Violent Harvest

Behind

2013-06-17T15:23:00.001-05:00

I have the full moon festival in Elkhorn, KY this weekend and preparing for it is turning out to be more work than I anticipated. This will be my last performance for a decent stretch, and hopefully, just maybe, I can get back to fiction after the chaos is over.

Thanks for hanging in there if you're still a VH faithful, and rest assured I'm still around, placing paragraph after paragraph on the back burner, scrambling frantically to do this writer thing again.

It's certainly not easy...

A Little Gratitude is in Order

2013-05-12T13:03:00.002-05:00

My mother is the person who told me to pick up a book and read it for fun instead of a video game controller. She got me excited about things I couldn't see, except in my head. In many ways, she is the person responsible for my love of all things storytelling, and because that is one of the greatest passions in my life, I will forever be grateful for it.

Consider this a thank you for today, and for the past, when I dropped 5 bucks on a card and gave it to you, as if it had come "from my heart." I've always wanted to write you something, but I'm horrible and poetry, so I thought I'd write a top five list of my most fond mother memories.

5) Orange juice spilling at a red light before Kindergarten class. You changed my clothes, dried my tears up, and taught me an early life lesson. Accidents happen. Sometimes they are out of your control.

4) You coming to pick me up from YMCA day camp when the mean kid broke in to my locker and busted my glasses on purpose.

3) You taking me out to eat at Po Folks when I wrote the "I Like Hendersonville" essay, and telling me how proud you were of me on that day.

2) You taking me to Waldenbooks on Saturdays to pick out a new Goosebumps, or whatever series/story I was in to at any given moment.

1) You being there for me the night I saw "The Ring," had a nightmare, screamed, and had to literally crawl in to your bed when I was sixteen years old because I was so terrified.

You are an amazing mother, and I feel blessed every day to have strong, loving women in my life.

So thank you, and happy mother's day.

Goodbye Dark Recesses...

2013-04-10T12:15:00.000-05:00

I made the final issue of Dark Recesses before their online publication stops circulating. Wrote "Club" two years ago when I first got on creepypasta, and glad to see it's found a permanent home. Also check out the stories "Three Grams" and "On the Lovecraftian Ghetto," by two other very talented authors. You can download the final edition for FREE here:

http://cuttingblock.net/darkrecesses.html

I am hard at work, like always when Spring time hits. Thanks for stopping in. Dark Recesses and Cutting Block Press, we'll miss you!

Necromaster (incomplete)

2013-01-27T17:56:00.001-06:00

I started all of this at the end of round one, before I learned that there is far more power in the company of death rather than a futile struggle, day to day, clinging to the fragile coils of life. It's a lie that rules over all of humanity as we cherish and bow down to it, obsessed with prolonging our end. I was like everyone else once, during my first chance that I pissed down the toilet over the course of seventy years. Anyone who says they're not afraid of death --- that they're "at peace," or that it's "their time to go" --- they're lying.

But this is your moment, when you have the opportunity to change and open your mind to something different. There is real power to be gained, and I've made it very difficult for those I've chosen to seek out this grimoire. This will be my final message before the cogath.

There is nothing to be afraid of if you are willing to learn.

I'm only different than you because I've learned the truth. I've defected from the gruel and grievous circle of lies, and entered the deceptively sweet embrace of death. My second chance didn't come with exercise or good diets or vitamins. Life was a monotonous letdown. The gift came to me, a very unworthy and clueless old wretch, and it's a wonder at all that I discovered the blessings of death before I tried to off myself. But that's not what happened.

This is about a lot of things. It's about making all of you realize that you need to wake up. You've forgotten what it means to survive. You devour gluttonous value meals from drive throughs and fry your minds in front of digital displays for hours and hours at a time, and every single facet of living has been spoonfed to you from a silver bowl of shit. That's what I call this pathetic sideshow of paychecks and miles per gallon and reform bills that inspire panic because you're all going to lose pieces of paper from your wallets or digital ones and zeroes inside bank computers that tell you how successful you are and whether you can have a new Mercedes since your Lexus is over five years old.

Life is billioning everywhere, but the real potential of the human race has wasted away slowly. So this about a worldwide reminder. When the graveyards start erupting and soccer moms are robbing their neighbor's house for a revolver, they will be reminded. They will know what it means to deserve life, and they will pay an instant fine for years of cheating death. They will go from being afraid of the internal revenue service to being afraid of the mean alcoholic uncle they buried four years ago when he shows up hungry at their front door. They'll be freezing and diseased in forests and caves and fields, hunkered down and fearing sleep without another breathing partner to keep watch.

The government will call it bio-terrorism, the churches will call it the end of days, and the Twitter addicts will try to popularize YODO instead of YOLO.

And still, they will cling to the lie of life. Consider yourself fortunate.

You and I will call it the cogath dar marbh. In English, it means war of the dead. It's from the old tongue, when the Gaelic chomhairle tried in vain to do what I am about to attempt. Their druid enemies stopped them.

It's been exactly one thousand years since my ancestor failed the ritual. I stay in contact with him on a regular basis. His favorite sacrifice is a twenty something redhead.

So this is about making him proud, and giving back to my otherwordly community that has granted me authority over life itself. It's about returning power with power in return, quid pro quo.

Will you be one of them, or will you accept my gift?

Before you go any further, I would advise you to visit the cemetery of your family's legacy, gather up the remains of your loved ones, and grant them peace from the impending chaos.

Cremate them. Your mother will thank you on the other side later.

II.

The first steps have been taken. Let us take a moment to mourn your old existence, because it's only natural to have those feelings. Kiss it goodbye.

It's been bred in to you to chase these intangible and incessantly insane things called dreams. You can do achieve anything if you work hard enough. This what you're told when you're young, because we only have so much time on this earth, and the people who think they have the power and the control know they have a lot of money to make off you believing this. I worked hard for over thirty years at a company I started myself, only to get backstabbed by my partner. I'm a quadruple divorcee. I was depressed and eating valium because I made seven figures instead of eight. This is what life and dreamchasing does to you.

The cost of what will be required of you is astronomical. You think I don't know you, but I do. You care about three things. Money, sex, and power. These three motivations rule the world of the living. Some would attempt to question the big three, perhaps bringing up futile concepts like love and goodness, but those people are worthless to me. They won't be approached or instructed like you. You are depraved like me. That's why you've been given the opportuntiy to learn.

Lesson number one. Nothing comes without sacrifice. Absolutely nothing. This also proves true in life, but death is a much more forgiving teacher. You've put in hard work to get something you want out of life. Nice things, a pretty girlfriend, whatever. What's valuable in life is not valuable in death.

There is no big three. You will prosper through asking of what is required of you in the nether. I am your instructor, but I don't hold you accountable. More about that later.

For now, I need you to forget about morals and right and wrong. You are going to kill people, but in the process, you will make them something bigger than they could have ever hoped to become in life. You will spill blood. You will cause suffering, and you will love it.

Order number one. You need a partner in crime, and I don't expect you to do this alone. As I said before, death leaves you a lot of room for poetic license and creativity. You need to find yourself a living, breathing thing that's not human. I used my house pet and turned her in to vicious hell hound, but I leave the choice to you. The first step to gaining potency in your rituals requires something to keep watch over you as you commune with the dead. As you drift about the nether, you will be protected from the raging spirits of old, but you will be vulnerable in the real world.

What is left of the Gaelic rituals can be found in the Munich manual of demonic magic. Nearly all of the terms and superstitions outlined within it are inaccurate, but there are detailed instructions for creating a familiar. Read it, create your circle, and bleed out the old husk of your chosen animal.

When the last drop of blood falls, you will witness the opening of the nether for the first time.

I will not be there waiting for you, but rather, you will attune yourself and converse with the first spirit drawn to the body of the animal. Do what it asks of you, no matter what the request.

Should you succeed, then I assure you that I will be aware of it.

III.

You've made quite an interesting choice, my little necrolyte. I saw you, screaming and covered in blood, with your circle crudely etched in the wood by a shaky hand. Fortunately, a perfect circle wasn't required by the particular spirit who came to you. I appointed it specifically to your induction due to its chaotic tendencies. It felt the grave sense of terror in your gut with the bleeding fox on your lap, and it was grateful to consume such a strongly human emotion.

And you were grateful to have it taken away from you. How does it feel, knowing that you will never fall prey to fear again? It's been ages for me, but I've never forgotten myself.

I watched the entire ordeal. I saw your face contort with tears and regret, only to shift in one glorious moment as you wrapped your clutches around the first hint of necropotence. Your open, screaming mouth became a beautifully sadistic grin when the fox rose again. From a pitiful, dying and broken thing to a stalwart guardian of your legacy. How long that legacy persists is an entirely new question altogether.

Lesson number two. The pleasures of the world are meaningless to you now. and so are the consequences. Maybe you had thoughts of changing your appearance, of sucking the life from someone you hate, only to change the circumstances of your mortal life and get a second whirl at things. I don't blame you for these feelings at all, for I must admit I fell victim to them at first. I murdered my boss and my wife, I looked to be in my twenties, and my first inclination was to hit the town and find a nice, lovely piece of college ass. But there are things you don't realize.

Forget about your "nether regions" and burying them in pussy, or painting the town red and impressing people who don't matter by creating little green lights that dance on the ends of your fingertips. You have a new center of pleasure now. Remember that money and sex mean nothing, and when you bleed out your first victim and make your first offer of blood, you will be filled with such elation, with such physical pleasure, that you will forever regard humans as a snack for your brethren across the veil. They have much greater things to offer you in return for your service than a three second orgasm.

Forget about the police or any fears of worldly justice. There is nothing capable of punishing you except for what lies in the nether itself. Well .... and me, should you fail miserably and waste my time so close to the hour of our war.

Order number two. Your familiar is ready, but ninety percent of you is still pathetically human and therefore very weak. You will have to create your own pumice stone for mixing the blood of your offerings. To command the dead, they must respect you as they respect me, which means you need to become as close to your master as physically possible. Draining the blood of one will bring you a longer lifespan and restore wrinkles, but draining the blood of ten at a time, mixing them in to a grisly soup, and then offering it will allow you to learn new techniques and rituals. There's more to being a necromancer than living forever and drawing circles. You will learn to transform blood and bone in to shockwaves that will bring buildings to rubble. You will learn how to enslave any living, breathing thing indefinitely, so that it might do your bidding for eternity. You will learn a great many things, but none of them will come to fruition without a pumice stone.

Any solid object will do. Mine was given to me by one of the last remaining chomhairle when I was a child, crafted from a piece of stonehenge itself. It's important you understand that the object itself is simply a medium. You don't need some special keepsake like the pocket knife your grandfather gave you before he passed away. You can use a roll of toilet paper if you'd like (although you may become the brunt of many a sideways snicker at the hands of your necromantic brothers for doing so).

When you've chosen your object, create a new circle (which should look much better, considering the excitement I feel in you, rather than fear and trepidation), and find your first blood offering. It would accelerate your progress if you could select someone particularly special to you, be that in a positive or negative way. Very soon, your old girlfriend or your Monday night football buddy will become fodder for the corpses, so in a way, should you slice up and bleed out someone in your social circle, you are saving them from a much more grisly fate later. You will carry them with you, and at times, you may hear their whispers and screams from the object itself.

The choice is up to you. Take them alive, and ensure that every last drop touches your pumice. It will devour the blood like a rabid beast, and you will once again open the nether.

Enjoy the flood of youth and real power. This is your first kill, and it is your first step to belonging with your prestigiously gruesome family of the macabre.

I will be watching.

IV.

<c>

( This is what I have that isn't being edited/changed at the moment, hope you enjoyed the opening hook, stay tuned. Thanks - VH)

Liquid Blue (40,000 words, last edited 8/22/12)

2012-08-22T22:33:00.000-05:00

Google Docs Link:

Liquid Blue

This is exactly half of the book. I can guarantee that it will change somewhat, getting chopped and edited as I tack on the last fifteen chapters. I'm trying to make sure everything lines up, that my characters make sense in what they say and do, and I also want more of a horror element and less of a dark fantasy tone.

In the chapters following this shared half, David will become a vampire, Mercer's war will hit the streets and bring the Shroud to its knees, the war of the dead will be looming just behind the current list of problems the vampires face as an entire species, and the six bloodlines will be fleshed out with characters introduced from each of them.

I'm very much looking forward to sharing the rest of the book, but for now, this is what I have that feels somewhat presentable. You would think after three years of doing this and one novel already under my belt that I would get rid of the "stage fright" that comes with self-consciously sharing your mind with the world, but I doubt it will ever disappear completely.

I'm still working on it, but vampires are very dear to me (as well as zombies), and I hope I can bring them back to their true element and give them the justice that Twilight slowly cheated them out of, one retarded sappy chapter after another.

Au revoir, and thanks for reading. I'll have more soon, as well as Necromaster and some more side-plots that run canon with the Liquid Blue universe.

Cogath dar marbh!

-Drew W / VH

Install, PULP!, and other great horror shorts.

2011-02-10T13:01:00.000-06:00

Twit Publishing has released their new anthology (which includes "Install") through print, Kindle, and Smashwords.

I stayed up until 4am last night reading the stories from the other authors in this collection, and I can assure you that if you're a creepypasta lover, these are definitely right up your alley. If you want the hardcover edition with my first published short story ever, you can order it from them, or you can grab it on Kindle for $2.99.

Here's the link, and I hope you enjoy these stories as much as I did:

http://www.twitpublishing.com/CatalogWS2011.html

Violent Harvest: Short Stories Straight from Creepypasta and 4chan's /X/ Now Available on Kindle!

2011-01-04T00:32:00.006-06:00

Hey, guys. I've just finished uploading thirteen of my best short stories through the Amazon Digital Text Platform. My Kindle eBook will be available under the title of this blog post sometime in the next 24 hours for $2.99 .

If you got a Kindle for Christmas and you'd like to carry some Violent Harvest goodness around with you wherever you go, then look no further. I'll post the link to my shiny new Amazon product as soon they put the collection out of review and in to the live store.

EDIT: And, it's up. If any of you have Amazon accounts, it would be absolutely amazing if some of you could write me a review. If you enjoy these stories, let the rest of the world know. ;)

Kindle-licious.

Violent Harvest

2010-11-29T12:16:00.000-06:00

Hello. I'm not sure why you're in what used to be my house, or why you've decided to wander around long enough to find this, but I have something to confess to you, even if you're the only person who ever hears it.

By the time you finish listening to my memoirs on this tired old radio recorder, I will be dead, rotting under the roots of the terrible things that I have created, and you will hate me more than you have ever hated anything in your entire life. You will hate me so thoroughly that you will dig up my corpse and hack at it with a garden shovel until there's nothing left of my face but shreds of skin and lip.

Death is too good for me. I'm sorry.

Joel Pierce farmed a few miles down the road from me, and when he saw what was growing on my plot, he felt inclined to grab the sledgehammer from my tool shed. He pounded carcass after carcass until there was nothing but fleshy red goo, sinking in to the mud of my fields.

They grew back. He's still dead.

This place is wrong, and it should not exist, but it does. I've made it this way.

You will hate me because I am responsible for everything that's happened to this town, to its people, and to the very spirit of the land itself. In this one hundred mile stretch of nothing but green fields and the summer breeze of the midwest, you will find that I have corrupted and raped mother nature beyond anything that you can possibly comprehend.

Let there be some record of the small amount of goodness that was left within me. I tried to stop halfway through, when the full moon was at its pinnacle and my crops were reaching heavenward for the rays of the sun. I knew I had sown something terrible in the land, but I didn't have the resolve to chop them down.

I let them grow because they were beautiful. That's why the townspeople tried to set my farm ablaze. My perspective of beauty.

Take some measure of advice and try to learn from this. It started with the things that even you might find yourself vulnerable to. Greed. Opportunity. Lack of accountability. They have all contributed equally to those rows of botanic evil.

When my wife passed away three years ago, I felt that I owed the world nothing. I would sit on my plow in the middle of the field, screaming at the sky, mocking the betrayal of my once normal life. No one was around to stop me. My crops withered in the heat of the sun, and I ate once a week. I saw no point in working the fields any longer. Feeding the masses was pointless to me.

Sometimes, it was God's fault. I got worse and worse, until my Saturday night consisted of ripping pages out of the King James version in the middle of five hundred dead corn husks, yelling obscenities at the almighty creator, wiping my ass with scraps of the old testament. Old Joel knew it before anyone else, but he wasn't the only one. The whole lot of them were gossip mongers, through and through.

I'm not apologizing for the faces wrapped in the husks. This town got what was coming to it, and Old Joel was probably due for a heart attack in the next couple years or so, anyway. I did what I set out to do, but the thing I'm sorry for goes beyond a bitter farmer's vendetta against his neighbors. It's sinking in to the earth right now, in this very moment, you see.

I'm not sure what to call it. Wrongness? Death in the ground? A scar on Mother Earth?

It doesn't fucking matter. I destroyed this town's spirit and the people in it, and I used their bodies to do the thing that I've done best since my old man showed me how to till a three foot garden plot when I was three years old. I took over more and more of his work. I know how things grow, what they need, and what they don't need.

I ripped a hole in the goodness of this place and the three hundred years of slow, rural tradition that it was built upon. All the memories, families, and loss have culminated in one field outside my front porch, you see. It wasn't the rot, or the fact that five hundred and seven of these local hicks didn't get a proper burial at that hideous fucking cemetery behind that hideous fucking church over by the river.

It was treachery.

They thought I was full of the goodness that so permeated every little facet of their pretty little lives. I betrayed them, and it messed something up here. Nothing this terrible has ever hit this place. It's very simple, I suppose, and maybe it's completely impossible to wrap your damn head around it at the same time.

Joel knew, you see. He knew when he looked out his upstairs bedroom window at four in the morning during spring tornado season and saw me screaming at the broken, lightning riddled sky, blaspheming the Maker and destroying whatever family heirloom or antique that was left still intact in my house that I could find. The reverend started showing up to my place a couple weeks after that. To "talk."

What he really wanted was for me to gain my god damn sanity back, and that way all his pretty little daughters and sons in his congregation would have sweet corn and fresh parsnips for the summer evangelical picnic. He didn't give one flying fuck about whether or not I was right with Jesus. That's why he was second.

I've mocked something bad and provoked some kind of attack in the soil. It was small, but now too much time has passed, and there are state police and other fellows in fancy suits looking around the ghost town that used to have a pretty good meat-and-three and the best Mormon thrift store for four counties.

This recording is almost over, and I must admit that I feel a small measure of peace, having confessed that I am responsible for the five hundred and seven things that may or may not be growing behind you and this house.

These people needed this, regardless of what you decide to do with them. Know that with certainty. You may be able to stall the omen of death that surrounds this place by setting the field ablaze, but know that they will grow back, and with greater purpose than before. I told you that I can grow anything, and life is persistent. Even seeds that are sown in treachery will grow.

If you burn them, you should run as far away as possible, because I must confess that they remember. There was one late afternoon at dusk when the sun had barely a sliver over the west water tower before my farm was shrouded in twilight. I felt guilt, and I was quickened by the horror of my betrayal. I soaked the fields in gasoline and prayed that the stalks would become ashes and nothing more. They remained that way for one season, but each passing Spring is more dangerous than the last.

I hear the rubbing of plant stalks and the shrieking of dead spirits. I hear their names of their loved ones outside my windows. They recite them by memory, like a list of casualties, because they were once good and perfect, and their families meant more to them than their own lives. They remember, and they protect each other.

Should you flee this place and continue to let them march across the earth in a violent harvest when the husks have yielded to the fruit of black flesh and the blood is dried and caked under the sun, then you have my gratitude. They have repaid me with death, and if you manage to observe them from afar, you may see me. I will surely be number five hundred and eight before the sun sets this eve, but we need to return to my apology. What am I really for?

You.

I've watched them for a long time. This is what happens to you. You can run soon, I promise. Just listen for one more minute.

You see, the only person I'm really sorry for is you. I'm sorry that you've set foot in this place of wrongness, because now it's with you. I don't care where you run, or hide, or attempt to fight. They can feel the others who have been touched by whatever I've destroyed here. Soon, even I will feel you, and no matter how many seasons it takes, I will find you.

You shouldn't have come here. We remember.

"Install" Accepted in to Twit Publishing's PULP! Winter/Spring Edition

2010-11-01T22:53:00.002-05:00

I'm getting paid to get this story in to this Pulp Fiction horror anthology. Great stuff. I never knew that Install would become the cult favorite of the VH readerbase, but this story has really gripped the publishers folks. Thanks for sticking with me through the nitty gritty. This is my only my second official short story sell.

The future is wide open, and we're going to break in with a ferocity of creativity. Stay along for the rider, dear readers. I'm so glad you're here.

From here on out, we're in the fast lane, and there's no turning back.

Onward, to new depraved depths of the mind. Surely there, we will find a good ending for Necromaster, hm?

War of the Dead

2010-09-19T01:45:00.004-05:00

(I have italics and other small edits to make to this, but this is basically a sequel short.)

The power does it to everyone. It corrupts us all, or at least those of us who embrace it.

Although we dive right in to be swept away by the black waters of necromancy, it's not easy for us to stay afloat. Our humanity is the coastline, the palm trees, the dry land itself. You put your humanity side by side with the fact that you're a wizard of hell, coastline next to infinite expanse of ocean, and you decide being a wizard is more fun. It appeals to you. You can't get away from it, so you dive in and swim out in to the ocean to get a bigger taste. To feel it all over your body, instead of just staring at it and dipping your toes in.

The first time you swim in the ocean of the dead, the waters are electric to your soul. They shock you, show you things that you can't possibly understand but eventually DO come to understand. One day, it just so happens that you might decide you're tired of swimming, so you try to turn around, but the coast is gone. You don't swim back. You keep being swept out. To the sharks and an unknown abyss below you. The only place you can go is down, and that leads to a place that no man has been before.

That is my family's struggle, and they have devised a society and a code over the years. If I have the right person, then the man in front of me has trampled our ideals in to the ground. Our traditions, our laws, our fellowship. In truth, we necromancers are afraid not of the dead, but of each other. We know that one of us might become too potent somewhere down the line because we stumble across the right demon with the right power, or because we sacrifice a particularly powerful spirit to the underworld. We know that one day, one of us might rise up and try to assert a kingdom of the dead on earth.

The Chomhairle believe this is the man who poses that precise threat. They sent me to find him after we found his diary. When my father learned that his own brother had deserted the coven and handed over a bloodstone to a random child due to a disagreement, he put a death sentence on this man's head. We couldn't begin to search for him until he left his bloodstone behind. A trace of his power that we could latch on to, that we could follow.

The man shuffles past me to the urinal with a mumble of "excuse me," and he shies away from looking me in the eye. He seems tired and drained. This is a good start. It could be him.

I linger by the sink, lather my hands, and rinse them off, hoping that he will finish in time for me to see his face in the mirror. To strike up a ten second, meaningless conversation. Anything. It's been such a long road here. I'll take what I can get.

I have to know. I can't walk out of this place now, even if I'm on the brink of death. I might have to teeter here for awhile. He is so very, very familiar with the spirit world; he might know it more intimately right now in this very moment than I ever will in my lifetime. If this is him, then his guise of deception is stronger than any in our history.

We know some of what he is capable of. But not all.

I hope one minute spent in this bathroom will be the conclusion to the longest wild goose chase in the history of the Chomhairle. If this is him, then I'm initiated as a council member. If it's not, then I'm at least another hundred years out. My ambitions within the council are nothing in comparison to the thirst for power.

The bathroom is fritzy, five star, and new age. It's deep in the heart of Soho, of course. A cesspool of youthful rebellion. The green light in this place is too strong. That's hint number one that I have the right man. Let me go down the list for you.

When he shakes it off, he spends an extra five seconds scratching his testicles, and then he rubs them a bit as he stares at the ad for the after hours swinger's club in the corner above the urinal. Even if this isn't the guy, he's still a pervert, and I've decided to sacrifice him if he's my sixth case of mistaken identity in a year out of simple frustration.

I wash my hands a second time, waiting on him, trying not to be disgusted. He finally zips his fly and moseys over to the sink. So there's hint number two.

"You spill something on yourself?" He asks me.

I've never heard his voice. It sounds different than I expected.

I know how this dangerous sorcerer sees the world. He's made a mistake, sharing his most intimate confessions with me. He never should have written them down. His ego may be his weakness, if I’m strong enough. Maybe.

This has to be him. I say it in my head a thousand times in a split second.

"Crawfish bisque. Good as hell, but I can't seem to finish a bowl without spilling it all over my sleeves." I say, squirting a fresh batch of soap on to the paper towel and scrubbing at my perfectly clean fisticuff.

"Aren't you a little old to be dining here? I'd think you would be at the Mesa or the Palm." He says, and he makes a valid point. I do feel out of place here. I'm the only person in the building over the age of twenty five.

He's bold. He thinks he's invincible, and I know that this is hint number three. He says the first thing that comes to mind with impunity, and he always has. That explains the four ex wives and the masculine decorations in his town house.

I stare at his eyes in the mirror, and he's too busy focusing on my pocket. This is hint number four, and this is the best of them all. I know this is the rogue necromancer. His eyes have a green twinkle in the backs of them, something that normal humans can't see. He feels the stone, burning with ice fire in my pocket. He knows it's fucking on me, and he's stood next to me for less than half a minute. That's because he can't ignore the pull. It shows.

This is him.

Before he dies, I have to hear his story. I have to know how he uses blood magic without the artifact, even if my own father kills me for it.

I can feel it reaching out for both of us. Begging to be used. It's not easy to say no, even for me. I'm not surprised that he has become this in such a short period of time. He hasn't had anyone to hold him in check. Despite the flawless haircut and the twenty year old face, I know I'm staring at a demon in a human's skin. I reach in to my jacket, and his eyes widen as he realizes the magnitude of this small encounter in a men's restroom.

The stone is frigid and cold at my touch, but my fingertips delve past it to a pack of gum. When I place a piece in my mouth, I offer the pack forward.

"Freshen your breath? Got a date out there, I'm sure, you being so young and successful and all. I bet she's even younger than you." I say with a smirk.

He stammers and tries to speak, and it takes him a long while to gather himself. It's probably the first time he's looked unsure in decades.

"It's alright. Don't say anything just yet. You know, that diary of yours sure was a fascinating read." I say, biting in to a fresh explosion of spearmint goodness.

He's taking his time, searching for the right words. I think part of it is fear, part of it is excitement, and part of it is just complete bewilderment. He can't believe someone has done it. Maybe he's been waiting for this day, or maybe he's been dreading it. More than likely, he’s always considered it an impossibility. He's conceited enough. No one can do what he has done, or so he thinks.

"You have something that belongs to me. It's been a long time. I hope you found good use for it, but I'd like to have it back." He says.

I oblige him and place the frosty construct of eternal youth in his palm.

"How did you continue to perform the ritual without the stone? That's impossible." I tell him. I have my own list of questions, and my father wants me to bring him back to our Gaelic homeland alive. I care little for my what my father wants, or his tired old code. I know this man has real answers for me, because he has no limits.

He's gathering something inside. Something powerful.

If he decides to duel now, I am dead. Guaranteed.

"If you were practicing the art before you found my house and the things I left behind, then you should know by now. Your necropotence is weak." He says, and he laughs at me.

“Are you disappointed?” I ask him.

He doesn’t respond immediately, but instead, he places his hands flat against the swinging bathroom door. The polished wood glows with a vibrant, undulating energy, until the crease between the door frame and the wood no longer exists. He’s created a containment field of sorts. By sealing off this room from the real world, he’s made it a theatre for the macabre. He pulls a thin fragment of white chalk from his blazer pocket and kneels to the travertine.

I watch him sketch a makeshift circle of summoning, but I stand purposely on its circumference, blocking it from being completed in its entirety.

“Move.” He says.

“Tell me how. I’m not here to turn you over to them. I won’t kill you if I don’t have to.” I say. I’m bluffing. I hope he doesn’t know it.

“I’m not going to ask you again.” He says.

“I’m not leaving without answers.” I tell him.

The next moment , I see a cold, crimson colored glow erupt around his hands, and my body and mind are incapable of processing the nature of his attack. I feel a shockwave of impact on my chest and forehead.

I feel like the back of my head has melted away from a voltage of death magic, and my blood and brains are leaking out of it. There’s a hard surface against my head. I moan and feel a hot rush of coppery wetness in my mouth. I finally realize that I’m on the floor, sprawled out like a corpse.

I go from standing in the middle of the bathroom to a crumpled mass of broken bones without knowing how to defend the cause of it, and I know I am outmatched.

I have no chance. My mouth is broken. I can’t speak.

I see another glow, blue this time. I feel bones mending, and flesh melting against flesh, coming together. I feel every scrape of my body’s parts against each other. The pain is immense. Worse than anything I’ve felt in my life.

I don’t even realize how shattered my body is until he puts it back together in reverse order, when I feel my bones break and re-break to accommodate each other until the spell is complete. When the incantation is over, I gasp inside the circle of chalk, and I want to beg him for mercy, but that would be a mistake. A fatal one.

Although my body feels whole again, he has me contained within the summoning circle, enchained by the an impromptu force of binding. I can’t move anything except my lips. I have a voice again.

Although he is directly responsible for my affliction, I manage to whisper a “Thank you,” for mending the damage. He ignores me and lowers the frigid stone to my forehead. In his other hand is a blood stained kris.

I feel the edge of the snaking, curved blade bite downward in to my wrist. He’s draining some of my blood.

I feel the hold on me weaken considerably when he waves his hand over my face. He is being somewhat merciful.

“Marbh kala.” He says. I know that hissing tongue. The old language. I find myself amazed that he knows the words, as I have learned them from my father and the tomes of the coven.

My body begins to levitate in to the air, and blood flows freely from my wrist like a crimson waterfall. It collects in a pool below me at the center of the circle. He slashes my other wrist, and my carotid as well. I’m draining at a rate that tells me I won’t survive.

She appears in what seems to be no time at all, but I’m unable to trust my own senses, as delirium is seizing them for its own agenda, one by one. I can’t focus any longer. I hear her voice, and then his. I think he has summoned her from the dinner table in to the restroom to cover his bases. She doesn’t know what’s happening. She’s losing her mind by the second, when she was on a perfectly normal date only moments ago.

I hear a loud “NO,” and a throaty, wet gargle. He suspends her body in the air beside my own, and then he starts a chant. I think she’s already dead.

