Mail Jeevas, P. I.

1

Well, um, hello there. Not gonna lie, I have no idea how to start this. I can't even believe I'm writing this.

You see, I have this shrink. Her name's 'Ramona'. She thinks I'm crazy. You know, cause of my unconventional job and the bizarre stories I tell. So she's making me keep this infantile journal in hopes that I'll "gain a better connection with the real world by writing down the simple aspects of everyday life."

Yeah, she's pretty much a cunt. A young, vivacious cunt, but a cunt nonetheless.

Should I introduce myself? Well, once all is said and done, there may just be a whole board of shrinks reading this, so perhaps they should meet me via my own words and not just Ramona the Cunt's.

My full name is Mail Jeevas, and I live in a small boring apartment in the bad part of town, with peeling green walls and creaky wooden floors. I have a cat named Skully who likes to throw up a lot, and my favorite color is orange. I don't dye my hair, it's naturally this color, and yes, the carpet matches the drapes. My best friend's name is Mello—no, not like the soda, and no, there is not a 'w' on the end—and he is one psychotic mofo. (Really guys, he's the crazy one, not me.) I know no one cares about these boring facts, but I would like to point out that I am a normal, completely sane, healthy male, with normal person habits. I love video games, especially ones with aliens or mutants. I have a classic Mustang which I named Mika, and she is the sweetest ride ever. (Be jealous.) Mello gave her to me for my birthday last year (February 1st). I live off of ramen noodles and energy drinks, but with my line of work, I don't have time to care that I'll probably die from kidney failure.

Oh, that's right; you guys want to hear all about my work, don't you? Is it really so uncommon to be a Paranormal Investigator?

Well, I go to work every day, to my little brick office of the corner of a seedy little street downtown. My door says M. Jeevas, Paranormal, with a stylized picture of an eye underneath. What does that mean, you ask? What do I do?

Have you ever seen a documentary on ghosts? What about history channel special on UFOs? Those guys that sit there and talk about all those hauntings, those facts about abductions, and all sorts of info on cryptid creatures you've never heard of? Those are paranormal experts. And chances are, they started out like me. I investigate all those claims of hauntings, all those cases of people being attacked by Mothman, or Batboy, or the Jersey Devil. Whatever it is, I've seen it before. Nothing surprises me anymore.

Hauntings are my bread and butter. Vampire sightings are also common, especially by vapid teenage girls, for some reason. At least once a week, I get sent to the cemetery, or to some random person's house to take a look at the werewolf there—or what is usually, their pet German shepherd.

But what I live for, what I really love more than anything else in the whole world, is when I get a real case. A real ghost, a real anything, something that sends me racing to the books to find out how to kill it, how to satiate it, or simply how to send it on towards the light. And yes, believe me, these things are real. In the few years since I opened my shop, I've helped on four ghosts, encountered two werewolves, seen one startling case of voodoo incurred zombieism, killed one vampire, and dragged a kelpie out of someone's koi pond. I'm pretty small time, but I enjoy what I do.

And I am not delusional.

There are things out there that would send you screaming to your mommies, that would make you sleep with the lights on for the rest of your lives if you weren't too blind to see them. You say I live in fantasies, but really now, which one of us is really living in a made up world? Be glad people like me are out here to keep your neighborhoods safe.

Fuck, I don't even have a mommy to run to. You want to know why? Ugh, you wouldn't believe me if I told you.

Psychologists are all the same, they all live in denial.

Oh look, now I'm all mad. I wonder if there's a psychological reason, or if I'm just pissed that my mom is dead and an innocent man is incarcerated for her murder. Maybe if courts of law gave more stature to people like me, my dad would still be free.

…

I hear a car outside. I'm at work, by the way. I hope you know that this journal thing is severely cutting into my bored as hell, throwing pencils at the ceiling cause there's nothing better to do time at work. Hopefully whoever's in the car I hear will bring me something good. Maybe it'll be so good that it takes up all my time and I won't even have time to write in this stupid-ass thing.

