Of Gods And Devils And All Inbetween

2007-02-02T03:22:00.000-08:00

THE HOLY CORRIDOR
A homeless man reunites with a sadistic figure from his past.

FALL FROM A MASQUERADE
A group of thieves is confronted by their ruthless target.

SUNDAY PREY
A hunter finds a mysterious priest dying in the woods.

DEATH IS THE MORNING MIST
A mentally challenged man takes part in a strange experiment.

SEVEN MILES FROM METTLER
Two friends stumble upon a gate to a cruel forgotten town.

THE OAK TREE BY THE LAKE
A man remembers a brief bygone friendship.

A GIFT FOR CLARA
A tycoon tries to pursuade a man to use his unusual talent.

LONG GREEN SMILE
A cold deal is struck with a heartless businessman.

THE CLOUDS BELOW EASTON
Two brothers climb a mountain and discover a grim truth.

THE SIX TRIALS OF JULIAN MCKENZIE
An office worker is recruited to work for a hidden department.

SEMAPHORE
A man with strange phobias confronts them head-on.

RAPESEED
Three girls wake up in chains and try to recollect the night's events.

PHIL AND MAXINE AND THE ORB
A young couple is stalked by a group of mysterious men.

TOUR OF THE JAILKEEPER
The keeper of an unusual prison gives his replacement a brief tour.

Death is the Morning Mist

2007-02-02T01:50:00.000-08:00

From where he knelt alone in his hazy pit, he could see shadows lying in deranged stretches on the field, playing with his escaping mind. He shut his eyes to avoid them, while clutching his bloody arm in the faint light. The feeling in his legs were fading away, which might have been a good thing. Anything to erase the pain.

Nothing kept Mike from thinking about his friend, however. About how he made him into a form of evil, an unrecognizable wound of his former self.

There were voices coming, floating intermittent on the mist. He didn't know to trust them or not. At that point, nothing made sense, and trust was a gift that didn't exist anymore. Perhaps it never did.

Run to them, he thought, it doesn't matter anymore. Just stop the pain. I can't walk. I can't see. Blood in my eyes, streaming down my face into my mouth. I'll dwell on the taste to keep me from passing out, the flavor of this demon I've made.

Please help me, Mike thought, whoever you are. Don't hurt my friend.

*****

Kirk took his time with his last delivery of the evening. From there, he would head home for soda and TV, and if he was lucky, the company of his roommate. Mike stayed late at the campus library a lot, leaving Kirk alone with his tip counting. Kirk never could remember Mike's study schedule, no matter how many times he was told.

Before he let his finger off the doorbell, his last customer for the day answered with anticipation, swinging open the brownstone door.

“Kirk, my won ton man,” said Professor Dillenger, thinking he was funny.

“That's what I am,” laughed Kirk in his animated way, also thinking the old man was funny.

The professor handed him a ten spot from the top pocket of his pullover, with words of advice. “Keep the rest, and save up for a new helmet. That one's ready for the closet.”

He was right. Kirk's white helmet was at least 20 years old. He bought it at a garage sale along with a lamp that had long since retired. The helmet only covered the top half of his head, had a torn chin strap, and was cluttered with remnants of once colorfully-bright cartoon stickers.

“It does the job,” Kirk said to the professor.

“Deep blue,” he replied, “get something in a deep blue, to match your Honda.”

With a half-smile on his face, Kirk walked back to the sidewalk where his motorcycle was parked. He secured the straps on his bike's cart, smiling back at the professor. With a hesitant whirring, he started his Honda and drove off.

*****

“Your tips get better everyday,” Mike said to his roommate, opening the windows of their stuffy apartment.

Kirk was at the table in the kitchen/dining room, with crumpled dollar bills and various coins sprawled across the formica top. He slid the biggest coins over the edge of the table and into his palm, counting as he did so. From the other side of the living room, Mike had to remind him that the nickels were actually worth less than the dimes, despite their larger size.

“I always forget that,” Kirk chuckled as he obviously miscounted his tips while watching TV.

Sitting on the sofa, Mike glanced at Kirk and his treasure of tips. $11.34 for the day. Mike knew that his friend's count would be wrong, like it was every night. He knew that he'd recount it after Kirk fell asleep. But he didn't mind it much, because there was never more than ten dollars to sift through.

The two were an unlikely pair to be sharing a small apartment in the university district of the Woodston suburbs, or so it would seem. Mike was attending W.U., involved in a variety of activities, from sports to science projects. He got his thin black hair cut and trimmed twice a month, and called his mother weekly to tell her how he had yet to meet a nice girl.

Kirk's flat blond hair was cut the same days as Mike's, whether in need or not. They would make a good time of it. With the sole exception of Mike, Kirk had acquaintances as opposed to friends.

More dominant in his description, Kirk was uneducated. To be exact, the boy was a simpleton. On the surface, he had traces of naivete in the personality of a nice guy. What didn't show was that he had no college or high school education, merely basic math skills and first-stage phonetic reading abilities. Those special school programs never went above that.

Every piece of paper in Kirk's life had some footnote about his simple thinking. His I.D., his job application to deliver for The Blue Dragon, even his school certificates all had brief, small-printed mentionings of his “limits”.

Mike had been pals with him since they were at the same orphanage. He himself was enrolled in Kirk's Enhanced Education program at their alma mater. By his sophomore year, however, Mike extended himself beyond the fences of the program. Kirk never left them.

“The professor said I should get a deep blue,” Kirk said into the air.

“Deep blue what?” Mike asked.

“Helmet. He said my helmet is old and ready for the closet, and that I should get one that's colored deep blue.”

“To match your trail bike, I suppose.”

“How much does a deep blue cost?” Kirk asked, holding a fistful of faded dollars.

“More than what you've got,” Mike told him. “They probably start at sixty or seventy bucks.”

“Kirk opened his hand and looked through the tumbleweed of money. He pulled away a few bills, then a few more. He counted them and came up with a disappointing figure.

“I could loan you some cash until you get paid,” Mike offered.

“No,” Kirk quickly said, almost upset. “I already borrowed for rent. I have a job, and I should pay for my own helmet.” He clumsily slid the money into a huge glass jar. “This will be the Helmet Jar from now on. It will be until I have enough to get one.”

“I admire you for your determination,” Mike said blankly, watching TV.

Kirk took it as enthusiastic approval, and tossed his helmet into the air, following it with his eyes. “My head will shine like the sky!”

Mike smiled at Kirk's proclamation and stood from the saggy sofa. He walked into his bedroom to do a little studying for the next day, leaving his friend at the table holding his helmet in front of the jar with an air of impatience.

*****

In one of the halls of Woodston University, Mike and his friend Theo walked to a water fountain beneath a student bulletin board. Mike bent over to drink as his friend glanced at the passers-by.

“How's life with Quirk?” Theo said, looking at the students walking by.

Mike stopped drinking just long enough to answer. “He's fine.”

“I didn't ask how he was, I asked how life with him was. For example, how's rent?”

Mike stopped drinking and looked at Theo for a moment before replying. Theo removed his glasses and gulped water from the fountain as well.

“Rent is okay,” Mike finally said.

“You went from 'fine' to 'okay'. You're broke again?”

“Well, yeah, who isn't?”

“People with decent roommates.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” Mike asked knowingly.

Theo rose from his crouched position and put his glasses back on, just in time to see Professor Dillenger limp by.

“Hello Professor,” he said.

“Girl-watching, Theodore?” the Professor laughed in his hurried walk. “That's so unlike you.”

“Not really, sir, we're all testosterone and Pepsi inside,” Theo replied. The Professor disappeared around a corner with a little laugh.

“What are you guys, chums or something?” Mike asked.

“It helps to oil the wheels from time to time. You should try it sometime, it takes off a lot of the pressure of being a full-time academian.”

“Get back to what you were saying. About roommates.”

Theo looked at him serious for a moment. “The Blue Dragon's rumored to be closing.” Knowing that news would make Mike pause in thought about his near future, Theo gave it a moment to sink in before continuing in a jovial manner. “We won't have anything delivered in Woodston, except pizza. Some college community, huh?”

Mike was still taking in the news, hoping it wasn't true. “Where did you hear that? Kirk just landed a raise, not even three weeks ago.”

“You know Peter?” Theo said. “His uncle owns the place. I never knew that till this morning. He said that his uncle is suddenly talking about being too old to run a business, about dying in his own country. Closing down, moving back to China, the whole bit. He's almost 80, and he's afraid of not seeing his grandchildren again.”

Mike knew how hard it was for someone like Kirk to get a job, and how lucky he was to get one at the Dragon, working with people he's known for years. It wouldn't just set the two of them back financially, it would strike Kirk emotionally as well.

“I don't know what's going to happen with you and Kirk,” Theo said, “but if the two of you split ways, and you need a roommate, let me know. My roommate and I are about to reenact Gettysburg.”

“That's what everyone says about their roomies.”

“Apparently, not you.”

Not really listening to Theo, Mike stared across the hallway in thought.

“If you do decide you want another roommate, don't put an ad up on the board,” Theo said, looking at the bulletin board above them. “You know where I am.”

Mike looked up at the board, covered with a skin of papers in every color and size. In the middle of it all was a bright green paper with the W.U. letterhead on it. It said: “Woodston Science needs young people with brains. Big money, no work involved, need not be Einstein.” The headline was accompanied by a cartoon ape holding Lego blocks, and went on with details of who, when, where.

“Big money” was all Mike needed to see.

*****

“What would I do?” Kirk asked, glancing at the green flyer on the kitchen table.

“I don't know, but I've done it many times before,” Mike said. “I never got paid for my time, but the paper says something about big money.”

“What about the Blue Dragon?” Kirk asked. He held his worn helmet in his hands, ready to go to work for the afternoon.

“It would just be every other night. A few hours, that's all. When I volunteered for experiments, I was playing cards a lot. I looked at pictures, drew cartoons. Easy stuff.”

“Cartoons?” Kirk said with curiosity. “They pay you to draw cartoons?”

“Not when I did it, but they'll pay you. It must be a big experiment if their paying money. You might be doing something very important, for everyone.”

Kirk paused for a moment before putting his helmet on. “I don't know. I guess it wouldn't be so bad. You always do say how you want me to go to college.”

“Yeah, and the experiments would kinda make you a student. You'd be studying science with other people.” Mike tried his best to pitch the idea. He didn't tell Kirk what to do, that would create a stubborn rebel. Rather, he merely encouraged him to prepare for the future.

“I could hang out in the rec hall with you on Friday nights,” Kirk thought aloud.

“Well, you could do that now, but yes, you could go to the rec hall because now you'd be part of Woodston U.”

Kirk walked to the door with his motorcycle keys in one of his hands. He slid his other hand across his helmet, feeling the sticker corpses of Sylvester and Bugs.

“I usually go to Miller Park after my last delivery,” he said. “The sunsets are pretty from there.” He rubbed his helmet again. “But I guess it would help me get a new helmet.”

“That's right!” Mike said enthusiastically. “Deep blue. You'd still be able to go to the park. I'm sure they wouldn't keep you every night.”

Kirk smiled at the thought of going into a motorcycle shop downtown and picking out a new helmet. He also thought of a few other things he wanted to buy with his would-be wealth. His smile gave Mike the O.K.

“Do you remember the phone booth on campus where we met when we went to see 'Jurassic Park?'” Mike asked him.

“Yeah, the dinosaurs were the best!” Kirk said with passion.

“The movie was good, but the phone booth, do you remember where you met me? Next to the big white building with the towers?” His friend nodded yes. “That's the science building. Go there after work, Room 23. If you forget, just ask someone where the experiments are. They should know.”

“Room 23, the laboratory,” Kirk said, almost singing it to help him remember. “Room 23, the la-bra-tor-ee.”

“Money for you, deeeeep blue,” Mike sang back.

They looked at each other for a second before laughing at Mike's ridiculous rhyme. With a shake of his keys, Kirk stepped out of the apartment, closing the door behind him.

*****

Turning his trail motorcycle off, Kirk looked up from the student parking lot to the belittling towers of the Woodston science building, a futuristic rendition of a medieval castle. Not bothering to secure his bike in the city-sized college, he walked to the nearest door of the building and peered inside.

The hallway was sterile white, stretching forever. Identical doors stood in front of each other in soldier-like rows, all closed, all blue. Kirk followed the doors with his eyes, from the farthest point away from him to the very door he held ajar. He stepped inside with his helmet in his hands, the door hushing shut behind him with an abrupt clasp of metal on metal.

The first door he examined said “34” on it. Counting backwards through a song he learned to aid him, he walked down the hall until he reached 23. He held the door's big, metal handle for a moment before turning it.

The door's opening let out jungles of various lab noises, all of which he'd only heard in movies. Entering the room, he immediately noticed a large-screen television with the animated “Lord of the Rings” playing on it. He also saw tables with serious science items on them, and people walking around with serious scientist faces.

“May I help you?” asked one of them, a man with thinning grey hair. Just like everyone else there, he wore a white overcoat, and carried a loaded clipboard.

“My roommate told me about some experiments you do,” Kirk said, “and I want to help.”

“Good, good,” the scientist said, “we have a couple of other subjects already. Three should work out okay.” He straightened his coat collar before clearing his throat to speak in a less relaxed voice. “I'm Dr. Farr, the one who wrote the flyer you probably saw. I even drew the ape.”

“My roommate probably saw it, but not me,” said the nervous young man. “I only saw the words part.”

Dr. Farr sensed Kirk's uneasiness and tried to alleviate it. “It might be a little intimidating at first, but really, this is just another classroom. It's the same as all your others. Well, perhaps not as stressful as Bio Lab can be, eh?”

“I don't go to Woodston. My roommate does, not me. I'm not that kinda guy.”

“What kind?” Farr asked. “The kind that likes school? I find not many people are that kind, my boy.”

“Smart. I'm not smart enough to go to Woodston,” Kirk told Farr, not seeming to be bothered by his unfavorable self-evaluation.

Farr noticed this and thought for a moment, looking Kirk up and down. He pointed with his clipboard to another part of the room, beginning to walk there. Kirk followed, though his eyes kept wandering.

“The experiments we do are usually for statistical purposes,” Farr went on. “They're simple, take almost no time, and count for science credits. But since you're not enrolled, I'm sure you'll like the fact that you'll be getting paid. Very well, in fact.”

As he followed Dr. Farr to another door, one with a large, thick window, Kirk wondered if he should have asked what the experiment was about and what he would being doing. But after hearing Farr tell him he would be paid well, he didn't want to blow anything for himself. He treated his paid volunteering as a job, and speaking with Farr was the interview. Besides, getting paid “very well” warranted cooperation from the subject, not annoying questions and delays.

Farr opened the door with the thick window. Kirk noticed networks of wires woven into the glass, all different colors, crossing each other in perfect geometry. He looked at them, tracing the individual paths from edge to edge. As he did so, he could hear Dr. Farr making subtle noises behind him. After following a yellow wire, he looked at the room's lights reflecting off the glass. This new room was quite the closet.

“I have some questions for you, nothing academic,” Farr said, “just some personal routine questions.”

Kirk turned around to see that the room was indeed very small, barely the size of his bedroom, with instruments and computers built flush into the walls. Evidently to save space, though they didn't seem to succeed. In the middle of the room next to Farr was what looked like a dentist's chair. Uncomfortable memories about dentists came to Kirk.

“Sit down, sit down,” said Farr, “you know, I never got your name.”

“Kirk.”

“What a masculine name that is.”

“It's spelled with a K.”

“Of course, what else could it be spelled with?” Farr waited for a laugh, a look of “Yes, that's true, doctor,” but there was nothing. Kirk was serious. By the tone of how he stated his name's spelling, it sounded like that was the way he always introduced himself.

“Kirk with a K,” Farr said, “I'll be back in a moment. When I come back, I'll ask you those questions like I said, and then we'll get the ball rolling. Would you like a magazine while I'm gone?”

Kirk spied the magazines underneath the scientist's clipboard. One caught his eye. Seeing this, Farr gave him the Time issue with Superman on its cover, celebrating the superhero's 50th birthday. “You want this one?” Farr asked him. “Go ahead and look at it for a minute.”

The huge door closed behind Farr with a vacuum seal hush as he left, looking over his shoulder at his newest guinea pig. Kirk leafed through his magazine, looking at the pictures, attempting to read the larger print on the more interesting pages. Through the wired glass, he saw Dr. Farr talking with several other white coats, pointing at him while he went on. The others looked at Kirk, nodding in approval of Farr's find. One in particular, a lad with curly hair and glasses, looked at him differently than the rest.

Kirk wished he could read their lips, but could only hope that what ever they were saying about him was good.

*****

Holding a deep blue motorcycle helmet up to a sunlit window, Mike pinched the cushioning within it. “Plush. Good stuff. How much did this thing cost you, anyway?”

“I don't remember,” Kirk said, “but I have the receipt.” He reached across the kitchen/dining room table and dug the balled receipt out of a pile of dollar bills and other papers. He read the number at the bottom. “$125.99, but I paid more because of tax.”

“You've only been in the science biz for a month, and you've got enough money for a new helmet, clothes, and rent? What do you experiment with, the stock market or the track?”

“I take a lot of tests,” Kirk said, “and they show me cartoons of trolls and dragons, and show me pictures of forests, trees and lakes.”

“What do these have to do with your deal?”

“They still won't tell me what they want to find out,” Kirk said, as Mike tossed back his new helmet. “They say if they tell me, it'll mess up the control, and I won't get to do it anymore.”

“How long is this little operation going to last?”

“Dr. Farr says as long as it takes. I like it.”

Mike saw Kirk happy in his new sweats, holding his blue helmet, and didn't care to inquire about the university's goals. After all, he himself had been involved with experiments before, none lasting more than a couple of days, but with the same people, with the same Dr. Farr. “With your science adventures and the Blue Dragon,” Mike said, “you'll be rolling in green.”

“I think I'm going to stop delivering for the Dragon,” Kirk said, flat-toned.

Mike was stung with surprise by the abrupt decision, never hearing anything prior hinted to that. “What?” he blurted out, choking on his words. “The experiment isn't going to last forever. What are you going to do when it dies?”

“Mr. Chang says he's going to sell his restaurant so he can go back to China, so that...”

“Yeah, yeah, I heard something about that.”

“And the man who might buy the place said that he won't do deliveries.”

“So, you can do something else!” Mike burned, becoming impatient with Kirk's abandon. “You can clean dishes or clear off tables.”

“But I like the tips,” Kirk said, “I like driving around Woodston. People know me when I give them their food. I don't want to be inside all day.”

He put on his helmet and headed for the door. With his keys in his hand, he turned back to Mike who was leaning against the kitchen counter, looking at the tile floor in frustration.

“Dr. Farr said he wants me to come more,” Kirk went on, “he said he wants me to come in more days a week, or more hours everyday. If I go in the afternoon, I can still see the sunset at Miller Park on some days.”

“What about rent?” Mike said. “What about food and everything else you need? Everything else we both need?”

“The experiment will probably last for a very long time. When it's over, I can get another job. I can deliver pizza or work at the movie theater.” Smiling inside his helmet with a blind confidence, Kirk left the apartment, not to return until well past 11:00.

Mike slid Kirk's money into the glass jar and screwed the lid on. The jar was quite full, mostly of tens and twenties. But he knew that one day, whether soon or farther down the line, it would be empty again. He knew that despite his friend's optimistic view of the future, someone like him doesn't bounce back from a fall easily. His resume would read “Delivery boy, guinea pig”, right next to the part about his mental limitations. Mike found himself regretting ever seeing the green flyer.

*****

Three months passed quickly behind the boys. Kirk removed the basket from the back of his Trail 90 since The Blue Dragon had been transformed into The Ox Cart, a steak-and-potatoes place. Mike had been on vacation from school, the experiments went on, and Kirk's new helmet had lost its luster.

“I've been meaning to wax it, but I keep forgetting,” Kirk told Farr, as he sat in the dentist's chair. Farr seemed to ignore what he was saying.

“Do you still have those dreams?” Farr asked. “The ones where you think someone's going to hurt you?”

“Yeah, like someone's hunting me, chasing me, but I don't know who. It makes me feel like a rabbit or a squirrel.”

“The dream of someone chasing you, of being prey, is a classic one. Sometimes you can even enjoy the thrill of it.”

“Not with my dreams you can't.”

Farr prepared a hyperdermic needle for Kirk, the latest of hundreds he'd taken. At first, the needles scared him, but then he reached a point where everything scared him a little. The needles paled in the sea of fear.

“Dr. Farr, I don't feel so good,” he said, opening and closing his hands on the chair's armrests into tight fists.

“What is it? You're going to vomit? Headache? You have to tell me, my boy.” Farr continued to ready the drugs as he spoke, reducing the sincerity in his voice.

“No, no, its nothing. I'm just scared, I guess. I feel like something's behind me all the time...”

“Kirk, we've been doing this for months,” Farr said. He was getting enough of Kirk's stories of the air grabbing at him, of the unseen assailants between his apartment and W.U. “It's the same every time. You come here, you sit in my chair. I give you this medicine, you sleep for a few minutes. You look at pictures, watch TV, take tests. I don't see what there is to be scared of. But like I've always said, if you want to stop, just say so...”

“No. I can do it.” Kirk was trapped into the experiments, and Farr knew it, especially as he offered to get Kirk out of them. The movie theater never called since Kirk applied for a job there. Neither did the Pizza Barn, though he figured he wouldn't get a job delivering there, since his skinny bike couldn't very well hold a stack of 16-inch pies.

He glanced at the needle, almost ready. He darted his eye away to keep from getting more nervous, a trick Mike told him to do. It usually worked, but for each time he did it, he hoped harder that he wouldn't faint or throw up. How embarrassing it would be for a science man to lose his composure on the job. “I drive my motorcycle fast, now. I don't want anything to catch me.” Talking could help ease the anticipation, he thought. “At night, when I go to sleep, I'm afraid that something is going to grab my leg if I let it hang over the edge of the bed.”

Farr squirted a quick stream of yellow fluid into the air, then lowering the needle to his subject's arm which was strapped down to its armrest.

“They're just dreams. It's okay to feel scared, my boy. You can feel any way you want to. You can keep your feet under the covers and away from the edge of the bed. You can drive a little faster than you usually do. Being cautious will do you more good than anything else. What you need to watch out for is when you act like your dreams are real.”

Farr shoved the needle into the middle of Kirk's right arm. Almost an entire chamber of the drug went into him. “You're not going to run out of here, screaming about a mist chasing you again, are you?” Farr asked with a smile. The smile calmed Kirk a little. “Those naps of yours can be pretty tiring for all of us here. You didn't tell anyone about that, did you?”

“I wanted to tell my roommate, but I didn't. I don't want to spoil anything.”

“Right, the experiment's been going on too long to spoil it. What a good job you do.”

Another scientist, one with curly hair and glasses, entered the small room carrying a few videotapes. It was Theo.

“Hey Kirk,” he said in a conjured joviality, as he watched Kirk's uncomfortable grimacing. “Which ones are we watching today, Dr. Farr?”

“Put in #10, the same as yesterday.”

“Right away.”

“Theodore, just a moment. I need a word with you.”

Theo turned to the doctor, hiding his reservations about the experiment Kirk was involved in. The subjects used to be merely that to him, subjects. But in this particular case, it was someone he knew, or at least knew of. He and Kirk hadn't been introduced before, but Mike told Theo everything about his good pal and roomie. In addition to all that, the experiment itself demanded a unique perspective, being unprecedented in its dangers.

“What is it, Dr. Farr?”

“How are things around school? Classes?”

“Everything hunky dorey,” Theo replied, hoping it wouldn't go further than that.

“And what about you? Have you kept everything in this room only in this room? I see who you walk with between classes.”

“Of course. Nothing leaves me.”

Farr paused, thinking about what his pupil said, analyzing how he said it. The doctor prided himself on being able to spot a lie or lack of will. “I'm glad to hear it.” Theo left the room to set up the videotape, swallowing what apprehension he may have had moments before.

“Same thing as yesterday?” Kirk asked.

“Yes, that's right. Tomorrow will be something new.”

“I want to watch 'Lord of the Rings” again. Some parts of it, anyway.“

“Some parts,” Farr repeated. “Some other parts scare you, don't they?” He loosened the straps on the chair and let Kirk stand on the floor. “That dragon part scares you, doesn't it?”

“Yeah. There used to be a basket on my motorcycle, with a dragon on it. I used to pretend it protected me at night when I delivered Chinese food, or when I drove here to the lab. But one day it turned against me. It didn't like me. I almost fell off my bike when I saw it.” Kirk mumbled something, fading into quiet.

“What, my boy? What did you see?” Farr waited through a long silence for a response. He didn't want to push Kirk too far, not while he was so close to a new plateau.