The hissing accelerates in to a flood of syllables and archaic sounding phrases that I wouldn’t understand even if I was completely awake and aware. He speaks it more fluently than my father ever has.

As I watch her blood spill in to the lake on the floor, joining my own, I realize that this man is beyond anything we’ve ever done or accomplished. He makes me think that real power is found within the self, within a single identity of self-discovery and learning, and not within a circle of conceited death magi who have clung to the same spells and traditions that have limited their progress for centuries.

Her eyes are empty, blank seas of hazel. As he waits for her to stop bleeding out, I realize that I have stopped bleeding myself, and shouldn’t be alive. He’s keeping me breathing when my veins are as dry as death valley, and again, he shows me something that I did not think possible. I am content to float and observe, and I realize that even if these are my last moments, I don’t deserve them. I don’t deserve any of the dark gifts that he has put so prominently on display before me in this private niche of the nether realm.

I breathe, and there is no air. I don’t need to breathe. I am alive in my deadness, augmented in a stasis of a ritual that I have never witnessed before. His objective is beyond me. I can only observe.

He stops chanting. The spell is complete.

The blood on the floor seems to hum with a possessed life of its own as it separates. Eventually, two puddles of scarlet rest at either border of the circle, and one hums with an emerald taint to it. I can feel traces of it in my mind. It is foreign. The glowing blood is not my blood. It is hers.

The pool begins to rise, like a spire of flowing vitae, commanded by the necropotence of a true master. It takes on a savage, beastial outline, but it is not an animal that exists on the earth. It is some screeching demon spirit, summoned to exist within a temporary liquid body.

“ARDMHAISTIR.” The blood creature speaks. The thick, rich burden of Gaelic pulls down the words. He has trained demons to speak in words created by the human mind, and I only await the next event in which he will impress the depth of his power upon me. I am watching, and I think the word he has spoken means “thank you,” or “master,” but I’m not sure.

“Glac eisean.” He says. I know what these words mean. My father said these words to the spirit of my mother when I was stalled in her womb.

I was lodged head first. The cause of her pain, suffering, and eventual death at the violent hands of child birth. Before she could be swept away in to the nether, he summoned her spirit.

He asked her how he could go on without her love to keep him tethered to a mortal life. She held one response. Glac eisean.

Take him.

I was meant to die like a human being, but I was a son of one who lords over death like it is their personal playground. That makes him a diabolical father, and an excellent necromancer.

The demon blood figure obeys his command.

It hovers through the air slowly, like an eel of liquid, until it splits off in to three lesser streams. It halts at my open wrists and my slashed throat, and then it rockets through my veins with the authority of the one who holds the circle.

The return of blood to my body and the completion of the ritual bring me strength. When my hands and head stop twitching, I find that I can move my arms and legs. I sweep my legs over the precipice of the circle and step to the floor of the bathroom on feet, as if getting out of a bed of air.

“What did you do to me?” I ask him. The answer is something that scares me, but it is also something that I have to know.

“The youth ritual, without a stone. Now you see the type of sacrifice that you require. Each time, every drop must be replaced. A new soul. The most expensive and taxing necromantic ritual of them all, except for one.” He says.

I turn my head to look in to the mirror, and indeed, my face is as young as his own. I am no longer in my late thirties, but twenty something again.

“I’ve tried so many times. Even with the bloodstone. I am nothing, compared to you.” I tell him.

“One day, I thought someone might show up and show me that stone. I had no idea it would be a member of that old man’s family. I never knew there were others. It was only a challenge. My life was once so simple, so mundane, so terrible that I wanted to die. How many of us are there?” He asks.

“Twenty three, including me. If they knew what I know now, they would send their best. I am nothing. They think you a fledgling, toying with powers that are beyond your control. But you have mastered death beyond anything that I have ever seen. They are no match for you.” I tell him.

“Necropotence is not studied. It is not learned. You practice it, and you sacrifice. You sacrifice, again and again and again. You will destroy so much life in the search for a method to extend it.” He tells me, and his expression is somber.

“I have been tasked with destroying you by my father. If I return to him and this task is not complete, he will kill me himself.” I say.

“Do you have more of a chance against him, or me?” He says.

“Him.” I say, and my cheeks flush scarlet. I am ashamed that the head of the coven, who is also my father, is so weak compared to this mastermind.

“Do you want to know why I wrote that diary?” He asks.

“The same reason that you left a death certificate with your memoirs of your human life. To taunt those with a sense of justice.” I tell him.

“You’re not the first to read it. There was one rogue detective that they suspended because he was cracking up, finding about some of the things I had done. He never took the stone. He tried to use the law.”

“How many years did you get out of him?” I ask.

“None. The time went to Sasha.” He says.

“Your dog? Still around?” I ask.

“Not much of a dog anymore. More like a hell hound. But yes. I’m very fond of her.” He says.

“Then why the trail, if it’s not conceit? If you feel you are not above anyone else?” I ask.

“Power. Has your father ever spoken of the Cogath dar Marbh?” He asks.

I feel sick. In this moment, I know what he desires. The legendary aspiration of any necromancer. The war of the dead.

“Please, no. Not me.” I tell him.

"I left the trail to find someone who has stood within a circle because I need two of us to complete it. I've waited all this time, doing nothing. You will not leave this room until you've completed the ritual with me." He says.

"No. I can't. Why would you want to unleash..." He cuts me off.

“Yes. It has to be you. Someone who has felt the touch of the nether.” He says.

“How do you know the legend?” I whisper, fear in my eyes.

“You may have spoken to the dead. Your father, too. But you have not listened to them. You haven’t asked them what they want.” He says.

“We don’t serve them. They serve us.” I tell him, but I know my words will be hollow and empty when they sink in to his brain. The tone in his voice terrifies me. He seems so drunk with power.

"The dead have given me the gift of eternity, and I have commanded them for long enough. It is time to give them what they desire." He says. His eyes are on fire like a madman, and I know I can't stop him. He's so god damn ambitious that he’ll stop at nothing to bring the dead back to earth.

“You are already the most powerful lord of the dead. Why submit yourself to the cogath? You don’t need the power. You are uncontested.” I say, but then I think of my father and his blind conceit, and I think that this man will certainly be the death of my old man, and relatively soon.

“You don’t understand, little Chomhairle. They’ve told me ever since I first saw them in my attic that I was their man. That I would bring them back to roam the world, like the loyal subjects that they are. That I would become a lich --- a living embodiment of power, merged with death. Do you know how long I’ve waited? It’s not about me anymore. It’s about them.” He says, licking his lips and snapping his fingers together. I can’t move. My legs are stone.

“You need two. You thought you were the only necromancer alive on earth, so you left the stone. To see if someone would dabble in the art and become a novice, so you could sacrifice them in the ritual.” It all makes sense to me now. It’s not his ego. It’s not the power.

He only wants to complete the one ritual that has never been completed. Cogath dar Marbh.

The shackles blast out of the bathroom floor, sending fragments of travertine shrapnel around the room. Wet, tightened strands of pulsing, veiny matter coil around my wrists and ankles. They’re like blood vessel tentacles, trying to drag me in to the black pit under us that they sprang from.

His face is changing. The walls of this room have melted away. We are in a tempest of the nether. Under lightning strikes and hissing shades, I see the bones in his visage. I see the human-turned-demon for what he really is, and despite the terror that amounts within me, I am awestricken. The bones in his face, illuminated snowy and pale by arcs of lightning ---- they are beautiful to me. I want to become what he is now, standing in front of me.

He rakes the kris across his chest violently, shedding blood on to an island of dead rock where we stand, suspended in the nether.

His necropotence is too strong for the demon to resist. It obeys him, a gargantuan mass of black flame and swirling, gaseous chaos. The voice booms in my ears, sounding nothing of the earth or any spirit I have spoken with in my lifetime.

Here, on the home turf of the dead, they are not forced to communicate with us in our manmade languages and tongues. We hear them, and we understand.

He tells the demon that we are about to be at war, and to deliver a message to the spirits to gather at the soft places.

For their invasion.

Before he departs, the demon tells him that he can’t complete the ritual without two necromancers.

He grows angry, and points at me.

The demon shakes its head and fades away in to nothingness. He screams with rage, drawing the kris once more. He sends another shockwave of green force, knocking me to the ground, although it doesn’t break my bones this time. The curved blade is vicious against my throat.

“ONE OF THEM!? ONE OF FUCKING THEM!?” He repeats it over and over, delirious, slashing at my hands and forearms as I try to stop the point of the weapon from sinking in to my eye.

“Please, stop. What are you…” I stammer. The blade is so sharp, so painful.

“You were dead three months before you came from her womb. Your father performed a ritual and gave you the breath of the spirit before you were ever born. When you came in to the world, barely breathing, a shriveled fetus corpse, he bargained with the underworld. They took your mother’s life instead of yours.” He says.

And then I realize it. I realize that I’m not human, and that I have never held power over this man, or any other.

I realize that I am of the dead, and his indomitable power over me stems from the precise fact that he is a necromancer.

I laugh at him.

When he finally gathers himself, I realize that he stares at me with a sort of longing, and I know that he respects me, as I am a dead spirit with a human body.

I will be part of his kingdom on the earth. I will stop at nothing to fulfill his dreams.

His clenches his fist tightly, and in the middle of this summoning circle, he slowly reconstructs the bathroom until everything is back in place and the seal on the door is broken.

He restores me to what I was before I walked in to this sanctum of eternity, except that I am now a twenty something spirit, walking among the patrons of the restaurant, a chameleon of the underworld.

When we hit the sidewalk, the night air is luscious and graceful with my skin. The point of the blade in my back is not.

“Take me to your father.” He says.

And I begin walking. Eventually, a feral and twisted animal joins us, with eyes like hellfire. Sasha.

Held hostage by the greatest praetor of Hades and his pet, I quicken my step, and I know the war of the dead has been stalled for one more evening. I also know his patience is infinite.

It is my war now, although I am only a foot soldier of the lost. I will not rest until the murderer who traded my miserable life for my mother’s receives justice. Then, I will find the other twenty two of them, and punish them for being weak, if he doesn't do it first.

For I was dead before I was brought in to the world, and that means he is not my father. Only a manipulator of spirits. I am now with the one.

One who serves me and the rest of his kingdom ever so faithfully. A warlord of skeletons, cadavers, blood, and bone. A bringer of salvation, with enough necropotence to bring our dreams to fruition.

I am with my true master now, and he will never cease his efforts.

Not until the last of the living are gone from the face of the earth.

Frozen Sunday

2010-09-15T23:12:00.004-05:00

Lan keeps his eyes sealed shut, pinned under the oppressive stillness of judgment. His arms and legs have lost all feeling. This is the fourth creeping hour of his punishment.

The graveled, deceptive warmth of the Dedicate's voice is enough to make him sick.

"Renounce your sins, Lan. Leave them here with the stocks, and walk out of this holy place as a child no longer. Apologize to the commune for your offense!" the Dedicate says.

"I'm sorry her father said no, and I'm sorry that all of you are here, making a spectacle of it. But I'll never renounce my love for her. Crucify me. I don't care." Lan says.

He opens his eyes and glares at the man in the ridiculous purple robe. Then, hunchbacked against a heavy slab of wood with no reasonable expectation of relief in the near future, he spits at the man's feet.

The temple goers erupt, some gasping at his audaciousness, some bowing their heads in prayer to ask God to cleanse him of his blasphemous thoughts, and others appearing as though they've been slapped in the face outright.

The Dedicate frowns at him and nods at the lasher to proceed.

"For your original crime of the flesh before marriage, you will befall one hundred lashes. For your defiance in the face of the Creator, you will befall much worse. I ask Her now to reach downward from her throne and intervene! We will place you in the Facing Room!" The Dedicate exclaims.

"THE FACING ROOM! THE FACING ROOM!" They chant like mindless drones.

"For who has given us everything that we don't deserve?" The Dedicate turns his back to Lan in the stockades and spreads his arms like a prophet, his purple robe wingspan reflecting the pale light of the various torches around the temple.

The first bite of the whip breaks open the skin of his shoulder. He feels blood trickling at first, like a slow motion waterfall. His back ignites with each assault, and he sees starry explosions of white hot pain behind his eyelids amidst the growing volume of chants around the room. By lash number twenty five, his back shoulder resembles a shark bite.

“I miss you, Tess.” Lan whispers, gritting his teeth against the sting of cured animal hide.

The Dedicate lowers his arms and quiets his hive, then turns to face his captive once more.

"Speak mercy to Her, and your pain will be nothing. We can hold a meeting with our sister commune. I will speak to her father on your part so that he might forgive you for deflowering his only daughter who has now been lost to him, due to the difficulties of child birth. Should we redeem you in time, maybe something good can come of this after all." The old man says.

"And our child?" Lan asks. Again, the townspeople stare wide-eyed in shock.

"There is no child, and she is dead because of what you did to her. Both of them lost because you are a sinner." The Dedicate says with a cold, efficient frown. His fabricated façade fools his audience, but not the young man in the stocks.

"And again, we come to an impasse. You say something is a certain way, and I know it's not that way. All of you are being fooled by this fancy dressed man and his lies. Tess is gone, but they’ve hidden my child." Lan says. The whip bites him worse than ever before, and he cries out in pain.

They are outraged.

"The Facing Room, take him now!" One woman says.

"The whip is too good for the likes of that lusting vagabond. He is a child of darkness!" Another voice says.

“This young man will meet the wrath of God and learn to respect Her, but let us continue our service without his black spirit to muddle the conscience. Please turn your scriptures to the book of Marx as we pass around the offering plate. Brother Merritt will deliver the prayer of tithes….”

Lan listens to the violet hypocrite and suffers the lash for another three hours. He’s a background example for the Dedicate’s sermon, and his cheeks burn with fire as he feels the probing eyes of his fellow townsfolk on his person. He stays motionless in the stocks until the massive indoor amphitheatre of religious demagoguery is empty except for him and his tormentor.

The whip bearer dots Lan’s bleeding back with a linen cloth, and his voice is surprisingly gentle.

“I have to take you to the Facing Room now.” He says, loosening the top half of the wooden prison.

Lan stands up and his back screams in protest from the stress of a six hour ninety degree angle with his lower body. His arms tingle with electricity, and his legs feel they’re made of curdled milk. He sits down on the pulpit and tries to breathe as steadily as possible.

“Just give me a minute. I can’t feel my arms and legs.” Lan says.

“I’m sorry I had to do that.” The man says.

“It’s not your fault. I brought it on myself. I could have kept my mouth shut and pretended like I thought I made a mistake.” Lan says.

“Maybe you did. I’ve given lashes to many. We haven’t had someone resist the Dedicate in a very long time.”

“Well, it was time. He’s wrong. She loved me, and we were going to leave this place soon, but now she’s gone and I have nothing left. I’ll never tell them I was wrong for loving her.” Lan says.

“I see. But how would you leave? As soon as you leave the gate, the air is poison.” He says.

“You think it’s poison. They’ve told you that you can’t leave your whole life, and yet people from other communes get here somehow, don’t they?” Lan asks.

“The Dedicate has the support of the High Temple. They have the resources to transport us safely from haven to haven.” He says.

“Yeah? Or maybe they want you to think that’s the only way. Maybe if you don’t do it their way, they don’t want you to think there’s a way at all.” Lan says.

“I’ve never seen someone call the Dedicate a liar, and I haven’t unlocked the Facing Room in five years. I could be executed just for listening to this.” He says.

“You’re just as blind and naïve as the rest of them. There’s more out there than temple and the Sabbath and Her Word. There are people who live on the outside of our walls, and they live freely. I’ve seen them in my dreams.” Lan says.

“You’re strong, but I can’t listen to you any longer. Your blasphemy is harmful to my spirit.” The man says.

“Another impasse, then. Do what you’ve come here to do and leave me.” Lan says.

Lan stumbles behind the man until they reach the locked door. The words “FACING ROOM” are emblazoned on a silver placard.

His lasher unlocks the door, and Lan steps inside.

“Just know that you can’t hide from Her. She will quicken you as she has quickened all the others before you, and when you come back out to me, you will be as clean and pure as the Dedicate himself.” The lasher says.

Lan has no reponse, and says nothing. He steps inside.

The door closes heavily and clicks, locked shut not two seconds afterwards.

The room is nothing but an empty space surrounding an altar, constricted by vast wooden walls and a high, vaulted ceiling. The air smells of stillness. Lan hears himself breathing, and nothing else.

You’ve strayed off course.

The voice floats in to his ears from nowhere. It feels above him, but there are no windows. Lan jumps at the sound after the brief period of perfect silence. It’s a sweet sound, but also terrifying in the same moment because the young blasphemer sees nothing in the room except for the altar.

He kneels before it, but his fists are clenched. He shakes, infuriated by his isolation in the room where he’s been forced to talk to God.

“I’ve done no wrong if you look in to my heart, Loving One.” Lans says.

Your lusting hurts me.

“No. Not lusting. The Dedicate preaches love. LOVE. God loves you, I love you, we all love you and each other. As long as we love God first, we have everything that we could possibly ask for. This has been the word since I was an infant.” Lan says.

Marriage is my sacred commandment as a requirement for the pleasures of the flesh.

“Your priest is hiding my child from me. You know she’s alive. Tell me where she is.” Lan says.

Child, you do not command your Maker. Continue, and you will face redemption at my feet. Do you understand? Forget the babe, for it is a foul reminder of your sin.

“Then I have decided that you are nothing but a vengeful God, and I will go to the inferno before I will bow before this altar ever again.” Lan says.

He spits on the altar, and it brings relief to his anger and helplessness.

Until his saliva freezes solid.

He hears a hiss, and the room is instantly engulfed in a thick fog. He holds his hands in front of his face, but he can’t see them. He feels frigid, icy air and his bare arms prickle with goose bumps.

“If you are a benevolent God, then you know what I really held for her was love. Stop this.” Lan says, his voice much weaker than he expected when he hears it.

He can already feel himself shaking, and a layer of ice is starting to form on the surface of the wood at each corner of the room, slowly expanding in complete silence except for the occasional fracture or crack in the crystallized formation of divine pestilence.

Freeze. Suffer the bite of consequence.

“D-Don’t do t-this.” Lan stammers. The ice has encased his feet to the wood paneling, restricting his movement to his hands and head.

REPENT.

He hears it a mile away because his blood is thinning and he feels like he’s going to pass out soon.

“N-never.” His voice is only a shady whisper, weakened by the onset of frostbite.

A fresh and unrelenting wave of freezing force sweeps in to the room, and the ice solidifies around his calves and mid section. He is suspended below the altar, forced in to a contorted position by a prison of frigid malaise.

Forced to bow to an idol he doesn’t believe in.

You will spend one day of your life here every week until you feel remorse for your crimes against your brothers in the commune. Every Sunday will be a frozen one, and you will beg me for warmth when I finish with you.

Lan is unable to respond, as his entire body is sheathed in the deathly silent formation of crystal except for his cheeks and eyes, which burn bright with rage.

He thinks of Tess and her laugh. It sparks a cinder of warmth in the cold and dark places of his spirit.

In a small, hidden easement behind the crossbeam, an old man in a purple robe smirks through a one way window of polished glass.

***

The cloud is a forgiving and blissful perch of relief. He sinks in to it, and her fingertips are at his bangs, twirling his dark hair in a repetitious habit that he’s always loved her for.

“Thanks for staying true to me in the face of something so terrible, love.” She says.

“God doesn’t care about love, Tess.” Lan says.

“You’re wrong, Sparky. He does. The power in that room isn’t God.” Tess says.

“Wait. He? What do you mean, He?” Lan asks.

He gasps at the darkness when they wake him up before sunrise with a dousing of ice water. They strip him of his crafting license. They burn it in the fireplace, then ransack his living quarters, taking everything that he owns in the blink of an eye. He ends up in the Dedicate’s office.

This is one hundred Sundays later.

He keeps his head bowed and says nothing.

“Your resistance has led me to terminate your employment within the commune, Lan. You’ve had almost two years, and yet you are still a lone vigilante, floundering in your cause and infecting my brothers with blasphemous dribble. Every Dedicate of every other commune has laughed at me for not executing by now. I’m not going to pander to your fantasies any longer.” The Dedicate says.

“I will still never submit to your false god, and one day, I’ll have your life.” Lan says, his face expressionless.

“Threatening the head of the commune with murder? You realize the sentence for such a gross violation of ---“

“Death, or the Facing Room. Either is preferable to standing here with you.” Lan says.

“Very well, young fool. You shall know the wrath of God on the Sabbath.” The Dedicate says.

“One day, I won’t thaw out, and my heart will stop. Then you’ll feel like a real powerful man, I’d wager.” Lan says.

“If it is God’s will for you to die, then so be it.” He says.

“You don’t know the first thing about God’s will. Tess is trying to tell me something, old man. I’m going to find out what her message is. I have a feeling it’s not good for you or your brainwashed subjects.” Lan says.

“Look at the prophet of doom! See how his empty words give him false hope.” The Dedicate grins.

“Tess finally showed me. I know what you’ve been doing, old man. You’re a liar.” Lan says.

The lasher escorts him out. He walks in stifled silence, and he finds that he’s on the verge of a chaotic breakdown. His breath erupts upward from his gut, spinning his insides, and then it slows down erratically.

“Don’t be afraid, blasphemer. You need not fear God. This is a place of healing.” The lasher says.

“Before you lock me in that room again, let me ask you one question.” Lan says.

The lasher unlocks the door and opens it, but he hesitates for a moment.

“It’s about your benign God.” Lan says.

“Very well.” The lasher says.

“Why have we always referred to God as “Her?” Why couldn’t God be a Him?” Lan asks.

“The Lord has always been Her, since the beginning of the histories.” The lasher says.

“But there are histories that aren’t written down, even before our histories. What did they believe?” Lan asks.

“The old people were reckless and lost. A very scarce amount of them held false religions, but it is the Dedicates who have brought us real salvation.”

“Someone put on a purple robe after the air became poison and started talking about God and the way we should live and communal love. That’s what happened. I know it.” Lan says.

“Preposterous! They are our prophets and our leaders!” the lasher says.

“They’re magicians, putting things in front of your eyes to blind you from the truth.” Lan says.

“You are an odd man, and you say things that make me fearful for your life. You are fortunate that you have not been executed already.”

“Just think about what I said the next time you’re chanting and waving your arms around with the rest of them like a flock of hypnotized sheep. This is the Sunday that I might not come out of this room ever again.” Lan says.

“And you think. About the things you’ve said, and how many chances God has given you. Suffer, and think about the mercy you could have had.” The lasher says. He slams the door.

The lock clicks shut behind Lan. Almost instantly, the room coats over in a thick coat of hoarfrost. The ice covers every inch of him except his eyes. As he is forced to bow, he stares at the frozen base of the altar with an empty, passive stare and refuses to acknowledge it.

In these moments, he begs for death.

Blasphemer. Death is too good for you.

Lan wants to protest, to say that these words are not the words of an all knowing and powerful Creator who loves all, but he only suffers in quiet torment.

But his insides feel warm.

He closes his eyes and focuses on the outline of the spectral face in his mind’s eye. He grows warmer. He feels the icebound vice grip around his waist and shoulders lessen, just a breadth. Frigid droplets of slush begin to melt off the ice sculpture that was once a man, only seconds ago.

The face is milky and undefined in his head, but he sees the unmistakable laugh lines and the pull of the most glorious smile he’s ever witnessed. This face makes Tess and her smile seem small and insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but only because Lan knows that her smile isn’t what makes her. It’s the warm soul inside….

The constricting ring of frost around his neck and shoulders melts to the darkly stained wood of the floor, and he finds that he can speak again. Relief is coming, little by little. The freeze isn’t painful anymore.

Another wave of frost.

This is the most potent and powerful ice attack in one hundred Sabbaths. The ice congeals on top of itself in layers, like a frozen katana blade. There’s a rhythm and a pattern to it.

He closes his eyes and sees the face once more.

He doesn’t hear a voice, and the face is not a man or a woman, but simply a presence. That presence fills him with hope. That presence tells him in one split second that this room is a deceptive tool of control and fear. In an instant, he knows, and he understands.

“I know you’re watching, old man. I know you can hear me. I can imagine that you’re probably turning the temperature down further. You’re pumping more water in to the room. That explains the extra four feet of thickness. Does it disturb you that I can stand here and move my lips freely, even when you drop it to negative five hundred?” Lan says, smiling in jubilation. The ice is down to the top of his chest now.

He hears no answer and meets another onslaught of winter. He laughs. The warm cinder at his core ignites, and for the first time in his life, Lan speaks with the real God.

The shell explodes in fragments of sharp rivets that ricochet off the walls and ceiling. Lan watches in bewilderment and awe. A dagger of ice collides with the alcove behind the largest crossbeam, and Lan hears a sound like splintering wood, except more high pitched. It’s a very odd sound, but God tells him that it’s the sound of his freedom.

Part of the wall is missing. The fragments of it are different than any material Lan has ever seen before.

“A room with walls of diamond.” Lan mumbles to himself.

“It’s called glass, you ignorant piece of shit. And the voice of God you've been hearing? That's a 'speaker.'” A familiar voice sounds.

Lan looks up the wall and encounters a familiar blob of purple. The smiling face tells him more of what he needs to know. As he takes in what the warm deity tells him, his face contorts with pain and denial, and then acceptance. All in a moment’s breadth.

“You’re a monster. Not the worst of them, but all of you. Soros, Trump, Buffett. Not prophets. Men of power who escaped the blasts.” Lan says in choked disbelief.

“We had the resources to survive the fallout. We were the men in power. The men with all the wealth, pulling all the strings, inserting all the politicians in the right spots at the right times.”

“You killed everyone who knew who you were.” Lan says.

“Religion is a powerful motivator, Lan. On any given day in the older times, I could make the right phone call and make anything happen. I was that guy. Then, the bombs fell. Money was useless. Political office meant as much as a Visa card, which evolved in to a worthless piece of plastic after the first week of catastrophe.”

“You kept the young ones alive, and wiped out everyone else.” Lan says.

“There were loyal soldiers and high ranking officers of the military who still considered me “Commander in Chief.” They had bullets. I used them, and anyone over the age of ten wasn’t spared. Anyone who knew my real identity got placed in an underground commune with a decade’s worth of supplies. When they re-emerge, they will play along with everyone else. They will pretend that I am Her chosen holy man.” The Dedicate says.

“Why not use a real religion? Why hide the technology from them and use it secretly in this room, making them think that God will punish them, when you could utilize it to make everyone’s life easier? And why the She-God?” Lan says.

“Because it’s not about everyone else, Lan. It’s about me. I need the power. It’s all I have left. I created something that the whole world believes in, and regardless of what happens to me, you will never have a taste of what that can feel like. What it can do to you. The world started its destruction, and I eliminated the leftovers of something that was wrong and twisted. Where was God then, Lan? Tell me.” The Dedicate says with a defeated look of disgust.

“He got caught up to you. He found the one person who never bought all your shit in the first place. Maybe we were doomed to destruction, but we persevere, and the spirit carries on. That spirit is what defeated your manipulation of information and plague of ignorance. My God broke your science and technology, and you belong in the lowest circle of hell. The circle for treachery." Lan says.

The old man's eyes grow fearful at the reminder of his fate in the nether of eternity.

"The world will become right with time, and perhaps you can redeem yourself with God. Tell me where my child is, and I'll spare your life. This can be step one.” Lan says.

“I sent them to a different commune. You need transport to safely get inside their temple without risk of poisoning, and only I can arrange that for you. If the other Dedicates know that I’ve told you all this, you won’t be safe, and neither will I.” The Dedicate says.

“You have technology that can create ice in an instant, but you won’t give them running water.” Lan says.

“Don’t judge me. Don’t you dare. You weren’t there when every city erupted in to flames. Thirty one nuclear warheads in ten minutes, Lan.”

“God will carry us through this. Not you.” Lan says.

“You can’t get her back without my help. You can't kill me. You can't radicalize the people in the commune and tell them the truth, and you can't spread anything that contradicts the High Temple. If you show your brothers this room and these machines, they will know fear and chaos.” The Dedicate says.

“You're not a real leader. Not an example for a good man to follow. I'm going to show them what your socialists and wealthy false demigods don't want them to see. God also wants me to tell you one thing, Dedicate.” Lan says.

“You’re not talking to God, but I’ll entertain you. Go ahead, tell me. Tell me what God wants me to hear, since I’ve been telling you your whole life.”

“The difference is, old man, I’m not lying about it to control people’s lives.” Lan says.

“Spit it out. What does your almighty God have to say to me, the most powerful man on earth?”

“Look at the king of nothing. Look how his empty words give him false hope. God wanted me to tell you that you will die on the false altar that you created. Thou shalt not have any graven image before me.” Lan says.

Lan bounds the Dedicate like a swine, and eventually deciphers the process of operating the frost emission device on the foreign control panel. Despite his recent visit by the Creator, he is still amazed by his first glimpse of old world technology and the inventiveness of mankind.

He switches off the torrent of frost.

He takes one of the glass shards from the floor and places it in his pocket as a reminder of the day when he saw the face of the Lord. Then, he locks the door with a certain purple robed man screaming in desperation behind him, ice creeping up his legs.

“Eye for an eye, Dedicate.” Lan says, amazed at the display of divine retribution before him. The ice is not manufactured by scientific devices. It is created by the Creator, and the effect is phantasmic and beautiful.

Lan thinks that purple is a rather beautiful color when filtered through four feet of ice.

He follows the glass corridor leading from the back of the easement. He opens the massive doors at the termination of the glass tunnel and encounters yet another new material as he approaches the airlock: metal.

The containment field glows with a dull red hum, and God speaks to him once more.

Lan learns that he will be responsible for healing the world and spreading truth, but first, he has to become a family man.

He knows that his journey will be long on foot, but as he steps through the containment barrier and the poison of radiation begins to seep in to his body like the Dedicate’s corrupt lies, he feels warm again. The warmth allows him to breathe safely.

“Thank you for safe passage to my family, Lord.” Lan says.

The voice is never as strong as it was in the moment when he fractured the icy shackles of a false prophet, but trudging through blasted lands of cold death and an invisible sickness in the air, Lan has never felt more free or alive.

This voice isn't from a speaker. It's genuine and real. This voice is his strength against the fallout.

You're welcome, my son.

Standing tall on a highland ridge with a bleeding sunset and the very slightest hint of a crescent moon, Lan begins the perilous descent in to the lowlands, to a fleeting vision of a cooing infant.