It was Mello. He came to bring me lunch. He knows that I'm too lazy to get up and too broke to afford gas or take out, so he brought me some lovely, expensive as hell looking lobster in a Styrofoam restaurant box, from some swanky place that he frequents. You see, the thing about Mello, is he loves money. Well, not so much the green stuff itself, but the things it can buy. Generally, I'm a pretty simple man. I like my food cheap, my rent cheap, my clothes cheap, and my games expensive. That's just how it goes. But for Mello…he wants everything life has to offer. I can't blame him. When I met him in college, he was a dirt poor kid from Berlin, brought in purely on scholarships (cause damn is he smart), majoring in—you'll get a kick out of this one—psychology. We had one class in common, which we both nearly flunked because of each other, and our dorm rooms were three doors apart. Now, he's supposedly a part time criminal profiler. That's what he tells people, anyway. Now you explain to me how he affords to have a Hummer3 and a Ginetta G60, plus real leather clothes for every day of the week, and spare cash to buy me lobster for lunch.

The best thing about Mello is that he never judged me for my career choice. I told him my life story one night (drunk after being dumped), but I remember it well enough to know he never laughed. He believes me, even the weird bits, finds some of my exploits to be great stories, and occasionally tags along. When the cases are dry and I can't pay my rent, he loans me money—but never once has he said, "Why don't you get a real job that pays?"

It's a bit strange really, considering that to most people he's a complete tool and an ass. But he never questions me, so I never question him. I don't care where he gets his money. It's nothing to me, and it's none of my business. What kind of friend would I be if I took his generosity and turned it around on him?

Obviously not a good one.

Plus he gave me a Mustang. A Mustang. A sixty-nine Mustang. Who cares how he paid for it? It doesn't get more classic than that.

See this, you silly shrinks? I'm NORMAL. I have normal friendships and a normal house, and maybe my friends aren't so normal, but that has nothing to do with me.

Oh hey, the phone is ringing. I usually write down all my phone calls on notecards for the sake of remembering details later. Maybe this journal thing can come in handy a little. My pen is already in hand.

"Hello, this is the office of M. Jeevas, Paranormal Investigator." (This is me)

"Does the M stand for Matthew?" (This is…a little boy? He can't be more than eight, by the sounds of it. I've never actually gotten a call from a kid before. Crap, I suck at kids. I'd take a ghost over a kid any day.)

"Haha, no, but you can call me Matt if you like. What's your name, squirt?" (Oh god, I sound like an old man. 'Squirt?' What the hell was I thinking?)

"Matthew." (I should have guessed.)

"Well, what do you need with a P.I. Matthew?"

"You do monsters, right mister?" (Cringe. Monsters. Oh well, can't expect a kid to know what they're called.)

"Yep, monsters are my thing. What do you need? I charge by the day…"

"There's a Devalpa outside my house."

Well damn. He knows what it's called and where it is. And he knows what a Devalpa is! I've never heard of anyone besides myself who actually knew that. But this isn't good. A Devalpa, for all you "real world" folks, is an Arabian creature. He poses as an old man, a weary traveler that can't walk another step. He begs passerby for help and assistance, a ride upon their shoulders, perhaps, until he can walk again, but if anyone is kind enough to do this, from the second he is upon them he will trap them with his legs, which turn into snakes, and force them to spend the rest of their lives as his slave.

In other words, there's a hobo outside this kid's house who may or may not be a really mean and nasty Arabian parasite creature. The good thing is, in a city like this, no one looks twice at beggars, and they sure as hell don't give them piggyback rides.

The bad thing is, I have no idea how to kill this sucker.

"Okay, kid. Where do you live?" (Cue frustrated temple rubbing. How the hell am I going to fix this? I can't believe I'm getting something this good; this is great, but jeez. I would usually pass this off as another false alarm, but it's a Devalpa… Nowhere near well-known enough to be fake.)

"421 Clover Street. My house is the blue one. Please hurry!"

He hung up on me. What the hell.

Guess I'd better go take a look at that Devalpa. I guess I'll take my gun? Fat lot of good that'll probably do. Looks like I won't be sleeping tonight—the internet had better tell me how to kill this thing.

So, Ramona. You wanted details about my simple, everyday life. Well, now you're getting 'em.

I wonder how long they'll lock me up for.