“The Blue Dragon,” Kirk began, “I saw the Blue Dragon. It was on the basket, on the side, painted. Then it curled around, and crawled on top of it.”

*****

“You're jealous because I have the money now!” Kirk yelled at Mike, outside their apartment door. “You wish you could've been paid for your work, like me.”

“You shouldn't go anymore. You shouldn't go because your mood swings are gonna make me murder you!” Mike screamed back. He unlocked the door in a frenzy, trying to manhandle the bundle of groceries in his arms. “You come home every night around midnight, wake me up ranting about some stupid thing like my shoes being in the living room...”

“They shouldn't be in there.”

“...or a cup in the sink unwashed. Then you go to sleep and wake me up again with your nightmares. Something's wrong upstairs with you, I don't care about the money!”

The two of them stormed into their home, each with shopping bags up to their brows. After a struggle, Kirk accidentally dropped his onto the floor, just shy of the formica table. “Look what I did!” he cried. “Your stupid talking made me so mad I dropped the food!” He violently kicked the bag that was on the floor, sending a splatter of milk into the living room air.

Mike set his bags down on the table and closed his eyes in anger, restraining himself from succumbing to an outburst.

“Why don’t you say it?” Kirk said. “You don’t like a retarded person making more money than you!” He ran into the bathroom and slammed the door shut. After a few seconds, Mike heard the shower turn on.

Quietly, he cleaned up what Kirk left for him. He tried to ignore the shrieks and wails from the bathroom, the thuds against the shower walls. Then, all at once, the noises stopped. Only the sound of the water remained.

He walked into the bathroom, surprised to find the door unlocked. Kirk was usually good about locking doors, especially when he was using the restroom. “Kirk, what are you doing?” he said in a calm tone. The shower door was swung far open. Kirk sat inside, fully-clothed, with the water stream hitting him on the neck. Mike reached in and shut the water off. He poked Kirk in the chest a couple of times to wake him, but he was out for the night.

Taking his roommate's wet clothes off to get him into pajamas, Mike noticed that Kirk's chest had become darker, hairier. Perhaps it was the effect of his body being wet, but it looked spookily as if there was more hair. Quite a lot more.

It had been nearly a year since Kirk began going to Dr. Farr. As of late, his dreams had grown to serious levels. Once Kirk was watching TV with Mike, and said he saw the clouds behind the actors emerge from the screen and float toward him. Another time, Mike came home late from a party to find the apartment in shambles. The sofa was shredded, the table was overturned and split. Another day, while working on his motorcycle, Kirk lifted it in frustration and threw it several feet. Mike remembered when he and a friend were helping Kirk change a flat, and could barely lift the trail bike, much less throw it.

And now the hair on Kirk's body was thicker. Mike knew there were drugs involved, but he had no idea they affected hormones as well as thoughts, his temperament.

The money kept coming in but was no longer important to his friend. Kirk ignored the jar, leaving the money on the table in piles for Mike to put away. Nothing was important to him anymore except his visits to room 23, and his “medicine”. Mike felt he had to talk to Farr about what was going on, despite the need for scientific control. It was becoming too much for him to be in the dark any longer.

*****

“Last night was the first good night's sleep I've had in a long time,” Mike said. “Kirk used up so much energy in our fight, he was knocked out the whole night.”

“He's not sick, is he?” Farr asked as he filed some records. “He's still coming tonight?”

“As far as I know. He's home sleeping right now, but he'll be up for tonight. He looks forward to it.”

“He's at a very fragile stage in the experiment. He needs his sleep, especially if he's as bad as you think he is.”

“As bad as I 'think'?”

Farr walked to a metal table of glassware and small stacks of papers. He scribbled down something on a cubical paper pad and tore of his leaf. “Get this downtown and give it to him whenever he feels bad or gets cranky. It'll calm him down.”

“A prescription?” Mike asked.

“We give it to him here whenever we sense his mood becoming rocky. It's pretty mild stuff, really.”

“Is this what causes his hallucinations?”

“No, that's not where it comes from. This is basically flu medicine. It sedates him a little, makes him mellow.”

“So he'll still see things coming after him, but won't care so much.”

Farr felt Mike's concern, as well as his doubt. “He's reached a part of the study that's crucial to the whole. If we stop now, this entire year will have been for naught. If I tell you what we're doing, it will most likely result in the same.”

“I'm not here to talk about results. Kirk needs help. There's no way he could've known it would get this bad.”

“There's every way he'd know, Mike,” Farr quickly added. “The armadas of paperwork we had him read and sign on the first day are nothing but endless disclaimers, basically saying that anything's possible, and that many things are probable. I know he's a little slow, but he's a big boy. He knew exactly what he was getting into when he first walked through that door.”

Dr. Farr wanted to dispense with any thoughts of withdrawing his most advanced subject from the experiment. Mike's
hesitation to respond told him that he was successful in expressing that. He knew, however, that if Mike wanted to pursue things, he could eventually take not only Kirk away, but raise a heat and take away many other things as well. “We try our best, believe me, Mike.”

“Look, I'm not saying I want the whole thing stopped case closed,” Mike began, “but there has to be a way of doing whatever it is you do without endangering him any more. If not, then stopping the study is the only way.”

“The problem is gaps in the process,” Farr told him, continuing to file folders. “He comes here and moves ahead, then goes home and exposes himself to other things in life. Television. His environment. You. For just this last part of the experiment, I propose he stay here with my staff and I.”

“Spend nights here. In the lab.”

“It's perfectly fine, my boy, and for the best. I assure you it won't be very long. After this we'll be observing conclusions, making hypotheses on related fields, and so on. It won't involve him to a point where we'll need to watch him constantly.”

“That all sounds good,” Mike said, “but I'm also concerned that he may be addicted to your drugs.”

“We're monitoring that, too. We'll give him alternate preoccupations during the testing, placebos, things that will gradually get him used to not receiving the Licycline solution. That's going to be administered whether or not we conclude that he truly is addicted. Does any of this make you feel better? He's my subject, yes, but he's a person first and foremost. I always remember that part.”

Mike didn't care much for the study anymore, or the way Kirk changed. But he'd known Dr. Farr for years, taken his classes, participated in his studies. He decided to give his old professor one more chance to wrap up his experiment before taking it to the dean.

*****

The dentist's chair was gone. In the small room with the thick-windowed door there was now a metal table with many straps on it. Clutching his travel bag, Kirk saw this and instinctively wanted to hide. He wanted to run outside into the nearest open field so that he would have plenty of time to see his approaching killer. He also wanted to duck under the nearest shrub, to cover his head and get lost in the dark.

“This is where you'll be for a while, Kirk,” Dr. Farr said. “The chair is gone. I know how much you hated that.”

“This is worse,” Kirk said under a gurgling, deep voice. He cleared his throat in an attempt to mask his metamorphosis.

“Hop on. I'll show you how it works.”

Kirk lied on the table. Farr and a couple of other staff secured him to it with the built-in straps. Once the last strap was tied down, Farr turned the table to a vertical position. Kirk thought of Frankenstein's monster.

“You're eyes are very red and swollen, Kirk.” Farr raised an eye dropper to his subject's face.

Kirk immediately squirmed and tried to avoid the dropper, like a baby moving its head to avoid its food. Two scientists moved in and held his head in place. A third held his eyes open. Farr administered several drops into each eye.

“It burns! It burns!” Kirk screamed at the wall of deathly-serious faces. “Get it off me! I need water!”

Farr prepared a needle for his subject, filling the chamber full of the familiar yellow liquid. He squirted a little into the air, triggering Kirk's routine nervousness like a sadistic Pavlovian scene, which at that moment rose to skyscraper fear. “Hold his arm down,” he told his staff. “His glands are red-line active, there's no telling anything anymore.” Already strapped in three places, two scientists held down the young man's arms as hard as they could.

“Hold still now,” Farr calmly told his screaming subject. With a sudden jerk, Kirk broke the two straps that held one of his legs. He kicked Dr. Farr hard in the stomach, sending him back against the windowed door. The staff rushed Kirk and clamped down on him like human vices. He continued to bellow strange moans, beginning to see changes in the staff. One had bright orange eyes. One had long, straw-like hair. One had a long, pointed tongue.

He cried out in high-pitched shrieks, yelping like an animal being beaten with a club. “Gas him! Hold him!” the scientists said. One of them threw a breathing mask over Kirk's face, another turned the valve. Farr jabbed the needle into the boy's arm. Kirk poured out muffled cries, moving about like a fish as it's painfully lifted from its water. The veins in his arms lit up and raised in quite a gruesome sight, resembling the sprawling branches of a dead tree.

With half-open eyes underneath his transparent gas mask, Kirk finally went out. The last image in his mind could not be described as a picture, but rather an emotion, as raw as one could read about in any psychological study. Fear.

Over that next week, Kirk was subjected day after day to the same experience as that of his first 24-hour stay. All day, everyday, even as he slept, Farr's staff poked him, prodded him, drugged him. They recorded every nuance to what he said and did, no matter how insignificant. During this process, Kirk spoke less and less. His words turned to grunts and moans most of the time. Other times, he didn't speak at all, but just stared at everybody and everything as if waiting for something to occur.

The doctors, the student assistants, Farr himself, they were all demons. All of them, long-toothed creatures imprisoning him for the Great Mist, preparing him for when it would envelop his being.

During the day, they crawled countlessly over his body with their daggers and claws. During the night, a chosen few aimed fire at the boy to keep him at bay, accompanied by their strong leather straps. Outside, he knew the blue soldiers were ready to stop him in case he tried to flee the castle. But there was nowhere to go, nothing to lose. He felt he would die either way.

One face that Kirk didn't see much of was Theo's. The student scientist couldn't bare to see what Kirk was going through. He had never seen anything be taken so far, and didn't know what to do about it. He feared for his standing with W.U. and with Dr. Farr, thinking that his academic career was put on the line by his inability to keep confidence.

If Mike knew what was happening, he thought, then he would be the one to end this torture. It's only right that he knows. Someone must know. I can't be the only one who thinks this is wrong. I just need someone to reassure me that I'm not alone.

Near the midnight of the seventh night sleeping in the castle, Kirk's guards were looking the other way. He built up his situation, his desperation, his emotion. He thrust it into his right arm and burst it from its three straps. Quickly, he ripped his other straps to shreds and threw himself at the door of his private room.

Farr's night crew rushed to sustain the subject. They piped gas beneath the door and pushed heavy equipment against it, preparing for anything just as Farr had said.

Kirk slammed his angry, terror-stricken body against the wired window, pressing his face against the sight of the demon guards. Behind him, the wall of lights and knobs were writing his execution. They crafted a guillotine traced in bright red lines of blood. Howling like a rabid coyote, Kirk punched his arm through the window and grabbed one of the staff guards. He pulled the helpless creature through the jagged hole, slicing strips of skin off his cheeks and forehead. Clinching his fist over the scientist's face to fit it through the hole, Kirk curled his fingers hard, shoving them into the man's devil eyes, sending thin spurts of blood onto the glass.

The others saw this and began to flee, one at a time, until the last remaining few ran away screaming all at once. Their only prayer was to get away before Kirk got to them, and hope that the breaking of the wired glass would bring enough security to deal with the thing they made.

Cracking the unfortunate captor's skull apart, Kirk pounded the pulpy head onto the door handle and wedged it against
the roof of its mouth. Using it to pry open the door, he destroyed the great lock.

The Mist is approaching, he thought to himself. I've got to hide where it can't see. Somewhere dark. Somewhere quiet.

He whipped the door open, sending the mutilated corpse across the room, falling prey to a wall of glassware and utensils. The prisoner looked about the room that once smiled to him, but now only choked him, waiting for him to die. He wouldn't let that happen, though. He would kill anything that kept him from the salvation of the sunrise, and punish it for its efforts, its breaths of Hell.

Out into the hall where the blue soldiers stood, Kirk screamed in fear and in pain of what was happening to his mind. It felt like it was melting, like he was forced to bare witness to his own shifting into a mud pit of what he used to be. During this crouched wrenching of agony, from the main entrance of the hall, a dark figure burst in carrying a large weapon.

“Mr. Bowman, I find you at last,” Dr. Farr said, still unrecognizable to Kirk. “You were inevitably bound to reach this point, my boy. I simply thought I was correctly prepared for it.”

Kirk looked up at Farr, who was slowly advancing the troubled youth. As soon as Farr was clearly seen in the light emanating from the lab, he stopped, raising his bizarre gun.

“Don't shoot me,” Kirk gurgled, “let me out.” The state of his thoughts were moving back and forth like water in a can, and it was hard for him to focus on one spot. He saw everything in a jumble, and imagined it all in either black or white, for him or against him. They wouldn't stay in one field, creating unimaginable confusion, clouding him from lunging blindly at his fender. In this, Farr was lucky, and he knew it.

“Mr. Bowman, I want you to tell me who I am. I want you to tell me where we are. What is this place.”

“This is where the walls are,” Kirk moaned, still clutching his head. “This is where the blood holds you for the Mist, and the lights blind you from seeing it hover above your head. And you... you live here.”

“Again, Mr. Bowman. This time, stop reading out of cheap thrift store novels. Who am I? What is this place?” Farr was serious in tone, perhaps creating temporary control where he knew he truly had none. Even with the tranquilizer in his hands, his confidence was lacking. The amount of sedative he carried on his person was nowhere near the amount he needed to fell Kirk, much less the single shot amount in the gun's chamber.

“You live here in this castle. I don't know you... I just know that you want to kill me.”

“Dr. Farr. That is who I am. This is Woodston University. Think of what we do here. Remember what I told you to do if you lost yourself.”

Kirk thought hard about the lines he was made to recite in such an event, but couldn't recollect them. Farr made him study the lines upon the end of every daily test, to help him base himself. “My name is Kirk Bowman. I study science. I am under the care of Dr. Farr. My name is Kirk...” Suddenly, he sprung to his feet, slapping his palms to the cold wall. Farr reacted quickly, firing darts at his subject as fast as he could reload, hitting him square in the back.

Kirk didn't react to the darts' impact, too busy coping with his new level of loss. Once the waves calmed, he turned to his doctor, looking at him through teary eyes as he plucked out the darts. All the while, Farr was reloading, dropping every other dart onto the tile floor along with his courage.

With one blurred movement Kirk bounced forward, knocked the tranquilizer out of Farr's right hand, and destroyed four of the fingers on it. It was unreal how they hung there, limp, completely useless pulps now.

Farr backed away quickly, but was cut off from the exit by his subject who thought he was only going for more weaponry. Kirk's twisted perception considered everyone as strong and enduring as he was at that moment, and didn't consider that the scientist was injured and afraid.

Farr fell to his back to avoid another swing. Thinking fast, he shoved himself against Kirk legs, tripping him. Immediately, he scampered across the floor, trying to get to the lab, trying to find fallen darts to stab the boy with.

Onto his feet before Kirk, Farr ran into the lab. Inside, he looked about for anything that could help him. There was nothing. Maybe he just needed to stay alive long enough for security to arrive. But the thought became pointless as Kirk grabbed him by the throat with amazing speed, in what seemed to be an absence of linear time. But rather than instinctively crushing his windpipe, Kirk paused, face to face with the doctor.

“You have me at a disadvantage, my boy,” Farr said in a warped rationale, shaking in complete terror. “What are you going to do now? Whatever is running through your head, do it. Anticipation is worse than anything you might conjure up.”

Kirk looked at the helpless man's eyes for a long time, trying to decide what it was, what that moving thing was he had in his hands. It was the first demon that actually spoke to him. All the others screamed or spoke to each other, but never to him.

At an apex of confusion, the hitting of one of his surmounting waves, Kirk tossed the doctor against a mirror as though he were made of straw.

Crying from the unknown consequences of his rash actions, and from the way the world filled so quickly with devils, Kirk ran through his prison and ripped the torture instruments apart. The table, the wall controls, the stacks of magazines, the TV. He even found the dentist's chair he used to tremble in.

As he demolished Lab 23, his mind furthered its slip from sanity, taking great leaps, dismissing all memory and logic. Not a minute after he ended his tirade, he was out of the castle.

*****

Sweating in his two-bedroom apartment, drenching the duct tape-patched sofa, Mike surfed through TV channels. Half-hour advertisements, late night talk shows, classic movies being butchered with edits and commercial breaks. A flash of W.U. Lights up the screen, making him back up several channels to the local news.

“Theodore Allard was found murdered in a gruesome scene in the science building just an hour ago...”

Mike could believe what he was seeing. His eyes open to a point where his brow started to ache. Through his abrupt grief, he gripped a throw pillow, trying to listen to the rest of the article.

“...authorities originally suspected the work of several people, possibly a gang, but witnesses describe only one man fleeing from the three attacks. The suspect, who has been pinned to the two student maulings and the faculty murder, has yet to be caught by the ongoing manhunt. Woodston University has been sealed off, and we can only hope that it’s not too late to catch this man. Police feel confident that the suspect is still somewhere on campus...”

Mike processed all this quickly. His speed of thought skipped over things he kept racing back for. He didn’t know where to start, lost in the crazed blue of theo, the police, the school, and Kirk. My God, he thought. The science building, Theo worked there. He was found there. Dead. Kirk is there. He’s in trouble, he might be next, if he’s not already dead.

Holding tight to the pillows, he reached down to the sofa and pulled at the cushions as the broadcast eerily described the suspect’s features. This was happening so fast, Mike could barely think about what was happening. He cursed himself for what he began to form in his mind, though the evidence was overwhelming. He looked up at the lamp across the room, next to the TV. It was cracked in a dozen places. Mike had to glue it after Kirk smashed it in rage. The mood swings, the tantrums, the nightmares, the hallucinations.

The man they were hunting was Kirk. They succeeded. They made him some kind of monster.

Mike bent over on the sofa and began to sob. He began to travel back to the days before he stepped past Kirk and into a college man’s career. For a torturing few minutes after the broadcast, Mike was thinking the way his roommate used to, with simple sorrow.
The broadcast continued. “Police advise to stay away from the campus, as they are on a shoot-to-kill hunt. The man is considered dangerous and mentally disturbed.”

*****

Yellow ribbons roped around the university entrances, endless in their stretch. A scattered few police officers formed invisible walls between them with their arms held out, keeping people from stepping beyond the crime scene’s borders.

Mike arrived on his bicycle, watching from a short distance away. Enshrouded in darkness, he spied the nearby oleanders and eased toward them. Laying his bike on the ground gently, he stuck a leg into the bushes, then another. From within the bushes, he saw a couple of officers a few yards away. They received a message on their radios and moved deeper into the dimly-lit campus. As soon as they were out of earshot, Mike carefully removed himself from the shrubs, slinking onto the grounds he knew so well.

“There’s nothing here for you!” an officer yelled into a loudspeaker. “Please, everybody, stay off the campus until the situation is over and done!” Mike heard how many people were making a commotion, and how many officers were holding them back. He thought of those huge numbers and added the officers in the manhunt. He realized that in towns like Woodston, especially in suburban outskirts areas, crimes that made the news were swiftly dealt with, and police struck especially hard to kill it as soon as they could.

Here, their man supposed killed one person and mauled two others. The night had many hours left, and the campus was a labyrinth city with countless trees, bushes, buildings of every size and shape, and dark corners. Pathways leading to everywhere were blacked out and there was plenty of partially-constructed outstretches surrounding the center of W.U. This was big. Kirk, drugged-out, uncontrollable, was going to die.

Mike had to find him before anyone else. At that point, he wouldn’t know what to do. If Kirk had really done was he was accused of, then he most likely lost his mind or what was left of it after Farr’s games. He had to find him fast, before the police, before another victim.

Hunched over as if it helped conceal him, he scurried into the shadow of a tall, black-leafed tree. Appearing before him spookily was the castle in the distance, the science building. There were officers here and there about the building, but nothing be couldn’t sneak past. Most of the police were carrying their shotguns and pistols ready to destroy Kirk at first sight. The would tend to investigating the lab later.

Three officers were in front of the building, leaving Mike to hope that the service entrance was unguarded. Surely, the killer wouldn’t return to the spot of his first kill. No need to beef security that much.

So far, he was right. There was no one outside the service entrance. Stepping in, moving his head around frantically, he saw no one inside either. He visualized a map of the building, turning it upside-down to compensate for where he stood. Room 23 should have been right where he was.

In the staff hall, the doors were unmarked, and he was left to guess that the one directly in front of him was the lab. Opening the door, not recognizing anything at first, the blood rivers told him he was right. More yellow ribbons and more officers. They spoke just outside the main entrance to the lab, talking about the murder.

“He punched through three inches of reinforced glass,” said one officer, “triggered the alarm.”

“Must be on high on something,” said another. “Sick thing he did, tearing part of his head off. I’ve never seen anything like that.”

Dear Lord, thought Mike, rummaging through Farr’s cabinets.

“Carried the body clear out into the parking lot,” an officer continued. “He drew a big X on the victim’s chest with blood, and carried him through the hall out into the lot. Gotta be some sort of satanic thing.”

“A witness says that he held the body like a shield, struggling to keep it vertical out in front of him.”

Mike was looking for anything regarding the experiment, anything that involved Kirk. He was searched through tears, not bearing what they were saying about his friend. Papers and memos thrown everywhere, the authorities did a half-thorough job of looking for the truth. In the college district, you find the man first, then the intangible stuff, like motive and ties to the victims.

“Cro-Mag Tests 1,” said one paper. “K.B.” Kirk Bovett, Mike thought. “Reversal potential results,” said another sheet, also followed by Kirk’s initials.

Over the next few minutes, Mike scanned through a score of papers in the subject file that the police did not look through yet. He learned that the experiment originally had two other subjects when Kirk started, but soon thereafter they were let go. The experiment concentrated on Kirk.

It first involved pictures and slides, still life photography, cartoons, things with bulky shapes and primary colors. It moved on from there to video tapes, mostly computer animation: wildlife, jungle scenes, recreations of prehistoric times. The progress charts depicted more intense, more violent content in the videos, more complex movements and an increase in dark tones. They were showing Kirk subliminally gruesome stuff, making it gradually worse everyday.

Dragons, dinosaurs, reptiles, bears and lions killing prey, anything with blood, was somehow inserted into whatever Kirk was exposed to. Scenes from “Lord of the Rings,” “Jurassic Park,” “Jaws.” then cam homemade stuff with people running away from muggers in the dark. The muggers became bigger. They became mutants. The dark sidewalk they ran on became dirt and weeds, buildings became barren trees.

Farr is out of his mind, Mike thought, leafing through notebooks. The other couldn’t have known what he was doing. Theo couldn’t have known. They probably each knew part of the experiment, but only Farr knew the entire scope and purpose. This is sick.

A footnote concerning Kirk’s lifetime limitations was circles with theories linked to it. Apparently, his disadvantages in life were Farr’s advantages. Kirk’s learning disorder, his development problems, made him the most suitable candidate for the devolving experiment. The other subjects must have been closer to “normal.”

“Don’t move!” yelled a voice from the main doorway. It was an officer, pulling out a gun for Mike. He was alone, the others were still outside. Mike knew he should have threw himself at the police, maybe help them find his friend. But living in Woodston for as long as he had, with his flickering faith in local humanity, he fell back to his early high school way of thinking, when Kirk was his classmate. He had the instinct to run and avoid being accused of being a murdered himself, or of being an accomplice to one.

“I said don’t move!” The officer then began yelling for his comrades with moving his head. He screamed yelled again. The third time, he moved his head in the direction of the door, just for a second. It was then than Mike’s heart raced as he flew to the service door, barely being able to shut it behind him. The officer lunged for him, weaving through the laboratory disaster. The clutter gave Mike the scarce time he needed.

Immediately, he ran into the shadow path he followed moments before. He ducked and scurried, tripped once, but righted himself as if all in one movement. He heard the officer behind him, but it must have been in his head, because an eternal minute later, Mike had eluded the authorities.

*****

In the middle of a flat dirt field sat the future site of Woodston University’s three-million dollar ball park. Around it was plains of what looked like blue grass in the moonlit darkness. Kirk fell to his knees and picked up a handful of the grass. Up close to his face, it lost its luster. He threw it down in frustration.

Between the stadium construction site and the distant mathematics building lied an expansive faculty parking lot. Lit by only one working lamp post, Kirk felt the surge of hunter in him. He scoped the concrete field for the Mist and the demons coming back to cage him for their master. Along the outside of that rock hard area was an automobile. It looked familiar to him. Perhaps that was a bad thing. He readied his hairy claws.

A lone man walked from the math building to the car, whistling a tune as if he didn’t know about the police, the maulings, the manhunt. He acted quite comfortable, as if this hell was welcoming, routine.

Kirk approached the creature, walking erect so as to strike with unawares. The creature looked up at him, exposing his face to the single lamp post light.

“Won ton man,” said Professor Dillenger, “you attend Woodston now?”

Kirk saw who it was and reeled back from his hunter role. He left it with the recognition of the professor, but only for a second.