He will reach them just before Christmas.

But he'll never be cold again.

Nethergame - A Novel Excerpt

2010-09-09T21:41:00.006-05:00

(Here are the first few chapters of my nearly finished novel that I've been working on for a year. I've also attached some accompanied listening if you feel up to it.)

I.

Tonight is the night that Richard prays for the first time in his life.

He doesn’t kneel at the foot of the bed or fold his hands like they teach you in Sunday school. At four fourteen in the morning, he lays on his back, his arms outstretched and his left foot sticking out from the edge of his comforter where the breeze from his ceiling fan makes that small part of his body less comfortable than the rest of him.

He could rearrange, but the old frame of his bed creaks too much and if he wakes the cat sleeping by his knee, he’s getting up to feed it dry food because he can’t afford the Fancy Feast anymore. Richard hasn’t shaved in six days because you don’t have to shave when you don’t have a wife or a job or responsibilities in the outside world. The only job he’s performing well is keeping his stubble frisky.

Tonight is the night that Richard prays for the first time because he’s suddenly very desperate, and very alone. He doesn’t know why he’s alive, or where he came from, or how he’s going to get out of the giant gaping hole that he’s dug inside his own life. He’s down to a pink slip, a check for five hundred twenty six dollars and thirty four cents, and a growing stack of bills on his kitchen table. He’s running on financial fumes.

His eyes are blank and motionless, following thin licks of moonlight on the corners of the ceiling where the drywall is peeling away. Droplets creep down the wall from the busted hot water heater in the attic. They form a puddle at the base of the hardwood under his only bedroom window, and the slight hints of mold are most obvious when the sun streams through, first thing in the morning. He gives it ten days before the ceiling buckles and he has to go to Home Depot to tell them that he didn’t buy the extended warranty on the Whirlpool but it’s only been nine months past the normal expiration and if they don’t replace it then he’s never doing business with them again, except that he can’t afford a new hot water heater in the first place, much less a new duplex.

Richard paws at the bedside table until he finds the little plastic lid that they give you to shoot the Nyquil with. To the left of that, there are three beer cans and a bottle of that cheap water you can get at his old employer, by the Zingers and the Twinkies, for fifty nine cents. His fingertips skim the table surface until he finds the actual bottle itself, and then at four seventeen in the morning, he’s gulping it in waves to make himself pass out. Too much, and he’s left laying there for another two hours, his eyes twitching behind the lids and buzzing back and forth like a hundred wasps in a mason jar. Too little, and his dream world becomes just a little too real, a little too horrifying to function when he wakes up. He has to step in to it with a certain degree of numbness. He knows the dream is coming because it’s always the same. The one aspect of his life that’s a sure thing.

He reaches over to set the bottle back on the corner of the table and misses, and then he hears the very slight sound of bubbling pharmaceutical soup leaking out on to his hardwood floor after a crashing of plastic to pierce the darkness. The first glistening tear streams down his left cheek, tickling his face, followed by the second. The third tear streaking down comes from the right eye, and he thinks it’s odd that one has to catch up to the other. Before he can see if everything lines up real good, to see if the fourth tear sheds from the right instead of the left for symmetry’s sake, his eyelids are heavy and he has his last little thought to himself before sleep overpowers his senses.

Help me.

He’s drifting off in to a forced stupor and having the same dream again, except he’s hoping to get past the black circle this time. Most of all, he’s hoping he’ll figure out why they’re both screaming.

***

Nate’s fighting exhaustion and the pull of three Bud Lights in the second to last seat on the bus back from Fresno.

It’s the trip back from the final game of his senior year at quarterback, and now there’s talk of the draft and which pro team Nate’s going to play for, and whether or not he’s smart enough to get above a twenty on the Wonder lick. They’re three hours out from Santa Clara at four fourteen in the morning, and because he threw for three hundred seventy two yards and rushed for eighty four, half the Santa Clara cheerleading squad is on the bus with him and the coaches are turning a blind eye.

Nate has the Senior Bowl tomorrow, and he should be asleep, but he’s not.
His teammates are drunk and passed out down the rows of booze-stinking leather and Mary Johnson’s lips are on his neck, but she’s long since given up on anything but slow and steady snoring, and her breath comes in little whooshes, scented with the bubblegum lip gloss she’s wearing and a faint smell of vodka. The carelessness and liberation behind those little whooshes sting Nate’s skin, and in one split second, he envies her life in comparison to his own.

Nate thinks of draws and slant routes, staring at the metal white ceiling of the bus with the roof lever that clinks and rattles every time they hit a pothole on Highway 99. He thinks of his bullet from the thirty yard line to his best receiver in the end zone during the fourth quarter with four seconds to play. There’s a random flip flop under his seat and a Lifestyles wrapper that makes him want to look away, because otherwise he’ll start thinking about who it was and who they did it with, and then he’s no better than Mary Johnson herself.

It’s been the best day of Nate’s life, but he’s still afraid to sink in next to the newest random sweetheart that’s latched on to his athletic coattails --- too terrified to try and sleep like his peers around him. He could win the lottery tomorrow and still dread the early hours of the morning. Until he finds a way to stop sleeping permanently, every night is a gauntlet.

The last thing that he wants on the night that he’s broken his future wide open is to have the dream, but he knows it’s coming, just as he knows he’s going to fall asleep very soon. When his eyes droop, he’s feeling it --- a tickle on the backside of his sinuses, it’s setting in, and then he’s drifting along on cruise control at fifty five with the rest of his team, just as the bus driver spikes his coffee with a fifth sweetening of Jose Cuervo.

At four seventeen, the last thing running through Nate’s conscious mind is that he’s finally done something good, something right, that his real family would be proud of, except they don’t exist. He’s finally hoping he’s done something that will change the scene that plays out in his head, because tonight is a big night, and if the dream is going to change on any night at all, it would be this one.

Nate starts to breathe in unison with Mary Johnson, except instead of bubblegum lip gloss, there’s a coppery trickle in his mouth. It tastes like blood.

***

Jake is about to win, and it’s the highlight of his weekend.

The Grand National is really strutting its stuff alongside the Porsche just outside exit two on the Jersey turnpike, and the turbo charged engine starts to roar when Jake pushes it in to sixth gear. They’re both cruising along at a good one hundred twenty miles per hour, and the old guy in the Porsche misses his window.

It’s finally starting to shift from a total of sixteen lanes, eight on either side, and at exit one, it’s a two lane highway and Jake has the leverage he needs to smoke the cocky bastard next to him. He uses the shoulder and fires on the accelerator until he’s blazing past the Porsche with a guitar lead from Ozzy Osbourne blaring through his subs.

After almost twenty straight minutes of wide open, gas guzzling mayhem, the lights of New York City have faded on the back skyline and he’s been racing this prick the whole way. He’s finally put eight hundred yards of pavement between his rear bumper and the headlights of his rival, and the Porsche’s driver has given up. Defeat.

Jake meets up with the driver of the Porsche off the exit when he finally catches up in the parking lot of the Motel 6, and Jake can’t help but smile as he pockets three hundred dollar bills. He thanks the young guy for a good race and wishes him well. He tells him to lay off the clutch in fourth gear, because it’s holding him back.

He doesn’t think he can drive another mile. His adrenaline rush has three minutes left, tops, and then he knows he’s going to be a zombie before his head fills up with the place that he visits every night without moving a muscle.

His hands are shaking right along with the heavy engine block as he cuts the ignition, and within moments, he’s swiping his card at the front counter and he has his duffel bag, a room key, and a continental breakfast for thirty nine ninety nine as long as he checks out before ten.

Jake has only had the Grand National running for less than four hours, but he knows that as of five minutes ago, he’s reached a level that’s going to take him to the next circuit. He knows he’s bound for the Busch leagues and a stock car that bellows like a dragon when he stomps the gas. He knows, without a doubt, after outrunning a car with twice the power of his Buick, there’s no way Jake’s ever going to lose another race again.

At four seventeen in the morning when Jake’s washing his face with complimentary soap, complete exhaustion kicks in with ruthlessness. The hot water on his skin only makes it worse, and Jake collapses belly first on the mattress, half of his face oozing with a slick, moist film of lathered chamomile, and the other side smelling of cleanly rinsed apple freshness.

Jake’s starting to dream and when he feels the summer wind on his shoulders, he swears he smells the faint hints of barbecue.

II.

They wake up and they know all three of them are stuck here until they wake up again.

It’s always the rushing of the cool stream, and Nate opens his eyes first. The grass bank is soft and enveloping, and the first instinct is always stay, rest here, you can stay here forever if you’d like, but Nate hasn’t trusted that voice since he was little. Jake and Nate always have to shake Richard to stir him, to get him up and off the bank of the river so they can get downfield to the cookout. Richard always wants to stay and sleep in the grass.

They walk as always, and they’re quiet at first. The only thing they hear is a droning of crickets and bullfrogs; the only thing they feel is a fresh breeze that whips about the hayfield, unsettling the flora until the air about them is interlaced with the wisps of dandelions.

They’ve never asked for each other’s names. Richard knows Nate’s face, and Jake knows Richard has a tattoo of a vulture on his shoulder, and Nate knows Jake’s favorite food is crawfish gumbo, but they’ve never learned each other’s names. Dream friends don’t exist, and so they don’t need real names. Richard knows his logic is shaky on this, but mostly he thinks about something else while he’s here.

They’re there to teach you something, to illuminate your personality and reveal your inner workings to your mind’s eye. This is what Nate’s shrink tells him.

They’ve been taking this walk for over twenty years, always these three, sometimes a fourth or fifth, but the others never stick around for long. The only ones who matter are these two, but I don’t need to know their names. If I find out their names, they will disappear. It’s just symbolism. This is what Jake’s “dream analyst” came up with after two hours and a hundred and fifty bucks.

So that’s what they do when they fall asleep at night. Richard and Nate and Jake, ambling along the length of the stream among dandelions under a swelling sun, nameless to each other, the breeze just light enough that it feels like it’s kissing you in the mouth when you’re walking in to it.

They pass children playing and laughing with each other, faceless old people with sundresses and canes and fine hats. There’s the smell of barbecue and pitchers of lemonade, and there are the sights and sounds of people in a simple time and place, except none of it feels right and Nate and Jake and Richard want nothing more than to rid themselves of this place forever.

They walk, and as they approach the edge of the field and the laughter of the children is nothing but a faint whisper on the wind, they see her. In these few minutes, they try to learn about each other, even though they’re convinced that the other two aren’t really there. They avoid the subject of names, references to the real world, or anything but speculations about the girl in the black dress. Mostly, they talk about sports.

They walk until they meet her at the seesaws. Until they talk to the girl in the black dress, everything feels wrong. Then, there’s some sense of purpose to it --- they feel like they have a reason to be here, but they don’t know what. They’ve been trying to find the answer for a long time.

She’s always off on her own, never playing with the other children, usually sitting on the end of the seesaw where she barely pushes herself off with her feet until she comes right back down with a groan of wood and metal. She’s always bobbing up and down on the seesaw plank, until they notice her and ask her why she’s by herself.

They stare and she stares right back for a long time, until Richard can’t stand it anymore and he exchanges an uneasy glance with the other two. The thought running through Nate and Jake’s head is the same. I hope he talks to her. I don’t want to. What does she want with me? I just want to wake up.

Because they see each other every night, they’ve tried going off by themselves, tried ignoring the little girl until the sun comes up in the real world and they’re forced awake by a cell phone alarm, but that never works. They can spend what feels like an eternity at the picnic tables, and they can stall as long as they want, but until they talk to her, there’s no resolution. When they wake up, it’s always seven hours after.

They’ve tried sitting down at one of the picnic tables with one of the smiling, gentle old women for hours, but all she ever does is ask them how the potato salad is, and they know they’re not getting out until they see the black hole in the ground. They’ve even tried telling the old lady that the shit is awful, it tastes like ashes, but it’s always the same result, either way. She smiles and motions towards the edge of the field, towards the little girl, and then she asks them again if they like her potato salad. The old lady’s teeth are tinged with a film of dark fluid, and her fingernails are filed to razor point, but otherwise, she could be your granny in church.

When they were little, they tried to block out the other two, to go and play with the other kids, except when they get too far apart from each other, the sun starts to go down, and the kids start looking like they aren’t kids anymore. Their backs twist up like limbs off a tree in the dead of winter and their pupils film out until they’re milky white voids. They start to hiss, to run around little Nate and Richard and Jake like rabid animals. So then they start to run, and when they get close to each other again, the kids are all giggling with smiling faces.

They think if they can get the other two little boys out of their dream, then maybe something will change --- that maybe the prison has a loophole or a different way out. But then they get this feeling of wrongness, just like the feeling that maybe they should get on their feet and start walking before the water in the stream starts moving too fast. They get across the field from each other, and the sun starts to fade away and the sky starts swirling with overcast shadows, so they run back to each other and have nightmares at school when the other kids are thinking of kickball and peanut butter and jelly with the crust cut off. This is fifteen years ago. Now, they ignore all of this and just head straight to the seesaw.

Now, at age twenty three, all three of them stick together and they always know that they have to walk up to the little girl before anything will change, before they can even start to think about waking up and getting out. It’s not worth doing things in any way but her own. She can change the dream on them as she sees fit.

They’ve tried asking her name, tried to talk to psychics and paranormal ghost experts and dream symbolists and psychiatrists in the real world who always tell them that the dream has nothing to do with their subconscious and the only reason they’ve having it every night is because they’re not being honest with themselves.

The shrinks tell them that the other two guys in their dream aren’t real.

It’s too insane for them to think about, so they just glide along and maybe that’s why, in twenty three years, they’ve never asked for each other’s names. They’re afraid that the other two might actually have names, and they’re afraid of what that might mean for them. They want to keep this place as imaginary and insignificant as they possibly can.

They’ve tried sitting at the picnic table and telling the old lady that the potato salad is excellent. They’ve tried to run away, but they end up in the same field, ten miles later. They’ve tried to drown themselves in the stream, but the water dries up. They’ve tried to bash the old lady’s head in with the potato salad bowl, but she laughs at them and spits black filth in their faces. Her cranium is made of steel, despite her elderly frailness.

The only thing that works is going to the seesaw.

They’ve tried to brainstorm in libraries on the outside, to find out who the little girl might be, or why she might be there, and even though the lemonade looks incredible when the sun shines through the pitcher and the barbecue smells delightful, neither are safe for them. They’ve tried eating and drinking, but all they get is a mouth full of ashes. So they sit and try to piece it together, but they’ve never come one step closer.

Tonight might be the night that they get some answers, but mostly they just want to wake up and run away. All three of them are paralyzed by the thought of leaving dream limbo, of having some finite conclusion to the whole thing, because it feels bad.

So, they repeat it. Night after night. Going strong on twenty three years.
They’ve left the old lady and the white-eyed, crooked backed kids behind, but their footfalls are heavy and reluctant. The girl on the seesaw beckons.

Richard first thought she was his half sister --- the one family member he had left in the world after his father hit the door on his mother and decided to knock up someone else for a change. He’s long since given up on that idea because the article he saw in the Tribune says his sister was crushed by an asphalt truck when she was twelve, thirteen years ago. He gets on a kick and thinks his half sister that he’s never met is haunting his dreams somehow, but that’s all under the bridge and he’s stopped following that line of thinking permanently. Three years of the same dream later, Richard knows she’s not his sister. His shrink disagrees with him. His shrink is an idiot.

For a stretch of his adult life, Nate thinks she represents the high school sweetheart that he misses so terribly since the accident. His lost first love.

It’s back in high school, and he’s undefeated with a state championship and banking on a full ride at UCLA. Milly is valedictorian, planning her perfect speech for graduation. They’re both getting married as soon as she turns eighteen, going to live the rest of their lives together, and then Nate hits a pothole on prom night and flips his new Camaro, and the only thing left of her is a blue high heel and tangles of dirty blonde hair plastered against his dashboard.

Nate withdraws his application to UCLA and swears that it HAS to be her, that he should have known it was going to happen since he’s been seeing this little girl his whole life, every night, like clockwork ---- except he’s given up on that shitty pipedream, and he knows it’s not true by now. There’s no symbol, there’s no greater meaning. Milly’s gone forever, and he’s accepted it, even though he’s popping Xanax and risking his pro career to forget.

Jake has no clue who she is and he’s never had a strong woman in his life, so mostly he wonders if it’s karma or maybe he’s just losing his mind. He says hello to the gas station manager’s daughter with cerebral palsy that’s next to his garage shop in Jersey every morning when he goes in there to buy cigarettes, but he knows it’s not her, because that girl has a level of goodness to her, and this little girl makes him feel like he’s dying inside when he sees her drifting up and down on the seesaw.

“The sun will be going down soon,” Richard says.

She nods like she always does, and it’s taken three hundred sixty five nights a year for twenty three years for them to know that this is what Richard has to say for her to start moving. He’s tried “Hello, little girl” and “How about them Yankees,” but she responds to nothing else. She starts walking when he tells her the sun is going down, and that’s just the way it is, the way it always has been.

She always bobs for a bit with a somber little smile on her face, letting them stand there and sweat in the heat until she’s ready to get off the seesaw, but when she finally does, she’s walking faster than a normal little girl should be, and they’re struggling to keep up.

Her dress is too long for her and the hem of it drags against the dirt as she leads them in to the woods. By the time the hayfield has given way to nettles and the underbrush, the sun and the laughter of the old people and the smell of barbecue are gone. There’s only a dark sky and the wind doesn’t feel like it’s kissing them in the mouth anymore. It feels like a gale, a cold knife to the skin that shouldn’t feel so real because this is a dream, but here it is and there it goes, and there’s nothing Richard, Nate, or Jake can do about it except follow her further through the trees.

She stops just short of the circle of stones like she always does, the pine needles and crunching leaves yielding to soft earth and an absence of tree trunks or undergrowth. She’s standing there in her dirty black dress, her pale bare feet sinking in to the dirt, and the sky doesn’t exist anymore. There’s only blackness above ---- no clouds, no moon, no pleasant sights or smells from the summertime any longer. Now, it’s the three of them and the girl standing just inside the circle, and she’s starting to laugh at them.

Her laughs penetrate their very spirit, and just like that, bing bang boom, all three of them feel small inside. It’s the most horrible part of the dream, and it’s the reason Richard can’t bear to fall asleep sober.

The sound of stretching dirt and bending earth accompanied by her shrill laugh --- it’s a cue for the screams.

Jake and Nate start screaming, just like always, and Richard wants nothing more than to stamp out the sound, to push them to the ground and smother them until they can’t make those awful sounds anymore, but all they can do is stare at Richard with eyes wide, their faces twisted with horror.

Richard doesn’t get the chance to ask them what’s wrong (why can’t they stop screaming at him?) because the circle is starting to form. The hole in the ground inside the stones is starting to peel back and open up like a split fruit in the middle of the earth, and then there’s nothing but the gaping hole, calling to them.

That’s when the cruel laughter and the visage of the girl fade in to nothingness, and all the three of them can do, all they can focus on is that roaring chasm that’s opened up in the forest floor.

Just standing there on the lip of it with the hum and swirl of wrongness in their heads, they forget about each other --- quivering, motionless, at the mercy of the bottomless pit. It’s calling to them like the voice that tells them to stay on the riverbank and lay there when they first open their eyes in a dream that’s too vivid and horrifying to be real. The voice is inescapable.
Stay. Rest here. You can stay forever, if you’d like.

They’re too afraid to listen.

This is where each of them hopes something will change. They’re banking on a little glimmer of hope that maybe, just maybe, the hole will close up and they’ll wake up in the real world, never to return, and they’ll never hear the voice again. But it doesn’t happen that way.

The black ring’s call in their minds only intensifies until they feel like their brains are melting, like nails are being slammed through the back of their heads with a hammer. While Jake and Nate are standing at the precipice, they’ve reached the point in their lives where they can’t take it anymore. They want answers, but they’re in too much agony to ask the dark voice what it wants. They can only drop to their knees, and keep screaming.

Richard walks forward, keeps moving, until he’s one step away from a permanent descent in to the abyss. He hesitates, and then he knows the dream is coming to an end, that he won’t see the other two until he falls asleep again.

But something’s changed.

They have a few moments left and they feel themselves being lifted away from this place, but Richard, Nate, and Jake know that there’s a decision to be made.

Richard thinks it’s a night of firsts for him, and that maybe his prayers will be answered.

Now, for the first time in their lives, the three of them are thinking about jumping.

III.

Out of dream hell, and in to the crucible of reality.

Richard opens his eyes slowly, and he wonders if normal people feel like they’ve been hit by a truck when they wake up in the morning.

His head is still throbbing, and even though it’s faint, at the very edge of his mind, he can still hear her laughing.

He struggles to his feet, and after he opens the bedroom window to air out the stench of mildew, he has to perform a running start to clear the mold patch in the corner of his bedroom. He takes a cold shower and shivers under the nozzle; with his Thrift Sak buy-in, he’s down to using cat shampoo that he bought three years ago. Richard thinks that some human hair products smell worse.

Richard is thinking about possible insurance scams that he can pull off and get away with, faking his own death, or winning the World Series of Poker. These are the only three avenues that he has left in his youthful cycle of desperation, and zero of them have a chance in hell of working.

So Richard walks around the turnout to his old Honda, just as the sun is starting to crest over the horizon, and he knows the only thing he can do is beg for his official job title back as a “Customer Satisfaction Engineer” at the Thrift Sak convenience store on Derby. He’s shaved his stubble.

He tries to pet his cat in the laundry room on his way out, but it shies away and hisses at him from the corner. He wonders if he can sell his cat on Craig’s List to get a tank of gas as he gets in to his car.

Richard goes five under the speed limit until he gets there. Elton John is in his CD player. He likes Elton John because he doesn’t pretend to be someone he’s not.

The neighborhood bum lingers in front of the Thrift Sak, waiting for free hand outs. The homeless man houses an addiction to Thunderbird fortified wine that prevents him from finding permanent residence. He spends most days scrounging around in the trashcans outside the front glass doors when Richard pulls up. He’s looking for scraps of half-eaten donuts and cigarette butts that still have a few puffs left to them if he can borrow a lighter.

Richard doesn’t know his real name, either. He just calls him Thunderbird, and the bum prefers it that way.

Richard slips the wino a buck on his way in. He thinks of him as a sort of affectionate pigeon --- the only living being in the world who is loyal to him. His cat prefers to be alone.

“Ey Richard! A little late today, aren’t you?” the bum asks. His voice is as rough as the burlap of his foul smelling, tattered coat.

Richard doesn’t want to tell the wino that he’s been fired and that he’s come here to grovel and beg for the chance to make seven thirty five an hour again. He figures he might be adding unneeded stress to the bum’s routine if he throws a wrench in the gears and tells him that he might not be getting a free breakfast burrito every morning at ten ‘til seven.

His boss Margaret and the young girl Sandra are working, and they’re arguing with a thug and telling him he can’t buy a lighter without identification, because people who buy lighters are smokers. Richard is here to beg for his job back because instead of arguing, he finds it easier to sell cigarettes to whoever wants them. That way, he can focus on his poker game more, and there are no upset customers. His boss Margaret disagrees, and she also disagrees with him sneaking beers from the cooler at night before he goes home.

It’s not that Richard wants to be a thief. He has to dumb his nerves and find some way to make himself crash hard, or the dream causes dark enough thoughts as it is. It was the easiest way at the time --- he hadn’t counted on being caught two weeks before his biggest card tournament. Now, he won’t be able to afford the buy-in without a job. He needs another three hundred and ninety two dollars, or he’ll be living under a bridge in a month.

He’s tried suicide once, but he’s too much of a failure to even get that one right. If you need to off yourself with carbon monoxide in the garage, it’s a good idea to start with a full gas tank. Otherwise, you’ll just pass out and wake up with a catheter in your ass. The nurses laugh at you, even though it’s not supposed to be funny --- but it sure is. One in ninety hospital beds are filled with failed suicide attempts, the nurse tells him. He’s a rare commodity as far as entertainment value is concerned.

Sandra is beaming at him with her tacky hoop earrings that dangle from her ears, as big as Olympic medals and twice as shiny. Margaret has a scowl on her face because she already knows it’s coming, and she’s unlocking the back office so Richard can follow her back there. She doesn’t want to scream at him in front of their clientele. As he passes the nacho and chili dog machine, Sandra finally loses her cool with the thug and unceremoniously refuses to sell him anything else (LOOK, sir, you can’t buy a lighter here, so go somewhere else. You don’t even look eighteen..)

Richard sinks in to one of her ratty chairs with the peeling armrests. He hates the smell of her dingy yellow-walled office and the rows of employee service awards behind her. He hates that the back of the store sits a little too close to the dumpsters, so when the sun rises in the morning and has a chance to bask everything up real good, the corridor from her office to the back receiving ramp smells like rotten burritos and cigarette ashes. Most of all, he hates her and her smug little smile, like she’s making six fucking figures managing a gas station and he’s the scum of the earth or something. She waits and scowls, and so Richard has to speak first.

“Look, I’m sorry, I know I haven’t been a completely honest employee, but if you could just give me another thirty days to prove that I want to…”

“One thousand, twelve hundred dollars and eighty five cents, Richard.” She says.

“What?” he asks. He knows what’s coming before his mouth stops moving. He should keep his mouth shut.

“That’s how much merchandise you’ve stolen from the store in your six months here. So I tell you what. I’ll hire you back, and when your paychecks cancel out what you’ve stolen from us, you can start collecting wages again.” Her voice is a frigid razor blade.

“I’m not sure I can do that. What if you took half of each check..”

“No, Richard. Half of nothing. You ripped me off for half a year and you think you’re never going to get caught, so you finally do, and then you’re in here acting like we owe you something. I like you. You never talk, you never bother anyone, and half the time I think you’re going to show up one day and shoot us all like the Columbine kid, but I pretty much left you alone, and this is what I get. You’re out the door until you write me a check for twelve hundred. Got it? This is my local chain business, not some corporate Thrift Sak hack job. You trampled on my ability to feed my family when I never gave you any shit, Richard. ” She sounds like his mother, except she doesn’t have a fake larynx box and throat cancer.

“I’m sorry, Margaret. I’ll make it right, I swear, but I just need one paycheck. I might not be able to eat. Please. I’ve been having some personal issues lately…”

“Personal issues? No fucking shit you have personal issues. Did you really drink every brewsky you stole, or did you take them down to a party and act like Hugh fucking Heffner with your free booze?” She’s having fun with it now. Best to give her what she wants. As long as he has a job when he walks out of here.

“I don’t see why it matters now, but yes, they were for personal use.” Richard starts looking at the floor, and he sounds defeated. He’s been hoping to keep his personal hellhole out of the equation. Wrongo.

“Jesus, Dick. There’s no way. How do you do it? How do you go through a case like that and just show up here the next day? Are you an alcoholic? Be honest.” Margaret cares a little too much, and suddenly Richard wants to just stay fired and walk out and keep her from poking her nose in his personal business, but he’s too desperate at this juncture.

“I’m more of a gambling addict than an alcoholic, but I have to get drunk to sleep. Or take cough syrup or drugs.” He says.

Margaret pulls out his file and shreds his termination slip, and for the next week, he’s on unpaid leave to correct “performance impacting events” in his personal life. His next day of work is on Monday, and he has five days to build a bankroll with his meager four hundred dollar sum. He listens to her lecture him, to her genuine compassion for his “problems,” before he flashes her a flawlessly fake smile and heads back down the pungent corridor.

Richard smirks a little as he comes out of the back, and Sandra is stocking Doritos and Funyuns by the counter display. He gives her a little wave, she waves back, and then he’s passing by the breakfast sandwiches and slipping two steak biscuits in to his jacket pocket before she looks up again and pesters him for a date, as always. She’s too attractive for Richard to believe that she’s in his league, except she has zero self esteem and he’s already seen her naked a couple times.

“Still going to teach me to play Texas Hold ‘Em one night, Richard?” She’s batting her eyelashes, sliding her forefinger up and down her bangs before fiddling with one of her hideous hoop earrings.

Richard secures the shoplifted items of deep fried goodness and leans forward over the counter. He gives her a little grin, because suddenly, he’s getting his minimum wage job back and has a way to sustain his gambling habit.

“Margaret’s gonna let me come back and work awhile. I won’t be here much longer, Sandra. I’m about to hit the big time. I’m good enough to win millions, I promise you --- I just need a few more paychecks to take care of the bills.” He slides her a five and two quarters, and she has him some Marlboro Lights on the counter in a soft pack without skipping a beat. It’s their routine, if they even have one. He succeeds in stealing because he always pays for something else simultaneously.

“Ooh. Watch out, we’ve got a high roller alert! I guess we’ll just have to play strip poker since you’re broke.” She licks her lips and lowers her voice a bit. It’s almost comical. Richard would be flattered, but he’s too distracted to care.

“I guess. I’m about to go to the casino. You have yourself a great weekend, Sandra.” More fake smiles, more fake nuances to convince the real world that he’s a normal human being. For what? Richard asks himself, and he can’t give himself a valid answer.

“See you then, Dicky Dog.” She blows him a kiss.

“My name is Richard. Don’t call me fucking Dicky Dog.” He hates that nickname almost as much as he hates Sandra, but she has her uses.

He’s turned around without another word and waltzing out the glass doors feeling a lot better than when he came in. Thunderbird is waiting for him by the Red Box. They ease around the corner, and then they’re both smoking and eating steak biscuits.

“Mmf. Good shit, Rich. You headed to the boat?” With his crooked smile and disheveled appearance, the Thunderbird wino is more genuine than the other lot of people in Richard’s life. Richard decides to teach him to play poker, eventually. Right after he teaches Sandra.

“Down to my last chunk of bankroll, man. I’ve gotta win big and make this last. I don’t want to work here anymore.” Richard is squinting in to the sun and it’s painful for him to buy gas at the pump. It cuts in to his big and small blinds.

“Ah, well, thanks for the biscuit. Hope you get lucky, Dicky Dog.” He smiles for a grand total of three teeth.

Richard almost decks him, but instead, he walks around the store, and Margaret’s daughter is standing by the trash can with a water gun. She hits Richard in the forehead twice with a quick little spurt, spurt, and then she’s laughing.
Richard almost shudders, but he doesn’t want to hurt the little girl’s feelings. He smiles at her, covers his chest with his palm and fakes an agonizing death.

