FRENCH QUARTER CROSSROADS_entry for Alison's SUPER-SNOOPER blogfest

This has been the kind of day for me that usually ends up with obituaries being written,

but I wanted to participate in Alison's intriguing SUPER SNOOPER BLOGFEST :

http://alisonstevens.blogspot.com/

As it had for the past century and a half, the setting sun took its last look on St. Peter’s street as it transformed to Rue La Mort.

The flooded street sparkled with flakes of burning silver. Beneath the muddy water, spirits swam restlessly, looking nothing so much as seeping blood under the sea.

Though I had seen the transformation a thousand times, tonight’s still hollowed out my chest. My vision blurred. My head became light.

Reality stretched like taffy pulled by some demented demon-child.

The world looked as if I were viewing it from the wrong end of a telescope. My head felt full of helium. I half-expected it to float off my shoulders.

The evening fog became blood mists billowing over the flooded street. The mists became figures out of nightmare. I stood my ground. There were dazed innocents behind me.

The ghost demons fell back to the tried and true, murmuring hollow promises in my ear. I felt off-balanced as if I would fall into madness.

I still stood my ground. Hissing in anger, they drifted off down the flooded Rue La Mort in search of more gullible souls.

A shadow loomed over me. I held onto my Stetson and craned my neck, looking up. There it was in all its hellish glory.

Meilori’s, the Crossroads of Worlds.

Meilori's stood towering over me. Torch-lit iron lacework balconies stretched up high into the foggy night. I couldn't make out the building's top.

The smell of cedar, oak, ash, and lightning strikes filled the air. Screams sounded low in the distant night. Moans of warning murmured as if whispered right next to my ears.

Leathery wings sounded up high in the thick fog that masked the remaining balconies. I heard the thud of a heavy body, the ear-aching screech of talons against steel, and a husky laugh of hunger about to be fed.

It suddenly noticed me and glared my way for a long moment as if pondering its chances, then abruptly flew back the way it came.

I turned and saw the weathered sign hanging above my door :

HERE BE MONSTERS.

Wasn’t that the damned truth?

I saw the gleaming window in front of me.

In strange, flowing script was the one word : Meilori's.

The letters were rippling and flowing into different fonts and colors, some for which science had no names. And that was fitting, for science had no name to describe its owner either.

***
A new favorite song of mine :