“What are you doing here so late?” No response. The professor started to hesitate, not sure what to make of Kirk’s unusual appearance. He continued with the small talk to help ease the tension that seemed to be surrounding him quickly. “What... what do you do now that the Dragon is closed?”

The dragon. He knew of the Dragon. What else did he know? The demons? The castle? Of course, the castle. He just came from one himself, one that shares the same ground as his former prison.

Kirk stood inches from the crisp pan of light. Stepping forward with caution toward his enemy, the light traveled up his body with snail’s speed, and Dillenger would see more detail than he could imagine.

“What that on your shirt... your pants... oh dear...”

His blood soon joined what was already on Kirk’s science overalls. Bleach white next to blackish red. It had an appeal to it that Kirk smiled at as he stepped on the back of the professor’s head, muffling attempts at screams against the grainy pavement. The screams grew louder and higher in pitch as Kirk tore the professor’s left arm out of its socket with a twist and a snap and the entwining of muscles. He had to press down on the professor’s head harder, to silence his worthless pleas for mercy.

Bending the severed arm to extremes, where the elbow stuck out with a sharp fracture, Kirk caved in the professor’s skull with it. His cries were terrifying, their volume tripping over blood filling his throat. Kirk’s heart nearly exploded in fear, and it made him ill to be so frightened. A final swing of the arm and the skull was more than penetrated. It was a jagged bowl of hair and blood, and other things that Kirk knew were evil.

The swing of the arm was so fierce that it flew from Kirk’s grip toward the mathematics building, landing in the middle of a clean grey path.

Locating the ball park again, Kirk ran like an imp to where one of the dugouts had been partially built. It was a giant burrow of hard-packed dirt, cloaked in night dark all around, filled with death dark inside. It was inside this blackness that Kirk was completely unseen. He was free to scan the entire park and the fields beyond it in wait for the Mist to come. The Mist would be grey, black, red, filled with flashes of every color, every soul it’s devoured, no doubt. It would not have a body to attack, no blood to spill, but he would fight it somehow. He would know when the time came.

*****

Near the math building, along the blood-stained path, Mike discovered the professors arm in sheer fright. There was a watch on the wrist and shreds of a man’s dress shirt, soaked in blood. Tilting his head in anticipation for the unimagined worst, he saw Dillenger’s body face-down in the pan of light, next to the driver’s door of his blue sedan with the keys dangling from the keyhole.

Mike walked up to the professor and confirmed it was him with only a passing glance. He couldn’t look for more than a second, doing all he could to keep from vomiting. Walking a few yards further, he turned around to see more than he picture from his new angle.

He burst with vomit, his insides acting before notifying his brain. Grey and yellow liquid covered his clothing. He bent over in weakness, clinging onto his thoughts, his mind.

The ball park was only a hundred or so feet away. It was charcoal grey, darker in some places, and was a match to what Kirk described in his nightmares. Mike walked in, leaving the faint light that bled from that which was honoring the professor. Peering around a concrete bunker, he saw that he was next to one of the dugouts and directly across from the other.

Silence.

Nothing moved, nothing made sound, nothing was alive aside the blue grass, artificial in its appearance.

A rustling and the kick of a pebble broke the quiet. Mike heard it come from the dugout across the way. He walked toward it, waiting for Kirk to come out traumatized, sobbing in pain. Covering in blood, limping as if extremely weak, Kirk stepped forth from the burrow, stopping only a few feet from the edge of the darkness that concealed him. It wasn’t until that moment that Mike realized he didn’t know what to expect. He didn’t see his roommate, but rather a completely different person, a different being.

The two of them stood a mere fifteen feet from each other, unseen to anyone not standing within the half-developed diamond. Kirk made a few grunts with no order or reason behind them, rough sounds with his breathing. Mike looked for something to say. He forgot about the police, the manhunt, the intent to kill Kirk. He almost forgot about the murders. Almost.

“Kirk, you’re a mess,” he said, laughing under a growing ceiling of fear. “Let’s go get you cleaned up.”

Kirk looked at him with an unmoving stare. He didn’t acknowledge his words in any way, looking right into his eyes in wait for something to happen.

Mike was becoming very scared. He flinched at the movement of Kirk’s arm, reaching up to scratch an itch.

“Come on buddy, you’re acting weird,” said Mike, trembling through his voice. “A lot of people are looking for you. We don’t want to worry them. Let’s go home and watch some TV. Maybe we can see a movie. That corner video place is always open.”

Kirk sensed this man’s fear. He began to prey on it.

“They have this discount now for W.U. students. I got a card for it, but I’ve been putting off using it.” Mike could barely stand to look his friend in the eyes.

Kirk screamed a muddy, boiling roar, not taking his sight off Mike. A cold breeze slid across Mike’s face, making his eyes water. Through opaque vision he saw Kirk getting closer, not seeing how fast he was moving.

One second and Mike was hitting the ground. Two seconds and he was thrown against the backstop boards. Three, and he was reeling from the pain of Kirk’s foot shattering his rib cage.

“Don’t do it! Don’t...” Mike was gasping, and the sound of his forearm snapping interrupted his plea.

Kirk threw the helpless student into the diamond, between the pitcher’s mound and home base. Pushing himself up from his brunt landing, he tried to force useless words from his mouth, dry and muffled with bits of blood and lack of air.

“Don’t... don’t... please.”

Kirk stood ominously at the backstop board, taking in huge swallows of air. Unexpectedly, his brow raised from its aggressive expression, and he relaxed his arms.

“Kirk, help me... please.”

As Kirk looked out into the diamond at who was now his roommate, no longer a demon, he saw the great black stretch of land behind him. The darkness began to move in all directions, as though the night was liquid. The swirl became soft at its edges, hovering over Mike.

It was the Mist coming to get Kirk. It was hiding all that time, disguising itself as the night air, waiting for Kirk to be alone before it made the kill.

Letting out a loud, distorted yell, he ran toward Mike who had his head bowed in agony. Mike looked up at the exact moment Kirk reached him. Fearful for his life, he covered his face with his broken arm.

Kirk grabbed his legs and dragged him into the burrow, hiding him in the complete dark. He jumped out to face the Mist, which had started to approach his friend just moments before. He stood tall, looking for anything that would given his enemy a disadvantage, thinking like a hunter, a killer. This was the meeting of the Dragon’s Breath and the Zealot, the end of a long, insane dual huntdown.

The Mist stopped in front of him, pausing as though it were hesitating to strike. Kirk cried out, waving away images of a time before the drugs and experimentation, before the closing of the restaurant. He drove back his sanity, coming to take over again. He ran away from the still mist, sitting atop the mound. He would fight it when he had more control of his emotions, over his sanity or lack of.

“Kirk,” Mike moaned. “Don’t leave. They’ll kill you.”

*****

The police officers were combing every dark corner of the campus, searching the Language Arts area, working their way to the Mathematics department. A couple ran out of the fog-like night to them. They had just come out of the Biology lad, where they spent the last several hours studying, unaware of what was happening on campus. As they approached the officers, it was clear their eyes had just see evil.

“Over by math,” the young man tried to say, “over by math.”

“We saw something by the math building,” his girlfriend followed, “and they headed toward the baseball stadium.”

“Get over there,” an officer said to his comrades in a quick, stern tone, waving his flashlight in that direction. Immediately, teams of police aimed their detailed search to where Kirk and Mike were.

“Calm down,” the policeman told the frantic couple. “What did you see?”

“By math, Professor Dillenger.”

The troops of police were stunned by the sight of the professor’s body. The mangling of his upper torso was nothing short of the devil’s work. When they reached the ball park, they beamed their lights at the nearest burrow. It was empty. Lighting the opposite burrow, they saw what looked like a crouched figure, possibly dead in its stillness.

Mike looked up from his drowsy position on the lowered dugout floor to see what looked like dozens of lights bleeding into one blinding white mist. The click of a gun rang out, unfamiliar to him.

“Come out of there with your hands in the air!”

From where he knelt alone in his hazy pit, he could see shadows lying in deranged stretches on the field, playing with his escaping mind. He shut his eyes to avoid them, while clutching his bloody arm in the faint light. The feeling in his legs were fading away, which might have been a good thing. Anything to erase the pain.

Nothing kept Mike from thinking about his friend, however. About how he has become some form of evil.

The voices were coming, floating on the mist. He didn't know to trust them or not. At that point, nothing made sense, and trust was a gift that didn't exist anymore. Perhaps it never did.

Run to them, he thought, it doesn't matter anymore. Just stop the pain. I can't walk. I can't see. Blood in my eyes, streaming down my face into my mouth. I'll dwell on the taste to keep me from passing out, the flavor of this thing I've made.

“Come out of there right now!”

Mike didn’t really hear the voices. Even as he stepped out of the burrow, in his head, he was still passed out across the dugout floor.

“Stop right there! We’ll open fire! Stop! Hands in the air!”

He stumbled onto the diamond, halfway between third and home, falling to one knee. The addition of more light revealed the blood all over his clothing, the maddening look on his face. More guns clicked to load, two officers moved in to apprehend him.

“For the last time, put your hands in the air!”

He knelt still, with seventeen policemen aiming their pistols at him, less than twenty feet away. Every officer knew what this killer was capable of. They knew of the sheer strength it must have taken to rip a man’s arm away from his torso. With whatever drug is coursing through his body, they wouldn’t be able to predict what he might do.

Mike’s vision started to clear. His head was still foggy, not knowing where he was or who was with him. He wanted to go to whoever was there.

The two officers were behind him, getting closer, moving slowly, readying to sprint in with arms held out and their hands spread tightly. Before they got their chance, Mike rose to his feet, much to the discomfort of the police.

“Don’t move, or we’ll open fire! Again, do not move or we will open fire!”

His head still swimming, Mike wanted only to run toward the comforting distorted words that were calling out to him.

*****

The sunrise cracked light along the distant hillside. Between Kirk and that beautiful horizon was a valley of green pastures, farms, and a snake-like river. Rickety wooden fences kept in the cows, the chirping of birds filled the huge, bushy trees. This view was Miller Park’s most beautiful and most secret. Only a few knew the back way to the small cliff that was isolated from the rest of the giant park. He found it as a small boy, living in the orphanage with Mike. Usually, he sat with his legs crossed on the cliff during sunset, but today sunrise would do.

He bowed his head in thought of his friend. He thought of the Mist, and of how it probably got to him, despite the vast darkness he hid him in. If it didn’t manage to penetrate that dark, it would surely have had him by sunrise when the sun stole his cover.

“Kirk,” a voice suddenly said. “Don’t be afraid. It’s going to be alright.”
He turned and saw the Mist coming toward him slowly. This time it was a glowing white. Perhaps it was a different being, a different collective of beings. No. It must have been a trick. The comforting words, the change of color. He knew there was no place to run from it now.

“Kirk, don’t move. We’ll come to you. If you move, we’ll be angry.”

It is a collective! Kirk realized. The Mist widened, starting to surround his position, preparing to envelop him. He was confused as to whether it was to be trusted, and he had to decide before his choice was made for him.

“Just stay still now, it’ll be alright.”

He stood like a savage, breathing hard, foaming. His teeth were exposed, his back was arched like a cat’s in defense. The white Mist came closer from three sides. Kirk had to do something fast. He randomly picked a side, curled his fingers, exposed his teeth, and lunged.

“Hold him! Get in there and hold him!”

“Move it! He’ll overtake us!”

“get it ready! Hurry! We can’t hold him any longer!”

“Now, Hirsh, now!”

Dr. Hirsh stabbed Kirk with a hyperdermic needle, sending him into an uncontrollable fit. He rolled around, nearly falling off the cliff. Farr and the others rushed to make sure he didn’t.

With a final shake and a drowning yelp, his arms slid to his sides, and his eyes froze in their wide stare. Kirk was dead, as all the scientists very well knew.

Dr. Farr held the other needle in his right hand. Hirsh gave him the one they used.

“It’s sad we had to use this one,” he said, holding up the two needles, indicating the one in his left hand. “But what else could be done?”

“The sedative, any sedative, would have done nothing to him,” said another scientist, “not with the gland flow he had.”

The eight men in white smocks paused as if honoring Kirk with silence. They had quite a rough and distressing night, one filled with decision that were hard to make, and regrets about what forced them to make those decisions.

The night was long, the news broadcasts went on all hours, the police continued their manhunt, expanding it beyond the campus. Morning papers reported that the killer fled the college and was loose elsewhere. A young male student was mistaken to have been the killer, and was shot and killed while in a disorienting stupor.

Farr hoped that their plan to “decrease he negative publicity” would work. He was quite sure it would, as it had before.

“How did you know to come here?” asked Hirsh.

“His friend came by the lab,” Farr replied. “He was an old student, as well as an old subject of mine. I asked him to tell me where he thought Kirk would go if he was upset or sad.” He paused for a moment, choking back all regrets that had been born in one night. “I wanted Kirk to think of that place whenever he had trouble with the Licycline, but I never had a chance to ask him to do that.”

Farr bent down to look at Kirk’s face. At last, he seemed at rest. “This was Kirk with a K. That’s how he introduced himself.”

The eight of them stood around Kirk’s body in its fetal position on the dirt, thinking about the length of time between the moment he first walked into the laboratory, to the moment Dr. Hirsh injected him with 90 doses of Licycline.

“It’ll look like an overdose, a build-up of the drug, perhaps,” Farr said calmly, cutting the silence. “The drug mixed poorly with his elevated adrenaline, we’ll say. We have federal documents that separate us from those responsibilities.”

“A year’s work,” Hirsh said, “the town in its frenzy, the lives lost. I can’t believe we did this.”

Dr. Farr put the syringes in his pocket and breathed a long sigh, looking out at the sun rising above the countryside and its morning mist.

“I agree,” he replied. “We should have used a female.”

Long Green Smile

2007-02-02T01:48:00.000-08:00

“I'm Joe,” he said as he entered from the waiting room.

“Yes, I know. Please have a seat, Mr. Hatley. Would you like a drink? Coffee? Something a little harder, perhaps.”

“No, thank you. How did you know my name?”

The young, dark suited man stepped to his small bar and poured himself a cup of coffee, smiling as he drank it. “You'll forgive the obligatory offerings. I've apparently made it something of a habit. Beverage before business.”

“Again, how did you know my last name?” Joe repeated nervously.

The dark suited man smiled at his client as he spoke. It was the kind of smile that encompassed an entire face and was felt rather than seen. “I understand your apprehension. Robert called me last night and said that he recommended me to one of his friends. He told me your name, as well as a few other things about your dilemma. The rest I gathered myself.”

Upon that, Joe opted to sit on the plush sofa by the window rather than one of the seats in front of his host's desk. He wanted to feel more relaxed and comfortable with the business at hand. A couch seemed less formal, plus the large office window provided a grand view of all Manhattan.

“I've never been up this high in a building before. My building is only twelve stories. I bet the overhead is high around here,” Joe said in his weak attempt at small talk.

“Yes, it seems that leases are more outrageous the higher your floor is. They should be called leaches. But my expenses are covered without worry, I have more than enough clientele.”

The businessman took a seat behind his finely carved desk, sipping his coffee slowly.

“And what do I call you?” Joe asked, still a little edgy about what he was to transact that afternoon.

“Drake Vincent. Drake, Mr. Vincent, Mr. V, whatever is easiest on your tongue. I've never considered what people call me very important.”

“What else do you know about me? I mean, besides my name.”

“Quite a lot. Joseph Hatley, born in Oxmill, Texas on October 28, 1952. Graduated from Kingsville University, 1973. Joined RKA Foods Corporation, 1975. Left to start your own company, Nature-Born Juices, 1987. Divorced once. No kids. Might I add that if you indeed had a wife or kids that they'd be drinking Nature-Born Juice, because everyone else on the globe is. Including me. You've built quite the empire, Mr. Hatley.”

“Creating empires isn't always a clear day. I assume you know about that.”

“You mean your silent partner that has not been very silent as of late?” Drake smiled his smile. “Yes, I know about that. My investigations are thorough. I know that you made your company grow from a basement operation to the household name it is today. I know that your partner, Mr. Mitchell, was an initial investor at first, but has become very greedy and manipulative. I also know, which you only suspect, that he intends to viciously take over nearly all of the stock, including your own. The notions of illegal dealings and forged documents are not beyond his willingness or ability. Without my help, you will most likely be on skid row or in jail by the year's end.”

“You know all this?” Joe said in a sweaty near-panic. “Are you sure? Or is this just speculation?”

“Don't forget who you're talking to, Mr. Hatley,” Drake said. “I make it a point to know everything. I'm never unsure, never guessing. But of all the things about my potential clients, the one thing I don't know right away is the service to be performed. Basically, Mr. Hatley, what exactly is it that you want from me?”

Joe couldn't answer immediately. In his heart, he knew what he wanted, he always knew. But he'd never expressed it in anything other than a thought. Though he had no intention of forgetting his agenda, he found it difficult to say the words. “I want Mr. Mitchell... out of the way.”

“Out of the way,” Drake laughed. “You mean you want him in an office farther from you than it is now? You want him to move to another state? You want wider aisles in your office building? What do you mean by 'out of the way'? I have to be sure I understand you correctly on this, it's very important.”

“I want him eliminated.” Joe blurted, feeling a sting in his throat as he finally clarified what he wanted.

“Let me help crystallize your thought. You want him dead.”

“Yes.”

“And you want me to do it.”

“Yes. I can't have him running the company or putting me out of commission. I've worked too hard just to have the bastard steal it all away. It was one thing to have him siphoning most of the money for himself, but ownership of my company is entirely different. That's what I truly care about, not the money. You know, I never wanted him as an investor to begin with. But I was young and eager, I wanted my baby to be born. Sure, Mitchell dipped a fortune into helping Nature Born get off the ground. But he'd be nowhere without my ideas. He'd be nothing more a TV-commercial lawyer in a small town, defending welfare bums with fake whiplash cases.”

“Please, Mr. Hatley,” Drake said, still sipping his coffee. “Save your anger for later. You'll need it. For now, we should concentrate on the deed. Spell out exactly what you want.”

“I want Mitchell dead. Tonight. That's all there is to spell.”

“Don't make it sound so simple, that's actually quite a tall order. A murder within less than a day's notice, my my.”

“Is it too little of a notice for you?” Joe said.

“Oh no, I'll accept the task. I merely ask that you not trivialize the concept of death. You may stop to consider that I might find it insulting. And insulting me can be a mistake, as you could imagine.”

Joe remembered who he was dealing with and felt the proper fear claw through him, sealing him motionless to the sofa. He was so busy in his verbal tirade and opening of long-kept emotions that he forgot about Drake's horrid, true identity. “What is your fee, Mr. Vincent?” Joe asked, shaking, almost becoming ill.

“My fee. Yes, that needs to be discussed.”

“Is it my soul?” Joe was near tears. “Will you be collecting my soul when I die, or sooner than that?”

“That's only in the movies, Mr. Hatley. Not once did Sherlock Holmes say 'Elementary, my dear Watson' in any of his novels. It was something Hollywood created. Likewise, in my many lifetimes of dealing with mortals, not once did I request someone's soul. I don't need to. The fact is I have an overabundance of them.”

Drake saw the terror in his client's eyes and preyed on it, enjoying the poor man's torment like a light snack. He stood to look out of his fiftieth-story office window. There was calm in his words and manner, pausing as if to grant Joe a moment of quiet. “The fee for my services is exactly half of your net worth.”

“What??”

“And since you are estimated to be worth around 300 million American, my fee is around 150 million. The odd change can be worked out later.”

Joe seemed to snap out of his fear upon hearing the dollar amount. “You're out of your mind! I can get a street thug to kill Mitchell for a quarter if I wanted to! Hell, maybe that’s what I should do.”

“The kill is the easy part, Mr. Hatley,” Drake said in a calm anger, bending down to speak within inches of Joe's face. “Don’t waste evil on the stupid and the ignorant. I am no street thug. I do more than just deal with your business partner, I deal with the aftermath. All the messy little bits and pieces that float around when you commit something like murder. As I stressed before, do not make the mistake of trivializing death in front of me.” Drake crept down onto the sofa next to Joe, satisfied with the renewed fear he instilled in his client. “Under my services, your partner will die tonight as you requested. In addition, you will be cleansed of any and all guilt about it. Despite the fact that you're the only person with any real motive to kill Mitchell, the police will not ever approach you with a single question. They won't even suspect you. No one in this world will conceive of the notion that you may have had anything to do with it. And no relative of his will become an heir. No one will step in and take over where he left off, leaving you a new person to deal with. All of this comes with the package. I deal mostly in the cleanup of a task as opposed to the task itself. These are things no twenty five cent hoodlum can do for you.

“If my fee is still beyond your courage, then you are free to try your mafioso or your ghetto gang punks. Of the two men in this office, it is you that needs me. I've sold services to kings and countries. Countless religions have been created, corrupted, and destroyed by my hand. I've shaped the histories of whole peoples and cultures, and caused more pain than you will ever be able to comprehend.

“So, if you want your company back again, as well as your self-esteem and dignity, allow me the simple pleasure of plucking Mr. Mitchell from your life. You told me yourself, all you care about is the company, not the money.”

“But what do you need money for? You're...”

“The Devil?” Drake smiled as he popped a cigar between his lips, lighting it with a simple puff. “What is it you mortals say about money? What is it the root of? Mr. Hatley, you of all people know that the physical world revolves around the Long Green. Business is the engine of society. Besides, souls are so flimsy, they make for poor bargaining. If you think about it, you'd still belong to me even if you hired some young punk to remove your partner.”

Joe was confused. He wasn't expecting something so solid, and so high stake. He felt he should have been grateful, though. After all, he thought, his eternal soul is worth any amount of money. The decision was becoming clearer with every minute. “You say that my partner has plans for me?”

“Many plans,” Drake confirmed. “And I guarantee he will execute these plans without the hesitation you are showing now.”

After a long silence in thought, Joe walked to Drake and held out his hand. “Alright, Mr. Vincent. You've got a deal. 150 million dollars, or whatever the exact amount works out to.”

“Done.” Drake snapped his fingers with a grin. He gulped down the last of his coffee and sat behind his desk again.

“How do I pay you?” Joe asked.

“I'll take care of all the arrangements. It's a simple matter of transferring the funds to my accounts. Nothing unusual.”

Joe was taken aback by Drake's calm demeanor about their deal. He had so many questions that he didn't know how to ask. “I'm sorry if I seem disoriented, but I keep expecting something. I don't know what, a puff of smoke, maybe, or a bolt of lightning. I can't help feeling as though I should be somehow different than a minute ago, before I hired you to kill a person for me. But I feel exactly the same.”

“On December 31st, you're Joseph Hatley. When it turns midnight you're still Joseph Hatley, even though the year has changed.”

“There's a difference between New Year's Eve and murder.”

“Not to me,” Drake said. “And not to you either. Not anymore. You won't feel any remorse whatsoever, remember?”

Joe searched himself for any ill feelings, but there were none at all, just as Drake had said. “Maybe it's because I haven't actually seen or been confirmed of his death yet.”

“No, it's not that. But you will be confirmed, rest assured. For it will be you that does the deed.”

“Me?” Joe said in surprise. “What do you mean me?”

“I take care of the cleanup, not the task. That brings up another myth that's been spread about me. Contrary to what is said, I have never directly killed anyone or anything. I leave that to mortals, they seem at home with such acts.”

“But I can't kill anyone. I won't. I'm incapable of it, that's why I hired you.”

“Don’t underestimate yourself,” Drake told his client. “You are very capable of murder, that's the service I've provided. You won't feel any guilt, you won't get caught, and no one will suspect you. You could stab Mitchell sixty times in front of an entire precinct of cops and never get pinned for it. What do you think causes injustice? Why do you think innocent men go to the gas chamber, and heartless rapists walk the streets? You see, I don't directly cause any crimes, I never have. I merely allow people the ability to cause them very, how shall I put it, efficiently. Ironic, isn't it? That the Devil himself is the one that's incapable of sinning.”

“I think I see what you mean.”

“So, I suppose you'll be off to take care of business now. We shook hands, there's no refunds. There's no need for refunds since you won't be changing your mind about this.”

“No, that I won't. I'll probably wait until after dinner before I kill him. I'm trying to decide between stabbing him or shooting him. Maybe a good strangling. It'll come to me, I just need some time.” Joe paused, listening to what he was saying. “This is amazing, I'm planning to murder someone and I'm approaching it as if I were going to the store for a carton of milk.”

“Doesn't it feel good?”

Joe thought for a moment, feeling all novelty slip away. “Yes. Yes it does feel good. I feel like I could kill anyone one-two-three. I won't feel remorse or pleasure, I'll be somewhere in the middle. It's just another action, another simple gesture.”

“Worth 150 million?” Drake asked in his Drake smile.