“Oh! You got me! Everything’s going dark…”

She giggles at him before she runs inside because Margaret is about to get off work, and he can hear the echoes of “I shot Richard! He’s dead!” emanating from the back hallway.

Richard exchanges looks with Thunderbird before he walks to his car, and he shrugs.
“Can’t blame her for enjoying the small things in life, Dick. She’s got cerebral palsy, you know. How long will she be around with us?” The first insightful observation out of Thunderbird’s mouth all morning.

“Yeah. Some people do have it worse than we do.” Richard says.

As Richard mashes the accelerator and pulls out on to the 109, he swears he’s heard from someone else about that girl’s illness before, but he can’t remember where.

It soon leaves his mind as the lights of Caesar’s Palace beckon to the paycheck burning a hole in his pocket.

IV.

Jake has no arms or legs.

That’s the first thought that enters his mind as he attempts to peel himself off of the motel bed. There’s a hardened layer of soap film on one side of his face, and he’s looking at his hands and watching his body move, but he can’t feel his extremities because he’s been passed out sideways and slantways for nine hours. He’s numb all over.

He’s grown accustomed to waking up in awkward positions, with half of his muscles asleep. He’s used to opening his eyes and feeling like his entire body has been fucked by a gorilla.

He’s not used to hearing distant laughter in his head, and he hates that the little girl’s face is still burned in to his mind like it’s been branded against his brain with a molten cattle prod.

He sits on the edge of the bed for a good twenty minutes, waiting for the tingling numbness in his fingers and toes to go away. He pokes the top of his hand with his pocket knife to see if he can feel it yet, and even though it’s a mile off, his nerves do faintly protest. ‘Ouch, that’s sharp, quit doing that, asshole!’ his muscles tell him.

Another twenty minutes, and the cruel laughter is finally starting to dissipate. Jake is suddenly afraid, because she’s never stuck around in the real world for that long before. He silently wonders if he’s going insane.

Jake hearkens back to the time when he was a little kid, when he could open his eyes and forget about the girl and the hole in the ground instantly after waking up. He misses being able to bounce back from the dream like it’s nothing, of running out to his bike and racing down the steepest hill in town before his mom has even had a chance to tell him to brush his teeth and is all of his homework done?

Jake checks the clock on the TV guide, and it’s a little after eleven. He’s missed the continental breakfast.

As he makes the walk outside and hunkers down in to his Grand National, the roar of the engine cylinders breathes life in to his day for the first time. Jake sees a Corvette speeding by the Motel 6 in fine style.

Jake is up to sixty in a few seconds, and he’s reaching for his wallet.

V.

Nate is getting drilled at the Senior Bowl.

Here comes a three hundred and fifty pound linebacker, wrapping his tree trunk arms around Nate’s waist before he pulls him down as easily as a stuffed animal at a carnival. To finish everything up, the ogre rams his beefy shoulder in to the small square of Nate’s back, just as he’s falling to the green, and then his helmet is flying off and bouncing down the fifty one yard line.

The hum of the crowd grows in to a dull wave of exhilaration at Nate’s expense. Two more plays, and the fans will have a verdict. They’re piranhas, driven blood drunk by the smell of Nate’s impending defeat on the field. The pile of players ---- muscle and testosterone --- the crushing force threatens to overwhelm as Nate is brought to the ground. With each giant that rises to their feet after the whistle, Nate’s teammates are more and more downtrodden.

He squints at the rays of sun blasting through his helmet and coughs out a long, sticky mixture of blood and saliva at the forty eight. There’s a chunk of his lip in there somewhere. A thread of it catches on his facemask and then it flickers and dances between the rungs with his heavy breathing.

Nate stands up just as the burning pain on the side of his face really kicks in full force. Part of the skin of his cheek has been shredded on the Astroturf, and little specks of his spilled wound dot up and down the white painted hash marks. More fuel for the frenzied fans.

Nate swears he can hear a little girl giggling in his ears, and he’s been distracted the entire game. The heat of the California sun blisters the backs of his ears.

The small plastic receiver embedded in his earlobe sounds like it’s coming from somewhere in Asia because her laughing is overpowering his coach’s play calling. Nate is seeing stars, pulling his helmet back on, and they’re out of time outs. The play clock is ticking.

Thirty four seconds left.

Nate and the others in his huddle, the athletes headed for the NFL who will only play on his offense for the remainder of this one game ---- they’re looking to him for answers. They breathe like lumbering ancient steam engines on their last leg. They’re drained of stamina and resolve, having been run to death by a voracious defense for forty minutes. They crave leadership with desperate stares. They want the quarterback to make an amazing play and spoon feed them all a higher draft spot at the NFL scouting combine.

They feel like twelve rodents running through a hallway of mousetraps.
Here are more giggles, more mind flashes of black pits and white-eyed children in a field. It muddles the coach’s voice in his ears.

“Try to drop back in to the shotgun and run a skid. You might be able to hit Crosby or at least get us in field goal range.” Coach’s voice sounds far away.

Her laughing is ripping circles through his brain.

Here’s more California sun and the roar of drunken football fanatics.

Nate isn’t looking so hot after two halves of options and draw plays. They’re running him in the shotgun now, but despite the fact that he’s a good five feet behind the center, the defensive line has upped the ante to compensate for his adjustment. Nate is infuriated that his offensive line is making him look like a second string player in front of the top NFL scouts.

He gives up on the coach’s shitty play calling. He gives up on his right offensive right tackle, Marcado, from Santa Clara’s biggest rival school who just so happened to make the Senior Bowl as well.

Marcado hates Nate because Santa Clara stole the conference title from him in his senior year in Fresno.

On second down, Nate takes another snap from under center and has less than a second before a cornerback entangles him and strong-arms him to the ground. Marcado misses another block intentionally. The defender makes a mad grab to strip the ball. Nate curls up like a snail and protects it until he hears the whistle. They have one more down before the game is over. No timeouts remaining.

Nineteen seconds left.

Nate’s cheek scintillates with the shards of artificial fiber glass embedded in his face. He huddles up and flashes Marcado a look, but he doesn’t bother with calling him out on the missed block. Not enough time.

Nate’s body is screaming for relief, and he still has one more play to go. It has to be a touchdown for the win, or no one gives a shit and he’s a fifth rounder.

Nate gives up on receivers and tight ends that he can try and dump the ball off to in time before they smash his head in to the fifty again. He’s going for the scramble --- the quarterback rush that carried him so faithfully through his college career. The cause for Marcado’s grudge and game throwing tactics, because he watched Nate beat his team with it not two days ago.

Nate gets under center, and the rest of his team is out of the loop, but he has to demonstrate that he’s made of something here. He can’t be another uneventful quarterback at the Senior Bowl that doesn’t get drafted until the fifth or sixth round. He has to be a first or second round pick, or his future is over.

Nate pulls the earpiece out of his helmet and smashes it in to a mangled heap of electronic shrapnel under his cleat.

Twelve seconds left.

Here’s thousands and thousands of screaming human beings --- some hoping for Nate to pull a miracle and win the game with a Hail Mary, and the other half waiting for him to get hammered in to the fifty again, even harder than before.

A Hail Mary is out of the question. His receivers aren’t fast enough.

He can see binoculars and finely dressed business men behind the benches, separate from the beer keg mob, scouting each player, playing Batman detective. Who’s getting a first round pick and a three year salary of eleven million? Who’s getting cut from the draft altogether?

Nate doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the money.

Nate has been banking on professional football since he’s been old enough to walk.
“Red forty-three. Red forty-three. Down … set… HUT!” Nate takes the snap and drops back.

Marcado falls aside so as not to seem obvious to the coaching staff, and he lets the defensive cornerback through instantly. Nate locks his body behind the colluder and dashes forward, sending Marcado flying against the defense, until he’s blindsided by the same three hundred and fifty pound pain train that Nate’s been trampled by for the past five drives. Payback’s a bitch.

Nate drops back to strong side, and his other linemen are falling like bowling pins to the left. He’s a choice cut for another sack at the current angle, but that’s what he’s banking on. They dive for him, and he jukes his way out. A quick little dash to the left, a juke to the right, and then their hulking forms are dropping to the ground with nothing but gravity and empty hands to show for it.
He makes a break for the line of scrimmage, crosses it, and the rest of the blitz is over on weak side, trying to catch up to his unexpected scramble.
Nate’s calves have acid waterfalls in them. His lungs protest, but the adrenaline is a tsunami.

Five seconds left.

“QUARTERBACK! That’s not the play we ...” The coach trails off by the sideline as he realizes Nate is capable of doing what only a few quarterbacks in the history of football have been able to do, and so he lets the play run its course. He thinks he’s looking at the next Joe Montana. Nate doesn’t hear him because his headset kicked the bucket thirty yards back before the snap.

Nate grits his teeth as he’s about twenty yards from the last backfield safety, and then in a few seconds, the defense’s last chance leaps for him like a jungle panther.

Nate surges forward, doesn’t move to the side, doesn’t back off, doesn’t even attempt to try and evade the defender. He grinds his heels in to the turf like a mortar in a pestle, and the sickening crack of helmet fiberglass against torso pad echoes through the open California sky as Nate bores in to him with the contained rage of the past fifteen or twenty sacks that he’s suffered at Marcado’s behest.

In the moment of the collision, beads of sweat fling from Nate’s bangs inside his helmet and trickle down his face. His eyes have joined the burning acid orgy.

The dangling stream of fluid from Nate’s busted mouth flies from his helmet rungs at impact and hangs from the right pylon of the field goal marker.

It’s remarkable, the small things that one can notice in the middle of such momentous feats. Nate has blown the game wide open, but all he can focus on are dangling shreds of his blood and lip, streaking down yellow pylons at the Senior Bowl, two seconds after the game winning touchdown.

At the end of the play, Nate is standing in the end zone with an unconscious safety a few yards away. His eyes are locked on the business suits behind the benches. They’re whispering and taking notes on their little yellow legal pads. Nate can only think about the physicians and trainers that want to forge him in to an unstoppable grid iron force. Mostly, he’s thinking they’ll drug test him right away for steroids and HGH, but then they’ll find the Xanax in his piss.
Nate is certain that his girlfriend’s death and four years of doping will smell like pig slop to the swine on the news networks. His entire life will be on display by the time John Madden sits down to eat his corn flakes.

Before his one-game teammates storm the end zone and complete chaos breaks loose, Nate looks downfield and points directly at Marcado, as if to say, Yeah, I still did it, even thought you wanted me to fail.

There’s a Gatorade cooler being dumped over his head. He barely feels it, but he suspects the flavor is lemon lime.

The scouts can’t help but notice the defiance in his features. They love it.
Two hours later, three NFL teams are drafting contracts to sign him to their rosters.

The deep thump of bass drums and the wails of trumpets and screaming fans are drowned out by the cold laughter in his ears.

Nate only stares at the sun.

Castles in the Air

2010-09-02T10:28:00.003-05:00

Grant straightens his tie and walks downstairs with his briefcase at eight forty a.m. sharp. There's a slight hint of cinnamon in the air, as well as the scent of griddled pancakes.

"Good morning Grant." she says flatly.

"Morning, honey." He says.

Christina keeps her back to him, slicing the crust off of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and placing them in brown lunch sacks.

"Breakfast?" She asks.

"No thanks, I need to get going soon. Christina, why are you making sack lunches again?"

Her green eyes are two maelstroms in a storming tempest when she turns on her heel to face him, kitchen knife in hand. She feels anger --- instantly enraged by his poorly chosen timing to bring up their hot button issue.

The stare is one of hate and loathing. Her voice is acid, popping more violently than the fat of the thick sliced bacon in the iron skillet.

"Is this really how you want to start the day, Grant? This is how you want to kick things off, after you haven't said five words to me and this whole sad debacle is your fault?" Christina asks.

"I can't apologize for that. I can't control it, either. It's not my fault. I'm doing my best." Grant says.

"It sure as hell isn't my body, Grant. Seven years of marriage without a child. I'm starting to think your little soldiers are riding the short bus." She says, and she laughs at him.

His wife is standing in front of him, insulting the integrity of his sperm, and she finds it hilarious. His hands start shaking, and the smell of her excellent cooking now infects him with a wave of nausea. He grits his teeth as hard as possible, grinding them together like two sets of granite boulders.

"Please, Christina. You start ovulating soon. We've been trying every single night. We're bound to hit sometime. Can we at least try to be optimistic?" Grant asks.

She slams the business end of the kitchen knife in to the cutting board, where it wedges with the force of impact.

"You need to leave. Go to work." She says.

"Christina, please."

"Go to work, Grant."

"Fine. I fucking tried, for the record." He slams the front door in the foyer, starts his Volvo, and then he's gone with an unnecessary squeal of rubber in the middle of the suburbs at eight fifty a.m.

She places the two bagged lunches on the window sill above the sink and leaves it wide open to a morning breeze.

***

Grant pulls in to the new parking garage on Fifth at twelve after nine. On a normal day, he would be late to work right now.

This week, Grant is on vacation, although his wife doesn't know it.

The elevator feels like an ancient office, adorned with shining brass rails, polished wood paneling, and low golden lighting that puts him at ease, despite the scintillating insults that he took at the mercy of Christina amidst stacks of uneaten flapjacks and boiling tempers.

He pushes the button for floor nineteen. It says SUBMERSION GROUP.

“Main Lobby,” the elevator announces with feminine efficiency.

His loafers click on flawless, black and white flecked marble as he approaches the receptionist at the front desk.

He manages to smile, although he feels like scum of the earth at his wife’s behest. She returns his demeanor, and Grant thinks he feels less like a piece of shit already.

“I’m here to see Francis.” Grant says.

“Ah, yes! He’s two offices down the hallway to the left. He’ll be delighted you took his offer to participate. I think you’ll really benefit from our services here, Mr. Barren.”

“Just Grant, please.”

“Well then. I’ll buzz you in, Grant. Enjoy yourself!” She says.

As he makes his way through the plush office, Grant finds that he’s shuffling his feet on purpose, trying to find excuses not to go through with it.

Except he’s had enough, and he has to.

He pokes his head around the corner of the office door and sees a beady eyed, massively round figure behind an exorbitantly large desk.

“Hey, Francis.” Grant says.

Francis resembles an oversized, bulbous toad, but his voice is a deep scratching boom.

“Grant my boy! Come in! Sit down! I must say, I thought you would have been here three months ago.” His voice is poignant, and his handshake is like a box of iron around Grant’s fingers.

“This morning was the last straw. I have to do something. I feel sick when I pull in to the driveway.” Grant says.

Francis frowns with a measure of concern as he reclines backward in his head chair.

“You know, Grant, children aren’t everything. Some people think they want kids more than anything in the entire world, but four years later when they’re tired and waking up every night at three to clean shit up, they suddenly realize they’ve become robots. Have you tried alternative methods like adoption?” Francis asks.

“Come on, Francis. I’m not stupid. I’ve tried everything I can possibly think of to keep our marriage strong. I tell her the pregnancy will come some day, but she’s convinced I’ll be shooting blanks for the rest of my life.” Grant says.

“Blanks? Is that it that bad? What have the doctors told you?” Francis asks.

“Not impossible, but the odds aren’t good.” Grant says.

“Give me a number.” Francis says.

“One in seventy three at the best time of the month with my medication. Most of the time, it’s about half that.” Grant says.

“Ouch. I have six kids. You want one of mine?” Francis asks.

“No thanks. Just tell me what you have.” Grant says.

“Well, to be honest, the testing stages are over. It’s a full-fledged paying service now, although most of our clients make two figures more than you. Don’t worry about that side of it. This is on me, Grant. I’ve seen you suffer for way too long.” Francis says.

“You’ve never done it yourself. How can you not judge me? Some part of you must think I’m a terrible person for even thinking about doing this.” Grant says.

“Right and wrong is all relative, buddy. None of it is real. It’s just like playing golf or going out for a beer after work. I don’t think any less of you. Plus, you’re not some power tripping egotistical bastard like the people we rope in for profit. It will probably be more relaxing for you than most people who come here.” Francis says.

“What about the scenarios? I thought they were the same for everyone.” Grant says.

“You can pick a scenario, but I would equate that to buying a black and white television when you can get a high definition plasma instead. It just wouldn’t make sense, Grant. You should let the system read you. It creates something directly out of your mind instead of some prefabricated commercial vacation rip off.” Francis says.

“So if one of the scenarios is in Hawaii, but I’m a mountain person and would rather be in the Swiss Alps, it creates a mountain lodge in the snow instead of putting me on a beach somewhere?” Grant asks.

“No, Grant. I’m saying if you have a dream of walking around the Garden of Eden and pounding Eve doggy style, then you’ve got it. If you have a thing for Star Trek, you might just find yourself in the company of Lieutenant Commander Worf on the mother fucking Enterprise. It’s not restricted to things you can do in real life. That’s why it’s so expensive.” Francis says.

“Shit. It sounds crazy. I guess I’m ready, then.” Grant says.

Francis laughs and pours two snorts of Wild Turkey in shot glasses on his desk. The souvenir labels say “DARE TO DREAM.”

“A little early, isn’t it?” Grant asks as the rotund man slams his own serving with a smacking of his massive chops.

“It’s never too early to treat yourself, my friend.” Francis says.

Grant takes the shot of whiskey gingerly and it singes his throat all the way down.

“Follow me.” Francis says, shaking the hardwood floor with the weight of his footsteps.

Grant walks further down the hall. His resentment and anger from the morning has failed to recede. It only builds alongside the fire of spirits in his gut.

Francis stops him and unlocks a white door across from the janitorial closet. Inside, Grant sees a table and two attractive women in scrubs.

“One last thing, buddy boy. The system knows what you want. Don’t try to fool it. You can’t hide anything, and you’re going to get what your brain really craves. It’s shocking to some people at first, but you’ll be fine. I have clients to attend to, but our two attendants here will set you up real nice and pretty.” Francis says.

“Okay. I’ll let you know how it goes. See you, Francis.” Grant says. Francis closes the door, and Grant feels like he’s suddenly in a vacuum.

“Please lean back and get comfortable in the seat, Mr. Barren.” The blonde attendant says, motioning to the plush, white leather reclining chair.

He sits down and feels like he sinks in to it by a foot or more. He’s already breathing more slowly.

“The procedure is very complicated and the system will perform many tasks, but to us, it will only be a few seconds. First, I need you to swallow this. It will help us map your cortex.” She says, handing him a tiny green pill and a glass of water.

“Okay. I thought there were going to be shots or heavy equipment. This isn’t too bad so far.” Grant says as he swallows the caplet.

“Yes sir. Most of our clients find that our process is easy and painless. We’re usually able to submerse them within fifteen minutes of their arrival at our offices.” She beams proudly.

“How long will I be unconscious?” Grant asks.

“It varies from person to person, but you won’t technically be unconscious. The longest someone has submersed has been seven hours, but on average, most episodes last about three. However, in the actual submersion, time is completely relative. We’ve had people claim to have been gone for years. Even decades. First dips are usually only about a day long.” She says.

“Decades? Surely not. They have to be exaggerating. I don’t know if I want to escape for that long.” Grant says.

She frowns.

“What’s wrong?” Grant asks.

“You’ve already taken the pill. You can’t back out now, Mr. Barren.” She says, lowering some sort of head apparatus from the ceiling.

He starts to tell her to call him by his first name, but his eyelids feel like they weigh two tons apiece, and sleep has never felt more welcome in his life.

***

He awakes standing up, in front of his mirror in his best three piece suit. His hair is cleanly groomed, his face is smooth, and the red rings under his eyes have vanished.

The well dressed, manicured man stares directly back at him. His reflection is surprising, but pleasant.

He watches his mouth move, but he doesn't feel himself talking. He doesn't even know where the words are coming from. This is the first time he's heard himself speak without knowing what's going to come out of his own mouth. The sound is mechanical and feminine, like in the elevator.

"Hello, Grant Barren. I have completed your analysis, and I have provided everything that you could possibly need based on a thorough breakdown of your thought patterns. Your wife is downstairs. Please enjoy yourself during your first experience."

His face tingles. He watches himself talk with the computer voice again.

"Therapeutic and rehabilitative measures will be exercised per the request of Master Francis in the "Repair Your Marriage" scenario when you return for session two. Thank you!" Mirror Grant says.

The welcoming smile goes slack when he seems to regain independent control of his face muscles. He speaks to test his sanity.

"This is the sound of my own voice." Grant says. And it is.

He exhales and straightens his tie before he walks downstairs.

The scene is the same as any other morning before work, except for a few key changes. His favorite morning meal is on the table. He hasn't had biscuits and gravy in months due to Christina's refusal to whip it up because the gravy was a "pain in the ass."

His wife smiles at him at the other side of the table. She's twenty pounds lighter, and the haggard, defeating look of condescending sharpness is absent from her beautiful green eyes.

"Hey, handsome." She says.

He takes a seat at the table and realizes that his heart is pounding like a punching bag in his chest. He's waiting for the next sideways insult, the next glancing, biting remark about his manhood and his ability to produce a family. Another speech about his worthlessness as a partner and a spouse.

Christina leans over and places a light, feathered kiss on the cusp of his earlobe, blowing a cool breeze at his ear drum for a brief moment afterwards. The hairs on his neck stand on end. He looks at her in bewilderment, his cheeks flushed with scarlet.

"You haven't done that since we were in our twenties." Grant says.

"What are you talking about, honey? I know that's your favorite way to wake up in the morning. Do you think you have time to hop out of that sexy suit of yours before work?" She grins at him seductively.

Grant blinks before he hears a shrill, unrefined squeal.

"DADDY!"

She collides painfully with his shins with enough velocity to send the kitchen chair flying. His mouth is agape.

"Up, daddy, up!" The infant girl reaches with eager fingers, pawing at his pant leg like grasping stubs of loving tentacles.

I have a child.

He scoops his daughter up in slow motion as he turns to look at his wife. She's watching with an affection that he's never seen in her eyes. The strength of the bond of family.

"Hey, dad." A different voice from the stairs.

Grant looks upon his young son with the green eyes like his mother's, shining like crystals back at him from the stairs. His throat tightens, but he manages to keep his voice from shaking too horribly.

The corners of his eyes moisten, and Grant is seized with a happiness and a joy that he's never felt before.

"Hey, son." Grant says.

And then he sees nothing but white.

***

"Come on, buddy boy. Open your eyes. Wake up."

I know that voice.

He feels big, rough hands on his shoulders, and then his eyes snap open like lightning. Grant's vision ping pongs around the room frantically until he regains his footing in reality.

"I had kids, Francis." Grant says.

"I thought you might, but try not to disclose your experience to anyone, okay? Clientele privacy is a serious issue when you're dealing with technology like this, and I knew it would help you. You can build all these glorious castles in the air that you want, but don’t tell me what they look like. Keep them to yourself, and let them make your life better. If that’s what you get out of this, then that's all I need to know."

"Thanks, Francis." Grant says.

"There was one little problem, though. It's not a huge deal, but it was definitely a first." Francis says.

"What? You can't send me back? Please don't tell me that." Grant says.

"Oh, no, that won't be a problem. But, we like to "record" the experience through first person. The system uses your senses to make a viewable stream of images that we can put on a DVD or computer." Francis says.

"And?" Grant asks.

"Well, there was a power outage, which is why your scenario ended so suddenly. We're getting a backup generator in here next month, but our operation has only been live for one financial quarter and we weren't prepared for Metro power to go out." Francis says.

"So you lost the video?" Grant asks.

"Yeah, but it's alright. I'm sure the next one will be even better, when you get to know them." Francis says.

"Yeah...." Grant trails off, staring at the floor blankly. Here in this cold, tangible existence, he knows he has to return to Christina.

"Grant, are you okay?" Francis asks.

"Yeah. Hey, if I need to, can I call you later? I have a feeling I might need to sleep on your couch. I'm running late already." Grant says.

"Sure. I'll get Tonya to set out some blankets for you." Francis says.

"Thanks. See you tomorrow. Christina thinks I'm working all week, by the way." Grant says.

"I see. Have a good night, buddy." Francis says.

***

He walks through the front door twenty minutes behind schedule, and she's almost finished with her spaghetti.

This is what he hates. Treading on fucking eggshells.

He takes a plate and grabs two garlic rolls from the breadbasket before he sits down, giving her a peck on the cheek.

"Hey, honey. This looks great. Thank you." Grant says.

She stares in tense, tightened silence, coiling her noodles around her fork endlessly.

"I'm sorry, Tina bean. I feel better today than I've felt in a long time, and I'm ready to try to have a family, but I need your help."

Her features soften by some increment, although it's not much.

"There's something different about you, Grant. I can't quite put my finger on it, but something changed today." Christina says.

"What do you mean?" Grant asks. His palms start to sweat. His skin is cold and clammy.

"I'm not quite sure. I guess I should be fair and take it easy on you. How was work?" She asks.

"Um. Well, it was average. Same routine, different day." Grant says.

"Are you too tired to have sex?" She asks.

This is another thing he hates. He can't stand her dry, mechanical, "this is the biological goal of human beings so let's reproduce" approach to their lovemaking.

Sometimes, he has nightmares about being on top of her, and her face is lifeless, like a robot. She moans in precise, rhythmic wisps, and no matter how hard he tries, he can never stir her out of it---

"Grant." She says.

"What? Sorry, I zoned out for a second there." He says.

"I asked you a question. Do you feel up to it tonight, or not?" She asks.

"Yes. Yes, I suppose I do. Let me finish and I'll get ready for bed."

"Okay then. I'm going to shave my legs. See you upstairs in a bit." She kisses his cheek and walks out of the kitchen, but there's something standing by the stairs.

Grant stares for a long while until he's sure of it, but there's an outline of a dark, inky shadow by the bannister. It's knee-length, and a taller, slightly hulkier shadow lurks just behind it, snaking across the walls until it pools in to the form of a person.

Hi, daddy!

He hears the voice like a fractured bell, bouncing with terrible force between his ears. The knee high shadow shakes in jubilation, stretching up and down rapidly. Grant shivers, leaves his dishes on the table, and takes the stairs two at a time to his bedroom.

The sex is lifeless and mechanical. He's able to finish in twelve minutes, and his wife rolls over, satisfied. He stares wide-eyed at the ceiling for three hours before he drifts away to sleep.

The shadows gather at the foot of the bed and remain until the first hints of daybreak.

***

They skip breakfast because Christina is busy retching over the toilet when she normally stirs Grant for his morning routine. He awakes dazed at first, but darts for the shower as soon as he sees the alarm.

“Sweetie, are you okay?” He asks.

“I’m wonderful. Sorry I couldn’t get you up. Grant, we did it.” She says.

“We did what?” He asks, switching on the hot water.

“I’m pregnant. I'm sorry I didn't tell you last night. I got sick and went to see the doctor, and he confirmed. We're three weeks in.” She says with a smile. Despite the vomit entangled in a chunk of her hair and the sunken red rings around her eyes, she is beautiful to him in this moment.

I’m off the hook.

“Honey, that’s great! Thanks for being patient with me. Let’s celebrate tonight. Dinner at Morton’s when I get off work? Wear your black dress.” He says.

“You got it. Have a good day at work, tiger.” She says, but then there’s another wave of nausea.

He embraces her for a long moment in perfect silence. After his shower, when he finally walks downstairs and out the front door, the lunch bags still sit next to the open window, undisturbed.

There’s a picture of a positive pregnancy test on the refrigerator.

***

“I did it, Francis. We’re going to have a baby.” Grant says.

“Congratulations. I really mean it, Grant. Are you going to stop coming here, even though you’ve only been through one session?” Francis asks.

“No. I think I should spend the rest of my vacation here. It would relax me and start me off on a strong foot with her. If I’m optimistic when I come home, we’ll never fight again now that she’s pregnant, I’m sure of it.” Grant says.

“Are you sure? My wife and I fight about a lot of things other than the kids.” Francis says.

“That’s the thing, though, Francis. We never have. It’s always been this one, ugly elephant in the room, and now that we’ve kicked it out the front door, there’s nothing left to be bitter about. Theoretically, as long as she’s a mother, our marriage is perfect.” Grant says.

“Hm. I see. Well, I can’t guarantee that the system will keep everything the same, now that you actually have what you wanted the most. What’s second on the list? Have you ever thought about it?” Francis asks.

“Not really.” Grant says.

“Seriously? You must have some ridiculous day dream from your childhood or something.” Francis says.

Grant smirks.

“Yeah, okay. There is one thing, but I can’t tell you. It’s so dumb. You’d laugh at me.”

“The beauty of it is, you don’t have to. The system knows. That’s something we could definitely take care of for you. Go ahead and plug in down the hall. I’m going to configure the equipment so we can give you a recording this time. No one will see it but you, and it’s yours to keep forever. I hate to say it, Grant, but this is the last time I can offer you our service free of charge. Especially since things worked out so great for you.” Francis says.

“I understand. Thanks.” Grant says.

As he walks in to the white room this time, Grant feels a little guilty that his unborn child and happy spouse that lie almost dormant in the back of his mind. He’s excited about the prospect of unlocking his imagination and escaping to paradise once more.

The pill goes down easy, and his ears and wrists are becoming attuned to the soft leather straps. He feels more comfortable than ever.

“Enjoy yourself, Grant.” The attendant says.

He smiles, and his racing heart only seems to accelerate the numbness that’s slowly sinking in to his body and mind.

He sighs in a state of exhilarated contentment, but no sound escapes. His mind is accepting, tolerant of the computer’s probes in to his cortex.

Reality melts away.

***

He opens his eyes to bright white lights, silhouettes of figures in some sort of amphitheatre, and an oversized blue display screen that appears to be very, very expensive.

“I’ll take Colonialism and Cultures for three hundred, Alex.” a female voice says.

Grant is contestant number two on Jeopardy.

Trebek’s voice is slightly more mealy in real life, and he appears much shorter, but he rattles off the question with the same amount of classic enthusiasm as it appears on the board.

“Donning elaborate costumes and face paint, American soldiers often visited these women in the Orient during the Korean and Vietnam wars.” Trebek says.

Grant looks to either side, but neither of his competitors are buzzing in.

I know this one.

He hits the buzzer, and Alex gives him an inquisitive look.

“Yes, Grant?”

“What is a geisha?” Grant says.

“A geisha is correct! Well done. Your next category, please?” Alex asks.

Grant chooses “Opera in the 80’s” and sweeps the game for fifteen thousand. He nails the daily double. Christina and the kids are smiling at him from the audience the entire time.

