper. He had never given or received an invitation like this before in his life, and he found himself fascinated by the small sheet of paper. It was a large rectangle of thick heavy black paper and it was embossed with what looked like gold foil. On it were the words: You have been selected to attend the celebration of the winter solstice by Ms. Phorne and to further receive a special gift from her. If you accept, you are instructed to arrive promptly at 6:00pm the following evening at the following address. No dress code is required of you, only your presents. We look forward to seeing you there.

"What the fuck is this batty bullshit?" He had asked out loud to no one in particular. Jason reread the wording several times and then spent a few minutes carefully examining the invitation. He didn't know quite what to make of it. The whole thing seemed absolutely bizarre to him, like something out of a cheesy mystery novel. A mysterious invitation to a party he'd never heard of by a woman he didn't know? These kinds of things just don't happen to an average guy like him. And he was to receive a mystery gift from said woman? In what world does something like this happen?

Still he found his curiosity peaked enough that he couldn't just dismiss the affair out of hand. But his cursory investigations got him nowhere. He googled the address but it showed him what looked like an abandoned warehouse in a disused part of town. It was not the kind of building Jason was expecting from such a fancy looking invitation. He searched around the internet trying to see if he could ascertain the identity of this Ms Phorne that was mentioned but he came up empty handed there as well. He then racked his own brain trying to remember if he had ever met anyone named Phorne. But no one seemed to jump out in his mind.

The whole thing felt very cloak and dagger to him. A mysterious invitation from a strange woman to a fantastical party. Jason found himself debating off and on for the rest of the night and even part of the next day if he should really go. It seemed intriguing but at the same time, it made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Eventually, after a lot of talking to himself, he came to a conclusion. There was nothing for it but to go check this place out. If it gave him a bad vibe he would just head out for home as quickly as he could. He certainly felt no obligation to this strange Miss Phorne. But his curiosity had been peaked. And after all, it's not like he had anything better to do anyways.

And so that is how he found himself at 6: 00 p.m. that evening standing outside the doors of a dilapidated and abandoned warehouse. Or at least that's how it looked when he had done a quick internet search of the address early that day. A disintegrating building that had been abandoned since the late 70's, according to his research. It used to be part of a cement plant that went belly up.

But now? The place looked shiny and new as if somebody had completely renovated it from the ground up. More than that, the building looked like it had been converted into some kind of insane nightclub. Huge statues of what looked like ancient figures had been erected all along the outer walls, each one bearing a different name plaque. 'The God of Moths' read one of a thin man with sharp features wearing a tightly woven shawl. Another read 'The Goddess of Suitcases' under the statue of a woman who was clutching a carpet bag to her ample chest. Each one seems more ridiculous than the last. There were apparently gods of wet feet, smelly cheese and concrete. Goddesses of braces, sign posts and mood lighting. After looking at more than a dozen of these 'gods', Jason came to the conclusion that if something existed, there was a god or goddess for it. He vaguely wondered if there was a god of losers and what exactly he had done to get on his or her bad side.

There were no windows he could see on the outside of the building but he could hear music thumping through the walls. It didn't sound like typical club music though. It was something bawdier and more old timey. However, Jason eventually wound his way to a large set of double doors that were being guarded by a mean looking bouncer, a large muscular man with an incredibly thick neck. The bouncer struck Jason as particularly odd, not just because of his huge bulging muscles but because his skin looked like it was made out of bronze. Jason chalked it up to a trick of the light and the fact that the man must have had one hell of a killer tan, even though it was the dead of winter.

The bouncer gloured at him when Jason began to approach the door. His gaze seemed to say 'how dare you come here before me.' But when Jason held up his invitation to the man his dower look changed into a sly smile. The man pushed the door open and waved Jason inside.

"Have yourself a fine evening sir," the bouncer said in a gravely voice. His tone was overly polite as Jason walked inside. A staircase with a dark green velvet runner ascended before him. As he started to climb the stairs, his nerves felt like they were jangling together like a ball of wires. When the door slammed shut behind him, more from its hydraulic arm than from the bouncer pulling on it, Jason jumped nonetheless. He felt nervous in a way that he didn't normally get, like a part of him knew that something really bad was about to happen.