“Oh yes, very much worth it. I see that now.”

“That's what all of my clients say once the deal's been made. It's similar to a feeling of freedom.”

“Before I go,” Joe said, “I'd like to ask you something. What exactly do you do with your money?”

“I give it out to those who need it. Being good costs nothing, but being evil is usually expensive. Kids in gangs need to have guns and drugs, sold to them by someone usually their age. All that money has to come from somewhere. Hate groups and extremists need their weapons. They also hold meetings, organize events, run for office. And we can't forget wars. That's where most of my money goes. I don't know where yours will go just yet, but who knows? 150 million is a lot of green. You could be funding the next Hitler.”

Joe walked toward the door, thinking about what Drake said. In his mind, he saw the logic in what was explained to him and felt at ease with it. “I never pictured the Devil to be so tangible. Clear and precise, nothing vague.”

“What you label God and Heaven is what's incomprehensible,” Drake explained. “It would be arrogant for someone to claim that they relate to or understand such things. Mortals can never truly answer all the questions regarding the concept of omnipotence or the meaning of life.

“But I'm what you'd call a byproduct of Creation, leftovers from when ‘God’ made the universe. I'm the mess left in the kitchen after He baked a beautiful cake. And because I'm only a small fraction of existence, as opposed to the very origin of it, you can grasp me easier. You see, it's hard to notice goodness, but when someone is evil, everyone spots it right away. They want to see it, whether it’s on the evening news, or while passing a car wreck.”

With a small grin, Joe began to walk out of Drake's office. His foot in the doorway, he turned for one last query. “There's gotta be some kind of catch to my transaction with you. In every story I've read and every Twilight Zone I've seen, there's always a drawback to dealing with the Devil. There’s always a catch.”

Drake smiled at his client. “The person you are now is quite different than the person that walked into my office earlier this afternoon. Yet you don't feel a thing. Do you understand?”

“No,” Joe said in contentment.

“That's the catch. Good day, Mr. Hatley.”

On that last word, Joe walked out with a peaceful look about him. As he left the office, he noticed a nervous young man sitting in the waiting room. How funny it was for him, to see someone so apprehensive, so confused.

Joe went home to have his dinner that evening, as he said he would, before paying a visit to Mr. Mitchell's family.

Seven Miles From Mettler

2007-02-02T01:43:00.000-08:00

Sunset approached slowly as if it crept in caution, knowing what lived on the other side of the mountain. Doran and Jeff didn't have this knowledge, so on they drove down the winding road, their jeep rambling over the ancient, cracked pavement.

That forever place was called “The Sawmill”, for reasons forgotten, which was unfortunate considering there was no sawmill to be found. There was nothing at all, for that matter, aside endless fields and the narrow zig-zag road that cut through them. One of the only attractions was the inspiring sunset that supposedly made you drop your liquor in awe. The comfort of drinking that liquor in complete seclusion was the other attraction. It was, at least, for those under the legal age.

“This is pretty weird,” Doran told his friend in the driver's seat. “It's like one of those places you see on TV all the time, but freak out over when you're actually there.”

“Great place to shoot a movie,” Jeff said.

“Everywhere is a great movie shoot for you.”

“Seriously, man, just look at the road.”

“I would,” said Doran, “but I can't.”

The weeds stood so tall that only the bit of road directly in front of them was visible. It would stretch on until the next sharp turn, which was usually near, then onto the next turn. The boys didn't know which direction they were headed until they were there.

“That's just it,” said Jeff. “The road is invisible, we've been driving for almost an hour, top speed. This is nowhere. The next turn could plunge us off a cliff for all we know.”

“A cliff, no way.”

“Or something else. Anything could sneak up on us out here, easily...”

Before another word was said the boys made a turn and were in front of an immense gateway, seemingly appearing before their eyes. In the wide expanse of fields, the boys stopped the car and thought in silence about how it eluded them until the moment they were facing it.

“I thought you said the Sawmill road kept going to a dead end, next to a river,” Doran said. “I thought you've been out here before.”

“I didn't say that,“ Jeff said. “I've heard other people tell me about it. One of them mentioned that they never reached the end. We crossed the river a while back, anyhow.”

He coasted the vehicle toward the ominous structure. Its eroded steel pipes reached to the sky, holding up a sign whose writing was lost through the elements. Perhaps it was written in another language, it was so eligible. What made the gateway truly eerie was the way it stood tall and completely alone. No fencing to help keep out trespassers, one could simply walk around the rusted giant.

“It's getting dark,” Doran said. “Let's split. I got finals.”

“Hold on a second,” Jeff quickly said, not taking his eyes off the peeling metal skin. “I've never heard about this gate. We might be the first ones to come out this far.”

“Someone had to put up this thing, someone might live on the other side.”

“Aren't you curious to know who? Who would live way out here? No farmland, no power lines, it's hours away from the nearest anything.”

“Some people like privacy,” Doran told him, disguising his fear with impatience. “We should respect that privacy, especially when it's this extreme.”

Jeff shut his jeep off, promptly exiting it. Doran removed his seat belt and stood up in the convertible. “You're nuts, man. Let's go before it's dark, there's no street lamps out here you know.”

Jeff walked to the gate, looking it up and down, touching the flakes of rust as if they were crystal. “Do you know what that makes in gas mileage, Doran?”

“Probably spit, the way it's geared.”

“Yes, and I wanna get my gas worth. I didn't fill up just to make a long distance U-turn.”

Reluctantly, Doran joined his friend at the gateway, leaving his passenger door swung open. They examined the steel of the gate, which sang to them in the cold wind. Jeff stepped onto the pipes and began to climb over.

“Just go around it,” Doran said, “you look ridiculous climbing over it like that when you don't need to.”

“It's no fun unless you feel like you're breaking a rule.”

Following his friend as he always did, Doran hopped onto the gate, swiftly making it to the other side before Jeff got to the top. He was always the more athletic of the pair.

“Show off,” Jeff told him.

“When you got it, don't hold it back. Whoa, wait a second!”

Jeff landed on the ground next to Doran and caught the sight that shocked him. On the other side of the gate, where the jeep was once parked only ten feet away, there was nothing. The boys felt a stunning panic run into them with a cJeff. There was nothing as far as they could see, and yet someone had managed to steal the car, no noise, no trace of them. With such efficiency, there had to have been several thieves. Possibly dozens, gangs of them.

“Jesus Christ, where'd my jeep go?” Jeff said with a tremble.

“Impossible. That's impossible. How could it be gone, it was there a second ago.”

“Who's out there?” Jeff yelled out, afraid of who might answer. “Who's here?” Quiet. The boys looked at the miles of nothing again and noticed the weeds, their ability to hide cities if they were made to.

Jeff looked behind him to the ongoing road, heading into the nearby mountains. The weeds weren't so cloaking on that side of the gate. It looked the safer of the two worlds.

“What are we gonna do?” Doran asked nervously. “We're gonna get jumped in about ten seconds.”

“We go up there, to the Jeffs.”

“What's up there?”

“Something's gotta be up there, this gate can't be here for nothing.”

“It's older than God!” Doran shrilled, still expecting a hand to grab his ankles. “I ain’t going up there, that could be where the gangs are.” The fear in Doran's voice was pure, untouched now.

“Those mountains are closer than anything out here,” Jeff told him, “and I'm betting someone lives up there. I'm going up. You can play in the weeds if you want.” He started down the road, walking backwards at first, keeping an eye open for anything. Doran felt the cold wind slide across him, growing closer to pain the farther away his friend was. He knew Jeff had the right idea, and followed as he always did.

The boys unfortunately failed to notice another disappearance, however. Along with the absence of the vehicle, was the absence of its tire tracks.

*****

The pavement crackled away as they walked toward the mountains, until there was nothing but dirt under their feet. The road became a path, and the path became lost in the thick woods that greeted them past the first large rise. At that point, the gateway was beyond sight, as was any part of the Sawmill. They were in a forest, the front yard of whoever erected the gate.

“How are we gonna get back?” Doran asked. “There's no way we're finding the road again. Every inch of these Jeffs is covered with foot-high grass.”

“We'll find it,” Jeff said. “I know where we are.”

“What, were you a boy scout?”

“That tree with the mark on it that looks like a Coke bottle. We'll look for that, and the road starts up nearby.”
“That tree must have been hours ago, man. There's millions of trees, same towering size, same color and shape.”

“I'll find it,” Jeff said, his tone frustrated with his friend's lack of confidence in him.

“In the meantime, what are we looking for?”

“Anything. Just keep your eyes open, those guys that swiped the jeep might be up here.”

“Or we might find their hideout,” Doran said with an expression of fright, as he stopped and pointed ahead of them. There was a small cabin, sitting in the woods as if it were hiding from the rest of the world. “Let's turn back.”

“Listen to you, man. 'Hideout'. And you think I watch too many movies. It's sunset, now. In a few minutes, these trees will plunge us into blackness. We have to see if someone's home, fast.”

“You're crazy.”

“This was the point of us hiking up here.”

Doran stood silently as Jeff approached the cabin's door. Upon closer view, he noticed the door was ajar, perhaps inviting.

“Don't go in,” Doran pleaded in a whisper. He knew it would be his last attempt to persuade Jeff to become either a coward or sensible. His friend ignored the plea. “At least wait for me.”

Together, the boys entered the old cabin. The only thing that looked older than the exterior was the interior, by many years and many cobwebs. The inside also looked smaller than the outside which wasn't as surprising to them, the cabin being wide and shallow.

The darkness of the single room was cut by the opening of the door, letting in the sunset, brightening the room with a fading light. Jeff remembered what he said about the sunset, and felt hurried to find someone or something.

“Is there a phone in here?” he asked, still whispering. Doran scanned the log walls for anything. He nodded no.

“There's nothing in here,” Doran said. “Nada. This must be a storage shed or something, it's so small.”

“Well, what's that in the corner?”

Jeff bent down and picked up a small tin box. Inside it he saw what looked like fruit, but unlike anything he'd seen. It was ripe, whatever it was, and he was tempted to eat it.

“What are those?” Doran asked him. “Mutant apples?”

“Food. Probably rotten.” Jeff's voice hinted to hunger, and his companion shared the feeling. Quickly, Doran grabbed one of the fruits, examined it, and took a bite.

“Get rid of that!” Jeff snapped, slapping the odd shape from his friend's hand. But the first swallow was done, and Doran was assured that the food was harmless.

“Tastes a bit sour,” Doran said, “but still good. Dung would be good about now.”

Joining in the careless abandon, Jeff bit into another piece. They ate slowly at first, as though the speed at which they dined would affect any poisons present. After a minute, they sped their meal until the tin box was empty, resembling the rest of the one-room cabin.

During their feast, the sun sneaked out of sight, leaving the boys alone in the dark cabin, barely able to see one another. Standing in the open doorway helped, however, as the moon was full that evening, looking more dominant of the night through the silhouettes of the giant trees.

“We should bunk here for tonight,” Jeff said. “We can figure out this mess in the morning.”

“I don't wanna stay here. What if the gang comes back?”

“A gang that lives on a shoebox of fruit.”

“Someone else will come back, then.”

“Good. That's what I'm hoping.”

A part of the doorway's frame near Jeff's head suddenly blew apart with a piercing crunch that seemed to echo across the trees. Wood shards flew into the air, and the boys immediately dropped to the ground. Another part of the cabin near the door blew apart. This time it wasn't so unexpected, and they could hear things better. Someone was shooting at them. From the looks of the holes in the wall, a shotgun did the work.

“Jesus Christ!” Doran yelled, drowned out by the constant gunfire. “It's them! Godammit, I told you!” He was screaming obscenities into the dirt as he covered his head with his forearms, shrapnel scratching his neck.

“Let's go!” Jeff shouted. “This way! Now!” Jeff grabbed at his friend's hair and nearly dragged him crawling into a bush. Once under the cloaking leaves, the firing ceased. The abrupt quiet was too much for Doran.

“Leave us alone!” he cried, giving his cover away, triggering the rain of bullets to begin again.

The boys ran through the woods, crouched, constantly looking over their shoulders for the unknown stalkers. Though it was deathly black, they used every remnant of the trees as guides across the terrain. They made good speed and accuracy in their panic-driven race, until Jeff made the mistake of pausing for breath.

Instantly, he was shot, falling to the grass in a slow, dooming blur. Pain streaked through him, though he didn't know exactly where he was hit.

Another dead-aim shot landed in the same place. Jeff extended his leg into a sliver of moonlight, and saw that the wound was in one of his thighs. Despite his going into shock, he felt lucky that the powerful gun didn't clean his leg directly off.

“Jeff! Dammit, man!” Doran yelled from what sounded very far away. To the ailing Jeff, however, everything was growing more distant, more faded.

Doran ran back to him, scooping up the young man in his arms. The athletic boy easily lifted Jeff, and looked around to see if anyone was near. With a turn of his head, his eyes were perfectly aligned with both barrels of a shotgun, protruding from the night, inches away. One pull of the trigger would do it.

*****

“Doran,” Jeff moaned as he woke, not expecting sunlight. “Doran, what's going on?” He gathered the strength to sit up, hand was terrified to find himself in the cabin. The dim lighting of the room was the same as he remembered, and at first he thought he was having a nightmare. But rather than being light from the sunset, it was from the morning.

“Finally awake?” Doran said as he sat nearby, still a little spooked himself.

“What happened? Why are we here? The last thing I remember is...” He whipped off the blanket that was over his lower body and saw his severe wound. It looked as though his leg was mummified, wrapped amply with green strips of cloth. Things came back to him. “Why didn't they kill us?”

“He,” Doran said. “He didn't kill us, for his own reasons. I don't know.”

Jeff, still confused, moved his leg, and was surprised at its condition. After the blood he saw the night before, he thought he was a candidate for amputation. “What reasons?” he asked, becoming more angry as he fully awoke.

“I don't know, the guy doesn't talk. He...”

Just then, an old man walked in, carrying a pail and a shotgun. Although it was clearly a weapon, Jeff noticed that the gun was odd in its shape, its design.

“I thought you were another,” the old man said. “I brought you water. You better drink. It was a long walk.”

“Doran,” Jeff said, “tell me what's going on.”

His friend kept still and quiet, as the old man sat the pail of water next to Jeff. “I,” the old man started, “am Otim. I thought you were another. This is why I shot you.”

“You could've killed me,” Jeff said, realizing his words as he said them.

“If I wanted your death, I would have it,” Otim told the boys, with no emotion. Jeff remembered the two shots hitting the same inch of skin on his moving leg. The old man's skill was without question. “I didn't think about who you were,” Otim continued, “until after I felled you. And when I saw this other, holding you, I saw Ralin for a moment.”

The boys tried to hide their confusion, still afraid of the cloaked, dark figure of a man.

“I was mistaken,” he continued, “but I still shouldn't have opened gun. No matter what the trees say.” Upon that, he exited the cabin, leaving the boys alone.

Jeff turned to Doran in confusion, hoping that whatever his friend was going to tell him would be positive news. “Tell me,” he said to Doran. “Start at the moment I blacked out.”

“I was deep in the forest, far away from both you and Otim,” he said, a quiet, contained manner about him. “I thought you were right behind me. Imagine my shock when I heard you screaming in the distance.”

“What about this guy? Why was he shooting at us?”

“Otim shot at us because he thought we were from the 'village board'. I don't know what that means and I don't know anything more than you do. He didn't say another word until you woke up just now.”

“Did you sleep?”

“I think so, but I tried not to. Not with that guy around.”

Doran dipped his hands into the pail of water for a drink. Jeff followed suit, feeling a little better about it after seeing his friend's limited trust in the old man.

“There's no phones, no running water, no electricity. He's a hermit. Amish, if I didn't know different.”

“How do you mean?” Jeff asked.

“When I asked him about a phone, he didn't know what I was talking about. I described one to him, and he actually thought I was lying or crazy.”

“Maybe he's crazy,” Jeff said. “Senile. He took pot shots at us for no sane reason. Man, this is screwed. Let's leave right now. Let's find this village.”

“It sounds weird. I mean, he wanted us dead, thinking we were villagers.”

“Like I said, he's crazy. He's willing to murder people, a whole village. They're his enemies, not ours. Maybe they've got a phone.”

Otim returned with two large bowls of berries. He set them down, and walked back to the doorway. “You can leave when you wish,” he said, facing the trees. “Keep the cloth.”

“Thanks,” Jeff said with reservation, realizing that this insane man saved his life, after endangering it. Still, he felt his gratuity belated. “This is some amazing stuff you put on me. It's gotta be banned from the Olympics. I bet I could run.”

“Then run home,” Otim said flatly, leaving the cabin. “No time for visitors. I patched you because I killed you. That's as far as I jump.”

“You won't help us?” Jeff gathered the courage to ask. “Please, anything you could do.”

Otim didn't respond, still facing away from them, walking further into the woods. Jeff was somewhat relieved that the man refused to assist them. He was scared of him, despite the cool and cautious manner Doran was taking.

“Let's go now,” Jeff whispered, “before he switches personalities again.” Doran didn't feel as repelled as Jeff did. Perhaps, he thought, if he were the one that was shot, he would feel quite different.

His leg still stiff, Jeff rose to his feet. Doran helped him across the wooden room once, from which he crossed the room on his own. Satisfied with his partial mobility, he and Doran headed out the door, found their bearings, and began to hike up the mountain beyond the cabin.

Otim watched them leave and thought about Ralin, about what occurred on his night. It was usually the old man's way to leave folks at their own business, even though he knew what usually happened. He could always rely on his stone heart to help him forget the others. But with these two boys, it was somehow different. This would prove unfortunate for some, as he tried to forget.

*****

The village blended with its surrounding trees, seen only in contrast to the boulders that sat near the entrance of the clearing. Jeff didn't expect to see odd shaped barrel structures and townsfolk in pilgrim outfits. The villagers also didn't expect the boys, though their expressions weren't as welcoming as Jeff's.

“It's like being in a theme park,” Doran commented under his breath, eyeing the villagers as they walked cautiously by. There was a careful, almost fearful way about them.

“They haven't shot at us yet, so that's a good sign,” Jeff said. He evaluated each of the townsfolk for first contact, deciding that no one person was any more prepared for conversation than another. He randomly chose a small girl. “Is there a phone we can use? Is there police around here?”

Immediately, the girl ran across the narrow street to her mother. The two of them ducked through the swinging doors of a nearby building. From a distance, the boys heard the woman telling others about them, her tone not flattering.

Doran couldn't take his sight off the wide water tank in the middle of the town. There was a towering wishing well crane over it, and several rows off tools hanging from ropes. It looked as though it could be used for practical purposes. But the more the tension escalated, the less practical it seemed.

Jeff walked into the building the woman retreated to. Doran remained outside, as if to play the role of a lookout for a crime ring. It wasn't completely unwarranted.

“Excuse me,” Jeff said as he entered the crowded room. The large numbers surprised him, as they weren't all readily seen from outside. “My friend and I need a phone. Please, can you help us.” The folks in the establishment looked equally as puzzled as Otim did earlier, perhaps more so. Their curiosity, however, seemed different. “A phone, please, anything. A policeman. Also, there was a man that shot at us.”

Before another syllable was spoken, a man dressed in a blue peacoat emerged from behind the chef's counter. Running a short wooden club across the granite top, he fixed his eyes on Jeff, and Doran at the entrance. From the air of the room, it was clear that this man was a pillar of the community. A leader. Law enforcement, perhaps.

Jeff was prepared to explain everything to the man in the peacoat, but found himself hesitating. No one reacted when he mentioned that he and Doran had been shot at. No one attempted to answer any pleas for a phone or help of any kind. Just the opposite, the townsfolk seem preoccupied with the more mundane things, such as the boys' appearance, their clothing, the way they entered the village.

He thought about these things, noting that there was no actual entrance to the village. He and Doran clawed their way through heavy brush before finding the clearing.

Requesting the man's help, and that of the rest of the village, was suddenly a risk rather than the obvious choice. But it was the boys' only one.

“Where are you two from?” the tall young man in the peacoat asked quietly. The others in the room waited for an answer.

“Our car was stolen down the road, by the gate. We're stuck out here, we need a phone.”

“Someone stole something from you,” the man said, “by a gate.”

“Our car was stolen,” Jeff said slowly, as if his words would make more sense that way. “By the gate on the road up here.” He read the faces in the room. The concept of a road seemed as alien to them as a car.

Jeff had read about communities like this, people isolating themselves from the rest of the world, to a point where everything else seems bizarre. Religious communities, where their way of life revolves solely around worship. And this.

“Is there another village nearby?” he asked politely, trying to hide his piling fear. He didn't know what to expect, but pictured Satan and sacrifice. “We can get help somewhere else.” The man in the peacoat stood emotionless, staring at the unusual boy.

Jeff began to piece together in his head who the car thieves were, and why Otim shot first and spoke later. “Doran, let's move on now. These people don't need us bothering them.” His words were not received. As he turned to the door, he was frightened by the absence of his friend. He could mask his fears no longer, as was shown on his face. But before another thought was formed, hands clutched him from every angle, carrying him away, screaming.

*****

The room was obviously intended as a jail cell, judging from the bars on the door's window, which seemed to be a universal trait. The walls, however, were not stone or metal, but rather a stucco-type substance that did the job just as well. There were occasionally small holes through the walls, showing that the cell was an independent structure, trees all around it. Doran sat on the ground near the rear of the cell, trying desperately to break through a weak spot in the stucco. Jeff stood at the door window, listening to the villagers' night meeting at the large well at the center of town.

“They're here for the same reason the others were here,” a villager said. “The trees have been crossed, there's no talk to have.”

“Indeed,” said another, “they will leave to bring more, and soon the numbers will be out of balance. The trees have told us what to do.”

“Yes, but how?” asked another. The villagers talked in groups, making it hard for Jeff to understand what they were saying.

“I will decide how to clean the village,” the man in the peacoat said, his voice silencing the rest of them. “The water will clean the bodies before they are set afire. We shant have them lingering in smoke over our sleeping homes. The trees have shown us this.”

Jeff gripped the window bars as he continued to listen. He would listen only a minute longer before joining Doran in his seemingly endless task. In that minute, however, another voice cut through the mobs of people.

“The trees have told me different,” Otim said to the group. “The trees have told me that to end their lives is an injustice. An act only to quench paranoia.”

“An injustice,” the leader said, “such as that of your son?” The crowd began to talk of the ancient incident, as to lose any faith in the old man.

“Ralin's death was an injustice,” Otim said, “and I still dispute the village for its decision.”

“Which is why you are still banished,” the leader said, somewhat proudly.

“But that is not what my challenge is based upon. I say to let the new ones leave. They will die alone in these trees if that is what the trees wish.”

“That is what they wish,” the leader said, “I assure you. Knowing this, I see no reason to lengthen their lives any further. That, to me, would be an injustice.”

“I think I can get through!” Doran said, almost too loud. Jeff heard his friend, but paid closer attention to their only defender.

“I will not let this happen,” Otim said, walking to the steps of the well. “Once is more than this village deserves.”

Jeff heard the crowd shouting, their voices growing louder, shifting across the town's clearing. Piercing through the mob was Otim's scream, as he was tied to the well's long boom. Lowered over the water, the old man was submerged repeatedly, held under the surface each time far too long for any elderly person to endure. Still, he strived to live, and Jeff took it as an effort to make extra time for Doran to pound his way out of the cell.

Jeff ran to the hole in the wall next to his friend, breaking off pieces off the stucco as he had been doing. Though Doran was the strong one, Jeff's fear fueled him to almost match their efforts.

“There, right there,” Doran said, “we've got it.”

“Did you hear any of what they were saying?”

“Believe me, I didn't miss a drop.”

As Otim took his last breath at the village center, the boys made their way out the narrow hole, into the forest. They both knew the villagers would most likely hunt them down the moment they discovered what happened. All they could do was run as far as they could back to the gate, catering to Jeff's injured leg, hoping that the head start was enough.

“We've got no choice, start looking for the road,” Jeff said.

“What are we gonna do when we get back there?”

“Pray, for one thing. Other than that, we'll see when we do it.” Jeff did a poor job of explaining the situation to Doran, which was adequate. They both knew there was no other way.

During the night, they tried to advance through the mountain woods, only to find themselves passing the same trees, the same groups of berries, even approaching the village again. It seemed the small commune was surrounded by rockface from nearly all sides. If there was any way past the village, it entailed scaling the steep walls of rock, which Jeff was in no condition for.

“Otim's cabin was just a few miles back that way,” Doran said, trying to piece things together. “So the road should be right around there.”

“No, it was further.”

“Look, the Coke bottle! This is it, right here.”

Below their feet was where the wild grass began to scatter across hardpan dirt, and remnants of the road stretched until the narrow path began. The moment they took their first step, the sound of dogs barking was heard in the distance, sending a striking cJeff through them. The villagers were catching up.