He tucks the kids in to their beds in the hotel after the show, but they’re insistent on staying in their father’s room this evening.

They sleep at the foot of the bed on a pallet of blankets and pillows. When he asks why, Christina tells him that’s what they’ve done since they were little.

***

He walks through the front door in a hurry. He starts to apologize for being late, but something is wrong.

His wife is sitting on the living room sofa with her face in one hand, and his nine millimeter from the closet gun safe in the other.

“H-Honey? What’s wrong? What’s the gun for?” Grant asks her, stepping to the couch cautiously.

This is it. This is the night she tries to kill me for not being good enough.

“No. No. We FIXED it….” Grant mumbles.

“Who are you talking to, asshole?” She says, rising to her feet. Her French manicured toenails are soaked with drops of blood. She’s wearing her black dress, but there are red smears on her thighs and her hair is a tangled mess of chaotic auburn weeds.

“I…I don’t know. Christina, what’s happened?” His eyes are frantic. He thinks he already knows the answer, but the pain in her eyes confirms it, guaranteed.

“I lost the baby. Less than a month after it starts growing in me. It’s because of you. You and your fucking WEAKNESS!” She screams, flipping their ottoman with an angry shove. She clicks the hammer and aims the gun at his face.

“Christina, please. We got pregnant. We can do it again. This is crazy. Please, don’t do this.” Grant says. Tears are streaming down his face, and yet he isn’t surprised at what she’s doing now.

In fact, he’s been waiting for it, ever since the first day when the medical professionals told them that it would be almost physically impossible for him to have children with her.

She fires the gun, but something disrupts her footing, and the glancing shot goes wild and hits him square in the shoulder. He feels like someone has slammed a sledgehammer in to his collarbone. His eyesight ignites with starbursts and rapidly undulating, multi-colored lines.

He sees black shadows around her legs, attempting to pull her down.

To protect his life.

He feels liquid warmth and pain current jolting through his right side. He hears another gunshot and the thud of Christina's body impacting the living room floor.

The small shadow caresses his forehead. This is the cold touch of love in a house that should be devoid of all hope.

He feels the hole in his shoulder closing, and before his eyesight drifts away, a familiar scene of a man in the mirror flickers alive on the living room television above him.

***

Christina’s funeral wake is a dreary event, packed with judgmental relatives and groping, menacing stares from members of her side of the family.

Grant’s mother handles most of the arrangements, and Grant sits in the front row when they play Amazing Grace. He thinks that he looks awfully like a robot, going through the motions, not too different from his now deceased wife’s bedroom demeanor.

He tests his friends and family and asks them if they can see anything out of the ordinary when his shadow children set up to the pew and rest on either side of him, their arms around his shoulders.

The funeral goers only reach out to shake his hand or hug him, ignoring the fact that their hands and faces are passing through congealed blackness in the middle of the funeral parlor.

Grant tells them to console his children. Think about the children, please. They're the real victims right now. Why are you ignoring them? Please, at least give them a hug.

He sees cliques of whispering people. Francis tells him to get a prescription and offers three more submersions on the house. He's the only soul present at the wake who shows Grant a hint of genuine compassion.

After the burial, he sits alone by the soda machine in the back of the funeral parlor, picking at his potato salad and an assorted mix of finger sandwiches.

They linger with him, and he is glad for their company.

Grant gets in to his car and leaves.

He spends the weekend watching his first moment on the DVD over and over again, when he first saw his children who will never exist with human faces. Francis asks him if he wants the Jeopardy disc. Grant tells him that he'll never watch Jeopardy again.

He pauses his son and daughter's faces, immortalized at the base of the stairs with two pairs of sea green eyes that make him feel like he's staring at his wife again.

They sleep at the foot of his bed. Just before he dozes off, he hears the laughter of children. Grant sleeps knowing that tomorrow, he can wake up and finally be good enough for someone.

The following morning before they disappear inside the bus, he makes them sack lunches.

She would have wanted that, after all.

Metapost: Welcome

2010-08-31T00:11:00.001-05:00

Greetings, old creepy pasta veterans and newcomers alike. It's been a long road here, but we finally arrived, did we not?

I should be posting another short story within the week, but to cut your teeth, check out my short story "Widow" in 69 Flavors of Paranoia's Menu #7. It feels mighty wonderful to publish a spider horror story on Friday the 13th, let me tell you.

"Club" will be appearing in the new Dark Recesses issue dated for later this month. Stay tuned for that. We're finally taking off here.

My novel, "Nethergame" is fifteen thousand words from completion, and features themes from all of the "Underground Sports" pastas (Felt, Cut, Draft) all wrapped up in to a pulpy trilogy of under-the-gun goodness. I'm very excited and hope to have it completed for you soon.

Kudos to chairmansteve for designing this groovy, beautiful, and morbid looking website, and to Who Was Phone, the mother of creepypasta.com, who was giving me an outlet to get my fiction out in to the world before I was able to establish this blog.

I'd also like to direct you to The Josef K Stories. If you've never read his work, you're in for a treat. Many thanks to him for linking my new site. We are honored to represent him there. I highly reccomend "North" and "Shiva."

I'm off to try and enter diamond league in Starcraft 2 when I should be writing --- but hey, you have to take a break every now and then.

Have a good night, and may the muses bless you with creativity.

-VH

Suicide Solution

2010-08-08T19:31:00.005-05:00

You're thinking about it again. I wouldn't be here if you weren't. When you drift to thoughts of suicide at night, you provide a gateway for me to rise to the surface.

I've seen many who are obsessed, and when you're not thinking about ending your life, I get to visit their minds. However, you are truly one fascinating creature. No one knows it but me. You entertain some insanely beautiful thoughts for a few moments during the day. At midnight, your insomniac streak kicks in, and then you're stuck on long thought tangents of when, how, and where you'd like to take your own life. Most people go for easy, painless deaths, but you're different.

You've had some original concoctions, let me tell you. You moved past knives, sharp objects, firearms, and medication relatively quickly. You thought about plastering your brains against the basement wall downstairs with a twelve gauge once or twice. I recall flashes of deliberate cyanide poisoning and overdoses of painkillers.

Your favorite, though, is a free fall over that cliff to the north of town. You think about your body breaking in one terrible second on the jutting spires of rocks in the sea foam. You wonder if you would perish upon impact, or if you would bounce and sink in to the salt bath. You like the thought of open wounds, of impaling yourself and instantly filling your body with the swell of the ocean. You want to be tossed about in the waves, crashed against the rock wall like a ping pong ball until you finally expire.

These are the opportunities I relish and look forward to.

You're half aware of who I am at night when you lay there in quiet desperation. Your smile at work, around your dog and spouse, at the line in Subway for your five dollar footlong at lunch time ---- it's a hideously perfect facade. I have to commend you on building up the image of a normal American citizen. Your guise is nearly as strong as my own.

Back in the day, you thought about it every now and then, but lately, it's been an exquisite constant. The more you consider offing yourself, the more you invite me along for the ride. I took your mental hand from the first step down the road of dark thoughts, of wiping your own existence off the face of the earth. The first time you seriously considered it, I was born.

I remember it perfectly. It was the time when you were seven, and you tripped in the garage and knocked your father's Harley Davidson crashing to the cement floor. He'd been hitting his Sunday afternoon portion of Wild Turkey surprise after you'd come in from church, waiting on your mother to cook. He was furious with you and gave you a nice big wallop that you told your teacher was a bruise from a rogue baseball pitch. He wiped out a paycheck to pay for the damage and you went without lunch money for a month.

You've never played baseball in your life, you sneaky chameleon. I know better.

Don't ask me what I am. I'm not quite sure. Maybe I'm just a voice that people hear in their heads. Perhaps you are mentally ill, and I am you, but also not you. The most interesting notion is that I am some dark force and malevolent spirit, but I'm not prone to flattery. I am a force, a desire ---- a means to a permanent end. Nothing more.

You've never had the balls to go through with it, and I don't think you ever will. Be honest. You've always dubbed it "the easy way out," or you would have tried it out by now. The truth is, you don't have the gumption, and most other people don't either. You say it's a cowardly gesture, a cop out from the hardships of real life ---- but that's your excuse.

At one time or another, we all hit what we think is rock bottom. Some of us take a step back from the edge after seeing how steep the drop is, and we're ashamed for even considering a fatal leap. In this case, we are normal.

Some of us open a figurative parachute in mid air and realize how close we really are to death, and it changes our lives completely, mostly for the better. These people are the wrist-slashers and the failures who aren't even good enough to off themselves, and they fail miserably at everything they do. Believe it or not, they end up as stronger people than most after the ordeal ---- if they survive it.

Some of us hit terminal velocity when we go over the edge, and we splatter with collateral impact on the ground, destroying not only our own lives, but the lives of fellow loved ones and friends in the process. These people care for nothing in life but themselves. As soon as they hate the person they have become, they have nothing left. Their lives combust in one violent moment and their suicide impacts the world around them.

But you're none of those, are you? Mostly, you're a slug who avoids confrontation, but at least you're creative.

Sometimes, I get a pleasant surprise, and I get the chance to spring up during random times of the day ---- like when your boss calls you in to her office for an hour of adultery. Considering how much weight she's gained, I can't say I blame you for NOT wanting to have sex at work, but you're stuck with the pay raise at a job you can never leave. You can't back out on your little arrangement because you don't want her to leave a quick but oh-so-tantalizing voicemail for your wife, loaded with all the juicy details of your nine month fling, I have a feeling your significant other won't appreciate her new Lexus as much as she did when you pulled it up in the driveway, fresh off a Monday to Friday fuck spree. She still thinks you got promoted, because you're a clever manipulator of smoke and mirrors.

I won't tell anyone what a despicable person you are. You're standing there every day from three to four, thrusting in to that squealing porker on a groaning desk, wanting to send a nine millimeter slug straight through your temple the entire time.

This is where we digress. I don't see how you can endure it. When your neighbor sneaks in to your back yard at night and jerks off to your daughter through her bedroom window, you're too lazy to do anything about it because he's two hundred and seventy pounds and you're just a slimcake coward. You're too afraid to confront a potential sex offender in your neighborhood, but not because you don't care about your teenager. You really are just that lazy. It's astonishing.

The truth is, none of this is new information to you. You hear the same voice, the same thoughts, every single night. I'm always lingering in the grey area, waiting for you to make a move, but you don't. You're like a month old pickle that's hardened and stuck to the glass window of a diner. Instead of slowly sliding down to the floor, however, you just cling to the glass and let the sun shrivel you up in to an inedible scrap of decay.

This is the one new thought you'll have all night. In fact, it's the first new thing in this vicious circle that's been circulating through your head for a decade.

I'm tired of all the creative rigs you've set up in your mind. You construct these delusions of suicide grandeur, meticulously crafted and thought out to the point of perfection, and then you just wake up and put on your ruse to the rest of the world the next morning. You throw these great inventions in your head out the window, and I can never save them, because I have no control.

Patience is my greatest of attributes. I've watched and waited, and a week ago, I found out that I was wrong about my role as a spectator in this mess that you call your life. I've gained some measure of power over your mind. I haven't used it when you're awake, or you would notice.

I'm not a helpless observer anymore. When you drove your car to the edge of that cliff last night, you got me incredibly excited. I thought the moment had finally arrived. We were both ready, but then you lied to yourself again.

You backed down for the thousandth time. You're a suicide prude. Always holding back. Giving me self-destructive blue balls.

Tomorrow, your body will be mine. I've had the most perfect set of watercolors to paint the portrait of our death, but never the physical canvas with which to do it.

I'm going to take over while you're fucking your boss. I have a few things to say to her. Something tells me that you won't fight it. You'll drift away and let me take care of everything.

You have way, way too many problems.

Suicide is your ultimate solution for all of them.

Necropotence

2010-08-07T19:04:00.003-05:00

This journal was found in the attic of a fully furnished and abandoned town house in 2007 next to the last purported owner's death certificate.

I.

My life is so perfect that it scares me. I see smiling faces from my wife and coworkers, my boss tells me that I'm doing a fine job, and the pastor pulls me up in front of the choir to set an example for the congregation.

They know nothing of my desire. If my priest knew what I was meddling in, he would condemn me to the fires of hell.

When my life was difficult, I felt more alive. Each day when I open my eyes as a successful family man, I feel as though I've slipped one rung further on a downward spiral of age, wrinkles, and systematic failure of my body as it repeats a daily crucible of perfection that most would envy.

I know some are jealous of my life when they see me on the street, and yet I would trade life, limb, and soul to live in their shoes for one day.

I crave INTENSITY.

The easy life is mind numbing.

II.

Routine, routine, routine. Every day is exactly the same as the one before it. There are a few minor details that I barely have a measure of control over. I can order a ham and swiss instead of a turkey and pepper jack for lunch, and I can scratch my dog's left ear before his right. Coors Light, Michelob Ultra, Budweiser Select, Sam Adams Summer Ale. It doesn't matter if I fuck my wife from behind, if I finish up on her glasses, or if she swallows.

Drunk is drunk. Pussy is pussy.

Everything is always the same. Soon, I'm going to try it.

I've waited long enough.

III.

This is the last week I'm going to keep myself locked in this prison of endless repetition. I have all my affairs in order. I've written a note to my family and provided for everything and everyone.

In case I get senile, this is a typical morning in my life on a normal day.

I wake up at five thirty on the dot because my bones have internal timers in them, and my hip catches on fire at around five thirty four. I take a swig of mouthwash on my way to the toilet to save time, and I spend a three minute stretch swishing Listerine through my mouth and managing to squeeze out inconsistent bursts of urine. I've had to prop my hand against the wall since I was fifty. Standing straight up to piss is beyond me these days.

My third young trophy wife Margerie can only make decent eggs over easy, and sunny side up is out of the question unless we go out. The bacon is microwaved for two minutes and thirty seconds because although her rack is perfect, she can't cook to save her life. She spends every morning breakfast session explaining to me that my children from previous marriages are ungrateful and deserve to be cut out of my last will and testament. This all comes while I'm chewing spongy bacon and drinking cofee that tastes like engine oil.

By seven thirty, after I've shit, showered, and shaved, I'm in my boring Saab, puttering twenty minutes to work on economy cruise control. This twenty minute window is the highlight of my day. There's no traffic, the morning show I listen to is sometimes funny, and I take my first valium as soon as my rear tires hit Nutwood Street.

For the record, my life was once gritty and unpolished, but also glamorous in a way that it was poetic. I miss being piss poor, living paycheck to paycheck, and not knowing what the next day would hold in store. I miss my first marriage, when everything was new, including some positions that I can't do anymore because my fake hip would crucify me with pain for trying. I miss my 1970 Oldsmobile 442 that got six miles to the gallon. It was a one fifty five big block with a superstroke and a twelve second ignition top out. You felt like you were going to die if you lost even a smidgeon of control on a country road.

I was young then. It all comes back to age.

Old people all go out the same way. Heart attack, stroke, brain aneurism, cancer.

I want to be different.

It's still sitting on my mantlepiece, but it doesn't have to beg me anymore.

I'll soon be determined to take it down and use it of my own free will.

IV.

I did it. I've been carrying it in my jacket pocket. I can feel how cold it is through my shirt.

In case I lose my mind, let me describe a normal work day, more for myself than for you. I am the second in command under a tyrannical office crone by the name of Jana. She runs a tight ship and she's only been in the business for five years. She inherited the company from her father ---- my old business partner. Soon, she had the support of everyone else, and I became the sideshow with some measure of plastic authority. She still wields the iron rod.

I usually sneak a second valium in for the morning meetings, and I smile and nod more than anything else. I make Jana feel like her ideas are good, like the employeees actually care about what she has to say. When we break for lunch, I use my hour to go to one of five places.

I can't go anywhere the costs more than eight bucks. I made one hundred and sixty two thousand dollars last year, but Margerie doesn't put out for me if I eat expensive food without her. She IS a trophy wife, after all. My choices are always limited to the Taco Bell Pizza Hut two in one, Wendy's, McDonald's, or the China Spring. The best deli in town is open before three, three blocks down, and I get to eat there once a week when our meetings cut short. They always have to put the meat back out because I stroll in at two fifty eight, and they glare at me with the utmost loathing. There's no telling how many pastrami and loogie sandwiches I've had, courtesy of Jana's rambling motor mouth.

When I get back from lunch, Jana is always gone, and I spend three hours walking around the office and telling my employees how good they are at their jobs. The truth is, some of them really ARE good, and they know they deserve a raise. I have to tell them that I need more out of them because Jana is too much of a tightwad bitch to pay them higher salaries. She saves the extra cash for botox and the newest Corvette every year.

No matter how good my day at work is, it ends in absolute frustration. I live eighteen miles from my office in the city, but in five thirty traffic, it takes me ninety minutes to get in to my driveway.

The best day at work I ever had was the last day for one of our interns, Sally. It was about ten years ago, but I still remember when she unzipped my fly, pulled out my cock, snorted a line of cocaine off of it, and then drained me dry.

It took me two hours to get home because of a jack knifed tractor trailer that day. Work always ends on a bad note, even when Sally is there for your afternoon delight.

I hope my wife doesn't find this diary if something goes wrong. I never cheated to hurt her. I just like to feel intense. This fucking crazy thing is so cold in my pocket now that I have a red spot on my chest from where my skin is chafing against my shirt. I think I'll sleep with it under my pillow tonight.

I've had enough of normal.

When I wake up tomorrow, I'm opening it.

V.

For such a long time, it was a smooth, hard stone, not unlike something you'd pick up out of a creek and throw through Jana's front windshield. It's been that way since I was ten.

When I was young, this town wasn't much more than a church, a gas station, and a diner. I rode my Schwinn to service on a normal Sunday morning.

He wandered in after the offering prayer, and I know most of the Methodists thought he was a homeless vagrant, sliding from town to town with three handles of whiskey inbetween. He wasn't.

He pulled me aside behind the cemetery graveyard in broad daylight before I went home because my folks weren't at the service that day. Everyone talked and gossiped and I got plenty of warnings about talking to strangers afterward, but he was different than anyone I'd ever met. He didn't have much to say, and he had to be at least a hundred years old, but one thing sticks in my mind, seventy one years later.

"You've got the blood to use it, boy. I have none left. It's someone else's turn." he said with dry, cracked lips.

I wasn't interested in his gift at first. Here's an old man waving a rock in front of me and gibbering on about some lost art called "necromancy." I told him I wasn't interested in any work that was not of the good Lord's. I was brainwashed.

To persuade me to take the rock, he used it on my bike. As of right now, you're the third person to know about this.

I watched a clumsy, rusty contraption that had been handed down from poor kid to junk yard to dirt poor kid transform before my eyes. The stone glowed almost digital green, like the display you'd get on a high tech wilderness watch or something.

The problem is, back then, digital didn't exist. Neither did color television.

I watched rust melt away in liquid red flakes, and dents faded like the metal was made of silk. In a few seconds, my bike was brand new.

"I'll be dead soon, boy. Use it on something that breathes." he said. He looked to be in such ill health that I was scared by the prospect of his death. He dropped the stone in my pocket, and I fled.

Back then, I thought honesty was the best policy. I told my parents an old man fixed up my bike for free in the graveyard with a rock. They kept me locked in the house for the next three months and told me it's not nice to lie. I never told them about the stone. I kept it hidden in a safe place. It stayed in the back of my mind, but I ignored it for a long time.

When I was fifteen, my dog Becky got caught in the wheels of the neighboring farm's tractor because she liked to chase things. It was an accident, but she lost an eye, broke both her back legs, and she was on her way out. It was horrible.

Of course, my father wanted to spare me the pain and grief with a blast of buckshot. Everyone told me it was the easiest way --- that Becky would die an agonizing, slow death if my father didn't end her life now.

An hour before he got home from work to put an end to it, I took the stone and wrapped Becky in a blanket. I still remember her crying from the shifts in weight as I carried her broken body to the graveyard. Every footstep was painful to her.

It took me six hours to figure out how the thing worked. I had to cut myself and give it some blood. As soon as my blood touched the surface, it opened up and became soft, like a fleshy sponge opening its mouth. The more droplets I gave it, the more it glowed, and the more frozen it became in my hand. My skin was numb with the cold --- I couldn't even feel my pocket knife.

I know I didn't do it the way he did, because I ended up with a puppy with both eyes, but two broken legs.I couldn't bring Becky back to my family as a pup without them asking questions, so I gave her to a gypsy trying to hitch out by main street.

My father tanned the living shit out of my backside when I got home, but luckily, he was the type of man who would beat you and stop asking questions afterward. He considered the matter finished, and I was grateful for that.

After feeding my blood to the stone, I felt a few years older, and my body showed the signs of it. I shot up to six foot three, got hairier, and started looking at girls more often. I can never say for sure, but I think giving that time back to Becky cost me most of my adolescent years. I went through high school as a twenty year old pretending to be a teenager. My birth certificate said otherwise, but for all intensive purposes, I was older than everyone around me.

I'm not asking for sympathy. I just want to pull you in to the sad affair that has become my life. My past is interesting. The present? Not so much. If I don't explain all of this, then you'll think I'm a horrible person for what I'm about to do. The future holds the most potential of the three.

Maybe these words can put you on my side. The only explanation I owe the world is "why."

I don't want sympathy or forgiveness; I only want you to understand.

VI.

I always had an inkling that my own blood wouldn't work if the target of the stone was myself. It's much worse than I imagined.

Here's the last part of my daily routine. I know you have no interest in it, and that by now you've certainly heard enough of my babbling about how terrible normal can really be. I need this from you, and you can skip ahead to the end of the grimoire if you'd like, but it will help me to write it down. I feel so old that I can't keep it straight in my head anymore.

When I pull in to the driveway on Nutwood Street, Margerie meets me when I open the garage. She tells me whatever concoction she's left in the oven for me. It's a game of mundane surprises. Tonight it's meatloaf.

Before I can open the door in the garage that leads to the kitchen hallway, I have to shell out some cash for my darling wife. She's most fond of Ulysses S. Grant and Bejamin Franklin, but today, Roosevelt will have to suit her.

To this day, I truly have no idea where my wife takes that money, or what she does with it. I've never asked, and I never will. This is possibly why I'm in my third marriage, but the intensity in life that I crave does not come from prenuptial feuds and accusations of infidelity. She shows me the movie tickets and provides better reviews than Ebert and Roeper. I've grown quite fond of her cinema rants.

After I pay my wife and she leaves, I spend a brief moment of time at the dinner table. Usually, I attempt to eat the food as quickly as possible, and I rarely finish half of it. Mostly, I'm looking forward to the after dinner valium and a glass of wine.

When I finish dinner, I watch recorded episodes of Jeopardy on the DVR with my new mutt, Sasha. I have her trained to bark in time with the bells when someone hits the Daily Double. Usually by Final Jeopardy, I've fallen asleep, but sometimes I keep my eyes open long enough for the Skinemax porno. More often than not, I fall asleep with my cock in my hand, and Margerie wakes me up to escort me upstairs for a goodnight romp.

You think these nights of the routine don't sound so bad, but after so many years, it gets vicious. You can substitute Margerie for my first or second wife, change the house, and put new cars in the driveway, but the routine will never, ever change without something drastic to pour in to the mix.

Tonight, after forcing half of her dry meatloaf down my throat with a generous helping of Heinz 57, I opt to place the rest of the scraps on the kitchen floor for the dog before I lock the house. I grab this grimoire of my darkest confessions, and then I get in to my Saab and start the engine. I rarely see the dashboard lights and I've driven the Saab after the sun goes down less than a dozen times.

Driving on the open road with a dying sun rehabilitates my sense of danger and excitement. Not a single human soul knows where I am right now.

My first destination is the vast library at my country club. I haven't used my membership in three years. My second destination is a back alley by the corner of Norfolk and Phelps Avenue, where the railroad tracks intersect the city between the haves and the have nots. There, I will surely find a soul in desperate need of my resources.

I've read enough, researched enough, and toyed with this stone enough. I should have known you can't drain yourself to make yourself younger. It's like moving money from your checking to your savings and saying that you have more money, when really, nothing changes. Eventually, if you do it enough times, the bank will get pissed off at you.

It won't go from soft to hard again. It's sitting here in my pocket, gaping wide open, expecting what it knows it's eventually going to get.

I need someone else's blood to make the magic truly potent.

VII.

She looked vulnerable enough. I never would have imagined that she was packing a Smith and Wesson.

The struggle was brief, but exciting. I didn't open with a ruse or story. I told her that she looked hungry and down on her luck, and that I would like her to accompany me to dinner at the Cajun Kitchen, a short distance away.

She ordered a shrimp po-boy with red beans and rice and devoured it with an intensity that I truly envied. I've never suffered the pains of true hunger. I paid the tab and we left to walk a few blocks back to her alley.

She pulled the revolver from her torn coat around the same time that I shanked her with the dinner knife I swiped from the back of the restaurant. I waited until the train passed through at nine, and thank the heavens I did, for someone surely would have heard the gunshot otherwise.

Her eyes bugged out around the same time that her finger depressed the trigger, but the shock of being run through with a butcher knife overpowered her sense of depth, timing, and perception. She didn't have time to aim the weapon and shot herself in the stomach. She made it easy for me.

I tried scooping her blood out with the stone, but that wasn't enough. I used mason jars to store it in my trunk. When I got home, I went straight to the attic to give it what it needed all at once. Margerie wasn't back yet.

I was able to retrieve large sections of the Munich Manual of Demonic Magic, despite the odd stares of the librarian hussy and her ill repute towards my interest in the subject.

I learned about the power of circles and the danger of using the stone without standing in the middle of one. I learned about fire and ash and the requirement of sacrifice to complete any true necromantic ritual. My sacrifice tonight was the neighbor's cat ---- or its organs, if you want to be specific.

Kiss my routine goodbye. Nothing will ever be the same again. Do you know how it feels to stand side by side with the spirits of eternity?

With each new drop, I saw the lives the stone had consumed. I could only guess which ones were victims of the old man who possessed the artifact before me, or how far back the lineage of sacrifice went. My homeless vagrant was last, and her stomach still had a gaping hole in it. She gnashed her teeth and tried to lash at me like a demon, but the barrier of the circle impeded me from harm.

If I'm going to be alive forever, I need some form of companion, and Margerie won't cut it. She's a terrible cook. God, just the thought of eating her eggs for eternity makes me want to find a random sewer rat on the street and give it a brand new lease on life at the cost of my own. I used the blood of the homeless woman to rejuvenate my dog. Sasha growled at first, but once she was in the circle with me and the stone took its hold over her, she seemed to enjoy it.

Even animals aren't beyond the lure of eternal youth.

I still don't know whose soul I will use to make me youthful again. A few names come to mind ----- it's choosing one of them and not the others that really challenges me.

The ritual ran in to the early hours of the morning, and Margerie was wary of my secrecy in the attic. How many owners has this thing had?

I doubt I will ever know the answer to that.

VIII.

Sasha has been bouncing off the walls when I get home and she paws at the locked bedroom door when Margerie and I have sex. She hasn't done that in five years.

The term I've coined for the accuracy and power of these rituals is "necropotence." The sacrifice, the environment, the time of night ---- these are all factors that determine the extent of your success.

These small details could be the difference between your body evolving in to an eternal medium for the dead, or shaving decades of wear and tear off of your lifeline. The line I walk is so very thin. I'm lucky I didn't unleash something by mistake when I was younger. Sasha turned out halfway good, and halfway possessed, but at least she's not human. If she becomes dangerous, so be it.

All spirits serve me now.

I've realized that this power makes me greedy, and I'm ashamed to say that it feels wonderful. I won't relinquish this for anything.

I don't seek revenge on them for letting me lock myself in to a lifetime of mediocrity. Instead, I will use their lives as an apology. They will become part of something greater. They don't realize who they have become or how miserable they make the rest of the world around them, but I do.

I have a duty to find a meaningful purpose for them.

I have seen the dead face to face, restrained from consuming my soul by nothing more than a line of chalk on the hardwood floor. Their rotting smiles form insidious and leering grins at me when I funnel the blood of my subjects through the stone.

I call them subjects and not victims because they become a part of the kingdom of the dead when they pass in to my prized artifact. This is above and beyond anything they could have hoped to achieve on this plane, because I have chosen them by the very classification that their lives are pathetic.

As of right now, I am no longer a man of the routine, but a necromancer.

IX.

Sasha and I didn't have to sleep last night. We went for a walk.

She helped me chase down another vagrant across the railroad tracks. Something tells me that it's not exactly Sasha inside anymore. Whatever's behind those amber eyes is in this with me for the long run. She's better for it.

I concocted an impromptu ritual in the woods and used most of the old bum's blood. Right before the sun came up, I fed the last of what I'd gathered to the stone. I was back in time to take my morning piss at five thirty five, and guess what?

I can piss standing up now, and I flushed my valiums. Soon, I'll be on my way to work.

X.

I made my own eggs and bacon and I told Margerie that she's never been good at it. I also told her I was donating my entire estate to the local funeral home and cemetery. I found it fitting. The owner and I run in close circles.

When I got to work, I quit on the spot and told Jana I hated her more than I hated her old man. I spent time writing checks to various people around the office who have never received a Christmas bonus, but earn more for the company than Jana does herself. People told me I looked good ---- ten years younger, even.

I waited in the parking lot until she left and I followed her to her condo on the other side of town. I wasn't surprised to see her whip out a bottle of Early Times as soon as she hit her living room.

Jana won't have a drinking problem anymore, and if I were to approximate the years she gave me, I'd put myself right around thirty years old.

When I got home, I told Margerie that I dyed my hair and I've been exercising. She's threatened by my new outfit I have going here, but she also can't resist the urge to fuck me.

I waited until she was riding me reverse cowgirl, and I thought myself a warrior poet as I slid the knife inbetween her third and fourth ribs. The sheets did a marvelous job of soaking up all the blood. I was able to wring them out in to the circle.

I should bleed more people out in bed. I feel like a teenager again.

XI.

Those were all my changes. Maybe you're sitting in my attic and you're the first person to come across this monumental discovery. I can't give you any more of the names on my list or reveal my plans for the future. You understand, I'm sure. Although I have the forces of the underworld on my side, I can't have anyone meddling in my affairs.

If you're the detective type and you have some great sense of right and wrong, I can imagine you'll probably be on your way out the front door of my empty house to contact the authorities.