Jason suddenly had a feeling that he was trapped like a rat in a cage. That this was all some kind of sick twisted plot that he was about to be taken and sacrificed by strange crazed cultists in a dark ritual. He was seized suddenly by an urge to go, to run, to flee anywhere he could. But the only way out was back though the door he just walked though. And he didn't fancy telling that bouncer that he was suffering from a case of the nerves. Instead he took a deep calming breath and did his best to quell his anxieties. Then, when he felt like his legs weren't shaking quite as much anymore, he walked upstairs and tried to mentally prepare himself for whatever was waiting for him up there.

Jason ascended the staircase slowly, feeling as though his heart was in his throat. But as he walked, he could hear the sound of the band playing more clearly. As she got close to the top, he was surprised to realize that it was the sounds of big band music. He could hear the loud wail of horns being bellowed in a jaunty tune accompanied by piano and the drums with a large string bass thrumbing along in the back. It certainly wasn't the type of music he was expecting here. He had been expecting something perhaps more techno or maybe dark and rock like.

Finally, reaching the top of the stairs he found himself standing in front of another large set of double doors. Now that he was standing up here he could hear the loud murmur of a group of people talking and laughing and whooping and hollering. Despite his nerves, he couldn't help but think to himself there was one hell of a party going on. In the back of his mind he still felt that urge to run, to turn tail and flee this place before something, whatever it might be, happened to him. But his sense of curiosity was just too overpowering. And so, with a gulp, he opened the doors and stepped through the threshold. What he saw when he crossed through those doors made him stop dead in his tracks and gape in wonder.

There were dozens of people crammed into this space, all of them were standing in tight little circles talking and laughing, telling stories or jokes to each other. He seemed to be in a large high ceilinged hall. There was an amazing mosaic on the ceiling that seemed to depict an enormous amount of strange looking beings posing together atop a high mountain. High back booths line the walls and there were a few tables scattered around here and there around the dance floor. An enormous circular bar was situated in the center of the room, and Jason saw the shelves packed with bottles of the most exotic looking liquids he had ever seen. Several of the bottles seemed to be filled with metallic substances and a few were even glowing brightly. Back on the far wall was a full jazz band, all horns and brass instruments with the expected piano and drums. He saw a few string instruments in the mix as well.

All of this was completely unexpected to what Jason had anticipated seeing up here, but it's not the reason he stopped in his tracks as soon as he walked in. No, it was the people themselves that made Jason freeze as soon as he walked in. Because they didn't seem to exactly be people. Not entirely anyways.

Jason spied a man who looked like he was made out of solid gold in a deep black rhinestone suit telling a funny joke to a pair of girls who look like their hair was made out of feathers. He saw another woman with large rabbit ears sticking out of her head and a pair of overly large buck teeth having a conversation with what appeared to be a six foot tall beaver wearing a tuxedo suit top with no pants. His large flat tail would slap the floor in amusement every time the bunny girl would titter at a joke. There was another man up at the bar whose beard appeared to be made out of branches, twigs and leaves having a loud but incoherent argument with another man who looked to be a walking pile of stones in a suit.

Everywhere Jason looked he saw these incredible creatures carrying on casual conversations and paying absolutely no mind to him. In fact as he stood there gaping at the group of them, the large doors swung open behind him and someone swayed in and slammed into his shoulder. The figure slurred at him, "Hey sorry about that pal. I guess I have had a few too many this evening since my chosen stood me up." Jason turned and saw that the man who had bumped into him had a full wolf's head jutting out of a cream white suit collar. It had a half empty martini glass in one hand and was swaying back and forth unsteadily on its feet. Jason couldn't really compose any response to this wolf headed man and merely gawked at him awkwardly. The Wolfman seemed to take no offense to this and merely smiled at him in a lecherous kind of way.

"Do yourself a favor, kid..." The wolf headed man said, "And just let yourself enjoy it." It then tipped him a salacious wink and then without waiting for a response staggered off into the crowd.

Jason was left stunned at this interaction and was seriously considering the state of his sanity when he felt something tug at his arm. Reeling around his eyes eventually fell on what appeared to be a small clockwork man in a purple valet outfit complete with a fez. It bowed stiffly at him and then said, "If you will follow me sir, Ms Phorne has reserved a booth for your interaction tonight."

It then made a sweeping gesture that Jason took as a meaning to follow it. His legs moved numbly but his feet did not fail him as he walked after the strange clicking and clanking mechanical man.