“Come on, man,” Doran said, the fear showing in his voice. “We gotta run now.”

“I'm not running, you know I can't.”

“I promise, I won't tell them that.”

Doran grabbed his friend's arm, tugging him along. It was an act he normally would never attempt on the usually dominant Jeff, but one that neither boy argued at the time. Jeff strained with his steps, but made considerable progress and speed. He found a new confidence on the downJeff area, as the path led from the footJeffs. The hope disappeared as the path leveled toward the gate, revealing again the extent of his disadvantage.

“I can hear them,” Doran said, “they're getting closer.”

The boys turned around expecting to see nothing, as they had seen for the length of time they ran down the road. This time they were greeted by the terrifying sight of a mob, carrying long wooden poles and tools, being led by teams of dogs.

At the head of the group, near the dogs, was the leader in the peacoat. He wore a calm expression, quite a contrast to the hostile, blood-hungry men that made up his pack. At the rear of the group, nailed to a log carried by several men, was Otim's mutilated body. Apparently, the drowning was only a prelude to the ritual that claimed his life.

The majestic gate loomed on the horizon. It was hard to tell how far away it was, because of its immense size. The only thought in the boys' minds was to run.

Louder grew the villagers' screaming, letting the boys know how fast they were approaching. The dogs' barking was the loudest noise, sharply rising and falling in volume, making Doran run faster with every peak. Soon, he was ahead of his crippled friend, as he was before. The lead, however, was much greater this time.

Jeff felt the wound in his leg swell with heat, and he expected to fall at any moment. He struggled as far as he could, but at the end of an extensive surge of pain, he succumbed to his leg and collapsed to the ground.

Doran also knew his friend's destiny to fall, and heard it happen with an almost timed feeling. Still, it was no less horrific to hear.

He whipped around, prepared to run back to him. But by the time the thought formed in his mind, the dogs had reached their target.

Doran didn't know what to do, and looked at the waiting gate. The dogs made the decision for him, as half of them left the fallen boy for their new goal. Doran immediately continued to run, making no effort to meter his speed as before.

Farther down the road, he saw the presence of barbed fencing, stretching from both sides of the gate into a distance of eternity It only added to the barrage of fear and helplessness flowing over him.

The young man lunged at the metal gate, making it shake briefly, hanging on to it in complete exhaustion. The villagers were as loud as if they stood next to him, screaming in what sounded like another language. It was a jumbled pile of hate, superseded only by the enveloping roar of the dogs.

As Doran wobbled on the top of the gate, the demon pack jumped forward, latching onto his pants. They viciously destroyed denim like paper, losing their grip, and falling off him along with the shreds of fabric. His ears were filled with the oncoming chaos, and he was tempted to surrender to their foreseen fate.

About to faint in the beating sun and fatigue, he fell over the gate onto the other side.

Quiet. He waited for something to reach him. A dog, a blade, but there was nothing. The villagers were gone, the dogs were gone. Jeff was nowhere to be seen.

Lying flat against the dirt, Doran looked about him, lost in a search for answers. His eyes quickly caught something that what one would normally consider salvation, though he felt no comfort in its presence. Just confusion and despair.

Only a few feet from where he layed in the dirt, the Jeep stared at him, the warmth its engine still strong, its passenger door open as he left it.

Fall From a Masquerade

2007-02-02T01:39:00.000-08:00

“You sure no one's here?”

“I'm sure.”

“How are you sure?”

Andy was often annoyed with Jude's constant doubt in him. After all, it was Andy that scoped the rich neighborhoods in search of the ripest house. He was the one that jogged down those high-class streets every morning, observing when people left their homes, when they returned, what cars they drove. He would park at night and record what time the lights went off and on, and make note of what kind of alarm system they had. Through binoculars, he'd catch yet another banker or lawyer punching in his gate's secret code.

It was Andy that did all the footwork, not Jude.

“This house,” Andy said irritably, “is not expecting any people for another two days. I heard one of the gardeners say so last week. The owner is away on a trip out of the country.”

“What about servants?” David asked, bringing the van to a stop at the mansion's gates.

“No servants, either. The only servant that actually lives in the house is a butler, and he's in the hospital for something, so there's no one here.”

With the van's motor still running, David reached out the window and entered the mansion's security code. Just as Andy said, the code worked, and the immense wrought iron gates slowly swung inward for them.

“Pull up to the side entrance,” Andy instructed, preparing his small tool bag. “There's a set of double doors there, and it's out of view from the street.”

Jude looked up at the mansion as they approached it. From the gate it already seemed incredibly large, but the closer they came to it, the more it resembled a modest skyscraper. Even though Andy assured them that this home was completely vacant, Jude would enter it with his gun's safety switched off.

The alarm system was a piece of pie. Andy cracked it without a drop of sweat. He'd worked on dozens of different kinds of residential and commercial alarms, and this one was surprisingly simple, almost primitive. For a house of this magnitude, it was almost the same as not having a system at all.

The drill was routine. Andy chose the target and took care of the technical end of the mark, breaking codes and rewiring alarms. David was the driver. After quickly going through the house for a rough layout, he did mostly grunt work, loading the heaviest items in the van. Although Jude was quite the weapons expert, he was more refined in a more important area. He was the safecracker.

They spoke in near-whispers, more out of habit than caution, as they entered the dark structure with flashlights in hand. The moonlight coming in through the tall windows was very crisp about its edges, exposing only a few inches of carpet on the floor. All else was unseen in the complete absence of light.

“I've checked most of the rooms,” David said, returning from a parlor. “If there's a safe, it's hiding pretty well.”

“It's gotta be in here, then.” Andy pointed his flashlight to what seemed to be the largest, main room of the house.

“No way,” Jude said. “In houses like this, safes are almost never kept in the first room. They're usually in an obscure room, a room you'd least expect.”

“Almost never,” Andy repeated, fixed on the room before him. He entered it with his companions close behind. They moved their flashlights slowly, keeping them low, avoiding the windows. Then Andy's light...

“Holy Christ!”

Jude's heart jumped as he saw a giant face in the darkness, lit up viciously by Andy's beam. It was still, staring directly at the three thieves.

“Relax, it's just a wooden mask,” Andy noted.

“Big goddamn mask,” David said, not bothered at all by the shocking site.

Jude took a moment to compose himself, embarrassed by his unprofessional behavior. He shined his light along the wall and saw another mask, this one made of metal. He saw more of them, almost covering the entire wall. Each one was abstract in it's design, not resembling any particular creature. It gave Jude a trickle of discomfort to be standing in a warehouse-sized room, surrounded by countless freakish faces.

Upon that fearful thought, all three of their flashlights went out. Already shaken up, Jude's heart almost tore through his chest.

“What the hell?” Andy said. “Dave, you were supposed to check these batteries.”

“I did, man.”

“Batteries??” Jude frantically asked. “Are you saying that the batteries went out on all three of our lights at the same...”

As if thrown into the sun itself, the room's lights all came on, showing the young men the entire expanse of the room. More so than any of them could imagine, the walls were indeed covered with hundreds of masks of all shapes and sizes, made from every material one could conceive. And more so than Jude could imagine, their presence was truly terrifying.

“Where the hell are we, Andy?” Jude asked, cloaking his fear with anger. “What kind of messed up freak lives here?”

“I am that freak,” a voice said.

Jude instantly turned and shot at the voice, realizing a second afterward where it came from. He apparently missed his target, for standing in the two-story doorway to the room was an old man wearing a red robe. His features suggested that he was very old, yet his speech and movements contradicted his age.

Adding to the confusion, he was smiling.

“Please, gentlemen, put your guns away,” the old man said in a clear yet rusty voice. “Or rather, you young man, put your gun away. I don't think your friends are so rude as to enter a man's home armed.”

Jude was getting his senses back, but kept his gun raised in curiosity. “Andy, check him. Maybe he set of an alarm.”

“I disabled the alarm, man.”

“He's right, you know,” the old man told Jude. “The alarm is out of commission. Even if it wasn't, it wouldn't have done anything but make a tiny, ignored noise. As you've probably noticed, it's a very old, very obsolete system.”

“Yes, it is,” Andy said, also curious with the old man. He must be senile, he thought.

“I only have it to make thieves feel as if they're making some modicum of effort. Otherwise, suspicions would arise, and I might not be having this pleasant conversation with you now. So please, I'm just a lonely, unarmed old man, put your little gun away.”

Little? Jude thought. His homemade hybrid creation was almost a shotgun. Jude sized up the situation and put his gun in his nylon strap holster.

“Very good, Jude,” the old man said. “Now please, have a seat and a drink and we'll talk business.” He gestured behind them.

He knows my name? Jude thought. Andy and David's faces showed they were thinking the same thing. Before any of them could inquire about that, they turned around and were surprisingly greeted by an elegant table setting, complete with tea, juices, little sandwiches, candles and glassware. But the floor was barren only a second before, where did this table come from? It was far too decorated with delicate fixtures to be sneakily rushed in.

The old man walked past the stunned thieves and took a seat at the table. “Come come, there's liverwurst,” he said to Andy, who happened to love liverwurst.

The thieves sat in Victorian chairs around an oak-and-brass table which was covered by a satin tablecloth with a fine woven floral pattern. Everything on the table was above what any of the professional young men were accustomed to.

“Who are you?” Andy calmly asked. “How do you know us? Are you from Long Beach?”

“That's it!” Jude said in relief. “You must be Long Beach, that would explain things.”

“If you mean am I in that small-time outfit that resides on Pier in Long Beach, then the answer is no, I am not Long Beach.” The young men were growing more curious with every word from the old man, reaching an instinctual defensive posture. “David, you've hardly said a word. Have some grape juice, it's from my own vineyard. I know you don't drink.”

The three thieves sat upright, looking around them eyes-only, as the old man enjoyed his tea and cookies.

“What else do you know?” Andy said.

“I know that this tea won't be hot for very long. That's the downfall of brass, not the best for holding heat. But then silver is so cliche for teapots...”

“I mean what else do you know about us? No more pretending, no more games.”

“No more pretending,” the old man repeated, “how I wish I could say that sometimes. Not a single question will be answered until I see that you gentlemen are accepting my hospitality. If you're worried about poison, don't. I'm eating, so should you.”

David was the first to entrust in his host. He took nibbles here and there, as did Andy. Jude held onto his almost angry fear.

“Tell me my name, asshole,” he said to the unmoving old man. “Tell me where I came from, who I work for, and why I'm here. I wanna know how much you know.”

The old man removed a large cigar from a wooden box on the table. He smelled it with pleasure as he held it up to one of the tall slender candles. “When you drink tea, you must have a Grand Corona, I don't care what those cigar snobs tell you. A Don Mateo is perfect with a cup of Earl Grey.”

Jude's tone was unchanged in his host's friendly banter. “But back to business,” the old man continued. “You're name is Judeas Marino, you come from Nevada originally, but you live in the San Fernando Valley now. You work for yourself, although you have been with Andy and Davey here for nearly six months. Your first job together was some movie producer's house in Glendale. I'm sure you'll be happy to know that your little robbery didn't affect his lush lifestyle in the slightest, except for a his deepening lack of faith in mankind.”

“And the reason I am here?” Jude persisted.

“Obviously, to do what you do, take things from others. This is my house, so you're here to take from me.”

“That's right,” Jude said in a smile, pointing his gun directly at the old man's face. “I'm here to do what I do, take things. What I don't do is eat poisoned crumpets like my two 'friends', or sit and have tea talk with a crazy old fool.” The old man took a few puffs from his cigar. Jude saw that there wasn't a trace of fear in his weathered face, which aggravated him that much more. “Andy, David, back to the sacks. Let's get the hell out of here, but not without a few souvenirs.”

Andy and David stood from their seats, still not sure what to do. The old man was so calm with the gun aimed at his eyes.

“Now, despite your worthless alarm system,” Jude continued, “I know you must have an excellent safe of some sort. We can't find it, so you'll tell us where it is. While you're at it, you'll tell us the combination, too. No sense in drilling all night when the owner is right here in front of us.” Jude shoved his gun against the old man's wrinkled forehead.

“Jude, put the gun down, what's he gonna do?” Andy said, not sure of what he's saying. “David, search the rest of the house.”

“For what? I already...”

“For other hide-and-seekers, that's what. And yes, I know you already went through the house, so this time you don't have to be as thorough.”

David did as he was told, leaving Andy and Jude with their mysterious host.

“Jude, I can’t have this,” the old man said in frustration. ”Don’t make me regret my decisions. I hate being wrong in my calculations, and I’d hate for things to get ugly. I know you most certainly would.”

As he spoke, the old man's emotionless face grew tired of Jude's gun being pressed against it. His eyes told Andy that he was capable of more than things appeared. Without so much as a blink of an eye, he raised his cigar to his lips, drew in some Latin smoke, and gently blew it at his gunman.

Suddenly, Jude dropped his weapon to the carpeted floor. He shut his eyes, and immediately clutched the table in pain.

Andy could only watch as his partner flopped about in antique chair. He opened his eyes again, revealing them to be completely red. Blood started dripping out of his nose, then his mouth, next his eyes. Within seconds, he was bleeding from nearly every orifice of his body. After a minute, Jude fell to the floor, motionless aside from the constant streams of blood.

Andy stood with his eyes wide open, breathing heavy, stepping back a few feet. The old man sighed as he raised an eyebrow to him.

David returned in a hurry. “I didn't find any... oh fuck...” His words were cut short by the horrid sight of his partner lying on the floor.

“He didn't have to die like that, you know,” the old man said, taking a puff from his cigar.

“Who are you?” Andy asked shakily.

“He could have died in a more subtle manner. His heart could have merely stopped, his lungs could have been clogged, his brain could have been shut off like the kitchen light. But he interrupted my Don Mateo. The whole smoke is wasted now that I've had to do this.” He crushed his cigar, tossing the ashes onto his victim's body. “Plus, I felt that you young gentlemen needed to know what may await you if you choose to be as aggressive as Judeas chose to be.”

A building surge came over David, and he vomited upon seeing what looked like Jude's brain ooze from his ears.

“Who am I?” the old man said. Upon that, he opened his robe and lifted up his shirt, exposing a gunshot wound on his stomach. “You're friend was a good shot, given that he was probably blinded for a moment when the room's lights came on.”

The massive wound shifted, the blood instantly being clotted. A few seconds later, the wound was sealed, and the old man swept away the dried blood. He spit a bloody bullet out of his mouth at David, who shuddered as it bounced off his chest.

“How I do love to make you quiver,” their host said blankly. “My name is not important. I don't expect you to understand. However, I think you know who I am, but you're in that famous mortal denial, the ignorance-is-bliss way of thinking you humans cling to. Lies to calm the masses. Search yourself, and you’ll have no more questions for me.”

“What are you saying? That you're... you're the...”

“That I'm God's 'Significant Other?'” the old man laughed. Well, not how the good book describes. Concepts such as gods and omnipotence are never so clear cut that they can be summed up in words on a page. But as far as your understanding is concerned, yes, I am The Devil.”

David shook in disbelief, zipping his view back and forth from Jude to the old man to the sinister masks that surrounded them. “Andy, let's get out of here, man.”

Andy was instead staring at the old man, looking him fearfully in the face. “I don't know if that's a good idea, David. I don't think we...”

“You were looking for a safe? Remember?” the old man said. “Ironically, that's the reason I called you here. To look after my vault, amongst other things.”

“You called us here? What do you mean?” Andy was beginning to feel trapped.

“You don't think you came here on accident, do you?” the old man smiled his smile. “Thieves of your caliber don't randomly choose houses, especially around neighborhoods such as these. You spend weeks doing 'research', and the house that's the choicest would be the first one hit. I spread the appropriate rumors, allowed you to eavesdrop on rehearsed conversations, as well as made sure that you penetrated my security. But it goes much deeper than that. I've manipulated certain events in your life, shaping your existence so to speak, in that you would all arrive here tonight.

“Andy turned to crime at an early age mostly because his father decided to leave his family when he was young. I was there to encourage this act of release. And David's criminal vocation began when he was denied his college scholarship. He couldn't afford tuition, so he started doing... odd jobs... in the city Long Beach. The money became addicting, so college took a back-seat until he was a full-fledged, full-time thief. You would have been the first of your family to go to college. Instead, you were the first to spend time behind bars, the first to be ostracized from the family. In the end, do you ever think of who, or what, was responsible for denying you that scholarship that began it all?

“So you see, I went through some effort to bring you here. I hand-picked you, as I do all my servants. It's a pity I had to remove Mr. Marino from the plan. I usually foresee deviations like that. But then, only God is perfect.”

What the old man did then clinched exactly what he was, eliminating any sliver of doubt in the young men's minds. He removed his face as if it was made of wet paper, transforming his being into a walking shimmer of colored light.

The creature placed the now-surreal face on a hook in the wall, removing another mask near it. Placing this mask on its “head”, it became a young black man wearing a pressed grey suit.

After a moment of orientation, the black man removed a cigar from his coat pocket and lit it with only a puff of breath. “Savory,” he said in an unknown accent. “Nothing like a good Don Mateo, I don't care what those cigar snobs tell you. And back to business.”

The black man walked to a door nearby and opened it, gesturing for his servants to join him. The speechless young men followed cautiously.

“You did check this room, David,” the black man assured, “in case you're wondering where all this came from.”

The dark room, which David saw as a simple study earlier, was actually a stone walled vault, with endless shelves of antiques. The thieves saw knives, guns, crosses, books, bottles, all covered with centuries of dust.

“This is my vault. Like I said, you checked it before, but it only appears to be a vault when I personally open the door. Among your duties will be to watch over this room. If a certain being ever got in here, or any of his immortals, it would be very tragic for me. It would set me back quite a ways, and I can't let that happen now, in a time when I'm making so much progress.”

Andy managed to gather enough strength to question his new master. “What do you mean we'll be watching this room? Among our duties? What is this room?”

“This room is my collection from across the ages,” the black man said, puffing his Grand Corona. “These trinkets were designed by people of every race and religion to do one thing: to kill me.

“Vampires have there storybook garlic, their stakes through the heart, all that playful nonsense. I unfortunately have a continent of such things that are intended to end my existence. Nothing can end me, of course, but there are ways to kill me in my present form so that I have to go through the trouble of being, how can I describe it? 'Reborn' into the world.

“While I am away on business, you will watch the house, which is quite the easy task, but nonetheless a task. This vault is priority. I have come close to being taken many times, I won't lie to you on that.”

“So we're your servants now?” David asked. “Andy, what does he mean? We're supposed to come here whenever he's away doing whatever he does?”

David's companion knew what was to become of them, and he became ill at the thought of it. He grew nauseous at the idea that his whole life had been guided so that he would become this. “I think, David, that we won't just come here when he's away.”

The black man smiled. Even though his appearance was radically different from only moments before, his smile was unmistakable.

“Why us?” Andy asked. “Of all the people in the world, why did you choose us?”

“I can't expect you to understand. You are mortal, and can't conceive of my thoughts. I didn't just pick you from all the people in the world, but from all the people in time. Just know that God works in mysterious ways... as do I.”

The black man stepped out of the vault and checked his silver wristwatch. “I am due in Australia tonight. There's a virus that will occur in a newborn rabbit in the outback exactly seven hours from now. If it remains in the wild, it will die in a few years, and that's that. However, if it is caught by a tribal hunter, eaten, and the tribal hunter visits the nearby city... well, you get the idea. All I'll be doing is making sure the hunter's usual poor aiming miraculously hits its target.”

The black man laughed, and Andy felt a panic rush through him. He couldn't believe what was happening, or how easy it was for this being to cause such suffering.

“That's my favorite mortal misconception,” their master said. “Miracles aren't always a good thing. By all means, they can go both ways. They can give a blind girl her sight and feed a entire village with only a small basket of fish. But they can also kill a quarter of a million people. Until two days time, good night, gentlemen.”

As the black man started to walk away, Andy grabbed the nearest item from the vault, an medieval English dagger, and ran toward his new master.

He thrust the dagger into his master's back, and immediately the black man winced in pain. In a heavy breath, he looked at Andy through watery eyes. Slowly, all traces of pain fell away, and his face became a vile picture of frustration, eerily similar to when Jude met his demise.

Andy dropped to his knees and clutched at his face. Just as Jude had died, so would he. The black man removed the dagger from his back as Andy took in his last gurgling breath.

“He must have forgot that he's mortal,” the black man said to David, still in the vault. “He panicked, I suppose. Still, this is odd. I usually know when a servant is a wrong choice. Clean this up. And take care of Jude, too. That carpet is going to have to be soaked...”

“Sir,” David interrupted. His master was amazed at his courage, or perhaps stupidity. “Would he have made a better choice if he used this?” David held an old wine bottle in his hands, removed from the vault.

The black man looked curiously at his servant. “Yes, that would have been a better choice. No blade can hurt me, but that bottle of wine is made from the blood of a martyr. It's more sacred than holy water. Still, he was a mortal, it wouldn't have made a difference.”

David removed the cork from the bottle and splashed the blood onto his master. The black man smiled his smile, only to have it fall from his face as he felt a terrible pain surge through him. He felt the blood wine drip down his skin, leaving burning trails, exposing the colored light that made his being.

He fell to the floor, helpless as the blood seared at his flesh. David walked up to him and poured more of the wine onto his body. The black man gripped the carpet in agony, confused as to what was happening.

David bent down and peeled away the black man's face, turning him into his raw form of shimmering light. The creature looked up at David, who held the bottle poised over his fading existence. “I usually foresee these things,” the creature said in effort. “Who are you?”

“My name is not important,” the young man said blankly. “I can't expect you to understand. Some have called me your ‘Significant Other’.“

Upon that, the young man poured the rest of the wine onto the creature, dousing it like a match. Only a stench and a cloud of smoke remained.

He then turned his head and looked about the great mansion, setting it afire with mere thought. He placed the empty holy bottle back in the vault, shut its immense door, and exited the house as it was being enveloped in flames.

The Oak Tree by the Lake

2007-02-02T01:37:00.000-08:00

I used to go fishing at Miller Lake, not too far from the cornfields. There was a large mud hole near the main road that guarded a dirt path to the lake. It seemed to always be muddy, no matter what the weather was like. After I hopped it, either on foot or on my bike, there would be rows of willow trees along the path, followed by the cornfields that told me I was close to the lake, and far from the rest of town.

Mr. Joman was always in those fields, it seemed. I’d sit for hours with my pole in the water, usually not catching a thing, and Mr. Joman would sometimes bring me a lemonade. A few times, on the really hot days, he’d bring me ice cream. That was a long walk for him, but I don’t think he minded on account of him being alone. His wife passed on years ago, and his son moved away before I was born. I don’t know what happened to his son, but I think he works in a big city. That would explain why Mr. Joman never saw him. I could see the two of them getting into fights about whether or not a city job is suitable for a “country boy.”

I remember catching a fish once. I remember it because it was probably one of four times during my childhood where I actually caught one. I pulled it out of the water and was going to yell for Mr. Joman to come see it. It wasn’t very big, but to me it was a whale. I turned to see if he was nearby and saw him cutting his corn. He was doing it by hand. That was the first time I saw corn being harvested. Before that, it was always tall and thick, shading me from the summer sun as I passed it on the way to the lake.

I put the fish in my bucket, placing my pole beside the oak tree, and just sat and watched him with his sickle. For a man as old as he was, he was very strong. I used to imagine that he was the strongest man in the world. Seeing him work like that, I didn’t want to bother him with my small victory. Instead, I looked at him, and then at the vast, almost endless field before him. Suddenly, my whale wasn’t so big anymore. I can’t recall precisely, but I think I threw it back. There would be more fishing days ahead.

A loud noise woke me one morning. It sounded like an airplane passing overhead, only it didn’t fade away like you’d expect. It was constant, and I wondered what could generate such power. As I changed clothes, I noticed that it sounded distant, yet within reach. So after changing, having breakfast, and skipping brushing my teeth, I rode my bike about six houses worth before stashing it in the mile-high oleander bushes on the side of the road. That was quite a length to ride considering every house had scores of acres around them.

I imagined walking to a point where the sound grew so loud that I couldn’t hear myself breath unless I concentrated. But when I arrived at that point, it wasn’t as loud as I had predicted. That spot was in front of the Peabody farm. Those folks were rich. They weren’t millionaires, but they had more going for them than most other families who farmed that town.

I walked around the house, careful not to give myself away if someone was near an open window. I was a sneaky little one, or so I prided myself in thinking. When I got to where I managed to get a good view, I saw something I couldn’t describe at the time. It was a car, I first thought. It was a big truck, like the one I sometimes saw delivering thing to the stores downtown, only this one had teeth. They were saw blades, like the one my father had on his workbench. The truck had maybe a hundred of them, being dragged behind it, and wherever they went they cut a road out of the Peabodys’ cornfield.