Maybe you are the authorities. My place has been condemned for so long that society has been forced to notice. In that case, good luck. You've never seen my old face, much less the face of my youth. Will you take this dirty journal to a precinct and place it in a folder where it will grow cold over the next twenty years until the statute of limitations expires?

Or, perhaps there's a chance that you'll change your routine.

Look around. I've left the stone in the basket of my old Schwinn in the corner of the attic. To have any chance of chasing me, you're going to have to reject mortality.

Will your magic be potent enough to find me? How much are you willing to bleed?

Will you bleed for justice, or become one with the dead like me?

Do your research. Without enough necropotence, you'll be nothing when you finally face me.

Second Sight

2010-08-07T19:02:00.002-05:00

Monday, August 3rd, 2009

Times are hard, and I work in a business that is slowly becoming obsolete. People are steering away from glasses and contact lenses to Lasik surgery and more permanent, feasible choices in the field of eye care. I’ve never been the type to collect my thoughts and put them down, and yet these have been the toughest months to endure as of late. My wife left me, along with alimony and a good chunk of everything I’ve struggled to build since I was in my early twenties. I don’t know if I’ll make my mortgage payment on time for the third month in a row. This hole is going to be impossible to climb out of.

Thursday, August 6th, 2009

Got a phone call from corporate and had to terminate the positions of two employees. Stan has been here for seventeen years. He was a good eye doctor. I have a strong suspicion that more permanent layoffs are on the way. I had to go to a dealership and downgrade my vehicle, but the sales tax almost cleaned out my bank account.

Friday, August 7th, 2009

I was helping Stan take his things out of the office today and a new vendor approached me. He works for some company called “New Vision,” and their prices are better than every other type of lenses we carry. They don’t do glasses or frames. Only contacts. He gave a pretty convincing argument, so I filled my own prescription with their lenses and I’m going to put them in tomorrow morning and try them out.

I asked around and no other offices are carrying these guys, so I asked the vendor for the name of the doctors who invented the lenses themselves. The patent belongs to a "Dr. Ashcombe," and I've never heard of him.

This may be the small boost we need to stay open. I hope so.

Saturday, August 8th, 2009

I called New Vision and told them my office was on board. I should have talked to our regional division manager of healthcare before cutting the deal, but he treats me like garbage and routinely tells me that my office is in last place in every category but customer service. He says customer service doesn’t make money if you sacrifice profits. He’s not a doctor.

These lenses feel more natural and it seems like the material adapts to light better than any other brand that I’ve seen in my twenty plus years as an optometrist. I’m going to keep using them myself. I mowed my lawn today, and I swear I could see every blade of grass. Maybe our patients will drop some greenbacks to try these out.

Monday, August 10th, 2009

I prescribed my first pair of New Vision lenses to a patient today. He’s a six year old boy who was blind as bat before we fitted his eyes. His mother was concerned that six is too young for contacts, but after she saw him looking around and nailing the entire test on the wall, letter for letter and number for number, I convinced her to try them out. If I can get a pair of these out every day, there may be some light at the end of the tunnel. I’ve stopped taking mine out at night because they don’t bother me like normal lenses do in the morning. I feel like I could leave them in forever.

There was one thing that bothered me slightly about these new lenses. The boy read the very last line at the bottom of the chart, but then he started reciting something else --- it sounded like some sort of guttural, foreign language from Eastern Europe or something. I didn’t say anything and his mom was too excited about his twenty-twenty vision to notice, so I just let it go.

I’ll forgot about it soon enough. We’re going to make a lot of profits with these.

Wednesday, August 12th, 2009

I’ve prescribed them to thirty eight patients and it seems that word of mouth is sending more people my way. People are dropping HydraSoft and Toric left and right. The vendor from the company came by today and put a great ad in my office window. “See things in a new light. Fit some New Vision lenses today!” They also guarantee that you’ll read at least a line below where you normally would on the wall with any other vendor. They won’t tell me what the lenses are made of, but as good as they feel, I’m not hesitating to give my patients the best choice. The regional manager called again and congratulated me on turning business around. He’ll probably take credit for it at the board meeting. What an ass.

Tuesday, August 18th, 2009

I traded in and got a Mercedes, and I offered Stan his job back. I told him he’d have to convince people to go with New Vision when pitching patients because with the healthcare reform bill on the way, this product is our only trump card. Without it, people will go somewhere else. I’m going to install a plasma TV on the wall in the reception area so people can watch football while they wait on their appointment. People love football. Whatever it takes to get people in the door.

Friday, August 21st, 2009

Stan tried them out and he’s fifty five. He’s reading better than he was in his thirties, or so he says. We went to lunch today and he drives faster than usual; maybe it’s because he can see the road better. He didn’t read below the bottom line on the chart, so I’m thinking maybe I was just tired that day.

Saturday, August 22nd, 2009

I’m a little rattled. I called New Vision today to order more product and to fill some prescriptions with some pending patients, but no one would pick up. I thought the line had been disconnected, so I called the vendor’s personal cell and heard some sort of odd sound. It was this weird, random popping buzz sound, but I know the line was active because it was live on my desk phone’s display. Maybe their phones are down or there’s a power outage. I’m not sure. I’ll call them on a regular business day.

I need about a thousand pairs of lenses. They’d better not interfere with my business after pushing me so hard to sell their brand.

Sunday, August 23rd, 2009

I feel strange. I tried to go to mass with my mother today. I try to go to church with her at least once a month. I walked through the front doors of the chapel, and my vision started going blurry. The membranes around my eyes felt like they were going to burst open. I didn’t bring my glasses so I had to sit outside before we went to Sunday lunch. I think it was just a headache or a spasm or something. I’m not too worried about it.

Tuesday, August 25th, 2009

I’m frightened. Something wrong happened today. I fitted a 13-year-old girl for contacts, and while I was looking in to her dialated pupil, something appeared in the apparatus lens that hangs from the ceiling. It was a man's face, except his eyes were on fire, and he looked like he was getting closer and closer to my eye the longer that I stared in to the scope. I looked away before it got too big. I think I’ve been working too much and I may take a personal day. Stan is going to backfill my patients in to his schedule.

Wednesday, August 26th, 2009

I almost died today. I wish I would have. I went to the old house in New Haven that now belongs to my wife, thanks to the courts. On the way, I stopped at a McDonald’s, and the girl in the drive-thru window looked like she was going to kill me. Her eyes caught on fire and her teeth elongated, and her voice sounded like one of those mechanical larynx boxes they give to people who smoke their throats in to oblivion. My Big Mac was shaking in my hands and I spilled that special thousand island sauce on my khakis. I looked down to wipe it away, and when I looked up at the road, I couldn't see through my windshield. Every piece of transparent glass in my car went black. That's the only way I can explain it. I slammed on my brakes and everything happened so FAST. I felt a wave of heat, like my skin and hair were going to catch on fire, and then five seconds later I was just sitting there on the shoulder with a destroyed windshield and nothing else to show for it.

My wife asked me if I was doing drugs when I showed up at the door with no eyebrows. All I wanted was my pair of shiny black shoes from the closet. I shouldn’t ever have to go back again.

I saw her eyeing my car and my smashed windshield. I don’t really care anymore.

When she kicked me out the front door with three dress shirts and a twenty dollar bill a few months ago, she said I'd lost my mind.

I'm starting to believe her.

Wednesday, August 26th, 2009

It’s almost midnight and I tried to take my lenses out. They’re not THERE anymore. I reached in to pull them off my cornea with my finger, and I poked myself straight in the eyeball. I’ve heard of lenses with high amounts of protein buildup dissolving in to people’s eyes, but I’ve worn these for less than a month. How can I still see if they’re not in my eyes? For the first time in my life, I’m scared of something more than my ex-wife.

Thursday, August 27th, 2009

I checked the ledger today and business is out of the red and in the black. We’re officially making a profit on every patient now, but I’m having trouble focusing. I can see fine, but every now and then, my vision goes blurry and I see the winged thing coming at me from off in the distance. I tried going in to the broom closet and just keeping my eyes open in the dark. I still saw it in the distance, flying at me, head-on. It’s trying to get my eyes. I’m an optometrist. I NEED my eyes.

Friday, August 28th, 2009

Stan is dead, and so is the six year old boy. No one else has made the connection that the only thing they have in common is my office and New Vision. They found Stan about a mile from work, his car cornered with the shoulder of the road. His hair was burned off and he didn’t have any eyebrows. His eyes weren’t missing. They were burned and melted in to his eyesockets. I never got to ask him if he’d tried to take the lenses out. I have to call everyone and tell them to return their prescriptions and stick to HydraSoft. I tried to call the vendor guy from New Vision. The line was popping and snapping again. He started coming at me from the corner of the room, so I hung up and ran in to the dentist's office next door because there were people in there.

I got in my car, and his eyes stayed in my rearview mirror the whole way home.

This man and these visions --- they've ruined my life.

Monday, October 1st, 2009

Fourteen more patients are dead. I’d say that I would be looking at a lawsuit for my prescription records, but they haven’t found any traces of any company named New Vision or a brand of lenses by that name. The same thing happened to their eyes as mine --- nothing there but eyeball. I’ve closed my office (Dr. Mendez and Associates will be closed until further notice due to illness) until I can find out what’s happening. We’re about to be in the red again, but something tells me that I won’t be around much longer to worry about the fruition of my business and craft.

I was going to retire in the next five years anyway.

Tuesday, October 2nd, 2009

My eyes are not red. My eyes are not bloodshot. There’s this pink, fleshy, throbbing membrane of skin around my eyelids. It breathes and pulses when I stare off in the distance for long periods of time. The man starts to appear in the corners of the room and I see burning symbols on the walls everywhere. After a few hours, some of them become legible.

I sat on the edge of my bed and read them all night to see if I can make any sense of what's happening to me.

I haven’t slept in four days.

I can't write those words down here. The walls told me if I repeat them, I'll have to go see Stan.

I don't want to see Stan right now.

Wednesday, October 3rd, 2009

He woke me up this morning and gave me a bottle of pills. The burning words said I should go down to Doctor Margaret Lenore’s pediatric office in New Haven and tell her about this new drug. Helps kids with ADD and ADHD focus and get good grades. Supposedly works 400% better than Ritalin. She tried it on her hyperactive pomeranian and it works. Saw dollar signs in her eyes. I didn’t tell her that the bottle burned my hand and I had to wear gloves to give it to her. She didn't seem to notice.

The symbols in my office rearranged on the walls today and formed words. I’m afraid. This is the first time they've appeared anywhere but my bedroom.

I still don’t want to tell you what they said, because that makes this real, and this can’t be real.

None of this is real.

Friday, October 5th, 2009

I found the New Vision property. It’s deserted. Everywhere I go, things are on fire, but I can touch them and they’re not hot. The gas station attendant’s face melted and stretched out thirty feet to the floor when I gave her my card to pay for gas. The pink flesh is dark maroon now and it’s growing out from the sides of my head. I have the worst headache of my life, and I'm having dark thoughts about hurting people. I've never wanted to hurt someone in my entire life, but all I can seem to focus on is how good it would feel to kill my ex-wife.

I found something in the back room of this place.

The vendor guy is missing his head, and this entire office smells of ashes. The same, infernal message is sprawled in tangled, blazing handwriting on these walls.

Do you like what you see?

Saturday, October 6th, 2009

If I can go blind, he has to move on to someone else.

My life will be over soon unless I can keep reading the messages. I know I sound insane, but my bedroom and its walls have taken on the guise of a person. I can't do this much longer. He's sick, and evil, and I'm running out of paper.

He hates that I'm writing everything down. I know there's a way to end this without anyone else getting hurt. I'm running out of time.

Margaret won't figure it out. She's too greedy.

He gave me Stan back, to give me company. He's not the same old Stan. I don't like him very much.

I have to keep seeing these words on fire, or there's no way I can survive.

Saturday, October 6th, 2009

Just the thought that someone could put on the guise of a doctor and do the things he's done ---- it sickens my stomach.

Ashcombe was a destroyer, donning the white coat of a healer.

I've seen his life. I've seen the horrible moments, the bodies of lifeless children at his feet. I want to scratch my eyes out with this pencil, but that's the easy way out. Enough people have died already.

This second sight will torment me until I can find the way.

I have to stop him.

Sunday, October 7th, 2009

Lenore called me, but Dr. Ashcombe fired up on my wall and told me not to answer the phone. Usually he sends Stan, or some kid.

Her voicemail said that some of her kids are dead. They're standing in my bedroom with the good doctor, and they seem to bring him joy. They're still wearing their clinic bracelets.

He doesn't look much like a doctor. More like a burning man.

I will forever be his puppet, as long as I can see.

I know he's getting desperate. He's hiding something from me. It's a specific place. There's some location that he doesn't want anyone to know about, and when I find it, I will send him to hell where he belongs.

monday night can't sleep it's 3am

CALL ME A DIRTY SPICK DOCTOR AGAIN YOU OLD BASTARD I SWEAR TO GOD I'LL RIP YOUR GOD DAMN HEAD OFF AND HIS TOO

hard to write and keep an eye on Stan at the same time have to tell you what the walls said chasing me for telling you don't know how to get away

just need couple minutes to tell you so you can stop this

head is gonna explode can't make it you have to go to his office some road named roberta street not sure what state or zip code BURN HIS OFFICE DOWN

burn it down he's dead but that place gives him power to make these horrible things you have to BURN IT DOWN

oh god eyes burn HOT help

YES I LIKE WHAT I SEE I TOLD YOU ALREADY PLEASE STOP I TOLD I LIKE IT WHY ISN'T THAT ENOUGH STOP ASKING ME THAT FUCKING QUESTION STAN

stan, I've had enough of you stan

i've had enough i'll take care of you and then that child killer

burn it down

Install

2010-08-07T18:59:00.005-05:00

"Seventeen thirty-one Rural Hill Road. Job five alpha. Premium video on one, modem with twelve meg on two, high definition DVR on three. I added it to your handheld. Call me when your route is complete." Soll said.

It was easy for Byron's dispatcher to rattle off four hours of work like it was nothing. The job had been added to his route at three thirty. It was a one to four appointment. Undoubtedly, the customer had been scheduled for tomorrow, but they'd called in to raise hell until some poor schmuck got stuck with the overtime and another reason, for the third day in a row, that he couldn't get home in time to see Karen before she started her night shift. Byron closed his phone and approached the address.

Let Soll know if he needed anything? He needed to be home right now, enjoying his life, not working until the sun went down every single night because some customer service chronie didn't have the balls to say "No, you can keep your god damn appointment, thank you very much, and you'll like it. We'll install your shit tomorrow."

He flipped his transmission in to reverse only to find that his back-up alarm wasn't working. As he backed his van up the long, weed-ridden driveway, he flattened a post-it note against his steering wheel before securing his tool belt and stepping out of the van. He would see the post-it before he parked his van at the shop and went home for the evening. A reminder to tell the mechanics to get his alarm working so he didn't back over some little kid and get sued for one point five million. He'd seen it happen to another cable guy a few years back. Terrible fucking luck, that was.

Byron performed the cone-dance. Seven cones total. One sitting at your front bumper. One on your rear bumper. Two on your blind side, and three in front of the sliding door on your van. It was a necessary evil. They made him pick up the cones before he left as a method of reinforcing safety. If you had to walk all the way around your vehicle and pick up the damn cones, the odds of you seeing a dog or a kid under your truck were increased tenfold.

They'd do anything to keep you from running something over. It was damage control. Lawsuit prevention. Human resources called it "preemptive safety." Reason number two was that all traffic related accidents resulted in an on-the-spot drug test. Most techs failed and were fired the next day. Byron's theory for that one? Being a cable tech drove you to drinking, illegal drugs, and pills because it was one of the world's shittiest jobs.

He'd heard about this one guy who'd parked his van at his house on his lunch break, only to take off with his little girl playing hide and seek with the undercarriage. He found her mangled body under his truck around the same time that his three to five appointment called in bitching at the call center because he was late. He forgot the cone-dance. Terrible fucking luck, that was.

For being in a more prominent part of the city, the first thought that entered Byron's head as he crossed the lawn was how out of place the house looked. The cable drop was ratty and weather-worn where it fed in to the top of the attic. He'd have to replace it. Make that a five hour job, Soll. Thanks.

The shutters were a dark charcoal ---- a shade that would make most residents in this area cringe. Byron was surprised that the home-owners association hadn't ordered the place bulldozed to the ground by now. Except for rows of willow trees on either side of the property, the house was flanked by a seven bedroom, five bath on the left; on the right, a Mercedes, a Lexus, and a BMW sat in the driveway about a hundred and fifty yards down. Tiger Woods would probably find it acceptable to play golf on either of their front lawns. At this place, he probably couldn't even sink a tee in to the ground. It was a mixture of hardened sod, dead flora, and dandelions ---- accompanied by dog shit, which Byron narrowly evaded as he ascended the porch steps. He'd gotten skilled at judging the size of dogs by the piles of shit they left. This one was probably huge. Doberman, german shepherd, mastiff ---- one of the three, for sure.

He rapped on the front door as he slipped his booties on. His shoes were perfectly clean, but the boot-covers were another "preemptive technique" in this neighborhood. The moment he tracked a speck of dirt in to one of these houses was the moment one of these big wigs made a phone call to the CEO of his employer and sent him packing. Well, maybe not THIS customer ---- but any other in a five mile radius.

"HELLO? SHARPE TELECOMM. I'M HERE TO INSTALL YOUR CABLE. HELLO?" He knocked again.

He usually gave them five knocks before he went back to his truck for the door tag. 'Dear sir or madam, we regret to inform you that we arrived at your residence at -insert time here- today. Please call 1-800-SHARPE to reschedule your pending appointment with us for a day and timeframe when you can be home and available for our technician to install your services.'

On knock number five, he was out. Fuck this. He made good money doing what he did, particularly since he'd never been to any apprenticeships or electrician workshops, but that was because Byron had common sense. He was a hard worker. He didn't have time to sit around for people who would bitch out the cable company for an hour, but not be home as soon as they rolled him over here. He could be getting his back-up alarm fixed right now.

It was after knock five when Byron had turned to fetch his doortag. The door finally whined open. Byron cursed softly under his breath and turned to face the customer. The wood sounded like it was about to shatter from its protest. The girl in front of him seemed shy, certainly timid of strangers. She looked to be in her late teens, but he'd be damned if she didn't have an ID. Byron wasn't about to get stuck in a house with a minor, pulling cable, only to be accused of rape two weeks later. It happened to a guy on his team a few years ago. A six month trial and three months of suspended employment later, the guy received a verdict of not guilty. Terrible fucking luck, that was.

"Hello, ma'am. Is your mom or dad home?" He asked.

She said nothing, but rather, she reached forward and handed him twos slip of paper: A xerox copy of the account holder's driver's license, as well as a copy of her own (she WAS eighteen), and a check for one hundred seventy three dollars and fourteen cents. The big "Cee Oh Dee," as Soll put it. Byron shrugged. You never knew when they'd take you by surprise by being prepared. It was all well and good, as Byron hated trying to collect money from people. Maybe they desperately needed internet service to order new shingles from Home Depot since there was no car in the driveway. Byron chuckled.

"Thank you, ma'am. I'll have to reroute a new drop of cable out here before I come inside and hook up your lines and equipment. I'll be a couple hours out here." Byron said.

She stared at him for a long moment before the corners of her mouth upturned in to a thin smile. It was then that he noticed ---- her mouth was stitched shut. The threads were worn and half-coming apart at the edges, but he figured anyone could be desensitized if they walked around long enough looking like Raggidy Ann. He tried his best not to stare or hint that he was put off by it. Maybe she was smiling because he hadn't reacted the way most would. Did she have mouth cancer or something? Byron gave her a little nod, and then he was walking back to his van and performing the dog-shit shuffle again. He didn't even see a dog around outside. Where was it coming from?

It was fifty two degrees outside and the sun would start to drop in the next hour or so. It was the night-time work that really exhausted Byron. When your best source of light and warmth started to set, the job got vicious. He grabbed his thirty two footer and took it down to the end of the driveway at the pole.

After ninety minutes, Byron had the drop routed from the amplifier on the line, all the way up to the second story upstairs window. He had to drill an access hole for conduit to get a live signal inside the house. Sharpe Telecomm wouldn't let him drill a hole in the side of someone's house without requiring permission first. Byron walked back to the front door as the last rays of faint sunlight were lost among the sagging limbs of the willow trees to the west.

He knocked, and this time, the response was immediate. The door flew open and Byron found himself chest-to-chest with a massive monster of a man. His beard was flecked with a hint of this and a crumb of that, and he smelled terrible. Byron had been inside disgusting houses before. He knew this one guy who got fired awhile back who told him a horror story about an install at a lady's house. The lady had thirteen cats. When he reached back to swap her box, he got a palm full of feline fecal matter. Terrible fucking luck, that was.

Byron cross examined his license photo with the man in the doorframe. They looked similar, except the guy in the photo was much younger, and he didn't have a beard.

"Hello sir. Are you Mr. Weaver? I need your permission to drill outside here so that I can get your cable up and running ----"

"Reaver." The man said. His voice was reminiscent of thick burlap and crunching leaves.

"Excuse me, sir?" Byron asked.

"It's Reaver. And do I look like I give two shits about a half-inch hole? Hook everything up and leave soon if you know what's good for you." The man slammed the door shut in Byron's face. Bingo.

So that guy was the reason he was standing out here on this corroding wooden porch with the peeling paint. The temperature was dropping by the minute. Byron decided not to dwell on how much of an asshole his customer was, because he wasn't the first, and he wouldn't be the last. Only assholes would let their adult offspring walk around with stitches holding their trap shut.

Byron circled the corner of the house and turned on his Mag-Lite before he reached the top of his ladder. He tied off to the drop line so he couldn't fall. Workman's comp would be nice, but Byron had no desire to get hurt on the job, considering his penchant for illegal painkillers on the really bad days. The Hilti was an eighteen volt hammer drill, capable of cutting through concrete in a matter of moments with the right bit. After he finished his drilling, he poked the cable through the conduit and unstrapped his lanyard. He'd heard a story about this one guy who'd tied off his lanyard to a power line. A bolt of lightning hit the transformer, and the customer walked outside two hours later to find an extra crispy Sharpe technician and a free hammer drill. Terrible fucking luck, that was.

His cable hit something that wasn't supposed to be there.

He squatted on the rung of his ladder that was third from the top (any higher, and it was an OSHA violation), trying to peer in to the opening he'd drilled. The attic was padded with little to no insulation, and it was a wonder how the freaks stayed warm at night. There was a chilly drift of wind through the willows, and then the smell hit him.

Byron had categorized hundreds of houses by smell in his past five years as a cable tech. There were the smoke-filled houses with a dozen ashtrays. There were the houses with more animals than pieces of furniture. There were the houses with the stench of addiction and an air of pungent chemicals that made your sinuses flare up for three days after. None of those came close to this one. It was a smell that was familiar to him, and yet only because he'd smelled it before, in his childhood.

He'd never left his hometown before in his life, and maybe that was sad, but he knew that fucking smell. Byron stood up on his top rung and looked over the crest of willow trees, where the first hints of the moon were starting to tickle through. About a mile to the east, there was the riverbank. It was funny how you could completely forget a sound, taste, or smell until you experienced it again, twenty years later. It all came flooding back. The last time he'd thought about it, he'd probably been fifteen or sixteen. It was definitely funny how the human brain could work. Except the smell from that time wasn't funny at all.

He was seven, and it was hide-and-go-seek dodgeball ---- a hybrid mix of games that he and his brother had indoctrinated the other neighborhood kids in to playing because they were proud of their invention. "It" counted to fifty at home base, then set out to tag somebody in the back of the head before they reached home themselves with a soccer ball. Every person who got hit by the ball became an It, and those who made it safely would continue on to the next round. They were poor, but there were epic hide-and-go-seek dodgeball games between them in those days.

He'd gotten binoculars for his birthday a few weeks prior. He was laying on his stomach, looking across the playground field behind their apartment projects on the riverbank. An old run down Chevrolet in front of J213 was home base. His brother had tagged everyone out, and Byron was the last man standing. It was Byron against an army of Its at age seven, just before sundown and a dinner of Spaghettios and Nick at Nite when his ma called he and his brother in for the night. One last attempt to get to base. A showdown of sorts.

They'd circled around the back of the complex looking in one of his other favorite spots, and he'd made a break for it across the side of the waterfront in a dead sprint. He turned to crest it and hit the parking lot at the lip of the bank, but he never made it. He fell through a sink hole where the ground was soft at the head of the riverbank, and then there were bones and a rancid onslaught on his nasal passages. He'd fallen a good twenty feet in to a decaying, half-eaten animal corpse soup. Instinct and fear told him he was laying on his back in the middle of something's dinner plate. In the corner, he made out a small pair of yellow animal eyes, staring him down ---- but they were too low to the ground. It was a small thing, incapable of producing this pit of blood racked nightmares. He'd reached out to it, to see if it scampered away. It was too dark to see a way out. The smell of decaying remnants --- the scraps of the prey who fell victim to the hole ---- it was too strong. The foulness of it swept him away in to unconsciousness.

He'd known, back then, somehow, even though he was seven and riding the shortbus ---- that whatever had made that hole and left those bones wasn't a byproduct of Mother Nature. When he woke up a few hours later to find himself sealed off in the smell, his screams eventually brought the fire department. They broke out the jaws of life, and then he was free ---- but he never forgot the smell, or where it came from. He wondered about it for five minutes out of every day of his life. Something from his hometown that was beyond mundane shit like cable and stinking houses ---- it intrigued him, but also sent a shiver up his ass end. This wasn't any stinking house. It was the house of that smell.

The moon was shining across the silver metal of his drill bit as Byron bored the hole a little wider. Before his brother's forehead went for the big dance with a seven point six two NATO in Afghanistan a couple of years ago, he'd always told Byron to go back out to that sinkhole and figure out what the hell was going on down there. Not because he'd seen it ----- but because he'd seen the terror in Byron's eyes at the time, when they'd lifted him up in to fresh air, drenched in the blood of beasts. His brother lost his Spaghettios that night over the side of the top bunk. The smell was inescapable if you were within five feet of it.

He never got the chance to check it out because that housing project had been torn down to construct a new park, and they'd added a riverwalk down there for the tourists. This house was less than two miles from the spot, now that he thought of it. Parks, water, and tourists meant money, and so of course the nicer houses were on this side. Except this one. It had probably been around before then.

The ill omen in his conduit shouldn't have been there, but the smell was too strong and Byron couldn't bear to stare in for more than a few seconds before he started retching. It was yellow, wet, and shiny. Not so rounded. It was angular and sinister ---- Byron felt like he was staring down a panther in the middle of the suburbs. Someone was standing on the other side of the wall, watching him. For how long, now? He gagged and gaffed down the ladder as quickly as possible. The hard stuff was over with. Now it was hooking up the damn boxes and getting home to kiss his girlfriend before she left for work.

Byron strapped his ladder to the top of his van and loaded up the freakshow family's equipment before he made his way back up the overgrown walkway to knock on the door for the final time. He almost slipped on his heel and ate it as he sank his workboot in to a hefty pile of fresh dog spatter. He scraped the edge of his shoe on the top step and gave the door a good rapping. Something told him that a faint hint of dog shit wouldn't really affect the aroma inside this house. She opened the door. Her again, except she didn't seem so timid. It couldn't have been her, staring him down at the top of house ---- her eyes were a pale blue. He couldn't botch the install and leave because the old man was watching him work. That was a good quick way to get his ass landed in human resources for "customer sensitivity training."

He stepped inside and his feet sank a good few inches in to the welcome mat by the door. Black fluid eeked out from the sides of the absorbent bristles, caking the marred hardwood with a veneer of filth. The smell was pervasive and inescapable. Byron's eyes were already watering. When he got upstairs on his own, he was putting on the breathing mask. No way he could stand this. The girl stared, and she was trying to speak, but only thin hints of sound escaped the muffled stitchjob that held her mute and helpless to communicate. Tears streamed down her pale cheeks steadily. Byron squatted in front of their TV to hook up the digital box. He couldn't stand being so close to someone who was being abused, and yet he was a cable guy, and helpless to do anything but phone in a domestic "red flag" call. Law enforcement rarely took tip-offs from the cable company unless a tech found a drug lab.

It was one of those old televisions that looked more like an antique piece of furniture. The tube was probably bigger than Byron's head. Rednecks used them as a new stand when lightning struck their trailers two or three times during the summer. Most of them hadn't figured out that you could mount most modern devices to the wall yet.

She wouldn't stop, and she was getting slightly louder, but he knew she was trying to scream at him. It was like a cat at his bedroom door, mewling incessantly, except the sound had a sort of sadness to it. Byron fired up the box and it got an IP address. He moved to the computer --- running Windows 98. Of course.

He hooked the modem to plant and got it up and running within a few minutes, but a Microsoft Word file on the bottom toolbar piqued his curiosity, if only because of the name: 'ismellyou.doc.' He maximized it and started reading with the abrupt lisps of the threaded mouth finally coming to an end. She'd stopped trying to scream, and now she only perched behind him.

Been watching you install cable for a long time, boy. Never have been able to get your scent out of my head. Still have your binoculars. You left them in my father's old resting place when you were little. Want them back?

Byron dropped the third box and ran for the front door.

She was in stride with him, almost preemptively, as if she'd seen the same reaction before. Then he saw it. A pile of tools under the stairs ---- wrenches, shredded PVC pipe, other plumbing equipment ---- and a ragged, bloodstained pile of t-shirts. Stitchmouth rifled through them quickly, caking her pale forearms with the dried blood. She held them up, one by one, for Byron to read.

Hiller Plumbing. (Call a Smiley face truck today!)

Orkin. (Ask the Orkin Man.)

FDT. (We know home security.)

So Byron would become the Sharpe cable guy who was torn apart by the binocular thief. The girl was scribbling furiously on the old plumbing work order with a sharpie. He watched her write. His kneecaps felt like they were being pummeled by ballpeen hammers.

CAN'T LEAVE. HAD YOUR SCENT SINCE YOU WERE LITTLE. CIRCLING OUTSIDE, WAITING FOR YOU.

She was screaming again, but mostly, it sounded like his tea kettle with five pillows muffling the whistle. She wrote something down again and tucked the post-it note in his breast shirt pocket. Then, she was hauling ass.

