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It’s strange , Pix L. Riffs thought, the types of people you meet at Pizza Huts.
He thought that as he stared down a strange little man sitting next to him, in line for picking up their respective pies. Though his accent was vaguely Russian, his looks pointed to him hailing straight from the Uncanny Valley. Just a couple small things that stuck out more the longer Pix stared– the eyes, just a little too far apart; the skin tone, just a little too green; the head, just a little too large; the posture, just a little too awkward and droopy and limp to seem natural. A strange little man, indeed.
But Pix wasn’t staring because of his looks; no, Pix was staring because of what he had just said.
“ Ghosts? Hah. If the Ancients were really still around, they’d be closer to zombies than ghosts, ” and he clearly hadn’t just been saying it, either– everything, from his cynical gaze to his confident tone, betrayed the thought put into what muttering came out of his mouth. This man, whoever he was, was clearly no novice when it came to the paranormal, and Pix was intrigued.
He leaned forward. “You, sir, sound like you know how to back that statement up,” Pix told him; and the little green man looked almost taken aback for a moment, as if he hadn’t expected anyone to hear or care for his careless utterances. Of course, of course, the local Pizza Hut isn’t exactly where you expect to find fellow supernatural afficionados, but Pix wasn’t complaining. His latest Youtube video had been giving him more than enough trouble, what with the pesky holes and omissions in his sources, and he had been considering pursuing a new topic until then...
The man scoffed. “Well, it’s obvious enough, isn’t it? If the Ancients did turn into ghosts, then we would’ve seen more of them in the art they left behind. But there’s barely anything there, is there?” He leaned in conspiratorially. “But– you know what they did depict in the art they left behind? Husks. Drowned. Skeletons.”
Then the little green man smiled, and practically whispered: “ Undead .”
He leaned back again, casually. “You ever hear the story of Land Pirate? It’s a Russian urban legend. Talks about a walking corpse that dwells in the woods and builds strange boats and buildings all around. Nowadays the story’s thought to be a myth, made up to explain all the Ancient structures they found, but–” His eyes glinted. “–I’d be willing to bet the Land Pirate was one of the last remnants of the Ancient race.”
It seemed he was quite proud of his theories. Pix had certainly never heard these takes before in all of his time researching.
He leaned back as well, stroking his stubble in excitement and glee and curiosity and excitement again– it’d been a while since he’d seen such a fresh perspective. If he could get this guy’s opinions, it could make for a very, very interesting video.
He glanced at him again. What a strange little man, indeed. “Sorry, I didn’t quite catch your name.”
“...Zloy. You can call me Zloy.”
“Pix. Pix Riffs.” He shot the most inviting, friendly smile he could manage. “How do you feel about being a guest on my Youtube channel?”
--
Zloy couldn’t, for the life (death?) of him, tell you how he got here.
“Here” being the basement of a strange British dude with a Youtube channel, watching said British dude barely refrain from cursing as he fiddled with a camera that Zloy guessed was at least 40 years old, give or take a few decades. The man himself had a face that Zloy would call decently handsome, in that messy, effortless way that some people seemed to have.
Definitely a weirdo, though. Really, who the hell just strikes up a conversation about the supernatural in the middle of a Pizza Hut?
These two, that’s who. It ended up working out remarkably well, actually– their conversation didn’t slow once, and Zloy found himself enjoying the conversation a lot more than he should have.
“But here’s the kicker, Zloy, this dude apparently found the corpse in his backyard. He uploaded pictures, and everything– and the footprints kept showing up anyways . How would you explain it?”
“Hmm.”
“Exactly–”
“Have you considered Bigfoot’s evil clone?”
“...what?”
“What?”
...
“Well, obviously they exist! No, listen–”
“What do you mean they used to show up everywhere, Zloy!”
“–the real question here is–”
“And ‘back in my day’?! You’re barely older than me –”
“–but where do the phantoms come from–”
...
“Ooh, you’ve never heard of the werewolf of Count Derich’s castle?”
“Sounds a little familiar, but no.”
“It’s this old castle in Wales than was supposedly abandoned for three hundred years, but when a couple teenagers went to explore it, they found the basement was a lot cleaner than the rest of the castle, like someone had been living there!”
“That definitely sounds familiar.”
“The place was full of swords and armor and what looked like prototypes for mechanical wings! And books full of the language of the Ancients!”
“...”
“And in the next room over, there were dozens of animal carcasses. All of them had had most of the meat eaten off of them, and none of them had been cooked! So the running theory is that whoever lived there had been some kind of werewolf.”
“...oh, uh– I must have been thinking of a different story, then, but that is interesting! Haha... y-yeah...”
...
--
Pix watched the dot that he knew was Zloy slowly disappear over the horizon from his house. What a strange little man, indeed.
He forced himself to look away, and picked the camera back up from where he’d left it after finishing the recording with Zloy. He placed it into his tripod, hit record, and sat down in front of it.
“Alright, so Zloy left about five minutes ago. I think we can all agree that he’s definitely the vampire of Count Derich’s castle–”