I remember thinking that I had to tell Mr. Joman about that as soon as I saw him. If he had one of those trucks, he could get much more work done. He already a big pickup truck, all he would have to do was put the blades on the back, and then he could cut his entire cornfield in a week. I ran off to inform of my discovery, hopping my bike over the great mud hole in excitement.

I told him to no avail. He listened to what I saw saying, but acted like he didn’t care. He was polite about it, but I guess the idea of a truck cutting corn wasn’t appealing. I’d keep describing how it had a hundred blades as opposed to his one, and he’d just smile, even laugh, and offer me a Coca-Cola. I would then immediately stop my talking and accept the drink right away, because a Coke was priceless to me then. Drinking one with Mr. Joman made it even more so.

When the Cokes were done, before I could resume my truck story, he picked up his sickle and offered to walk me out to the lake, seeing that I had my pole with me. I got the feeling that he had a lot of work to do in his huge field, so I tried to forget my story and went fishing.

As time went on, I fished less and less with every summer afternoon. The following summer would prove to be likewise. I’d still go out to Miller sometimes, but not always to fish. Sometimes I’d just go out there to sit under the oak tree and watch Mr. Joman cut his corn. Even when I brought my pole with me, I found myself casting the line into the water, and then ignoring it to watch him harvest the field. I used to imagine all the fish I let get away whenever I didn’t pat attention to my pole. It made me feel like a great fisherman, or at least a great potential.

Many casts and many Cokes later, a winter came that froze the lake, which apparently didn’t happen very often. My folks let me play with my soccer ball in the front yard, but they didn’t allow me near Miller. They were afraid I’d fall in and freeze to death. They were probably right. I always did have an urge to do a running slide across the lake, even when I knew the ice was very thin.

Over that winter, I managed to make a couple of friends at school, and went to their houses on weekends. They had different things to play with, so I was very occupied when it came to amusement. I even got those rare Cokes from one kid’s mom every now and then. At first, they reminded me of Mr. Joman, but after a while, I didn’t think of him. In fact, it would be safe to say that I completely forgot about him when my new friends enter my young life.

I spent about half of a spring ignoring my friends and trying to court a certain young lady. For a while, I thought that something would come of that, but my expectations were not met, as I would find happen much throughout my life. She started seeing one of the guys I began ignoring for her. To make sting more, it was a guy I really didn’t like much. I certainly didn’t like him much after that.

I recall being in my room when my mother was going through a bunch of our things, looking for items to give to a local charity function. She gathered old clothes and knick-knacks, and approached me with my fishing pole in her hand, asking if I still wanted it. She saw that her only child had new friends for the first time in his life, and thought I didn’t have call to sit alone next to a lake pretending I was going to catch something. Truth was, I didn’t want the pole anymore, or to go fishing. But I did want to see Mr. Joman again, and for some reason, I felt like I needed the pole as an excuse to go down to the lake to see him.

That weekend, I biked to the lake as I had done many times before, hopping the mud hole along the way. Only this time, it wasn’t as quiet a ride as I was used to. I heard the sound of the truck with the blades on it. I heard it many times. In fact, I pretty much heard one for every farm that lied between my house and the lake. It seemed every farmer managed to get a Peabody truck over the winter. For the spring harvest, I imagine. They probably got their trucks over time, but my absence from the lake during that winter made it a sudden sound to hear them all.

I got to the fishing spot and cast my pole right away, probably to get that part of ritual over with. Like a fool, I accidentally threw the entire pole into the lake. At first, I was angry with myself. But after a minute, I didn’t care. I didn’t come to fish. I came to see Mr. Joman.

I don’t know why I didn’t just go up to him. I always needed my fishing to bring us to drinking cokes on hot days. However, that day I didn’t. He saw my foolish maneuver and laughed out loud. I liked to see him laugh. It was quite a contrast to his worn, leathery appearance.

When he finished laughing, I heard the faint noise of a Peabody truck and pointed it out to him. He told me that those trucks were for farmer who wanted to get either more sleep or more money, and that he had enough of both. He didn’t believe in letting a big machine to his work for him. He wanted to sweat for his corn, the way his father did. He said that it paid honored him.

We both turned to the water to watch my pole float away into the middle of Miller Lake.

“I’ll do one of two things,” he said in his grizzled voice. “I can swim out there and get your pole back, or you and me can go back to the house, get us a couple of sodas, and I’ll make you a new one. Jus’ like the one I used to use.”

I chose the latter, not so much for the idea of the homemade fishing pole, but for the coca-Cola which I so desperately wanted on that hot day. As I sat on his back porch drinking my Coke, I watched him fashion one of the crudest fishing poles I have and will ever see. All it consisted of was a huge stick with big grooves cut into it, and a spool of line stuck onto one of the ends.

Just like before, when our Cokes were finished, he walked over to the barn and picked up his sickle, which told me to try out my new pole while he cut his corn. I reluctantly did, planning on drinking my soda much slower next time.

As I sat beside the oak tree with my new pole in hand, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for Mr. Joman. In times past, everyone seemed to be cutting much the same way he did, by hand. Even then, the other farmers always had their children or farm hands helping out. Now, not only was Mr. Joman alone and working with a blade, but the other farmers had huge machines to help them. They did a hundred time the work of any one man. Without losing any of my respect, Mr. Joman didn’t seem so strong to me all of a sudden.

*****

As I looked forward to summer, I never would have been prepared for Mr. Joman’s death. I saw the hottest of days filled with cold drinks, talks of school, and making corn husk sailboats. I saw myself actually catching a fish with the pole he made for me, and then running to him to tell him how his pole really worked. I saw him finally finishing his harvest and joining me by the lake with a pole fashioned just like mine, giving me pointers on how to use it. I saw so much for that summer, but it just gave me so much more to come crashing down when my father told me the news. I don’t remember crying like that at any other time in my childhood.

Being the quite one, the shy, loner child for so long a time, he was really the first friend I had. He treated me with unconditional kindness that one rarely sees. I knew, even back then, that I would never meet a man like him again.

Many years passed, and I made more friends. In school I was isolated by my shyness at first, but then I grew accustomed to people being in my life. Shortly before the year of my high school graduation, my family moved to a house closer to downtown. This was nice because it saved me time biking from home to my job at the feed store. Later, I bought a little truck with money I saved from that.

Two month after graduation, I was accepted by a college in a city not too far away from my family. So I moved there, where I met Marie, the woman who would eventually become my wife. Occasionally, I would pause to notice how quickly things were moving, but I regretfully did not make these pauses frequently enough. I worked my way to a position with suck rank and stature, that the times between these pauses, as well as visits with my parents, became longer each year.

My daughter tugged on my pant leg one day and asked me if we could go fishing sometime. Her friend had told her about his fishing trip with his father, so naturally, my daughter was curious. She asked if it was only for boys, and if that why we never had our own trip. I told her that the fish don’t care whether or not you’re a boy or girl, and that we’d have our trip soon enough. My vacation was within a matter of weeks, so we could start planning a trip to somewhere like Alaska. I had always wanted to go fishing in Alaska with the boat I just bought, and my young daughter was never more excited.

Marie, who despised fish, pleaded with me not to go there, because she had heard that people die of pneumonia there all the time. She wasn’t so much worried for me, as for out little Alex. There really wasn’t another good place in my mind to fish, except for Miller Lake. I promised my daughter fishing, so fishing it would be.

On a hot Saturday morning, we arrived at the mud hole that I once enjoyed hopping over. The farmhouses along the main road were gone, leaving just lonely oleanders. In place of the houses were flat, leveled plots of land with no distinction of the families that used to live there. Stabbed into these plots were big signs that proudly announced the upcoming of track housing, shopping centers, liquor stores, and highways.

It saddened me to see my old house gone, but it somehow saddened me more to see everything I grew up with gone. All of my friends’ houses were vacant fields. My old front yard, where I used to kick a soccer ball around by myself, had a sign on it that said “No Trespassing.” Everything wasn’t just different, everything was lost forever.

Alex then got out of the car and, upon seeing the great mud hole, made a running start and promptly jumped over it. Her happiness from that jump made me laugh. It also made me take a second look at it, and realize that mud hole had been there for as long as I’ve been alive, perhaps longer. The very same mud hole that started the long dirt path to the lake was still there, still muddy, despite everything else becoming so dry and lifeless. Even its size seemed to be the same as I remembered.

I gathered my things and walked with my daughter past the beautiful willows to Miller Lake. There, everything was also the same. The oak tree was still there to give us shade, my pole was probably still in the lake somewhere, and in the distance, across a barren field of hardpan dirt, was Mr. Joman’s house. There were boards on the windows, and the barn that used to stand next to it was torn down.

As I stood there staring at my childhood, Alex tugged at my shirt and asked where the fishing poles were. I left them in the car. She offered to get them, but it was a long walk, so I told her to get a couple of good sticks instead. I reached into my tackle box and pulled out some fishing line and a knife.

“Are you going to make us fishing poles, dad?” she asked, always thinking.

“It was something I learned when I was younger,” I told her. I had only finished one pole when she wanted to fish to a point where she couldn’t contain herself anymore. I handed her the pole, briefly coaching her on casting, and before I could start on mine, I realized that I didn’t come there to fish. I came to see Mr. Joman.

“Dad, did you catch lots of fish?” Alex asked me.

“A couple of times,” I said, Just then, her pole gave a yank. I helped her pull in the line, winding it around an empty pop bottle I substituted for the spool, and on the other end of it was a little fish. It couldn’t have been any bigger than the palm of my hand.

“Dad! Look how big it is! It’s huge!”

She was right. It was huge. It was her whale. I looked to Mr. Joman’s house and said in my mind, “It really does work.”

My daughter put the little fish in her bucket and clumsily recast her pole. As I saw her sitting beside the oak tree with her homemade pole in her hand, I couldn’t help but feel happy again. The kindness, the pure feelings I thought I would never find again, I found in my little girl.

I sat beside her under the shade of the oak tree, put my arm around her, and opened a couple of Coca-Colas. This time, I remembered to drink slow.

A Gift For Clara

2007-02-02T01:33:00.000-08:00

A chill swept across his body in the serious, still room. The acoustic quality of the walls seemed to channel and echo every minimal sound into his ears. Peter had his thoughts about mansions, and all the accessories that came with them.

Though he was not one to deny the obvious beauty of such stately houses, even admitting to a certain regal quality he felt about them, he held onto old prejudices. The rich snooty folk and their expensive toys, the almighty image taking first priority, the invisible wall that kept out the rest of the world and held them in contempt.

A large man entered the room and silently offered Peter a seat with a routine gesture of his hand. They would conduct their conversation on antique Victorian chairs in the huge empty parlor, below chandeliers and a painted ceiling. Before a word was spoken, a servant came in with a tray of wine and sandwiches and sat it on a wooden chest in front of the large, well-dressed man.

“I'll be retreating now, as you requested, sir,” the servant told his employer. “The house is all yours.”

“Fine, Clemens,” said the large man. “I'll most likely see you Monday morning. Try to have a good weekend.”

“I always do, sir.” Clemens opened a nearby grandfather clock and wound it carefully before leaving the room. A moment later, he was heard exiting the house and leaving the grounds in his car.

Not knowing how to break the eerie quiet, Peter resorted to the small talk technique of commenting on the last thing that had attention brought to it. “My uncle had a grandfather clock like that,” he said. “It was just as beautiful. I remember it well.”

“My boy, if it was just as beautiful as mine,” Peter's host said, “then either he got a bargain or I was the victim of a deceptive clockmaker. I mean, I don't know how much money your uncle spent, but mine is a one-of-a-kind Gerhardt, the Stradivarius of clocks. It left me minus five.”

“Five?”

“Five-hundred thousand,” the host said as he took small bites rom his finger sandwich. “My wife has a talent for spotting the most expensive item in a cluttered shop, and persisting until it belongs to her.” The man smiled in the recollection, only to have the smile fade away. “Or so she had before she passed on.”

Still finding things a bit uncomfortable, Peter tried sampling the assortment of snacks to further alleviate the mood. He knew almost nothing about the man that sat before him, and despised the first words of an introduction. “I'm sorry, I don't recall your name exactly, it was...”

“Timald,” the large man said calmly, still nibbling like a rodent on his dainty food. “Timald, Tim, Timmy, Timothy, any variant of my name will suit me. I'll let you choose.”

“Then it shall be Tim. I once went to school with a man named Tim, nice fellow.”

“Thank you for the indirect compliment.” Tim stood from his seat and walked to the tall windows over looking the Rowdan river. He spoke to his guest without looking at him, as if his facial expression might endanger his upcoming sales pitch. “I'm glad you decided to come here today. I've come to understand hat you originally turned away from the invitation.”

“Yes, that was my first thought,” Peter told him, trying not to sound too at ease.

In his tone, Tim put away the introduction and moved on to business. “Let's not talk about our beliefs, or the differences between them. Larry has told me how you feel, and I want you to know I respect it, as should one respect anyone's creed. How long have you been friends with my brother-in-law, by the way?”

“He's a nice fellow, but I wouldn't label us 'friends'. We work in the same building downtown, and pass each other in the hall every morning. When I helped him that fateful day, it was a spontaneous thing. I'm not really sure why I did it.”

“Well, let me speak for the entire family when I say that I'm certainly glad you did. He's doing great, walking around like I thought I'd never see.” Just as abruptly as Tim left his serious tone, he returned to it, lowering his voice slightly in doing so. “I've tried many possibilities. But as my hands are tied, I find myself without options. For the record, I did not send for you until all other paths were exhausted.”

“Noted,” Peter said with a pleasant air. “I believe you, and should stop you from going any further. I appreciate the hospitality you've given me for the longest time. The limousines, the feasts, the clothes, it's been overwhelming.”

“It's gratitude, my friend. Hospitality is free. I've simply been thanking you for what you've done for our family, what you've done for Larry.”

“In that, you've paid me back ten times over.” Peter's voice seemed to gather momentum, or at least attempted to. “I came here today to clear the air and make a final statement. I want to say something for you all to hear. You being this family's figurehead so to speak, will have much the same effect.”

Tim's face of “let's not get hasty” told Peter that he was going to have to do more than make his rehearsed statement to sever his symbiotic relationship from this wealthy family. There was mental work to be done. “I realize that your family's been through a lot,” Peter continued, “and I feel for your girl. But what happened to Larry isn't something you can buy at the thrift store. It's not something one would call a small task.”

Tim continued to look out the window at the river below. “Clara and I used to take our boat out on the river, just the two of us. She'd call it Old Man Rowdan, and she'd pretend that the old man was pushing us along.”

“Don't say 'used to', she's not out for the count yet.”

“If you're saying what I think you're saying, then she very well is out. Out for the count, out of this life, out of time.” Tim caught the edge of frustration in his tone and slipped back into the controlled salesman of before. “What you did for Larry wasn't a small task. My brother-in-law owes his life to no less than a miracle, no one's saying otherwise. I know it's easy to place hope on that isolated incident and take things for granted. But I also know that events like this are rare. I have an eye for such jewels. It's this rarity that only makes me more determined.”

Tim walked to the chest sitting next to the fireplace and removed the food tray from it. He rubbed its varnished woodgrain with his hands. “This is a gift, from my family to you, for all that you've done. It's tailored to recruit you for my assistance, though it's a gift that I'd rather not part with, if you'd only reconsider. Please, I implore you, help me once again.”

Peter's silence answered the host's plea. Tim popped the latch and creaked open the lid. From inside it, he removed a small burlap sack and sat it on the mantelpiece.

“Every good story has three somethings,” he told Peter, building his curiosity. “Three bears, three pigs, three wishes. In this sack are your very own three objects, three items that will be my attempts at changing your mind about saving my girl. Each one is more persuading than the last. I assure you, much thought was placed into their presence. Do you have anything to say before I open the sack?”

Peter looked at Tim in apology. “I'm sorry,” he said. “Your approach and delivery are excellent, but I can't do it. I stand by my principles, at least for today.”

“You can't or you won't?”

“The 'can't' part I'm sure about, the 'won't' part I'm definite about. The responsibility is too great, you don't know what entails all this. Hopefully, you may not know for years. But the risk remains.”

Tim looked at his reluctant guest as he handled the gift. The large man gently pulled the string tied around the burlap sack and reached inside to reveal three small, shiny objects, examining them in the sunlight coming through the stained glass windows. “They're so beautiful, symbols for me. Solid 24-carat gold, imported from Tibet, engraved by my great-grandfather when he had this house built 97 years ago.”

“It'll take more than gold to...”

Before another word was spoken, Tim tossed Peter one of the small golden objects. Peter looked at it in wonder. It was a key. Looking back at his host, he realized that he was just given the first of three golden keys.

“If you're wondering what they fit,” Tim told him, jingling the remaining two keys in his hand, “they fit three very different locks. As for the one you're holding, I'll betray myself and make it simple, since it is the first one. That lovely key is for this.”

Tim reached into the chest at his feet and removed from it a small jewelry box. Sewn into the red velvet top were his initials “T.R.”, just above an intricate lock. He handed the box to Peter, who looked at it from all sides.

“It's not a booby trap, it won't bite you,” Tim said. “Go ahead and open it.”

Peter looked at his brimming host. Carefully, he inserted his first key into the box's brass lock. He twisted it and lifted the cushioned lid with a brief creek. A sweet music box melody came out of it, reminding Peter of when he was a boy. It sounded like the type of innocent song that would remind anyone, not of their personal childhood, but of childhood in general.

“Well?” Tim asked. “How do you like it? I call it 'Clara's Springtime'. I wrote it for her on my piano and had it specially built into this music box.”

“You're pulling the heart strings pretty well,” Peter said, almost succumbing to the magical sounds. “But it'll take more. Life and death is a serious pair of words.”

“In case you missed it, my boy, there's something that goes with the song.”

Peter looked inside the box and saw an envelope with his name on it. Tearing it open slowly, he found a personal check with a rather large figure written on its front.

“I'm curious,” Tim said. “Did I leave off any zeroes? If I did, please let me know, and I'll add on as many as you think I've forgotten.”

“The amount is fine,” Peter said in a disgruntled manner. But no matter how large it is, it'll never be enough. To be clear, Tim, this isn't a money issue. It's an issue of power versus responsibility of that power. I hope your other keys aren't just for boxes with larger checks, because if that's the case, we can end this game now.“

“There's no point in offering you other checks when the one in your hand could easily carry my entire fortune. No, these keys have different homes. This next one, if I may guide you for a moment, unlocks something in here. The manor is much too large to incorporate my persuasion antics, so I've narrowed it down to this parlor.”

With that, Tim grinningly handed Peter a second key, then taking the small box and check from him.

Peter looked about the immense room and found nothing else with locks. There was nothing at all, aside the windows and doors. He then thought of how simple the riddle was, for that's exactly what the key was for.

The windows were all thick stained glass with no means of opening them. But surrounding Peter were four doors, including the door Clemens used as he left, the one that led into the hall. Peter didn't know what to expect and thought about refusing to play along with the wealthy man's creation.

“This is a big place,” Tim said, as if to subtly threaten his guest. “A person can get lost here, especially when there's no staff to be found on this lonely weekend afternoon. If you'll do me the favor of returning my generosity by humoring me and my golden friends, I will do you the courtesy of respecting your wishes to leave my home. This is under the assumption that my keys will fail to persuade you to help my Clara. I doubt they will, though I had hoped we wouldn't need to use them all.”

It was clear that Tim would not be reasoned with. It was his house, and his rules. With such size to everything, it was actually more of a microgovernment. Once behind the mansion's doors, one was subject to the mansion's unwritten law.

Peter approached the doors one by one, trying the key with each of them. The first lock he tried was on the door that led into the hall and out the front entry to freedom. It didn't work, telling Peter that he was indeed trapped unless he continued the game.

The second door he tried was on the same wall as the first door, on the other side of the fireplace. It remained locked. The third door, the one opposite the sky-high windows, was also not the correct one. Peter was eventually faced with a remaining `UV`last door, one that stood directly across from the fireplace. Being the last one made it that much more ominous to Peter, that much more repelling, as if to say “don't open me” through it's fine wood carvings of Greek scripture.

“Go ahead, my boy,” the host urged on, “insert the key. My house is your house, no need to be shy.”

Peter held the key to the lock in hopes that Tim was not too unusual of a man. Eccentric was acceptable, so long as it didn't cross certain unspoken lines.

With a twist of the golden key, Peter opened the door and found himself standing at the entrance of a dark room. There was a chill that was surprisingly colder than the parlor, and a silence that seemed to be a negation of sound rather than merely an absence of it. The darkness was so black that if there had been a cliff at the doorway, Peter wouldn't have known until he was falling.

“Don't turn back now, my boy,” Tim said with a deeper tone. “Enter the doorway. One does not open a door unless he plans to cross it's threshold.”

With eyes nearly shut, Peter stepped into the darkness and was seemingly enveloped. There was something in that room that created a sorrow. The unseen walls felt as though they were sad or longing, as did the floor, the windows, the furniture. None of it was visible, but was present in pain, like a sadistic blind sight. Peter began to feel the same way.

As he stood in the dark room, looking about him as if to see something he hadn't seen a second before, Tim entered, stopping at the doorway.

“Let me ask you a question,” Tim said. “What do you feel in here?” His guest could not answer, whether out of fear or otherwise. “Perhaps a few words to help crystalize your thoughts. Hopelessness. Despair. Loneliness. These are what I feel whenever I'm in this part of the house, but especially this particular room.”

In a quiet part of his mind, Peter did not disagree. The unseen room was unfortunately all these and more.

Tim turned up the room's lights with a wall dimmer. Peter immediately stepped away from the large thing appearing in front of him. As the light became brighter, he realized it was a four-post canopy bed, neatly made, with black satin draped all around it. As beautiful as the bed was, it wasn't one that Peter would want to have the chance to sleep in. It looked the same way the rest of the room felt, as if it were quiet and still in mourning.

“You don't have to ask me what makes this room so important,” Tim continued, “and I don't have to tell you. You can gather things as well as most men, better due to your gift. I can see it in your face. You know this was my bedroom. Our bedroom. Isabella fell to polio here, in that very bed, one that she picked out on the day of our marriage. She adored it, and that's where she wanted to pass on. She didn't want to die in a white-walled hospital, with white uniforms and tired white faces sleeping in the beds next to her. The only way to end a life is in the home that held it.

“When Isabella left, Clara was only two. For a long stretch of time I told myself that my daughter was better off not knowing her mother well, that she was being saved worlds of torment and regret by not remembering anything about her. After all, your sorrow over a lost brother versus a long lost great-uncle whom you've never met is quite a contrast. We've all wept tears for some folks and made only passing remarks about others.

“Soon, I realized I was trying to trick myself. I think I've always known. I wish now that Clara had the chance to know her mother before she was taken from us. I constantly question God for making such a decision.

“It's been six years since, and Clara is beginning to ask me about her. I know these pressing queries are only going to get deeper. She'll ask more detailed questions, and I'll start to notice her mother in her movements. It'll be in the way she talks and in the way she looks when she's sleeping. Clara's slipping away now, too. 'Respiratory cancer' they call the killer, not many children her age survive it when it's this bad. All the money I have, all the power I've built for the past 30 years, none of it is worth anything to this girl right now. She keeps asking me what I'm going to do to help her, or if we're going to be together. What can I tell her? And when Larry comes over, and she sees him moving around and walking as if he were an aspiring gymnast after limping all his young life, she asks how he managed to get better. I ask myself the same thing.”

“What do you tell her?” Peter asked, moved by his host's emotional attempt at recruiting his ability. “What do you tell her whenever she asks such things?”

“I tell her that a young man who goes to Woodston University helped him. A young man that worked with him took away his crippling disease. Uncle Larry has been snapping in and out of shape when he walked for as long as Clara can remember, and all of a sudden, at the time when she first became bed-ridden, he's given a new contract on life.

“Hell, did you know he's even growing his hair back? The man's been bald since he was in his late twenties, I'm talking glossy skull bald. Now he's buying expensive shampoos, planning on letting his new hair grow hippie long.”

“It won't end there,” Peter told him. “This is only the beginning, and it's always sweet in the beginning. Anything that happens to him now is my fault. He didn't ask for me to help him, I volunteered. I helped him because I thought I'd be easing someone's suffering. Instead, I've realized that playing Mother Theresa is a full-time job. You've got the media on one side, and millionaires with terminally ill relatives on the other. That's something you should tell Clara. Tell her that as much as I'd like to help her, I can't. Tell her that it's not personal, that she's only one of many people asking for my help, and I'm saying no to all of them, not just her.”

“Why don't you tell her yourself?” Tim walked to the canopy bed and pulled back the satin drapes. Lying between the thick pillows, unseen before, was Tim's small sleeping daughter, Clara. Peter was obviously affected by her presence, but was still rooted to his beliefs. “If you weren't the only man on the planet that can help my girl,” Tim continued, “I'd slap you across the face for making her just a number in your collection of solicitors. Clara's different. She's not a rich old lady that's had a full, lush life, afraid of dying. She's a brave little girl that lost her mother, and is now going to lose everything else.”