She had the crawlspace hatch open as fast as he could get there. She was panicked, her eyes jerking from the front door to the opening under the staircase. He switched on his Mag-lite and maneuvered himself through the ripped out hole in the middle of the dryrotted floorboards. The last thing he saw before he dropped ten feet to soft earth and the smell of death was her pale blue eyes and a somber smile, marred by intrusions of black threads and the needle-bored holes of her forced operation. A princess being held captive, slowly transforming in to a witch in the captivity of the monster. Terrible fucking luck, that was.

He pulled the note out and read it before he started moving.

HE WILL KNOW. TEN MINUTES. REACH THE END AND EMERGE BY RIVERBANK.

He didn't have his breathing mask, and so he was forced to rely on the drywalled crust of his cupped palm fo filter the stench. Instead of decay, spilled blood, and stagnant mud, it was flakes of drywall and sawdust, breathing through his mouth. His teeth and gums were sodden and crunching, brittle with the dregs of drilled out walls within moments, and he coughed and sputtered. No roots or signs of life were overhead in the earth of tunnel. It was him, the glopping slosh of his boots in knee-deep clay, and the smell. Four minutes had passed. Byron grunted and surged forward, trudging harder. His steel-toed shoes were lumbering and clumsy, sinking him knee-deep with each step until his calves were on fire from lifting them out. Glop. Rise up. Glop. Trip face first and eat the filth. Rise up. Glop. Two minutes left.

Although his entire body was covered in it, the smell of the mud was diminishing. Overpowering it was the decay and union of the earth with corpses. Byron sank his boot down and hit something hard. A mangled human head. Part of the scalp was sheared off, revealing white skull bone beneath. The Home HVAC hat was crinkled and the brim was hanging by one thread, embedded in the slosh a few feet away. Byron vomited. One minute left.

Now he saw where the corridor terminated. He'd been there once before, when this tunnel victims didn't exist and the yellow-eyed fiend had been but a tiny thing, feeding off the small animals and rodents of Byron and his brother's old hide-and-go-seek-dodgeball grounds. Now it was mature. Smart. Manipulative. Holding a young girl hostage to keep its secret.

Byron tripped again and gritted his teeth. He was free of the mud at last, and now there was only a thin ray of moonlight rising like a spire through the middle of the deep sinkhole. To the hint of an opening, an escape. It was close ---- the stench of blood and innards emanating from the house-end of the tunnel was almost visible with its strength. There was a lithe and agile pattering of claws, and then the visage of Byron's childhood horror was no longer imaginary. For the longest time, its form was fictional in his mind's eye, gripping him with a fear of the intangible. Despite the trend in human beings to create their own fear in the presence of the unknown, the real thing in Byron's case was much, much worse.

There wasn't a moment of silence or trepidation in which the thing stood there and allowed Byron to take in what was hunting him. Its assault was instinctual and immediate, and yet the yellow eyes held a certain malignant deliberance. The young man's scent wafted across the air and through the senses of the shapeshifting razor fiend. Where the sharp knife teeth ended and gave way to black gum and gristled beard, chunks of bone and coagulated drippings were entangled. The leftovers of previous feedings.

Byron backed in to the wall in an instant moment as it pounced forward with lightning speed. Where his head had been before, there was now the crazed gnashing of the maw and a rapid swiping of cleft bone claws. Mud and earth were reaved in waves from the wall as it missed him by inches. He had no choice but to attempt to fight. He would pass out from the stink before he could run.

He reached in to his toolbelt and scanned the pockets by fingertip, trying to discern if there was anything he could protect himself with. He pulled out his needlenose pliers and held them clenched tightly against his palm, waiting for the next pass. The tip of the tool had broken Byron's own skin, and yet he didn't even notice. He was staring at the pair of Zeiss binoculars, the muddy lenses still intact, hanging from the thief's neck.

It roared and leaped on its haunches, claws extended, ready to eviscerate the neck of Seventeen thirty-one Rural Hill Drive's only cable technician in the past twenty five years.

Byron tried to strafe himself in to the corner in time, but sharp talons sank in to muscle and sinew between his neck and shoulder, and he crumpled to the ground under the weight of the thing. It pinned him, depressing its muscular haunches down in to his shins, two apexed claws resting their edges against his adam's apple. Hot expellations reminiscent of sour, sun-curdled milk and raw, tenderized meat came out of the mouth of the thing in waves, intoxicating Byron's senses. His eyes watered and his stomach turned upside down. He vomited again. It bore down in to his shoulder, reopening the wound a few inches wider, his body sinking down in to the mud and corpse-filth under the creature's weight. Byron's eyes, nose, and mouth filled with the stink. His ears filled with mud as the canyon formed around his head at razor point.

A rapid, guttural groaning came from the beast as it shook in jubilation. The yellow-eyed thing wrapped the strap of the Zeiss lenses around its claw, dangling them in front of Byron's face. back and forth. Hypnotizing him with the most elusive birthday present of his lifetime. It was laughing at him.

Byron turned to gain enough leverage to bring the point of the needlenose upward just as It began to chew on his shoulder blade. The tool bit through fur and hardened skin until he felt it twist through the jaw cavern from below. Byron stretched the handle apart as hard as he could. The entire time, he was screaming.

Sheets of flesh peeled back like the skin of an orange and Byron kept pushing. It bored upward, until the yellow glow of life in the thing's stare was but a solidified amber, unmoving and without any sign of life. Byron sank another foot in to the mud with the dismembered head of the thing inches from his face and the weighty hulk of its form trapping him in the sinkhole.

Forty minutes later, it was dry heaving in spastic bursts because his stomach didn't have anything of substance to yield to his vomiting any longer. He'd managed to strap the gaffs from his tool belt to his boots and begin the long ascent upward. He didn't need the fire department. The binoculars swayed around his neck, carrying the stench with them, and yet he was almost accustomed to the smell by now. When he gaffed upward to the sound of rushing water, crickets, and bullfrogs, fresh grass clumping at his pawing fingertips had never felt so welcome. He let out a primal scream in to the darkness, an echo of his triumph, before ripping the Sharpe Telecomm shirt from his torso and throwing it down the hole.

Byron lay there for a long while, gasping with the deliciousness of untainted oxygen. Then, he limped up the riverbank to Rural Hill Drive. He did the cone-dance and started the engine. Then, he went inside. Stitchmouth wasn't there to sign the work order. After setting it ablaze, Byron watched the house burn for five minutes before he left.

The fire department arrived at Rural Hill around the same time that Byron backed his van's rear bumper through the left brick wall of Sharpe Telecomm's Metro dispatch office. Before security could attempt to locate him, he'd already had time to throw his resignation papers through the boss's corner office window, strapped to a brick, as well as a post-it note on Soll's desk.

If my back-up alarm was working, you would have heard me coming. My route is complete. I quit.

A few nights later, as the moon reached its apex in the summer sky, Byron sat on the soft edge of the riverbank and had shots of his brother's favorite sourmash bourbon. He raised his binoculars to look upon the stars in closer detail. Instead of constellations and wisps of moonlight across the willows, he saw only fractured, distorted glimpses among the shards.

Both lenses had shattered.

Terrible fucking luck, that was.

Widow

2010-08-06T19:00:00.003-05:00

Nine one five, eighty eighteen.

Nine one five, eighty eighteen.

Jessica was singing it to herself in her head. A jingle, like humming the theme to The Price Is Right (Drew Carey will never compare). She couldn't forget this number, after all. It was the ultimate solution to her pain, to her rejection.

It wasn't a self-help number. No counselors waited on the other end of the line to talk you out of suicide. She wasn't that kind of desperate person. No, when you got right down to it, simply put, Jessica had a boyfriend problem.

Keith was an asshole. No, he was the asshole of all assholes. On the scale of douchebaggery from one to ten, Keith was an eighty nine point five. There was no telling how many times he'd broken promises to come over, only to be caught drinking at the strip downtown with some hussy in a short pink mini-skirt. All he did was go to work, come home and look at porn all day, or go out and cheat on her. He was an ungrateful, conniving bastard, and she'd had enough of it.

She took the steps up to her apartment and sank in to the loveseat, covering her face in her hands for a few moments. It was go time. She pressed the talk button, and the dial tone was a welcoming sound.

She'd first found the ad posted on a brick wall in an alley between the Earthbound Trading Company store and a White Castle, walking home from her rounds as an orderly at Metro General Hospital. She took the alley every day to cut over from Fifth Avenue to Union Street. She'd seen the occasional tagging here and there, maybe a few faded flyers, but this ad caught her vision almost immediately. The posting was made from some sort of silky, threaded material that stuck to the masonry with a persistent diligence. She'd tried to rip it from the wall to take with her, but it wouldn't budge. It was like a steel block, welded to the wall, and yet it felt so soft, so smooth, to her fingertips.

"Is your significant other acting less than significant? Are you married to a fat slob who doesn't deserve you? Boyfriend can't keep his schwance in his pants? Does he have you tangled in a constant web of lies? Call The Widow now! We are open twenty four hours, seven days a week. We guarantee a complete one-eighty in his attitude after one session. We will UNRAVEL him and make him see things YOUR WAY. CALL NOW!"

Nine one five, eighty eighteen. She'd dialed it before she was ready, her fingers seeming to follow the motions before she was fully aware of them. Maybe her sub-conscious was trying to tell her something. The receiver picked up almost immediately, but there was no sing-songy customer service representative to greet her on the other line. Maybe it was a small business. All she could hear was shallow, heavy breathing, and a rapid clicking noise. No --- hundreds of smaller, individual clicks, all in the same moment.

"Hello?"

Jessica was starting to feel a little disconcerted with her decision to call and she was about to hang up, but she finally heard a voice. It was feminine, but held a very low and monotone rasp to it. It sounded like a demonically possessed Jennifer Tilly.

"Good evening. I've been expecting your call." The voice said.

"What do you mean? I haven't called this number before." Jessica asked.

"I know all about you, especially about your boyfriend Keith. Except I wouldn't exactly call him that. He certainly doesn't treat you like you're his girl, does he?"

Although it was certainly true, it pissed her off to hear this from a complete stranger. Was it really that obvious? How did this lady know so much about her personal life?

"You're so beautiful, darling. You don't deserve the treatment you've received. In fact, your situation is so dire that I'd be willing to extend my services to you for free."

Jessica didn't have money problems, but the fact that this strange person knew about her and her misery ignited a rage within her. She was fed up with Keith.

"Well, you sound a little.... unconventional. But sure, I'd love to receive your assistance. I do love him, but he's just not a good person anymore. I hope this helps. I've tried everything." Jessica said.

"Oh no, dear. Not everything."

The lady hung up. Her line was dead. She had four hours to call her asshole boyfriend, convince him to come and stay over for the night, make dinner, and probably fuck his brains out so he would stick around. How did this "Widow" plan to change Keith permanently? It was unfathomable, but she was desperate to save her relationship at this point. Maybe things could be salvaged.

Or maybe she would know that they really were doomed, and the Widow would tell her it was time to move on.

***

She made rigatoni with marinara sauce, the same dish that she'd prepared on their first date in this very apartment a few years ago. She was optimistic. The Widow would help her rekindle the romance in their relationship and light a fire under Keith's ass. Soon, he would see the error of his ways. He was on his way now. Everything was falling in to place. She was proud of herself. She'd opened the windows to the small veranda awning overlooking the center quad of her apartment complex, and a smooth summer evening breeze was filtering in gently through the living room. The lingering smell of tomatoes, basil, and homemade wheat noodles broiling in the saucepan mingled with the fresh air. It was a nice nig ---

BAM. BAM. BAM.

Someone was rapping at her front door with ferocity. Maybe it was Keith. He was usually more aggressive when he'd had a few drinks. Maybe he'd stopped by Jonesy's for a drink or two before coming over to loosen up. Normally, he wasn't that obnoxious if he'd had a few. In fact, he was usually more reserved and polite. The sound was out of character for his normal behavior. She felt uneasy.

She'd dolled herself up with some tight-fitting seersucker capris and a sun blouse that fell about her hips suggestively. She was irresistable. She wrapped some of her hair around her finger in a strand and took a deep breath. She smelled nice.... like strawberries. She encased her slightly trembling hand around the doorknob to open the door. He was about thirty minutes early. Definitely strange for Keith, if you knew him well enough.

No one there when she opened the door. She heard rapid clicking above her, and as her gaze moved skyward, her life flashed before her eyes in an instant. This is it, her brain told her. You are about to die.

Rough, hairy spindrils lapped at her face as the giant black thing descended from the ceiling on top of her. She went to the carpet instantly, trying to hold her hands up to push the heaping form away from her. Her fingernails and palms slid fruitlessly off of a leathery dark abdomen. She thought she has having some sort of psychotic episode, but as she heard the door slam shut, she could see nothing. The clicks were roaring now, deafening to her ears.

Nothing again. In a split second, there was no black monster. She saw feet in heels now, open toed. Painted toenails. What the fuck?

The woman was gorgeous and exotic in her appearance, oddly beautiful, although her sense of fashion was a little strange. Cobweb designs were tattooed up and down her bare, pale arms. She was wearing a black, sleeveless gown that fell about her figure. Her lips were a juicy blood red, contrasting sharply with her pale skin, hewn facial features, and the dark material of the gown. Jessica was too stupefied to stand or move. She only watched, on her back. The first time she'd been on her back in months, as a matter of fact.

"Weaknessssss. You are weak, girl. YOU MAKE ALL OF USSSSS LOOK WEAK!"

The black thing was on top of her again, and now, she felt befouled. She didn’t have time to think about a woman turning in to a monster because survival seized her mind and blocked out everything else. The edge of her blouse was being lifted. Something razor sharp and pointed was digging in to her flesh -- boring in to her body like a power drill. Her stomach felt like it was on fire. Her vision was blurry, and her eyes couldn't focus at all. Something HOT was running through her. It felt like acid in her veins. This is it, she thought. I am going to die under this thing, this monster.

Nothing. Her abdomen was still burning, but as quickly as she felt it invade her, it was gone again, along with the black thing on top of her.

Was she losing her mind? The woman and the hulking dark mass were gone. She still felt that searing hotness flowing through her body. A smooth, red, pinpointed bruise surrounded her navel. She still felt like she'd been hit by a train. Something was going on here.

More knocks at the door. Less forceful, this time. It was Keith. She flung herself towards the gateway to her residence, flinging it open with an exasperated wail. There he was: his normal, grubby, ill-kept self, that dumb grin on his face. For once, he looked glad to see her, and she felt the same way. She kept back tears, and decided she would keep the incident to herself. She made a note to visit a psychologist this weekend. A combination of twelve hour shifts at the hospital and her emotional wreck of a relationship was definitely starting to get to her.

"Hey, baby. Looking good. Oh, I can smell it from here. You made my favorite." Keith said.

She led him in to the kitchen, pouring two glasses of dry cabernet. She lit candles. The night was steadily creeping back to a normal pace, but she'd closed the windows. Rattled, she tried not to let it show in her face as they began to have dinner.

She coiled the long, steaming noodles around her fork. The dripping marinara was piping hot, but the smell seemed "off" to her for some reason. Not enough spices? She was starving, and yet as she watched him shovel the meal in to his gullet, she couldn't help but feel revolted. Not by HIM, but by the food. She tried a bite herself. She couldn't even swallow it. It tasted like dirt. She coughed and hacked violently before running to the sink, gagging.

"Jessica, are you okay? Is your stomach upset? This is all my fault. I'm sorry, I know I haven't been trying very hard late ----"

She looked up and stared at his face. It was like he was talking in slow motion. His cheeks looked so plump, so puffy --- like she could tear them off his face in an instant. She was tingling all over. There was an unbearable itch, deep within her innards. Like having a thousand mosquito bites in her uterus that needed to be scratched and satisfied. She knew he could make it feel better.

"Go to my bedroom, now. I have something for you, big boy." She flashed him a devilish grin, trailing her fingers down the side of her hip to her capris, unfastening the button. She couldn't be any more obvious.

The look on his face suggested that Christmas had come early. He didn't waste a moment, rising to his feet. It took a lot of motivation to bring Keith away from a well-prepared meal.

He'd always been a selfish lover in bed. She pushed him down to the silky white comforter, straddling him and ripping her capris off in a matter of moments. No foreplay, no warm ups, right to coitus and penetration. He wanted to get off as much as she did, anyway. She felt strong and powerful, in control, for the first time in years. Her teeth were vibrating inside her mouth as she bit his neck playfully. And then a little more playfully. He was inside her, and it felt good. Too good, too fast ---- she was already almost there. She knew he'd already arrived by the look on his face. Oh, God, she was HUNGRY.

"Baby, your teeth, you're a little too roug --- OH MY GOD, AAHHH!" Keith screamed.

Her little ones, her young --- she could feel them leaving her now. Exiting her body and crawling up through his urethra to roost inside his moist haven of living tissue, blood, and meat. His body would give them life and satiate their voracious appetite for flesh.

Jessica raked her razor pincers down his neck, shearing the skin from his throat like a Snicker's bar wrapper. Oh, the clicking. Keith's eyes were bursting open like overfilled balloons, as the skittering beauties crawled down his chest and began to devour his muscular frame. She didn't itch anymore. She felt fulfilled. Well, almost. There was that last part.

She had him suspended from the ceiling after a few minutes of tedious work. He hung, lifelessly, and she was clumsy with her spinnerets at first. However, eventually she grew attuned to them as if they were hands or feet. It was awkward at first, but now she had him fully encased for the little ones. Her babies that would grow big and strong, that loved her so much more than her unappreciative, selfish mate.
At least Keith would finally serve a good purpose in life.
A sharp sound invaded her ears, and she dismounted from her web anchor on the ceiling.

The bedroom phone was ringing. A pathetic woman in her weakest hour. I have to help her, she thought to herself. She needs the Widow.

Jessica picked up the receiver. It was tiny in her pincered claws, but she was more agile, more dexterous now. Sure of herself, as she had never been before. The girl's voice sounded desperate, defeated.

"HELLO? Anyone there?! I need help with my boyfriend.... what the hell is that clicking noise? He's lying to me right now and I think he’s with some other girl downtown. PLEASE, I've tried everything...."

She was on a mission to make women more powerful, to harden them against the deception of their mates. Men were a tool to utilize to bring about the young, and nothing more.
She adored the sound of her new voice as she tested it for the first time.

"No, dear. Not everything."

Road Kill

2010-08-06T18:59:00.005-05:00

I felt safe in my car, driving down the interstate at seventy five miles per hour.

What have I encountered on the open road that stirs a sense of alarm in my brain? Normal, in-front-of-you, every day things. Maybe a semi with his hazard lights on because the trucker is tired and needs a few winks before he starts driving again. Perhaps a deer, jaunting out in front of my vehicle. Once, I slammed in to one and almost lost it. I've never hurt anything in my life. I was oblivious until I splattered her, caving in the corner of her head with my cruise control on, spattering gray matter all over the well-paved roads of my home state.

Back then, I thought having the blood of a dead animal on my hands was traumatizing. I was horrified.

I was a soft and ignorant fool.

I remember what my father said to me when he put me in the front seat of my brother's Dodge Dart at age sixteen.

"Drive defensively, mind your own shit, and obey the law. Don't drink and drive, son. You take care of all that, and you'll survive from point A to point B. I don't want you to show up in my driveway dead one day cuz you were reckless and irresponsible, you hear me?"

My father never had a way with words. His inspirational speeches sounded mostly like rants, but there was gold in them, if you could pan through the slurred speech and the hypocrisy.

I hope heaven doesn't exist. If it does, then my father is looking down now, and he is ashamed that I have ever been born.

Some sick fuck actually planned all this out in his living room, or basement, or torture lair. I'd probably go with the latter. That's the part that really irks me and grinds my gears. The fact that they pull it off, right out here in the open, and no one ever catches a hint of it until they’re road napped.

It took me a couple of hours to drive from my friend's house across the state line back to my own place. I'd head up there and visit him for a weekend every couple months or so. He was a good guy and we tried to stay in touch. We had a nice, relaxing weekend for the most part. He gave me his best wishes and told me to be careful on my way back. How many times do we hear that? You've got your keys in your hand, your phone in your pocket, and you’ve started the engine. The last person you see before you walk out the door says, simply, "Be careful."

I was zoned out and I didn't realize what was happening until it was too late. They stayed on the right, using the shoulder to pass if they had to so they were never right behind me in my rearview mirror. They waited until we were the only two cars around. It was a deserted stretch of highway that was neither here nor there: no exits, no trees, just flat farmland and the thin light of a half summer moon.

It was a Volkswagen van. This one was charcoal black, rusted out at various parts of the body and chassis. It sounded like a stampede rumbling through a canyon when it got close to you. I FELT it, over my Alpine speakers that were thumping double bass riffs and face-melting guitar leads to my very core. I turned to look out my window, but the heavy tint prevented me from seeing the infernal rumble cage that was coming up fast on my right. In the exact moment that my power windows got all the way down, the driver was waiting, a vicious looking grin on his face. He wasn't even watching the road, and neither was I --- for a brief moment, we both stared at each other. He looked glad to see me. His face was absolutely unreal. I thought I was in a dream. My left side hit the ingrained tire treads built in to the pavement for the people that fall asleep at the wheel, but I barely noticed that I was careening off the edge of the road, or the gyrating protests of my vehicle as it rolled over the bumps at such a high speed. I could only stare, with the sound of Pantera blazing in my ears.

The first thing I noticed was the top hat. His skin was ghostly pale, a snow white color that stood out in sharp contrast to the dark brim of the hat. He had more than one passenger, and they were all right next to him, trying to catch a glimpse of me. They were all bathed in an odd, red light. The interior of their van looked like it was a mobile dark room for developing photographs. This was all unsettling, and I was still doing eighty, about to breach the edge of the pavement and hit the grassy median between the two-lane highways.

I caught myself in time to swerve back over to my lane, but the van was coming over in to my slot, parallel with me, blocking me from getting back. My road rage flared in that moment, and I decided that I was going to stop them from moving and confront the driver with the Louisville slugger in my trunk. I floored the accelerator and tried to get in front of them, but they stayed right with me. We were almost trading paint, and a retaining wall was coming up. If I didn't stop, I was going to hit it head-on and do their dirty work for them.

I never had the opportunity to even think about mashing the brakes.

I wish I never bought a car with a sunroof. Moreover, I wish I hadn't been in the mood to act so pretentious, rolling around with it wide open on the highway past midnight, blasting my music at inhumane decibels. Two things happened in that next instant. They weren't in slow motion. They were smooth, efficient, and practiced. I knew they’d done it before, the moment it happened to me. Before I knew it, my old life was over.

A strong, burly man scooped me up out of the driver's seat from the top of my moving vehicle like I was a ragdoll. In the same moment, another small man who was literally dressed like a scarecrow fell in to my passenger seat. As my seatbelt tore in half from the pressure he was exerting on it, the small guy slid over as I was being lifted up. The last time I ever saw my car, it was being veered back in to the left hand lane by Mr. Scarecrow, and he was flashing me the most wicked grin I've ever seen in my life.

I wish I could accurately describe to you how it is that I managed to end up in the back of this van, but I really can't. However they did it, these things have road-napped me.

We ambled along at around the same speed as my car for a long time. I didn't know where we were going, but I knew their crime would go unnoticed and undetected. I would be a random missing persons report. My car will would up in some deserted spot where I've never set foot before.

They were sick-minded, beyond anything I could have been ready for. They rigged me in the back of the van, and with a measure of haste, began desecrating my flesh with unnaturally hooked metal objects. I think they were old-school grass cutting sickles. I started bleeding all over the place, but that was least of my worries, to be honest. They had much, much more painful hooks, embedded in my skin at the shoulder-blades, my calves, my neck muscles --- everywhere. The hooks were jerry-rigged to sliding coat racks on the roof of the van, and they screamed with the deafening sound of metal against metal as they pushed me back and forth like a toy, a plaything. My skin began to stretch out, because my feet weren't touching the floor of the van after a few hours. After a hundred miles of pot holes, I was almost flat footed, but my vision was going blurry from the pain.

I was once an accountant. Listen. Listen to what I have become.

They had smiles that were permeated with long, thin silver rails. They smiled at me during the entire operation with ear to ear grins of galvanized steel. They rubbed iodine in to my flesh like a marinade for an upcoming dinner party. I could only stare upward at the red lights above the coat rack, crucified on the frame of seventies era German ingenuity.

I was once a pale man, with albino skin and a tendency to shy away from large crowds. I am now a member of something primal and efficient --- something with brown, leathery skin and a maw of gnashing metal, a cannibal that wears a guise of rotting rag scraps and a filthy hat.

I wish I could have resisted then. I could have knocked one of them out, or seized one of their sickles and separated their incessantly grinning heads from their bobbing necks.

I was too focused on the physical shutdown of my body, too concentrated on being seized with fear to think of what they held in store for me.

When they released me from the rack, re-clothed in their garb of stinking cloth scraps, they smiled and stared with burning eyes, watching me sob in my new visage.

The little road-napper was standing over my head. I thought the hooks were painful. The pliers that he shoved in to my mouth tasted like they'd been rusting in a monsoon before being exposed to humid summer heat.

He had the first two teeth out before I even had a chance to scream. I had to keep swallowing and spitting. I almost asphyxiated and perished from the tsunami of blood that was gushing out of my mouth and down my windpipe.

Blood tastes so much like metal. I know that now. They are almost interchangeable.

They weren’t finished. The first metal sliver had been shoved in to the cavity where my incisor used to be, and it was protruding out of my mouth downward over my bottom lip.

The cab became deathly silent save for the sounds of power tools. They completed their operation a few hours after they took me in, and then I was indistinguishable from the others.

They knew I wanted to escape. They knew I would do anything to shred them limb from limb, but I was too weak and my mouth felt as though it had kissed a sledgehammer. They kept me tied up, strapped to the rack, to watch and observe and learn their craft.

They only took in one in ten. The other times, they drove the victim’s car off the side of the road in a strategic location in the middle of nowhere. They had their favorite exits, their favorite landscapes for secrecy.

The others, they ate. Metal cleaves flesh so much easier than calcified bone. It all came down to a nightmarish form of cannibalism, encompassed by a thrill of violent and disturbed wonderment.

I have become a monstrosity in the eyes of the world. The only thing left is to indulge in the family business that they have going, or forfeit my life to a power drill.

Our next target is just ahead.

The person driving has failed the test. That means we’ve been following them for a long time, and my pale-faced Father in the top hat judged them too weak to join us.

That person will be my first taste of road kill.

Maybe, someday, my family will choose you.

Be careful.

Draft

2010-08-06T18:50:00.002-05:00

"Draft" (sequel to “Felt,” and “Cut”)

This is Jake. I'm glad someone around here has a ham radio on. Keep it tuned to this frequency, cuz I got somethin' pretty unreal to tell you. Can you hear me okay? The mouthpiece is in my helmet, so it might sound a little muffled, but you should be alright. If you can record this, you better get at it. You don't wanna miss this. Just listen.

Eighty four centimeters. That's your window. You get that much space to make your move. It's do or die in the span of half a second; you're in a pocket of perfect wind resistance, and the responsibility falls on you to take advantage of it, or lose your opportunity. Fall behind, in other words. Cop out. You're the guy behind the checkered flag, in that instance, and you are invisible. You lost. No one gives a shit.

Or, you can be a maniac, and take the alternative. Capitalize.

That's what my buddy told me before he died. Capitalize on your own streak of aggression. He was only a small-time guy, worked at a gas station, but he was a damn good driver. He never made it to sponsorship levels, but he was well on his way, believe me. I never saw him lose a race on the street. He had a nice ride, and this bumper sticker on the back that said "Drive fast, or eat shit."

So, this is what you do. Bank on the possibility that maybe -- just MAYBE, the guy in front of you will lift his foot just half an inch while yours presses down, and give you the space and road you need to capitalize. Maybe he's a smidgeon more afraid of that upcoming curve than you are. So you take that space of fear, and you capitalize. Eighty four centimeters of it, to be exact.

A slingshot through the wind resistance is hard to pull off, but to be perfectly honest with you, there's nothing better in the world if you've got the nuts. Hundred year old vintage scotch. A threesome at the Playboy mansion. A winning lottery ticket. None of that means shit if you're born to race, okay? You'll consider me a thrill-seeker, or a speed junkie, or just plain ol' batshit crazy, but that's just the way it is.

I jerk the steering wheel to the left, enough that it doesn't fight the chassis and disrupt my downforce, and as I gap that eighty four centimeter distance between his rear bumper and my headlights, I'm on his inside corner and passing through to fourth place. I'm in the top five, and normally, I'd be banking some points at the end of today. However, this isn't the Nextel series or the Brickyard 400. Points are worth about as much as a shit-stain on a wedding dress around here.

The curve has ended, and I have one hundred eighty yards of straight-away.

Wide open.

You hear rednecks toss the term around like it's poetry. 'Did you see that guy? He was wide open! Damn, man! FEARLESS!'

What does it mean, exactly? I'm not sure. Does it imply that the piston chambers in your engine are at their flawless limit, that your transmission has topped out at that wonderful apex? Have you reached the nearly unattainable and blissful union of rotations per minute (RPM) and miles per hour? Those two attributes long to neutralize and top out together. There are very few moments in competitive racing when you'll hit that mark. It can take five or six perfectly maneuvered laps, a good draft, and a foolish opponent in front of you, but eventually, you will hit it. When you do, let me know if you bust a hard-on, because I sure do. Every time.

It's not just that. I have no reputation here. This car was given to me, for this one race, and, to quote the voice of the red-eyed weirdo guy in the black suit, "all heats to come, if I am deemed worthy."

My buddy Chaz used to say that you're only as good as the people that you can lap. If racing were UFC, lapping someone would be the equivalent of a ground and pound to the face. Football? It'd be a sack for a twenty yard loss, or an interception return for ninety nine yards. Well, I've lapped every guy here, except these top three. They're different. Every time I try to take a turn above speed and gain some distance on them, it feels like I'm getting in worse and worse shape. The car in first is about to lap the poor schmuck in last place for the second time. They'll intervene on that guy soon. He's short of the mark, and people don't survive when they fall short in THEIR events. Chaz's co-worker Richard thought he had them all figured out, too, like he was in real good cohoots or something. Yeah, that turned out real well.

Look in my rearview. See him, how he stopped to pit? He pitted twelve laps ago. There's no way he's getting gas. He won't be back on the track. Trust me.

So get this. If the guy in the lead of the pack is that far ahead of you, my question is, why even bother? When you get right down to it, most of the cars are tuned to the same specs. If you can't hit the curves and head out of them like a bat out of hell, swallow your fear, and put some lead on the accelerator, you're dead in the water. Nut up or shut up, and go home.

