Eve And The Mummy

1953 words

Eve Leach opened the door to her Upper East Side apartment building and shuddered. There was something off about the building, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. Shrugging, she thought that perhaps it was just because the sun was coming up, and it always made her a little nervous to come home this late.

She’d have to forgo the usual call to her brother. But Scott was 150 years old, he would be okay without her checking in on him one night. How much trouble could he get into? That chill ran down her spine again, maybe she could call him just for a minute.

A rush of wind greeted her when she opened the door to her apartment. There was the usual smell of day-old blood, she left her supply out once and was now stuck with the smell.

There was a light coming from her den, she rushed to it. Maybe, John, her time-traveling boyfriend, had come back to see her. Every time she asked if they would end up getting married, he demurred. She knew in her heart that it wasn’t likely, what did a 155-year-old vampire have in common with a time-traveler who never revealed his actual age?

Nothing, that’s what.

“John?” she called out as she entered the den. Her eyes popped out of her head when she noticed it wasn’t her beloved, but rather a dead man sitting in her chair. She moved closer and noticed that someone knew he was deceased because this was a mummy. “Hello,” she waved her hand in his face. “Crap.”

Sucking in a deep breath, she picked up her phone and called emergency services. After asking for a cop and an ambulance, she called the paranormal committee member assigned to her area.

With the calls out of the way, she scanned the bar. A tequila sunrise in real life would kill her, but the drink would relax her nerves. It would also make it seem like she might have an alcohol problem to the police.

Before her thoughts could drift away to why humans were so dumb, there was a knock on her door. It seemed infeasible that the police were already arriving, but stranger things had happened in New York City.

Looking out the peephole, she saw it was Sonja from the Paranormal Counsel. She opened it and invited the demon inside. “Thanks for getting here so fast.”

“Nothing like flying in the sky at night to scare the normal people,” Sonja shrugged. “What seems to be the issue?”

“A mummy in my den,” Eve answered as she led the way to the uninvited guest. She glanced back at the door, willing the city officials to get to her house. “I don’t know how he got here.”

Sonja examined him and looked back at her friend, “I hate to be the one to tell you, but this dude has been dead for almost as long as you’ve been alive. Hell, he’s been gone for longer than I’ve been allowed on the surface.”

“Police,” a man’s voice from the hallway, loud enough to wake the neighbors. Just what she needed, to have to explain to Evan, the finance bro, across the hall that there was a mummy in her house and she was a vampire. She shuddered at all the coming inside puns she would have to endure. The officer was impatient and yelled, “open up.”

“Can you keep it down?” Eve admonished as she opened the door. She took a look at the cop and instinctively knew he was going to cause problems for her. “My neighbors are sleeping and don’t want to be woken up by a rogue cop.”

He pushed past her and stomped into the apartment, looking around. “I don’t see a dead body.”

“Yes, please come in,” Eve snapped. The officer turned to look at her, and she raised an eyebrow, “it’s customary to request permission.”

“It’s also customary to arrest someone when a dead body shows up in their house,” the officer snapped back. Sonja walked out and looked at him. “Only guilty people call their lawyer before they call the police.”

“Only idiotic people assume one is a lawyer without proper introductions,” the demon said. She shook his hand, “Sonja Star, Paranormal Council Member and friend of Ms. Leach here.”

“Paranormal?” The word barely slipped through the cop’s lips. He was as white as Casper, but not as friendly. “Why did they send me to work this case?”

Eve ushered the officer and Sonja into the den. The mummy sat in the chair, unfazed by the newcomers. “I came home and found him sitting here, just like this.”

“Where were you?”

“Out with some friends,” Eve answered, hoping it would be enough to dissuade him from asking further. “I have an alibi, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

Before he could answer, the paramedics knocked on her door. Eve brought them back to the den, where the officer offered, “he’s dead.”

“They teach you that in cop school?” the paramedic asked as he and his partner hoisted the mummy onto a gurney. Before he could be questioned by the cop, “meet us at the morgue, we’ll go from there.”

Just like that, everyone was leaving Eve’s apartment. The cop turned to her, “don’t leave town. I’ll have questions for you.”

She shut the door behind him and looked at Sonja, “how bad is this?”

“Girl, someone is framing you for murder.”

Once Sonja left with the advice that she should make a list of her enemies, Eve sat down and started thinking. To herself, “It would be easier to make a list of people who like me.”