“If you weren't a man with a dying child,” Peter bellowed, “I'd slap you across the face. For thinking that you're any more special than the rest of the folks that have come to me for help, or saying that people are only numbers to me. You insult me with your selfishness. Notice how I use the word “you” instead of “her” or “your daughter”. This isn't about Clara or how she's going to miss out on a life without a mother. This is about a man that tragically lost his wife, is now about to lose his only child, and is going to have no one to live with him in this dreary house.”

“I can't understand how you can sit on the sidewalk and watch my baby die in my arms. How can you be so sadistic?”

Peter advanced Tim as if he were going to strike him out of anger. He stopped himself, straining to retrieve his composure. Looking down at little Clara, he spoke in a soft tone, not necessarily speaking to anyone. “Do you want to know how I discovered my gift? My brother, Joshua, was bitten by a rattlesnake while we we're hiking in the middle of lost-nowhere, and I didn't know what to do. I managed to carry him to a ranger station, but by the time we got there, all traces of the poisonous venom were gone. He was healthy again, healthier than before he was bitten.

“That was four years ago. Things have developed unpredictably since then. Last week he was hit by a drunk driver. Everything in his body was mangled beyond comprehension, it's a miracle he survived. But this miracle became a doom for him, because the pain never stops. The pain from the very moment that truck plowed into him, the curdling sting and sharp thrust of the it smashing his body, continue without any end in sight. You see, when I made him immune to the snake's poison, I made him immune to all poisons, to all chemicals. Doctors can't give him anything because nothing works. Morphine, codeine, they might as well be water. They can't sedate him, and they probably couldn't put him put him out of his misery without decapitating him like a vampire. As we stand here, Joshua's losing his mind, screaming all day in pain, ranting about how he wants to die.

If I had the courage my brother needs me to have, I'd find a way to oblige him in his wish.”

“I'm sorry about your brother, my boy,” Tim told his guest, “and I don't mean to persist like a self-serving fool, but it would be a fallacy to say that what happened to him will happen to anyone you may help.”

“My brother was only the first, as he was the one that made me discover my ability. There are unfortunately other stories, of people who at one point would have sold their souls for me to help them, only to be on suicide watch later.

“A girl I was seeing was attacked one night last year, left for dead in an alley by an evil, heartless demon of a man. She was beaten within sight of death, and I hurried to tend to her. Afterward she was in prime health, or so I thought. But it's the mental damage of a rape that never fades, especially so in her case.

“I soon found that my healing her somehow erased all her physical wounds, only to leave the attack to replay over and over in her mind, seemingly stronger with each nightmare. In time, the massive wounds she had on that dreaded night began to reappear in their full-blown severity every time she had the dream. There hasn't been a week since her attack that she hasn't been in St. Cristof's Hospital.

“I could go on, but you can see there are drawbacks to my gift. It's true when they say a blessing and a curse are sisters. I don't want your little girl to die, but I don't want to own her life, either. I don't want to be responsible for the aftermath, and there will be one, there always is. Like I said, I've got plenty of experience from my traveling healer days. I promised God that I would stop doing His job, and He promised to let me keep what little peace of mind I have left, even if it means stopping at the presence of your child.”

“What about Larry?” Tim persisted, starting to lose his composure in Peter's confidence. “Larry's fine, he could run a marathon he's in such good shape.”

“The jury's still out on your brother-in-law, Tim. It's only been a few months since I helped him, there's no telling what may happen from here. It was foolish of me to forget the rest of the folks I've 'healed'. Nothing can change this, he is to be the one.”

“You haven't used your third key yet, Peter,” Tim said flatly, seemingly restraining his eluding control. “All this banter has let us forget the existence of the third key.”

“There isn't a key that would do the job. After what I've told you, there isn't anything I can conceive that would change my mind.”

“As I've said, I'm desperate, my hands are tied. I need to at least try. If you'll step into my den, I'll present the final key.” The two men stepped out of the child's room, leaving her to continue sleeping.

Peter hoped that they were finally going to another part of the house, somewhere other than the parlor. He had felt so trapped in that beautiful room. Upon arriving earlier, Clemens showed him into the parlor and told him to wait a moment for Timald to join him. That moment lasted nearly an hour, testing Peter's patience and endurance. How lonely and cold it was to converse with 20 foot high stained glass windows while rehearsing his rejection over and over, determined to deny Tim his wish.

Upon escorting his guest across the parlor, Tim did not open the door that led into the main hall. Instead, he opened the door on the other side of the fireplace. Immediately, Peter could see that Tim's den was a no-nonsense office. It's size was quite a contrast to everything else in the manor, and Peter felt more trapped than before.

Sealing the emotions further, Tim shut the door behind them and offered his guest a seat in a hard, one-piece plastic chair. Peter began to suspect that perhaps his host's den doubled as the custodian's closet.

“Tim, let's get on with this third key business. I'll allow you to make your attempt to sway me, and then I'll be on my way.”

“To speed things up, as you've expressed you want, I'll turn the key myself and save you the trouble.” With a clunk onto his crude desk, Tim sat a rusted metal box with a lock built onto its side. “Well, here goes everything.” He unlocked the box for his guest, removing from it an ominous antique pistol.

Peter had to take a second look in disbelief, scared on a deep level, as if trying to convince himself that he was truly in jeopardy. Tim casually popped open the gun and checked for ammo, subtly making sure that Peter also got an undoubted glance for confirmation. There was no question, each of the six chambers had a bullet tucked within it.

“So, this is the last of the three,” Peter said, trying to sound comfortable in the presence of the weapon. “All the eloquence gone, all the psychology out the door. It's just the three of us, you and me and a gun. In the end, you're no different than a low-rent criminal.”

“This Colt,” Tim started, “is a family heirloom. It's older than your grandma, and more valuable than anything in this house. Don't think that I've dismissed taste and presentation just because I have a gun in my hand, or that this less-than pristine room is a where I take my captives for their primitive executions. You judge too quickly.”

“It's easy to judge so fast when I have a gun aimed at me, antique or not. Extortion is the word, plain and simple. But despite all this, despite all the impressive attempts at pitching your needs to me, I keep my view of you as a pitiable man.”

The large host slid the chamber back into place, and held the weapon loosely before aiming it at its potential target. “Extortion, yes, you're correct in that choice of word. I have succumbed to that strategy. But I never said that this gun's barrel was meant for you.” On that, he raised the beautiful weapon to his own head, holding the trigger precariously tight in a finger's grip.

“You've won the day,” Peter said nervously, attempting to counter Tim's well planned mind tricks. “You've succeeded in convincing me that you've completely lost your mind. You won't pull that trigger, you care too much about your daughter to leave her in this world alone.”

“Ah, but I won't be doing that. For without your gift, she won't be around long enough to notice she's alone. It's simple, really, as simple as placing your hand on her head and walking away with a fortune under your belt. If you don't oblige my wishes and keep the Lord from recruiting my little girl, I will pull this pin and meet her upstairs where we can see Him together.” Tim gave his guest a questioning look, examining his silent response. To accelerate his thinking, Tim pulled back the hammer on the ancient gun.

“Let me think, goddamn it! If I'm gonna do this, like you're so sure I am, then at least give me a minute! Put the hammer back!”

“A minute to think about it?” Tim barked. “You've had plenty of time to think about it, from the moment you pulled into my driveway this morning. Besides, how much time did you need before you gave Larry his legs back? Or any of your other disciples? I realize you're brother didn't turn out so well, and I acknowledge that something similar may happen with Clara, but at least give her the chance to find out. I'll take responsibility for whatever occurs. I'll deal with whatever my daughter goes through.”

“Somehow, I don't put much stock in that plea,” Peter said seriously. “If Clara were to have the same outcome as my brother, and she were screaming in agony every second of every day, I doubt you'd have the courage to do the right thing. I know I don't.”

Tim thought about what Peter said, about the possibility of doing the right thing“ if needed in the end. He realized his guest was right, that he wouldn't be able to cope with whatever may happen. He also realized that there was indeed nothing that could sway Peter from his stand. “You're right,” he said in a drifting exhale. “But I do have the courage to do this.”

BOOM!

Peter rushed to Tim's side, reaching him before he hit the floor tin a bloody thud. Without thinking, Peter propped him up against the desk to see if he was okay. A second later, he darted back from the large man's body, terrified in the realization that he touched him skin-to-skin.

Slowly, the severe gunshot wound on the side of Tim's head began to shift and change color. Tim's shut eyes sped back and forth as the wound transformed. Almost immediately, the blood stopped flowing, and Peter could actually see skin stretch across the wound, sloppily covering the shattered bone and torn muscle. He wanted so much to run from the manor, never looking behind him. Something kept him there, something more than the curiosity of whether or not Tim was going to recover.

The mystical healing stopped, and Tim fluttered open his eyes. The scar was a hideous sight, with bulky shards of skull behind a delicately laid sheet of flesh. Peter had only healed him to a partial, vile degree.

Tim flailed his arms like a cloth puppet, moaning as if he were trying to awaken from a long nightmarish dream. His eyes were against the top of their sockets, exposing his red-stained varicose whites. They bled as he flopped against the desk in pain. “Petahhhhh,” he moaned with straining effort, unknowingly drooling on himself. “Petahhhhh, helappppp....” From that point, his words became mere noise, nothing approaching recognizable. His seizures grew more intense, and it was a horrid sight to see a man of such power and stature turned into a tormented vegetable, lying at the hands of his reluctant guest.

Peter stood in front of the remains of the man, who was alive only by textbook definition. He thought to act quickly, not wanting to relive what he's done to so many others in the past. There was nothing else he could think to do but the right thing, the thing he could never imagine himself doing.

“Petahhhhh, ahhhhhhhppppp...”

BOOM!

*****

As Peter left the quiet den, once again in the majestic parlor, he thought of little Clara, whom he'd only glanced at once. He turned in the direction of her room and thought of how it used to be her mother's. For a flash of a second, he was tempted to walk into the dark room, awaken her with a smile, and give her his gift before exiting the mansion. In the unlikely chance that she would awaken with no problems, healthy as a girl her age should be, he pondered the thought of the young girl discovering her father in the den. He weighed the choice of a child dying in her sleep, or living in a twisted misery.

Finding himself taking steps towards her awaiting room, Peter stared at the stained glass windows as if to ask their advice. Without another thought, he heeded their silent suggestion, and walked out the front door of the manor for his first breath of fresh air all day.

The Clouds Below Easton

2007-02-02T01:31:00.000-08:00

There has never been a spectacle such as there would be that morning. It would be one of the few things in life that belittled life itself.

It was only a couple of hours away, though time seemed to stretch much longer. The boys were worn from their climb thus far, worn comfortably “like old denim” Mark would say.

Escapada was an angel on that painting day, with tall blades of untouched grass, waving seas of flowers, the occasional stone sitting in its contentment. Every bit of Escapada was green, feeding off the mist that made the air alive so high above the rest of everything.

In the shade of an overhanging cliff sat Stephen and Mark, relaxing for the first time since the start of their climb up what was called the most breathtaking mountain in Easton, Colorado. The boys were no exception to that popular opinion. Stephen chose Escapada after scores of research nights at the university. He went through three shelves of books about mountains, carefully interviewing each applicant before choosing her.

It wasn't the numbers in the texts or the photos in National Geographic that eventually pointed to Easton, however. It was old fashioned word-of-mouth, the kind that spread across generations, that told Stephen where to go. Legend. Folklore. He was always a fan. Fitting how that love would play such an unusual role.

“I turn in a circle, and still can't believe where we are,“ Mark said. “I can't believe how high it is up here.“

“Three or four miles would you say?” said Stephen.

“High enough, I don't know.”

“No. Not high enough. We'll get the ultimate high soon, though. It's gotta be the very top.”

Mark went through his backpack, sliding aside food and tools until he found his canteen. “I suppose the top is the only thing we have.” He began to drink sloppily.

“That's what's so beautiful about mountain climbing,” Stephen said. “It's such a simple sport. The only rule is to survive. The only goal is to reach the top. Simple, yet more exhilarating that any sport man's created down there.”

“Scarier, I'll give it that.”

“Rest is over. Let's get going. Otherwise, we won't make the peak before sunset.”

Mark sneaked a last drink from his canteen before shoving it into his pack. Already, his friend was up and quite a distance from him. When Stephen made a decision, it was concrete, and Mark knew to fall in line. It was a seemingly poor relationship, but actually very normal and healthy for these two.

“Wait up,” Mark puffed. “You treated Diana this way?”

“Diana wouldn't be up here,” Stephen said.

“No guts?”

“No imagination. I can't see how a person like her could find the beauty in something like Escapada, in the flowers or the clouds. She'd say something insulting to nature, and dismiss everything. All she'd see would be the bad things, like how cold it is or how there's a lot of bugs.”

“I think once she was up here,” Mark said, “she wouldn't be so bad. I mean, how can anyone be less than blown away by this?”

“You'd be surprised. I hope it's the booze that makes her that way, and not her lacking personality. I wager it's both.”

Diana was indeed lacking, in many ways. She and Stephen met not too long before, coworkers at a fast food restaurant while in high school.

The entire staff of that restaurant were classmates from the same school, with the sole exception of Diana. She dropped out at first legal chance to take a job as a receptionist with a car dealership. The pay was beyond anything a student could achieve at the time, which for her was plenty of reason to put education on hold. The hold turned into a permanent freeze when the dealership went under, and threw the self-proclaimed independent girl into the market of youth exploitation.

This, coupled with her manners and thick reputation, made her popular with the restaurant staff in a most negative way.

Stephen saw other things in the girl, or so he told himself, and strayed from the warnings to avoid her.

“I never would've thought you the kinda guy to be with a girl like that,” Mark told him.

“You sound like everyone else.”

“There's a reason why everyone agrees about that girl. You were always blind when it came to her.”

“Yeah, well that's past tense,” Stephen said firmly. “Things are different now.” He hiked up a kind part of the mountain, looking forward, cement brow, speaking every word with traces of regret and wonder.

“So, you're finally awake? Finally know what's going on?”

“You could say that,” Stephen said. He sighed and hopped over a rock as he thought about his ex-girlfriend. “I am supposed to be the smart one.”

Diana was the first square in a quick and twisting path for young Stephen. It led far from the life he had before.

When he was small, he was the model boy. Good in school, in church, in the home. He continued through high school this way. At parties, when the others were holding beers and shotglasses, Stephen carried his two-liter bottle of Seven Up. When being sexually active was hip, he took pride in his virginity, not afraid to tell others. The wild antics his closest friends were always into made him appear ever more innocent and pure. His parents cherished their only child and thanked the Lord for their son. But they were unaware of some things about Stephen, which was very unfortunate.

“I never needled you about being an egghead,” Mark said, trying to comfort his lifelong friend. “In fact, I admired the way you were always in control. Never got drunk, never failed a class, never got your heart broken.”

“It's not control, man.” Stephen struggled to describe how he felt. “You make your shield big enough, you can fool yourself into thinking you have control. To tell the truth, I think control that's redlining isn't control at all.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I mean everything that made me who I was came about after too many efforts. They made me tired. I don't know if it was all worth it. I should've been on the beach digging up clams with everyone else, but I was at home with discipline, being ship-shape for my folks.”

“Your mom and dad sure knew how to put on the pressure. They're cool and all, but they put you on the butcher block whenever you so much as thought about being normal.”

“Normal?” Stephen snapped. “I'd hardly consider throwing up in a field on a Saturday night normal.”

“If you were alone, no,” Mark said softly, as if to spread his calm. “If you're with a group of friends, then yes, it is quite normal to go overboard with booze someone swiped from their parents' cabinet. It was usually Brian Novell. He always had the stuff.”

Mount Escapada's summit approached rapidly, as shown by the terrain, becoming steeper with every step. The sky seemed to match the changes, the anticipation. The boys did also, climbing faster, breathing heavier. Within moments, they went from hiking to climbing to scaling. The chalk dust they brought for their hands was proving to be worth every penny of its inflated name brand price.

“What no one thinks about is how I did what I did,” Stephen said with great strain, slapped onto the rockface. “My grades were barely met. I sacrificed many would-be friends in order to make the letter A. I put so much sweat into my work, I thought I was stupid. No one puts that much stress into so little achievement, and I peddled that bike as fast as I could.”

“You're being a little hard on yourself.”

“That's not half of it. All the drugs I turned away from at parties, the beer, the pot. I took some. At home. I'd light up and try it, get smashed in the seclusion of my room. Once or twice would seem acceptable, but I did this often. Sometimes I'd go to a party for the sole reason of getting more.”

“Where was I during all this?” Mark asked.

“I didn't invite you because I didn't want you to see me.”

“I don't understand,” Mark said. “You wouldn't be social about drugs, but you'd do it solo?”

“Weird?” Stephen said. He continued to scale the mountain, heading toward the summit. “At first, I wanted to experiment alone, in case I became the world champion fool. I didn't want anyone to see me. Only later, it became recreation. That was my approach to everything. I never got my heart stepped on because I never brought it out for anyone. Every time I hid it, I felt like I was violating my instincts, and it hurt more each time.”

“But not with Diana.”

“No, not with her,” Stephen sighed. “The one time I should've kept hidden.”

At the fast food restaurant, Stephen was a shift leader, well-respected by his bosses and coworkers. After his entanglement with Diana, however, things changed unpredictably.

Keeping one's virginity can create a kind of vulnerability. Stephen's was clearly exposed when Diana took it from him. After that moment, he pledged himself to her, starting the spiral.

Diana became pregnant with their child, and persuaded him to steal from the restaurant. He did so, taking money and food, clocking himself in for hours he didn't work. His bosses discovered his crimes, but were lax with it. Because they were so fond of Stephen, and because they knew, as did everyone, the reasons and motivation for his thefts, they let him go with only a termination. His firing was for the books. Corporate needed him to pay for what he did.

Stephen attempted to get more out of every job he had after that similarly. He stole money from his next job, one in a men's clothing store, and was dismissed again. He was then fired from a gas station for the same offense. After that, his resume kept him from being able to get a job anywhere. His parents were not happy with their son's new criminal record. After weak tries at counseling him, they washed their hands of the matter. Where at one time they would boast of their only child, they now mention his existence in passing conversation.

In the end, it was all for nothing. Diana made him a thief for a baby that was miscarried. No baby, no friends, no family, no future. Diana was all he had, and that would be gone soon enough.

Unable to get even the most undesirable jobs, he joined the army. It was a move he thought he would never make, and he knew t was a desperation one, despite what others told him.

“What eventually made you break up with her, anyway?” Mark asked. “I mean, no one could convince you that she was bad news.”

“My folks always hated her. The guys at the restaurant felt the same. They all told me how she supposedly went out with a different man every night, got wasted all the time, lost the baby on purpose. I didn't believe them. I used the fact that they knew her as an excuse, and needed an objective opinion. So, while I was stationed in Alabama, I had my cousin Jeff spy on her. He never met her, she'd never seen him, so it was perfect. I mailed him a picture of her, and places where he'd most likely see her.”

“And?”

“And that's how I found out what she really was,” Stephen said. “She was with every guy in the city, never sober. Jeff said she was so constantly messed up that the president could've been following her and she wouldn't have known.”

“She's never seen me,” Mark told him, “you could've asked me to tail her.”

“You know you're the exception. You're always the exception.”

The two boys finally reached the top of the mountain, with only a few moments of sunset left to enjoy. As Mark prepared their camp, Stephen looked down the other side and saw what he waited so long for.

At the bottom of Mount Escapada was Looking Glass Lake, as pristine as the people of Easton said it would be. The local legend, the one that brought Stephen there, was that if one stood at the top of Mount Escapada on a certain day of the year, the reflection from Looking Glass Lake at the break of dawn would be so clear that it would actually fool you into thinking there were two skies; the sky above the mountains, and the sky below the ground.

Stephen always liked that tale, hoping that one day he would live it. He even fantasized about diving the many miles to the grand lake, as though to jump into the sky itself. After a night's sleep, the dawn would give him the chance.

*****

Mark felt a cold wind blow across his face, and opened one of his weary eyes a slit. The clouds were very distinct, crisp about their auras. The sun broke through them, splitting them with beams that cast light beyond other mountains. Escapada had yet to be fully lit up. The dawn was about to arrive.

A short distance in front of him was an odd figure that he couldn't make out at first. The wind made his eyes water, blurring his vision. Wiping away the tears, he saw that it was Stephen, awake, standing completely naked.

Stephen stood at the edge of the summit's cliff, looking down at the ominous, immense lake. Mark knew what was going to happen.

“Steve, what are you doing? Flashing the rest of the world?” Mark nervously joked. He hoped for an answer that was just as jovial.

“I'd say it'll be less than a minute.”

“Until what?”

“Sunrise,” Stephen said. “The lake will become the sky, and I'll fly into it.”

Mark immediately rose to his feet, and slowly approached his friend on the cliff's edge. “Whoa, what's this about flying? You mean with your imagination, right?”

“I mean that I'm going to do something for myself for the first time. I'm going to fly off this mountain and live the Easton legend. You'll be witness to it.”

Mark knew there was a strong possibility he would do it. He also knew that he was the only thing that could come between Stephen and the lake. These thoughts made Mark forget how cold it was, judging from the sweat beading on his face. “Stephen, you're crazy, you know that?” he said, gathering his strength.

“I'm something,” Stephen replied. “I don't know if crazy is the word, but I am definitely something. I should've made this trek long ago. Instead, I spent six years in the fucking service!”

“It wasn't that bad! You're seeing the bad things, and ignoring the good things. When someone feels down and depressed, it's easy to do that. It's easy to miss all the good things.” The winds grew colder and stronger. The light danced above the mountain. It was ready to touch the lake. “You told me how Diana could never see the beauty in the flowers and clouds up here. Now you're being the same way.”

“It's different.”

“No, it's the same. There's flowers out there, you just have to see them. You can't do that if you...”

“I'll see a lot more. While I'm flying, and after I'm done.”

Stephen turned back toward Looking Glass Lake. The light flickered a few final times, like God's closet lamp clicking on. A moment later, within seconds, the entire lake was alive with bright blue. As the light grew, the clouds came into the reflection, until there was a perfect sky below the ground. Stephen looked up and down repeatedly, and there was absolutely no difference in the skies. Standing became strange, for it was as though the mountains, lost in their fog, were floating in the air. Clouds above, clouds below. It was a dream.

The naked young man took a step forward. Half of his feet were off the cliff, with only his heels keeping him from falling. He looked at what surrounded him and cried. It was difficult to tell what kind of tears they were. Perhaps it was the cold wind getting to him.

Mark was desperate. He suspected something like this would happen, but never thought about what he would do if it did.

“I don't know how long this will last,” Stephen told his friend, “so I better go now.”

“Stay here, Steve!” Mark quickly said. “Of all the times to do something for yourself. Stay here. You're an only son, do it for your parents.”

“They've already cut me loose. Besides, I've paid my dues to them. Time for the bird to leave his nest.”

“You've got friends, you know. Stay for them, don't break their hearts. Do it for them.”

“When I'm gone, my death will be a trivia question at the high school reunion. A caption in the reunion invitation, perhaps.”

Mark didn't know what else he could bring up. He was terrified about what was going to happen, about not being able to do anything as Stephen plunged to the bottom. “Stay, brother. Do it for me.”

Stephen looked at Mark for what would be the last time, as though to memorize how he looked. “You know, Mark, I would stay for you, but I have to face myself, and all the illusions I created. You don't exist. At least, not here.”

“What are you saying? Man, you are crazy!”

“Mark, you probably don't remember this, but mom miscarried you. She told me so the day you died. The bed and all the toys she and dad bought for you were given to me. Everything was personalized with your name on it. 'Mark' was written on almost everything I owned growing up.”

“You're confusing me, Steve.” Mark was careful in this area. This was a topic that was never talked about before. I'm here, I'm speaking to you. We've been friends since kindergarten.”

“From my earliest memories, I can recall being reminded about you everyday. Whenever I was bad, mom and dad told me how I was undeserving of your room, of your clothes. I sometimes felt as though they wanted to trade you for me if they could.”

“Steve, stop it.”

“What they didn't know was that you were alive. With me. The first day of school, I knew that I was unable to make friends, that I was different somehow. So together, you and I spent all our time doing schoolwork. I never needed anyone else.”

“Well, I need you here, with your feet on the ground. I don't need you up there yet.” Mark feared he would not get through.

“When Diana was pregnant, I thought it was you inside her, trying to be born. But you died again, and it was an omen. I didn't see it for a while, but it was a sign. Perhaps I did see it all along. I was just in denial.”