This track is worse than Daytona or Talladega. Here, they don't really give a shit about how my car is tuned, so I’m starting to think maybe these regulars who win race after race have something going on that I don't know about.

I was right.

You wanna know why that one guy is two laps behind the leader? You wanna know why he's dead now? He's got no passion. That's why. I really wish you could see this place. There are no Bud Light vendors or racing merchandise booths. There are fans, but they don't hoot and holler and get up on the fences when you go by, or flash you their tits. There are no baseball caps with number 3's and angel wings on the front (rest in peace, Dale). In fact, the only time they seem to get excited is when somebody overtakes another driver. I think it’s odd. I’m also pissed that I’m fifty car-lengths behind the leader in seventeenth place, as of about an hour ago. Something changed though. I found out these cars, this track ---- this whole surreal fucking gig in itself ---- it's not the real thing. It's better.

Any sport should have a certain degree of heart and dedication to it. What are you willing to sacrifice to win? The moment I answer that question for myself, I hit sixteenth place. Then, I push the smooth little black button on the dash above my clutch. That's how I got up here in the top five. I wish I'd known about it sooner, because the thing is, I'm pretty sure I want to win more than any person --- or thing, on this little stretch of asphalt. It's not the money, either. They killed Chaz. So, what's it all come down to, really?

Revenge.

Stay wih me. I know a little bit about what's going on here, even though they don't know that. See, they find things where they think they can get you. They pit you all against each other in one form or another, except the stakes are always higher than any competition you'll find anywhere else. Then, when you fail, they take you away. It's what they do. They're passion-thieves. They take your desire, your determination, and then, the moment you find out that you didn't have enough of it, they steal it away in a heartbeat, and then your life is over.

Only one guy has succeeded in beating them so far, and he was a football player. As it turns out, he turned out to be good ol' Richard's downfall, since Dick had been banking on people's failures to make a pretty penny. That was in this abandoned little ghost town in Texas, but you know what? That town isn't deserted anymore, and the sky isn't charred with blackness. Ever since he won that little game, the sun peers out a little bit more there every day.

So, I'm here to help my racing buddy rest in peace, but I'm also here to make things right in this place. They've got themselves some sorta foothold, I reckon, but as soon as I lap the leader, we're golden. They lose their power when you beat them, you see. Even if I don't survive, I'll win, and that's all that matters. You feel me? I want it bad enough, that it's almost guaranteed.

I think I see a little ray of sunshinse now, off in the East, over turn four. Things aren't looking so good for them.

Back to that little black button. What do you expect me to tell you? That it's the turbo booster? Nitrous oxide? This isn't the Fast and the Furious. There's another thing I forgot to tell you. They've got this little I-V stuck in my forearm, and it feeds down through the floorboard in to the console. I hit that button, and I can watch the blood going through the little green tube. Half a second later, my engine rumbles like it's running on hellfire, and I'm hard pressed to even lean my head forward half an inch, because it's being forced against my headrest. Honestly, these stock cars give a new definition to "wide open." My speedometer goes up to 220, but the needle tops out at the end and shivers a little bit. I must be going at least 250, maybe more.

Sounds all good and fun, doesn't it? Not quite. See, I'm pretty sure when I get out of this vehicle and get "unplugged" that I'll be dead. The reason is that blood stopped flowing through the tube about twenty laps ago. Now, it's just this black cloudy shit, and every time I hit it to pass someone up, I feel like I just contracted pneumonia. My muscles go weak, and this car feels like it's going to devour me. Not to sound cliche, but I feel a little thin. Like every time I cross the flag, I'm being spread out a little bit more. I've got thirty three laps to go and I'm hoping I'll have enough juice to stop these bastards.

So here I come up on this third guy. It's harder than you think it is. I mean, you've probably tailgated some granny on the interstate that won't do the speed limit, but tailgating somebody at over two hundred is a whole different world, my friend. You're tilting sideways and falling against your door because the slant of the turn is that sharp. Don't cut it too tight or too wide, or you'll end up on the wall. Then, there's the draft.

You have your position behind him ---- or IT, I guess I should say, because the human drivers are all behind me --- and you have to lock it in. Match him, mile per hour per mile per hour. On the last few degrees of that angled curve, it's time to make your move. You gap it, feed out in to the wind, and STOMP that accelerator. If you did everything right, you might even be able to send the number one salute towards the black-robed fucker next to you as he eats your wake. Like I said, there's nothing better in the world. That might be the redneck in me, but it certainly appeals to the competitive spirit.

So here's the straight-away. It's time to press the black button again. I won't lie to you. I'm afraid each time, but I know this has to be done. I just mashed it, radio listener. I feel like I'm dying, but I wish you could see how fast I am. I passed second place just a moment ago, but I have to lay off it now and take this bend. You wanna know what scares me more than dying or losing? The sound those things in the stands just made --- like they're about to blow loads inside their black getups because I'm killing myself to win this race. See, the thing is, I don't give two shits. It might feel good for them to watch me burn up my life through the spark plugs and combustors of this car from hell, but they still assume they're gonna take me out. They think their number one is that good.

Richard did it for the money. Chaz did it because he's a good person, and he liked Richard, so he fell for it. That football fellow --- well, I don't know him, and I can't speak for him so much, but I think maybe he's a little bit like me. He entered willingly, maybe because he thought he was chasing a dream, and that dream turned out to be a nightmare. He fought, and he won, and wherever that man is, he's got to keep carrying the beacon, okay? I can't expect you to believe any of this shit, but if you take it on yourself to find him, you be sure and let him know that he's not the only one who wants to beat them.

I'm drafting first place now, but I'm terrified. You wanna know why? I'm not sure I can beat this cat. The slingshot is in place, the air pocket is there --- but now, I see what happens when you win.

You'll never guess what this sticker says on his back fender, eighty four centimeters in front of my bumper. Yeah.

"Drive fast, or eat shit."

Well, I'd say I'm on the verge, and I really ought to gap him at this point. My only question is, what's gonna happen to my racing buddy? Is it even him, or does he have a black robe on? Regardless, when I lap him, all of this will be over, even if he's gone. It wasn't in vain, you see.

I'm gonna sign off and press this little black button one last time, chief. If I cross the line and get that checker, it'll probably be a car and a corpse, but hell, that should count as a win in my book.

The track isn't there unless you WANT it to be there, and you'll be hard pressed to find it, but check about thirty miles out between Abingdon and Bristol, Tennessee. Also, find that nice quarterback, and tell him that the next ritual of theirs is gonna be some kind of fight. That's all I know.

It's time to capitalize.

You'll know I won if you see the sun.

Felt

2010-08-06T18:35:00.001-05:00

Five hundred twenty six dollars and thirty four cents.

This is my paycheck after two weeks of full-time employment at the Thrift-Sak. It's enough to pay the rent, two tanks of gas, and the car insurance on my jalope of a ride.

My apartment is a complete shit-hole. When Sandra used to come over, she told me that the cockroaches were complaining. She was always funny in that way that would annoy you, the more time you spent around her . She stopped talking, eventually. I should feel awful that it happened, but I really have no right to complain.

Forty four thousand, nine hundred dollars.

The sun is starting to crest over the city line, but that's what I won last night. What did it cost me, exactly?

Two packs of Marlboro lights (in a box), a Rockstar energy drink, and Sandra.

It wasn't my fault that they got her, really. I played to the best of my ability, and so did she. Maybe she caught the wrong river card on the wrong hand. Maybe I'm ten percent better than she is. Or, maybe, I just got lucky. Ask me if I got lucky, and I'll tell you --- I did, okay? I GOT LUCKY.

It's 5:43am and I have to be at work at the Thrift-Sak in seventeen minutes. I'm parked outside it, now, contemplating on whether I should go in or not. I'm leaning towards no. After all, I'm living in the fast lane now. I made my breakthrough, but not in a way that I'd thought possible.

People all over America play poker. Some for fun, some for sport, some as an excuse to see a hot girl take her clothes off, and some to make a living. I wanted to be that person for the longest time. Last night, I found a game with the highest stakes I've ever encountered, and now, I'm thinking it's possible that I could be upgrading soon. New place, new ride, new haircut.

Their game starts at midnight. Rule number one is that you don't play unless you bring a friend. Rule number two is that one person leaves a winner. Rule number three is that the game is off unless they get a full table of ten players.

Last night, I was number nine.

The buy-in is not of monetary value. In fact, the entire concept is a little distorted if the only poker game you've ever played is in Vegas. The rules are no limit texas hold em, which means that any player can go all-in for their entire chip stack at any time. The difference is, you don't buy your chips with your hard-earned.

You’re gambling, of course. Your only motivation is your own avarice. When you're invited, you know what the pot amount will be. Last night, it was forty four thousand nine hundred dollars. Tonight, it's sixty two thousand, three hundred twenty dollars. Why the sudden increase, you ask? Because they had a lucky winner at a full table, that’s why. Yours fucking truly.

It runs every night except Sundays in the back room of Romantico. It's one of those yuppie-hack metrosexual clubs downtown, by second avenue. People in that place are rail thin, and they wear spandex, lycra, and every other tight-fitting material that you could think of like it’s going out of style or something. Most of them are doped up on some substance or another ---ecstasy, pills, whatever.. It's not really my kind of place, but what goes on in the back room is completely discreet. It's under wraps, per the owner of the property, but it always starts at midnight. Some guy in a black suit with freaky red contacts runs it, and I can’t figure out what puts me off about him. He calls himself an artist and pretends he’s on some unearthly mission or something, but I just wanted to play poker, and he invited me. Said I was real good and could make a living playing in his game. He has the most groovy contact lenses I’ve ever seen, too. They make his eyes look they’re blazing on fire in low light.

So I’m all set to go play last night, but I don’t know anyone and she’s all I’ve got. I was never too fond of Sandra in the first place, really. She looks great naked (she has a tattoo of a purple crescent moon on her hip, and she smells like lilacs), but she was always a bitch to work with. She'd only come over if she got too drunk and her shift ended one or two hours before mine. For once, I actually needed her around. I asked her to go with me to the club to play cards, and she told me to go chop my dick off. I told her which club it was, and all of a sudden, she was all rosy-eyed. I guess she thinks she's a high class girl. She said she'd played poker a few times before. I didn't want to tell her that strip poker is different than the real thing, because you're playing to lose and get laid. I needed her, to get a chance at the pot. I didn't care if she lost. She was shitty with her money in the first place, so the prospect of a free tournament entry and winning forty grand sounded good to her. Like I said, she's not too intelligent.

The poker room itself is made almost entirely of stone. It's cold in there, despite the fact that it's a hundred degrees in early August before the sun goes down. There are broad, sweeping drapes that make a coverlet around the old rock, creating a perimeter around the room. There are no windows or openings whatsoever. The drapes bleed from the walls, the most vibrant of reds. The candles that are scattered around the corners cast an eerie, flamed glow towards the table itself. If you exclude the modern additions, it would look like something out of an Edgar Allen Poe story. The Masque of the Red Poker Room, if you feel me.

The table is some kind of black, charred material that looks like a mixture between wood, glass, and ebony. When you fold your hands on it or rest your elbows on the rim, your skin will get warm. Keep leaning and you'll feel hot. Eventually, it feels like you just ran your hand under a boiling water faucet. For that reason, I usually try to keep my hands in my lap. I learned to memorize my cards so I didn't have to peek at them after the first time.

The felt of a poker table can have a surreal, plush feel to it. Like a pool table, except it's molded over with a top layer of plastic that allows the cards to skim across it easier. This felt was the smoothest and most exotic that I'd ever seen, except that you could feel it moving. Put your chips in the center, place your fingertips on it to raise the edge of your cards --- and I swear you could feel a heartbeat. The surface is peach-colored and smells strongly of women's perfume. For some reason, touching that felt gives me a hard on. I guess you could say I've taken gambling to an unhealthy level.

When you first enter, you'll think you've lost your mind. You'll see heaps and heaps of chips, but some of them are more of an off-colored white than the others. Some players will look nervous and freaked out, but the tall man in the suit doesn’t let you leave once you step through the back door. When it finally hits you, you'll realize that your chips are made of human bones. All ten of you will exchange a nervous glance with each other before the blinds hit and the clock starts ticking. Under the gun, just like that. I didn’t care. I spend most of my time at the table watching people and observing their tells. That’s how I win --- I play the person across me and get inside their head. Most of the time, the cards don’t mean shit.

When you go all-in, you don't put any chips in the middle of the table. Instead, you stand up, walk to the back corner of the room, and they put their hands on your shoulders. They're waiting, you see. To make sure you made the right move --- that you really had the best hand. You'd better be sure. Bluffing in this game will cost you a lot more than your mortgage.

One by one, the people around me go all in. I’m surprised that Sandra is doing as well she is, honestly. People go to the corner, they bust out, and they leave with the tall man and his buddies in the robes through the back door. I don't know who they are. They have to be loaded. They give us our chips, they tell us to sit, and they get pissed at me when I try to smoke at the table. They aren't any different than the fat, cocky pit bosses at the Mirage, really.

I play tight, and I try to trap people when I know I have them in a tough spot. I’m a table bully at heart, and I’m catching some cards. Before I know it, there are only three of us left, and Sandra has enough chips in front of her to entertain a pack of dobermans for a year. A few minutes later, she knocks out this other poor chap in front of us, and we're down to two at around three in the morning.

I look down, and I try hard not to let a little smile break the corners of my mouth. I have two kings. "Cowboys," as some call them... or "danger rangers." The second best starting hand in poker. Although there are two of us left, the stakes are getting high. We both know that whoever wins this game isn't going to work at the Thrift-Sak ever again.

What would you do with that kind of hand? You'd go all-in, of course. And that's what I do--- before the cards even come out. I stand up from my chair, waltz over to the corner, and the red-eyed old man clamps his bony fingers in to my shoulder and waits with a smirk on his face. He knows something that I don’t.

Sandra rises to her feet, as well. She flashes me that stupid, sideways grin that makes me want to spit in her face.
"I'm all in too, Dicky-Dog." She says.
She walks over to the other corner, and they have her locked in, as well.

I hate when she calls me Dicky-Dog. My name is Richard. Not Dick. Not DICKY-DOG.

That's when I see her cards on the table. She's turned them face up, like mine. Pocket aces. Bullets. Pocket rockets. The big cheese. The number one best starting hand in no limit hold em. Suddenly, percentages are racing through my brain. I have a three in fifty two chance of hitting another king and beating her in this hand. She’s an eighty nine percent favorite. I hear a low grunt, hot breath expelling across the back of my neck from the robed figured on my right. Their fingers are crushing in to my flesh, now, even deeper. They know I've made a bonehead move, and that I'm probably the next one heading through the gated door. At least I know, either way, that I'm not going back to the Thrift-Sak tomorrow. It’s a shitty job.
Sandra's giddy like a school girl.

The turn card is a three. My winning percentage has just been chopped in half. One last draw.

I've never been as scared as I am in this moment.
The dealer in the black robe lays down the last card. The king of spades. I am saved.
The look of horror and revulsion on Sandra's face is almost classic. Her little khaki skirt does a poor job of hiding the fact that she's pissing herself. They must be really digging in to her. The voice that I hear next almost unsettles my bladder, as well. It's definitely not human. It comes from the tall man.

"Three of a kind kings beats a pair of aces." He says.

The figure at the table rises to his feet, and he extends his sleeved arm outward, pointing directly at Sandra's face. For the first time, I can see that his finger is not of human origin. It's made from the same material as my poker chips.

"We have a winner for this evening. The tournament is over." His voice scares the shit out of me, but the tall man’s announcement is delicious to my ears.

As they escort me out and the gate comes to a close with a slow groan behind me, the last thing I can see is Sandra's face, twisted in absolute horror. She’s missing her lips. I have a briefcase full of money and a head full of images that I will never forget.

It's 6:28AM now, and I am officially almost half an hour late for work. I toss my Thrift-Sak shirt in the wastebin by the gas pumps, but as I leave, Chaz is pulling in to the parking lot. Chaz is a pretty good worker, and he doesn't really give me a lot of shit. I like Chaz. In fact, I'll be inviting him to tonight's game. He's never played poker before, but I told him the stakes aren't terribly high. It won't even cost him anything to buy in, since it’s not a paycheck week. He knows a deal when he sees it.

I'm looking forward to touching the felt at that table again. There's a purple half-moon crescent on it, just at the corner by seat seven. It smells faintly of lilacs.

Cut

2010-08-06T18:21:00.003-05:00

"Cut"

Ricardo's snaps were so tight that I could barely take the ball from him in time to drop back. Every time he settled in to position, he appeared as if he was about to explode. I didn't blame him, and he was the best fullback I've had in twelve years, since the peewee days, when our center offensive lineman hit a growth spurt before the rest of us and shot up to five foot seven before any of us were half that tall.

The pocket collapsed around me before I even had time to think about an eligible receiver. This other team, they weren't like us. Before the snap, I could hear their guttural breathing. They forced their way through my line like demons possessed. My offensive linebackers dropped like bowling pins, and by the time the football rolled off my index finger with a shaky release, the right defensive tackle was on me, three hundred and fifty pounds of solid muscle. My head hit the dead, lifeless grass of the decaying field, and then I heard the hissing. They hissed on every big play, positive or negative, but this one was joyous --- celebratory. In that moment, with my head halfway embedded in the dead-field, I knew I'd thrown an interception. The others were one possession closer to victory, and that meant we would all be dead soon.

We were brought here because we weren't good enough for the National Football League. We all had starry-eyed ambitions; we aspired to get burned by Jim Rome on SportsCenter, to make people thousands of dollars with our fantasy football stats and our spreads and our yards per carry, quarterback ratings, and third down conversion percentages. None of it worked out that way.

We are the fourth stringers, the last round stragglers, who were the stars of small high schools around America. We did fairly well in college, but not well enough to merit a six figure salary and a draft pick from the AFC or NFC. We watched the star quarterbacks of Oklahoma, Florida, Texas Tech, the Heissman trophy winners, the school record holders. We watched them, and we waited. But long after they were chosen and spoon-fed multi-million dollar contracts, in the two-hundred and twentieth round of the NFL draft, we still didn't have a bid for a spot on a team.

That's when they came to us. We were the rejects. The ones who had been cut. We would actually use our college degrees, because we wouldn't be playing professional football. The problem for me was, specifically, that I had counted on the NFL. All of us had our hopes wrecked to oblivion, and we were vulnerable. Maybe that's why they came when they did. They played us like a fiddle. Our emotions were marionette strings, and they are the puppet masters. That's how we all ended up on this field, right now.

They came to me about three hours after the NFL's expression of their lack of interest in signing me to a roster. They wore black suits, wore large pieces of jewelry that resembled the over-sized, lavish sheen of Super Bowl rings and genuine Rolex time pieces. They seemed legit, until the moment I signed the contract. Their eyes were odd --- I just thought they paid for strangely-colored contact lenses. Then, something knocked me out, and when I came to, I was in a locker room, being prepped for the slaughter that's taking place on this "field." I assume the rest of my teammates were duped in the same manner. I don't even know where we are. The heat feels like we’re in Texas. The blackened sky makes me think we’re in hell.

They've pulled Ricardo to the sideline and replaced him with some other rookie. I've seen two others since the first quarter; the first was a wide receiver that dropped a solid pass on a slant route to the corner, and the other was our running back, who blazed like lightning during his high school and college career. He looked like an old man trying to get downfield against this other team's secondary. They're not human. They caught him about a split second after he broke away from the line of scrimmage and drove his head in to the forty yard line. It was the most vicious tackle I'd ever seen in my life. He shouldn't have survived, and when he did, they sent him to the other team's sideline. They're passing his body parts around the bench like his dismembered arms and legs are a quick, hydrating fix from a gatorade bottle. I couldn't see for sure, because I was freaking out and too concerned about my own performance. The first time I looked, he was making the walk of shame to the opposing bench --- which I thought was odd. When I looked back two minutes later, his body was in pieces, his head was mounted on top of the first down marker, and the safeties were eating his limbs. Their eyes glowed with a singed fire of electric fury behind black gloss visors. His sustenance gave them a lust for more blood, more violence. What better way for them to sate their hunger than on a football field, if you could actually assign that term to this place. I'd call it an expanse of athletic death.

As sick as it made me feel, and as much as my stomach churned, the players around me have rallied. They're inspired, not with the competitive desire to win, but with the raw, instinctual will to live, to survive. They don't want to die, to be consumed by the monstrosities in the black and red uniforms on the other side of the ball. Ricardo was being carved up, and he was our friend, our companion. As our defense went out on to the field, my guys were voracious to get back out there. We had to stop them, get the ball back, and push.

"Grind your heels," my father always said. "Grind your heels hard enough, and you'll get to the endzone, son."

We needed the big "W," but the points didn't matter. We had to make sure we weren't pounded in to a scurvy pulp by these hulking monstrosities. They were out for blood. They probably could have lost by ten thousand points, but as long as they tore in to us like ravenous ghouls, the thousands of hissing shades in the stands would be happy. They weren't drinking beer and eating chili dogs. Their viscuous, cloudy black figures were there to witness our torment, our downfall. We had to emerge victorious. And, then, we needed to find out how to get out of this infernal stadium.

I didn't know how or why, but there were TV cameras on the sidelines. The tall, robed figures operating them didn't appear to be employees for any major entertainment network that I was aware of. They had pads and pens with them, scribbling down furiously as they talked on their cell phones. As a football player, I knew what was going on there. They were bookies, and they were taking bets from someone on the other side. People who were aware that this was going on. It infuriated me, and I was ready to exact revenge on the fans, the red-eyed "franchise owners" who deceived us all, and most of all, the ogres at the line of scrimmage.

Our defense, bless their hearts, looked tired and defeated as they came to the sideline. The shade-warriors have failed to score a touchdown from my interception.... a "pick six," if you will. I saw the terror in their eyes, but thank the Gods, none of them were being taken to the other sideline. It was time for us to get out there. As we huddled around the marker, I tried to console them, to ensure that regardless of the outcome of this game, we would find a way to stay alive. I was making empty promises and hollow assurances, but I needed morale. How could I make a speech and take the place of a leader when not even I believed that we'd make it out of here alive? I had to try.

I took the snap and handed the ball off to our new fullback. I didn't know his name, but he was a huge, bulky fellow who looked as though he'd served military time in the marines or the army. Much to my surprise, he hunkered down, powered through the growling defense, and picked up a gain of around seventeen yards before the backfield defender caught him around the neck and drug him to the black turf. There were no referees, and we were running on pure adrenaline, pure rage. He came back to the huddle, and I decided it was time.

The huddle of a football team is a sacred place for any athlete. It's the moment when you plan your attack, when all eleven of you collectively decide who will take a hit, who will carry the ball, and who will reap the glory. My voice was shaky, and I saw tears in some of their eyes. Yes, even football players cry. I feel like King Arthur, except I've never fought anyone in my entire life.

"I don't know your names, but I know you all dreamed of playing in the big league. They told us we're not good enough to be pro. I don't know why we're here, but these things are counting on us to lose. Do you want to die, or do you want to live? It's that simple, boys. We fight, here and now, and if we die trying, then so be it. Until now, we haven't played like a team, because we weren't brought together as a team. Every single one of us has to count on each other. We're running a Z-26 play action skid. Convince them that the fake is real, and I'll take care of the rest, if I can. Ready?"

The roar from around me comes not from the ghastly black clouds in the stands, or from the beasts waiting at twenty yard line. It's from my temporary brothers, my teammates. It's the most raw, emotional "BREAK!" that's ever graced my ears.

I didn't want them to make any more mistakes, because I was afraid they'd be killed. I was the quarterback --- the leader, of sorts. If anyone was going to be sacrificed on an account of bad athletic performance, it was going to be me. I took the next snap and dropped back, faked a pass to the tight end, and broke for strong side. The yell from inside my own helmet, from my own voicebox, was so loud and animalistic that it inspired my last bastion of protection, the right offensive tackle. He surged forward, driving back the defense from hell. They wanted to tear my head off, and this guy, who I'd never met until five minutes ago, was playing his heart out, pushing, fighting for his life, and mine, and every other human being in this place.

I broke free, and there was only one defender between me and the goal line. He was three times my size, and I honestly believed that if he had hit me, I would have never stood up again. I managed a juke, and although I wasn't a running back, I was doing whatever I needed to do to secure those six points. He dove, and whizzed by me. Grind your heels, son. Grind your heels.

Touchdown.

I made it, and the vicious hiss that rang in my ears was like a brutal, fast-acting contagion. It destroyed my senses, rang through my ears, and I felt as though my head might be ripped in three different directions, splattering in to a bloody mess. How would that be for an endzone celebration?

The bigger they are, the harder they fall.

The crowds were furious, but I had scored. The score was six to nothing, but we never got the opportunity to kick the extra point.

The shades had begun to fade away, and the franchise owner, the red-eyed man in the black suit, has seemingly pulled the plug on the entire operation. He came toward me, and his voice was sonorous, almost bell-like, a complete and violent betrayal of everything that has taken place here. He ambled across the field to the one yard line.

"This is the first time anyone has scored against us. All of you will leave except this quarterback. You will do one thing for me when you return, or we will return for you, and you only.” The tall old man said.

His voice has chilled me to the bone.

There was only thing that I truly regretted, and that was that I couldn't have stepped up sooner and saved the lives of the first few players who failed. We could have stopped it. It required determination, teamwork, and the resolve to stay alive. We fought, and we won.

I have one last thing that I had to accomplish, however. The bookies were counting on our loss, and apparently, so were certain people who were connected with these hooded, robed figures. They were the financial movers and shakers of the underworld, I suppose. I wasn't entirely sure, but when I brought the man Richard to them, kicking and screaming, he appeared to be a rich man. He'd been cashing in on their scams for a long time. In addition to making side bets on football games, apparently, he'd been winning, lucratively, I might add, in some sort of demented poker game that they ran on the side.

They forced me to watch as they skinned him alive. They scooped out his eyes, crushed his skull, and peeled off his face. Then, they stitched it up, and made it in to a pig-skin football.

Where they would normally inscribe the manufacturer of the ball, "Spaulding," instead, there were only two words.

"Dicky Dog."

Core

2010-08-06T17:57:00.003-05:00

This message is my map, and this map is my message.

The earth here is thin. I move about it so freely, and the ease of it is a delicious thing, but it is also frightful. I dig my inscriptions by feel and touch, and because I know the earth, I know that this will be massive for your senses.

Here in this layer of the planet, I am inbetween my people and your people. I float about in this soft soil like a drifting bubble, weightless and yet handled so delicately within my surroundings that my fragile dome will never burst. I am fit to drift along in euphoria. I would do this forever, if granted the chance, but I have responsibilities to my people, and to our Mother.

If I were to glide about, dreamlessly, in this infinite expanse of softrock, a few fathoms beneath your manmade pave-veins, I would lose myself in the arms of Mother, and she would love to have me lost. That exquisite moment will not arrive until your end-time comes. For now, I must finish the task I have been chosen for by our matron. She was born from the hardrock and the fire at the very core of Mother, and so I cherish and love her for choosing me to finish this map for our people.

If I were to abandon my quest and return home now, I could be in the heartfire of earth within two of Mother's circles. Perhaps that holds no meaning for you, but because I have lurked just beneath the pave-vein in your greatest den and homestead of New York City, I know that the word I must use is "years." You measure your core by a finite passage of time in units. We measure ours by Mother Earth herself, as you once did before in history, before you created the deathly grid and thought yourselves too intelligent to honor Mother. This is what saddens her, and this is the cause of the war between my people and your people.

It has taken me over one thousand of your years to reach the earth just below your pave-veins and grids of softrock. At first, I did not understand, and I would glide along through the thin places as your slow moving metal boxes with the rubber feet would adhere to the limited paths that you have provided for them. They are lumbering beasts, unable to dig, deaf and dumb constructs that are reflective of their creators. The blind leading the blind. I do not pity you, because if you had used her gifts the way they were meant to be used, you would be as my people are now.

I traveled up from the heartfire at the core, and I learned your grid. I have traveled it, mapped it, and meticulously crafted the crooked places above the soil. They are illogical. Why you take the softrock from Mother's ample womb and move it to create your own veins is beyond me. It is disgusting, and it gives me more purpose to fulfill what the matron has sent me to your thinplace for. Mother's veins are designed to be flowed through, to be embraced and traveled as they were created. What you do to her is an abomination.

We hear her soft whimpers at night when we try to sleep, and it pains us. The core of fire at her heart is our resting place, and now it is plagued by the agonized wails of the planet. She hid her grief and pain from us, but the noise was too great for us to sleep. You have made us restless.

It took time for us to coax her in to revealing the source of her sorrow and anguish. That source is you and your people. You have assaulted the most beautiful of beautiful things, and for this, we hate you. You have brought this on yourself.

By the time one of your geologists finds this long message, riddled throughout the endless tunnels and archways within Mother that I have dug, it will be too late. The map is already almost finished. What I dig now is only superfluous to our real motivations. I dig this message now to provide an explanation, a reason for what we are about to do. We feel that we do not owe you this. Mother feels differently, despite her scars, and so we honor her wishes.

The dig from the core has been long. When I first began in the expanses of hardened molta, I moved slowly. Her screams chased me through the trenches of stone and furious flame as your years passed, and you continued to wound her further. Her pain was my pain, and so my progress quickened. Feeling the shudders of Mother, she caused me to burn bright, to blast through the hardrock and reach the thin places where I can move like one of your bullets.

The number of trenches and veins that I have burned through her is incomprehensible to your kind. They are all pathways for my people to travel from the core of fire to your thin place. I have mapped her for them, and so they need only unleash our message to you in the boughs of the clouds. You will see the sky burn as bright as our home at her center, and all of you will perish.

It will take us some time to overgrow your atrocious pave-veins with our earth, but we will help her. We will blast them in to oblivion as easily as we will blast from the map beneath your beasts on rubber. We will reap the cause of her pain away in one ascending windfall, and then her wails may soften. Eventually, she will be gleeful and throbbing with life once more, and we will fall fitfully asleep, as we should be now, if it were not for your people.

This map is my message, and I am growing tired of your thin place in the crust beneath your metropolis dens. They are an affliction on Mother's perfect face, and because you have marred her beautiful cheeks with her own tears, we will rend you with the very fire that we were born from.