On a whim, she went to make some tea. Her eyes scanned the kitchen to see if anything was out of place. It occurred to her again that someone waltzed into her house and left a mummy for her to find. Maybe it was some sort of warning, like the magic mafia was after her or something.

After a few sips of tea, she decided to cast a spell of her own. The goal was to find out who had left the mummy and get them turned in to the police. It was nearly nine in the morning, and she needed to sleep.

Moments after she cast the spell, she dropped her tea cup. Ignoring the mess, she watched as John came into the room and sat the mummy up. He watched the door for a few minutes, then disappeared.

Eve shook her head in disbelief. While her relationship with John was imperfect, she couldn’t imagine why he would plant a mummy in her house to have her arrested. He had to know that she was going to call the police.

And that the cops would blame her for the mummy.

If this was his way of breaking up with her, it was mean and unnecessary. She sucked in a deep breath. Over the course of their relationship, they’d broken up many times, but never had he put a dead body in her house. That seemed a bit immature.

Before her thoughts could spiral more, a portal appeared, and out walked John. He smiled at her, and then it dropped. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“How could you?”

John shot her a confused look, “I’ve come through that portal a million times, I thought we were over the pleasantries of knocking on the door.”

She shook her head and sighed, “How could you put a mummy in my apartment? You had to know I would call the police and that they would assume I was the killer.”

“What?” his mouth dropped into an ‘O’ as the realization dawned on him. John shook his head, “No, that was already in here when I came in. I thought it was weird but assumed that it was a decoration.”

Eve absorbed the new information. She sucked in a deep breath, “please don’t be playing with me, I can’t handle it right now.”

John opened his mouth, but there was a knock at the door. Neither of them moved for a second, then the banging got louder. Then the yelling started, “Open up, it’s the police.”

“It’s the same cop from earlier,” Eve sighed as she opened the door. He pushed past her and stopped when he saw John. “Is there something I can help you with?”

The cop turned around and looked at her, “there were no fang marks on the body. How in the world did you kill him without leaving a mark?”

“Why would I call the cops if I committed the crime?” Eve asked, not bothering to hide the annoyance in her voice. She stared at the cop and challenged him, “I’m a vampire and have connections to the supernatural world, why would I bother with you fools at all?”

“I’m her boyfriend and a time traveler. If she needed a body hidden, I take it to a different time and drop it off,” John piped in. “So, instead of harassing her, why don’t you actually do your job?”

The cop looked between the couple and sighed, “You’re a vampire,” he pointed at Eve then turned to John, “and you’re a time traveler? There’s no way that you people are telling the truth. Probably drugs… or the mafia.”

“If we were in the mob, you would not be standing here,” Eve said as she noticed that Evan was looking in her doorway. “What’s up, neighbor?”

“Yo, how are you, beautiful vamp?” Evan shot her his most charming smile, then he looked at the other two guys. “When you aren’t preoccupied with the village people, maybe you want to go out with a real man?”

“What?” Eve and John asked at the same time. They looked at one another, then back at the finance bro. She cleared her throat, “Evan, you know that John is my boyfriend.”

“I thought he was lost in time or something,” Evan shook his head. He studied John, “I mean, what does he have that I don’t? I sent a mummy for you,” he paused and looked around the room. “Where is it?"

“You?” Eve asked, her head swimming with the new information. “You were the one responsible for the mummy being in my apartment? But the spell showed John.”

“Spell? Now you’re a magic vampire?” The cop asked, clearly confused and ready to leave but stayed rooted in his place. “How much of this are we supposed to believe?”
“You can cast spells too?” Evan asked, his eyes full of wonder. “Is there anything this lady can’t do?”

The officer looked at Evan, “Come with me, we need to talk about where that body came from and how you got it into her house.”

“I’m a wizard,” he answered, crinkling his eyes.

Once they were gone, Eve looked at John. “Sorry about all of that,” she went to kiss him, but he pulled away.

“You thought I killed someone and framed you,” John said, his voice devoid of anger or any emotion. “We might need to pause this relationship while we figure out what we want.”

“But…” she stuttered but stopped. He opened a portal and stepped through it. A single tear slipped down her face. She walked to the counter and picked up her phone, there was a missed call from her brother. After hitting his contact info, the phone rang in her ear, “Hey, Scotty. You will not believe the night that I’ve had.”

“Mummy found in your house placed there by an overzealous, secret admirer,” Scott answered. “Don’t forget, I got mom’s psychic ability.”

Finally, Eve thought, some normalcy in a day of craziness.