Kthaahthikha

She was born in Melbourne, but don’t hold that against her. In any event, she doesn’t live there now. It wasn’t her choice to leave, but looking back she’s not certain if she’d return, given the chance. Who wants to dwell in a brick veneer flat, selling black-market anthologies of the miscellaneous occult to drug-lords and the occasional vampire? Working a dead-end job as a librarian, shelving books she’s never had time to read whilst she wonders if she remembered to lock the trunk containing the seven silver serpents that sits threateningly at the base of her bed.

No, she’s striking-out on her own, now, with a clean slate enforced by several court authorities and the general consensus that things would be better-off without her. Never mind her protestations that the vampires’ll just go somewhere else looking for a score, that the drug-lords were buying, not selling, and not buying that, anyways. So she had to pack her bags, and bid farewell to her mother’s grave and her father, holed-up in a Highton retirement home trying to avoid being sniffed-out by Interpol, even though they’ve known he’s there for years and aren’t that fussed. She kisses her boyfriend fondly and gives her girlfriend one last screw for old time’s sake, and loads-up the car for a long drive inland, across the scorched earth till her gasket blows and she’s hitching rides off of Bedouin on mange-ridden caterpillars, exchanging cigarettes and sexual favours for the privilege of an uncomfortable, slow-moving perch.

But she’s all set-up for the big time now, in her fancy apartment overlooking the river that she bought to watched the bodies float by. Exiled, but with a few possessions to ease the pain, sold for a quick buck to half-drunk scarab-wranglers trying desperately to understand Qhlohthletik and no closer for shelling-out. She’s got her place, and she’s got her bookshop, and she’s got an ad in the local paper that dances and smiles and announces itself in four local dialects (most of which are just poorly-enunciated French). She’s five-ten with a delicate chin and glasses that make her look like a brunette Shelley Winters (no, not that one), or a younger her>. She dresses in tweed for no apparent reason and carries a walking-stick with built-in torch, pistol, main-gauche and grapnel. Her leather carry-all is rumoured to contain the Lemurian holy scriptures, and she uses it to great effect in her more daring cases.

She was once called upon to wrestle a crocodile, and did so with dignity, gravitas, and manic glee.

She doesn’t like peaches, except with cream, and as a book-seller antiquarian ninja-sleuth assassin she’s got the second-greatest job in the world.

Her last name is Overcoat.

Don’t laugh at her silly name.

This post inspired by JP's highly-entertaining list of desired readers, and boredom.