The mechanical bell boy led Jason across the dance floor to one of the high-backed booths.

"Ms Phorne will be with you presently sir. Can I get you a drink in the meanwhile?" It said in a faded radio voice.

"Um, sure, get me a rum and coke. Heavy on the rum." Jason said, still not quite sure if he had gone crazy or not.

"Very good sir," the Clockwork man said and then turned and scuttled off into the crowd.

Left alone again, Jason looked around at the strange people he found himself surrounded by in this strange night club. He felt right out of place, not just because of his pretty average human features, but also because he had chosen to wear a t-shirt and jeans to this meeting. Had he known what kind of a place this was, he would have dredged up his old prom suit. Everyone else around him seemed to be bedecked in formal clothes, though admittedly very garish looking ones.

And yet as Jason gazed around he saw that he wasn't exactly alone in this throng of weirdos. While a vast majority of the people here were what could be best described as otherworldly beings, he did spy an occasional plain ordinary looking person in the crowd. There was a man dressed in what looked like mechanics overalls gazing around with a stupid look on his face, running his dirty hands through his hair as he stared all around himself wide eyed. He also saw a girl wearing what looks to be a fast food restaurant uniform looking very uncomfortably as a giant barn owl in a bejeweled cloak seemed to be animantly discussing something with her. And there was yet another man, this one balding, dressed in a decently respectable suit clutching a briefcase at his side and looking incredibly unnerved at his surroundings.

Jason suddenly got the conviction that these people, as well as himself, were some kind of sacrificial lambs. It was the only way his mind could truly come to grips with what he was seeing around him. Anxiety and fear were beginning to overtake his reason as these strange surroundings were proving to be just too much for his nerves.

He was suddenly seized by a sudden wild urge to run screaming his head off through this crowd until he found the door out, pushed his way through it and bolted down the street. He knew he wouldn't stop running until he found some person of authority and got them to come back to this warehouse or whatever it was and tell him that he wasn't crazy. He was on the edge of acting on this impulse and surely would have if a voice hadn't called out to him the second before he was about to bolt.

"Jason darling you came! You really actually came!" the voice exclaimed.

Jason snapped his head around and was greeted with the site of yet another strange but somehow enchanting person. A woman in a tight fitting black dress was making her way over to him, waving one hand with a look of pure delight on her face. The dress was strapless and while it came all the way down to her bare ankles it had a split at the hip that exposed quite a lot of her long legs. Her dark colored hair was in an updo and seemed to be strung with bits of multicolored tinsel.

But what really caught Jason's eye were two very prominent things. The first was that this woman had to have been at least 10 ft tall. She stood head and shoulders higher than almost everybody else in the crowd with a few exceptions. The other is that her skin seems to be silver in color and was shimmering as she strode towards him. Anywhere the light caught on her, it made her skin ripple with an amazing cascade of rainbow colors. Her eyes were crystal clear blue and seemed to sparkle like sapphires in the noonday sun. Her lips look like they were covered in liquid diamonds.

She waltzed over to Jason wearing a wide smile on her face that just seemed to light up all of her features in a very alluring way. She made her way quickly to where he was sitting and pulled him out of the booth into a tight hug. As she squeezed his mostly limp body, Jason was keenly aware of the fact that due to the height difference between them the top of his head was being smashed by the underside of her boobs.

"Oh darling, you have no idea how much this means to me!" She squealed at him as he was released from the impromptu hug. "I mean, I know you were under no obligation to come but... here you are nonetheless!"

She was still holding his hands as she gazed down at him with those sparkling eyes, seeming to be trying to take in all of him. Then she suddenly must have realized just how awkward she was making Jason, because she quickly let him go and step back. Clasping her hands behind her back she said, "Sorry about all that it's just... You don't know how much this means to me that you're really here. We have so much to talk about." Her voice was brimming with enthusiasm and joy.

Jason's confusion about the whole situation was not lessened by the appearance of the person who he assumed was the eponymous Ms Phorne, the one who had sent him the invitation. If anything it was only deepened by the presence of this titanic woman. Still he didn't feel any malice in her words or actions. From her body language, he could only really conclude that she really was genuinely happy to see him, even though he definitely had never seen her before now. For a moment the pair of them simply stared at each other, her with a kind of loving affection and joy, him with utter confusion.