Going to see the succubus meant a visit to the Waterhouse, which was bad news for a lot of reasons.  First of all, me and Beckett met the devil there once.  It was Beckett he was after, but still… Seeing the succubus was bad enough, because she was after me, which made her more dangerous than the devil (especially since she almost got me).  But worst of all, I hated going there because it was one of those pretentious art student bars where everybody was drinking wine and doing poetry readings and I couldn't even get the bartender to look at me, much less bring me a drink.  And I was going to have to stay drunk for this one...

                I was also going to need back-up, preferably of the mystical variety.  Aquagirl wasn't going to be much help and neither was monkey man, so that only left me with one option.

                God, how I wished I had any other option.

                In the time since I burned his body, Barry the Head had managed to recover some of his telekinetic powers.  It's possible that given time he wouldn't need a physical form at all, but I was making it a goal to keep him from reaching that state of awareness.  I accomplished this in part by keeping him in my junk room with the TV on, a technique that worked surprisingly well.  To augment this I periodically pulled him out of storage and got him shitface drunk.  Somewhere in all this he had still been able to regain limited mobility, mostly floating around to look for snacks he didn't need (since he didn't have a stomach) or to change the channel.  I left it on Scifi most of the time, which suited him, but he liked to watch Heroes and Knight Rider too.  I wasn't fully happy that his powers were returning, but figured I might as well put it to use.

                All this requisite preparation meant that my visit to the succubus would have to wait for the next night.  Luckily that would make it Saturday night, which meant I was pretty likely to find her in play and better able to fit in.  That was going to be key, because Barry and I had never attempted what I had in mind.

                I made a special visit to the Universe Trading Company for necessary supplies.  Unfortunately this required the purchase of a male mannequin, which not only was more expensive than I would have liked but elicited no end of weird looks in the store and all the way home.

                "It's for a project," I told everybody, which is excuse enough in this town for just about anything.  It was, in the strictest sense, also true.

                What followed (after an afternoon's worth of montage-style practice and preparation), was the most awkwardly disturbing physical display I have ever witnessed.  When I had envisioned Barry mounted to the shoulders of the mannequin and using his powers to animate it, the idea seemed so much more brilliant than it would prove to be in execution.  Too many movies, I guess.  It's hard to paint the picture properly because you kind of have to be me to get this, but when I was a kid I used to make stop-motion movies of my GI Joe figures with my parents' video camera.  I know you haven't seen any of those, but with that benchmark in mind try to imagine how bad it is when I tell you that those movies looked more real than Barry's performance.  He bobbed around like a marionette,  his plastic feet barely touching the ground as he floated down the street next to me.  I hoped people would assume he had some kind of palsy or something, but at that moment I'd have an easier time convincing them I'd invented a robot than I was having trying to pass him off as human.

                "Jesus, Barry," I complained.  His legs weren't even taking steps in turns, just lifting up and coming down together.  "Act natural, will ya?"

                "I'm trying," Barry whined, "but one of these legs is attached to the torso and the other one just pops off at the hip!  Neither of them bend!"

                "Best I could do on short notice.  Just try not to hop so much; you look like Team America."

                I tried to put his arm around my shoulders to look like I was helping him keep balance, but it only extended in front of him, which didn't help at all.  For flexibility, I would not recommend clothing store mannequins.  They really aren't designed for the kind of complex articulation moving around requires.

                Barry straightened himself a little too suddenly after my failed effort to readjust him and his head nearly came off.  There's just no good way to secure a living head to a plastic body, but I guess that's a tip you'll never need to incorporate into your everyday lives.  Least I hope not.

                The Waterhouse was posh enough that it was just on the wrong side of MLK, which kept us away from the majority of pedestrians at least.  Crossing the street wasn't fun, though. Another benefit of it being Saturday night was that once we were inside, we'd be too crammed in for anyone to notice Barry's moves.

                We walked inside and passed the piano no one was ever allowed to play.  She would be at the bar looking to score.  Hopefully her boss wasn't around.  Last time I ran into him he spent half the night talking to me about Scooby Doo.  It seemed cause for concern afterward that he hadn't taken any interest in acquiring my soul, just making idle conversation.  Made me think he knew something I didn't.

                But she'd taken an interest, and that's what counts.    Busy night at the Waterhouse.  I tried to clear a path for Barry so no one knocked his arms off or anything while he squeezed past them.  I didn't feel like I had to go looking for her.  I just needed to get to the bar.  I punched a hole open for us and wedged in so Barry had no leaning room.  He positioned himself so his plastic body was propped against the bar and all he had to concentrate on doing was keeping his head in place.

TO BE CONTINUED