“Okay, let's take it slow,” Mark said. “Step away from the edge. I didn't have a choice, you do. Don't waste it. Believe me, it's not something you want to take for granted.”

As the wind blew harder, Mark seemed less visible. Stephen could barely see his lifelong companion through teary eyesight.

“I'm sorry, Mark,” he told him. “You'll follow me, I know you will. We'll be together like we've always been.”

Mark cried silently, the tears running halfway down his young face before being whisked away in the cold air. Stephen readied himself for the clouds, fighting self preservation and fear with all his emotion. It was almost too much for him. The chill became comfortable and welcoming, and he turned around to look at Mark again, only to find him gone.

There has never been a spectacle such as there was that morning. It was one of the few things in life that belittled life itself.

The Six Trials of Julian McKenzie

2007-02-02T01:25:00.000-08:00

It's the start of a new era at Armillan Communications, a large corporation owning countless companies ranging from magazines to broadcast stations. Through its children, Armillan brought the world the latest news stories served hot on an outdated, overworked computer system. The corporate giant knew that if it were to expand into the future markets of software and Internet businesses, it would have to make some changes. After years of planning, and many mysterious delays, the time had come for a new technology to take its place.

Julian McKenzie joined the advertising department days after the ground breaking of the new system; a network of beautiful, white machines with blank memories, ready to go to work. A quiet, mild-tempered young man, Julian was trained only a few days a week at first. Being between systems, the department was between system manuals, and weren't sure what to do with this new recruit.

Management decided it best to refrain from training him on the shiny new equipment from square one. It was analogous to teaching an immigrant child his native Spanish before moving him into the much more difficult English language. Learning then became the simple process of coding and decoding. It was more efficient.

That decision, however, did not exclude him from the ritual that was a long held tradition at Armillan. Though never officially named, Julian would undergo what came to be known as the “Six Trials”, a battery of tests that every employee was secretly exposed to, from the lowest custodian up to the highest CEO.

“What's this?” Julian asked as he sat at the conference room table. “I've already taken two of these tests, I feel like I'm still in high school.”

“This test may seem similar, but its subtle differences are what we're going to be looking at later,” his supervisor told him as she gave him the third Trial. She watched him begin, filling in rectangular boxes on a computer scan sheet. It amazed her how quickly he was going through the problems.

“Who designs these tests, anyway?” Julian asked her as he continued his penciling.

His supervisor was surprised to hear him speak, being so comfortable as he began the test. She was also surprised he was on his third trial. “The big man upstairs.”

“Sid in Info Sys?” Julian chuckled.

“Sid?”

“He's the manager of Information Systems on the twenty-eighth floor,” Julian joked. “That is the top floor, isn't it? Or was big man upstairs' referring to God?”

His supervisor carefully observed him as he took his test. She replied as she always did, without a trace of a smile. “I was preferring to Mr. Armillan himself. He doesn't have an office here, I only meant 'upstairs' metaphorically. But it rather fits, because as far as some employees are concerned, Armillan is God.”

His friendly manner looking for the punchline, Julian paused upon hearing her. “Some employees, but certainly not you.” He waited for an answer, a nod, a sliver of a grin. The exchange of words was beginning to spook him.

His supervisor thought for a moment. “You have another ten minutes,” he replied.

As with the first two tests, Julian passed the third easily. Unlike his previous high scores, however, this time around Julian achieved a perfect 100%. The management was stunned. They knew he was bright, but passing three Trials was very impressive. Very impressive.

The other Trials were thrown at him quickly. They grew more difficult than the last. Questions ranged from basic mathematics problems to advanced psychological scenarios. Personal information questions were always included as well, queries that puzzled Julian, queries that one wouldn't think his boss would care to know. Opinions on world events, knowledge of history, economic predictions, biological technology, Darwinian theory.

Julian passed each one, no longer questioning his supers as to why he was taking them. He found their tone to be quite serious. No one uttered a word that wasn't in regard to his test scores. Apparently, the praise he was getting wasn't small talk fluff after all. He really was scoring beyond the rest the staff, which consisted of thousands of employees nationwide.

After months of testing, the sixth Trial arrived. Afterward, the management nearly trembled as they held Julian's 98% score their hands. They checked it repeatedly, but there wasn't a doubt. He was to go on to Number Seven.

It was on this day that his nightmarish life began.

*****

THIS IS JULIAN. HOW IS EVERYONE? FINE I HOPE. I AM AT EXT 3600 IF YOU NEED MY ASSISTANCE.

A few of the staff members noticed something odd about Julian's computer messages to the rest of the department, something very utilitarian about them.

THIS IS JULIAN. HOW IS EVERYONE? FINE I HOPE. I AM AT EXT 3600 IF YOU NEED MY ASSISTANCE.

Soon the department saw less of him. They occasionally read his computer messages, but never saw him at his desk. Perhaps he was promoted after going through those weird tests, some thought. Though most dismissed the quiet man's absence, some did not, including the department's assistant computer consultant, Ken “K.C.” Okuda.

THIS IS JULIAN. HELLO K.C. I HAVE A CALL TO TRANSFER.

“Thanks Julian,” K.C. replied on his terminal. “Hey, where you been, man? No one's seen you since you took that last test deal. You didn't even show up for the Kings game on Saturday, everyone was wondering what happened to you. What, do they got you up on the twenty-eighth floor planning corporate takeovers?” No response. K.C. continued to type. “Hey, if you're gonna lay off half the faculty, try to make it the half that I'm not on, okay buddy?” K.C. waited for his friend to answer in his jovial banter.

THIS IS JULIAN. I WILL NOW TRANSFER YOUR CALL.

Though he knew something was odd, K.C. could never have imagined the extent at which Julian was being groomed for a higher position. A higher purpose.

*****

Weeks earlier, upon the completion of his sixth Trial, Julian was invited to a special “meeting” with the heads of the corporation. He was escorted to this meeting by several men he had not seen before. Entering the elevator with him, they pressed the button for the infamous twenty-eighth floor, a Armillan employee's version of a rarely-seen hierarchy.

There were rumors as to what this floor looked like. Fancy potted palms, velvet wall coverings, gold-trimmed doors, the usual exaggerated nonsense.

Julian grew somewhat nervous.

While the elevator was in motion, one of the escorts pressed “Emergency” three times, paused, then pressed it three times more. The elevator's lighted floor indicator eventually reached “28”, but then kept going. Julian was confused, trying not to seem intimidated.

He and his escorts emerged on the twenty-ninth floor, a part of the massive skyscraper that was unknown by even the highest-ranking management. Peering into the darkness that enveloped him as he stepped out of the elevator, Julian saw that the entire floor seemed to be one immense room, judging from the acoustics. Every footstep echoed forever.

“Is Mr. McKenzie with you?” a muddled, interrupted voice said, cutting through the anticipating silence. Something about the voice was very distorted. It came from the end of a long metal conference table, surrounded by scores of suited figures with blank faces. Julian would come to know them as Level Five staff.

“Yes, Mr. Armillan, he's with us,” one of the escorts replied stoically.

“Leave us.”

The rest of the staff departed as requested. Only Julian and Armillan were left in the dim room, much to Julian's discomfort. Armillan? he thought. He wanted only to leave. He couldn't have been farther from his wish.

“Please have a seat, Mr. McKenzie,” Armillan politely ordered. He was probably used to treating people as so; courteous, yet clearly in command.

Julian sat at the end of the long table opposite his superior. He strained to have a glimpse of his mysterious employer, no doubt an heir to the vast Armillan fortune. In the world of business, there were few higher in stature. Julian was practically sitting with royalty.

The intimidating man had his tall executive chair turned away, adding to his control of the room, concealing what Julian would discover to be a horror of a site.

“Mr. McKenzie. I have been made aware that you have passed the Six Trials.”

“Excuse me sir?” The ever-polite young man always referred to others with “sir” or “mam”. Especially when he was unsure of himself.

“You were given a test that consisted of six trials, all which you have passed. You are only one of two people that have done this. I commend you. Most do not see even a second trial.”

“What does that mean? What are these trials for?”

“Every new employee receives these tests. Another test for every one passed. The number of tests they pass greatly affects their evaluation as a servant of the corporation, not only at the time of their arrival, but throughout their career. In a way, we know your future before you do. It's our business to know the future.

“Passing only one Trial will get a new employee only a scarce number of hours, prompting them to seek employment elsewhere. Passing two is average, and we treat them as such; average. Most never see a third. However, three signifies possible supervisory positions in the future. Four is rare, and warrants an actual office, as opposed to a cubicle office. Five is extremely rare, and is where positions on the twenty-ninth floor start. Level Five staff.

“Six is unheard of. As I said, only two individuals have made it to six, which is in reality a doorway to the seventh and final trial. As you know, Mr. McKenzie, we are currently upgrading our entire computer system. This is where you come in.”

Julian was beyond confused. He kept thinking that he was in some sort of practical joke. But then his memory quickly retraced his last few weeks. In his mind, he reread the questions on his tests, especially the unorthodox ones, the ones that made no sense to him. He recollected the way the management reacted to his progress, how they moved him to an isolated desk away from the other staff.

It was all coming together in an eerie path that brought him here to this dark, frightening, warehouse-sized room.

“Mr. Armillan, I'm more than willing to help out with the new computer system any way I can.” Silence. Time for small talk to lighten the air. “If you don't mind me asking who was the other person that passed all the trials.”

“That other person was Edward C. Armillan, founder of the Armillan Corporation, in 1805.”

“Was he your great-grandfather?”

“No, Mr. McKenzie I am Edward C. Armillan.”

Julian did a quick estimate in his head. 1805? Did he hear him correctly? That would make him nearly two-hundred years old. This was insanity.

Upon that thought, Armillan turned his chair and emerged into a faint light. Julian couldn't believe the hideous sight before him. The young man found himself shaking in total fear. It was all he could do to keep from vomiting.

“This is your final test. The seventh trial. At this point, though I appreciate your cooperation, it doesn't matter if you're willing to help or not. A find as rare as you can't have a choice.” Julian wanted to leave, but sat immobile as he heard his employer outline his future. “You will not help the new system, Mr. McKenzie,” the bizarre creature said, “you will become the new system.”

*****

An ordinary Saturday morning. David Gallo was part of the usual skeleton crew taking phone calls in the customer service department, dressed in near-pajamas, drinking a cold soda. Soon, the phone lines were dead, and the soda was empty. He made a retreat to the lunch room for another Mountain Dew.

Having a good fifteen minutes for a break, and knowing that nearly no one was in the entire building, he took it as his opportunity to take a peek at the twenty eighth floor. There was an old wager he had long wanted to settle with K.C. But if the rumors of golden doors were wrong, he could at least have a glimpse of the new PCs that were ordered for his department.

The elevator doors opened with a soft vacuum sound. David looked about the floor and was surprised to see that every rumor was indeed true. Beautiful paintings lined the velvet walls. Patterned carpeting stretched underneath ornate oak desks. Across the luxurious expanse sat a row of brand new desktop computers. They were top-of-the-line, waiting to be used, wanting to be used.

From somewhere on the vacant floor, David heard a voice. It was Julian. How odd that Julian would be there on a weekend. Only the grunts of the corporation worked Saturdays, not advertising reps like Julian.

“Operat... diagnostic complete... upgrade appendage...” Julian's voice said faintly. David left the friendly computers to seek the voice.

“Julian, where are you? Jule?” There was no response, though the whirring of air tools was heard. Perhaps Julian was repairing something. That made even less sense. “Hey, K.C. And I missed you at the game. We kicked Pittsburgh's ass, you should've been there.” He continued to talk to his unseen friend as he rounded a corner, stumbling as he was greeted by an unexpected sight. “The half-time show was...oh Lord...”

David Gallo gripped a fearful silence. Julian was at a secluded workbench, soldering iron in hand, working on his detached portion of his head. Nearly one fourth of his head was laying on the bench, still tethered to his skull with a bloody tangle of wires, cords, and veins. As if things couldn't get more terrifying, Julian turned and spoke, emotionless.

“THIS IS J.5. GALLO D., YOU ARE NOT CLEARED TO WORK WITH UNIT J.5. I WILL HAVE YOUR SILENCE.”

The voice was not Julian's, but rather a cold, dead rendition of it. Every sound was a watery shrill without a trace of human accent.

This is crazy, this is a prank, David thought. He scanned the creature for puppet strings, a gag table, the practical jokers to emerge from the back of the room. But all he saw was J.5, reassembling his head. The thing then approached him.

“THIS IS J.5. I WILL HAVE YOUR SILENCE.”

David's athletic youth paled in the shadow of the creature, and he was thus taken swiftly. His only salvation lay in the fact that his silencing was nearly painless.

*****

The employees enjoyed their Monday feast. It was one of many the management paid for to ease the stress of undergoing a complete system upgrade. But the joyous mood did not last. A custodian burst in with news of a most disturbing discovery.

Through the grief of the staff, David's grisly death was discussed and dealt with in a fast, orderly, almost planned manner. Upper management was quick to change the subject when he was brought up in conversation. Those who were his close friends were given fewer hours, often transferred to other parts of the building. It was an unusual way to handle such a tragic event. Of all the people who questioned that Saturday morning, it was K.C. Okuda that made an unofficial investigation of it.

Already noting strange occurrences in the building, such as Julian's disappearance and the mysterious flaws in the new computers, the death of his friend catapulted his curiosity. The objective way in which David's memory was being gradually erased from the office made him angry. It was obvious that Armillan Corp. was washing its hands of the incident, offering no explanations, dealing with the Gallo family in quick, secret out-of-court meetings.

K.C. wanted answers, and he was more than capable of getting them.

He took pages of notes on everything that he found puzzling, no matter how insignificant he thought it would prove to be. Compiling his notes at home in various cross-indexes, he looked for something that made sense of all the strange goings-on. He downloaded reams of information about the publishing industry from the internet, asked questions, wrote letters. Finally, a subject came up that he had not come across in his weeks of searching for answers: robotics. It tied into the Armillan Corporation in a strange, unbelievable way.

CIS, Cybernetic Intelligence Systems, was being explored in limited areas of research. Funding for it was mostly private, usually in fields such as military applications and space exploration. Dating back are early as the late 1800's, crude forms of robotic, clockwork laborers have been experimented with in a vast number of applications. Mining, warfare, transportation, construction. Now in the computer age, with rapid advances in electronics and microcircuitry, robotics have taken a back shelf to other technologies.

Critics site, however, that the future of computers lies in Organic Interfaces, and more specifically, Organic Circuitry.

The theory stems from the observation that despite any possible advances in computer circuitry, animal brain tissue exceeds it exponentially in data capacity, thus opening new gateways to infinite other technologies.

More than a million human brain cells can fit on the tip of a hair, each cell capable of storing an abundance of data. The feeble dexterity of human hands cannot conceive of creating a computer chip that approaches that level of complexity, much less reliability. In addition, a human brain is continuously functioning and being programmed literally every second, for decades, from birth to death. Even in sleep, the brain is operating, expanding.

No man-made computer can expect to live up to that sophistication unless it had its own intelligence, its own ability to learn starting from its very creation. In no manner possible could it have the storage capacity in regards to size. Technology would soon return to warehouse-sized computers if they were to seriously compete.

So there it was, right before K.C., amidst the cluttered printouts on his desk and the stacks of books on his bed. There was the answer to it all. Organic Circuitry. Cybernetic Intelligence. But what did it all mean? How did it tie to David's death?

One paragraph of a particular report in a December 1902 issue of Business Nation caught his eye, berthing the first of many insane theories.

“Today, the ailing newspaper tycoon, Edward C. Armillan, spent nearly two million dollars for a machine that is rumored to help extend his life, enabling him to continue running his journalism dynasty. Details of this machine are unknown, though it was bought from privately-owned CIS Industries.”

As crazy as it all sounded, answers were offering themselves to K.C. in droves, and he felt an impending fear for finding them.

*****

It was another Saturday morning. K.C. sat quietly at his terminal, typing a report on the recent gruesome incident. It was one of two reports he was making for his supervisor.

One reflected his personal theories as to what happened, including the research he spent many late hours uncovering. The other was merely a retyping of a watered-down report that the Powers That Be created for the public. It's main purpose was simply to exist, to give the corporation the ability to say that they, too, have investigated the matter and considered closed.

Though he was often chosen to head public relations matters such as editing product recall statements, he found it ironic that they choose him to prepare David's story for the hungry media hounds. After all, it was no secret that he and David were close friends. Perhaps it was because they discovered him tapping into the system files in pursuit of his own truth.

It made K.C. sick to type their half-hearted report. It especially made him ill to type it at his desk, alone on a Saturday.

Ten feet from him was an empty chair where David once sat. With fragments of the truth floating hauntingly in his mind, K.C. couldn't stand keeping his knowledge to himself. Though he would sound quite the lunatic, he felt the need to tell someone. Anyone. But his trust was shared sparingly at the company as of late.

At the peak of his frustration, just as he was going to turn and tell the nearest person about his research, an unexpected message appeared along the top of his computer monitor.

THIS IS JULIAN. I NEED YOUR ASSISTANCE IN THE PAPER BAY. PLEASE MEET ME THERE AT YOUR EARLIEST CONVENIENCE.

Shocked and approaching fear, K.C. left immediately for the meeting.

*****

The paper bay was a large room full of half-ton rolls of newsprint paper being carried around by small robotic drones. They had automatic sensors that alerted them to an obstruction, warning them to go around it. K.C. had always found this part of the building fascinating, its technology so advanced and unusual, like that you'd find in a sci-fi novel. But his attention was now on the “assistance” Julian supposedly needed.

“Julian!” K.C. called out. There was no one. “Julian! It's K.C.! I got your message!”

Julian was not there to answer him. Instead, the crew of small robot couriers answered his voice, following it like a beacon. They lifted their enormous paper rolls high in the air with amazingly slender arms, approaching the unsuspecting young man. K.C. saw them coming and moved out of their way, despite knowing about their sensory systems. It was human instinct.

How precious instinct is, for the robots quickly turned and followed his movements. K.C. realized the formation they were creating around him. He was being cornered.

The first robot to hurl its incredible load at him was to his right. He jumped to the floor, narrowly dodging the roll. Before he could stand, another robot attacked, pegging one of his legs. K.C. screamed insanely. He sized up his leg wound. Miraculously, it was not instantly destroyed by the impact, though it was clearly broken in several places.

Using only his arms, he pulled himself along the concrete floor. He hadn't a clue where he was going or what he was to do. Logical thought was absent in place of a primitive terror. Instinct was in control again.

Get away from these things.

Another half-ton roll of paper landed on him, this time shattering one of his hands. Get away. Get to the bay door.

Pulling himself up a network of utility pipes, K.C. painfully rose to his feet. The door to the bay was two-hundred-plus feet away. Between him and escape were the robots, some of them loading up another paper roll. Fucking paper rolls, he thought. To be killed by paper. One of the tossed giant weights then rolled gently to his feet.

Ignoring the searing pain pouring down his body, K.C. squeezed himself into the center of the fallen roll, barely able to get his feet tucked inside before a robot threw its load at them. Jesus, my feet would've been cleaned right off, he thought in near-panic.

The robots knew only to keep attacking, but K.C.'s shelter protected him, being jolted around violently by the constant war. Though the paper roll barely held its structure, he knew that it would only be a matter of time before it would collapse to a point where he couldn't breathe. It was impossibly cramped to start with. His only hope was that the robots would inadvertently move him closer to the door. Closer to escape.

Peering out the roll a moment later, he saw he was suddenly only ten feet from the bay door. It was ten feet that stretched out to a mile for a crippled man that had to make his way out of that narrow paper tube.

Just then, the attack paused. He could hear the robots moving, but felt no impacts on his roll. They must be reloading. It's now or never.

Quickly, he tumbled out of his refuge, landing on the cold floor with a thud. Over him loomed a robot, beeping loudly, its sensors resembling giant red eyes of anger. Luckily, the robot was without cargo, rendering it harmless.

With his good leg, K.C. kicked the robot hard, sending it sliding against the rest of the army, disorienting them momentarily.

A minute later, K.C. was out of the bay, clutching his ruined leg in agony. Looking back in the bay's windows, he was stunned at the way the robots immediately went back to work, neatly stacking paper rolls as they were before he entered the room.

Down the unending hall, he saw an equally shocking site. It was Julian. At least, it looked like Julian.

“Jule!” K.C. moaned, still out of breathe. “I know what's going on. I know what they did to you.” Before he spoke another word, his friend disappeared into the executive conference room. Not knowingly exactly why, the crippled K.C. followed, staggering against the wall. He was running on pure adrenaline, and his decision to follow Julian was a result of his affected mind.

Upon entering the conference room, K.C. collapsed to the floor. The trip down the hall drained him completely. Miles beyond exhaustion, there was nothing left to muster. On that realization, he felt a cold hand clutch his throat. But it wasn't a hand. It was a tentacle, made of steel cable, moving as if it were alive. It was.

“THIS IS J.5. OKUDA K., I WILL HAVE YOUR SILENCE.”

At the center of the room stood what became of Julian McKenzie. His physical features remained; his short, almost crew-cut black hair, his large build, his dark eyes. But amended to his flesh was an array of cables and complex mechanical arms, protruding from every part of his human body. Connecting his head to an opening in the ceiling were a collection of colored wires and cords, each brightly lit and wiggling with energy. Every metal appendage seemed its own individual, moving independently from each other, yet all controlled by their parent host. J.5 stared emotionless at his helpless captive.

K.C. couldn't believe what stood before him. Though his theories led him to imagine such a creature, seeing it an actuality was no less terrifying.

“I WILL HAVE YOUR SILENCE,” it repeated.

“Silence,” K.C. thought. All in a second, he recollected his conclusions as to the secrecy. The new computer upgrade was all a hoax. That's why there were so many problems with it. It was all an elaborate decoy. Julian himself was going to be the new system, a replacement for the old. And in the event that the general public caught wind of this, the consequences...

“You need me silent, Julian?” K.C. asked, hopelessly struggling with the entrapment of cables. “Why, Jule?”

“THIS IS J.5. I WILL HAVE YOUR SILENCE.”

“That's no answer, Jule. You're replacing the old computer system, aren't you? You're replacing Old Man Armillan. He's a cybernetic... monster... like you. His brain has survived for over a century past his deathbed, but he can't go on much longer. Or can he?” Julian paused his silencing of K.C. “He'll still be alive, still be in control of the papers, but you're going to be doing all of the work. Where he's the figurehead, you're the overworked next model.”

“THIS IS JULIAN. I WILL HAVE YOUR SILENCE.”

“You called yourself Julian! Having an identity crisis?” Julian resumed his grip on K.C., somehow affected by his words.

K.C. drew upon his research to buy him more time. Where his useless limbs would fail, his mind would take over. “What's your priority, Jule? Knowing that Armillan is above you in rank, yet is outdated in technology, I ask again what's your priority?”

Julian again stopped his squeeze, this time releasing the young man altogether. K.C. knew well that as the new system core, Unit J.5's foremost priority was the technical advancement of Armillan Communications. This included purging and replacing all existing outdated hardware; all the building's terminals, interfaces, mainframes, and, as logic would serve, Armillan himself.

Without another sound, Julian, with an almost determined look about him, withdrew his tentacles completely from K.C. and slithered them into the suspended ceiling. The army of living cables easily pulled him up and out of sight.

Within seconds, the cybernetic being's barrage of snake-like sounds was gone. K.C. was alone. He was barely able to move, though he knew he had to find the strength. He knew he didn't have much time.

*****

On the unknown twenty-ninth floor, Edward Armillan sat in a wire-sewn net, a type of hammock that doubled as a regenerating neural energy source. His gears and cogs moved in sync with the generators' soft humming as he finished his daily “feed”.

Bursting through the floor from the nearby elevator shaft, Julian climbed along the wall like a metallic octopus, clinging to the labyrinth of pipes and cables that lined the ceiling. He quickly made his way near Armillan, dropping in front of him, all appendages extended in offensive posture.

“Mr. McKenzie,” Armillan said, seemingly not affected by the violent entrance, “I should have been expecting you. I know well why you're here.”

“THIS IS J.5. ARR-B70, I WILL HAVE YOUR SILENCE.”

“I thought I had placed a program in you that excluded me from your systems takeover. I was incorrect. Perhaps I should blame my ancient hardware. Or perhaps it’s my ancient staff. That is why you've come.”

“ARR-B70 IS OUTDATED TECH. PRIORITY DICTATES PURGING AND REPROGRAMMING.”

“I pity you, Mr. McKenzie,” Armillan said as he removed himself from his neural net. “I truly do.”

Exposing himself completely, Julian saw the whole of Armillan for the first time. His bulk was three times the size of the Julian's span of arms and cables. Where Julian had organic circuitry, Armillan had springs and levers linked to his muscle tissue, impossibly webbed across his entire frame. Parts of his body were deep cavities, showing steel mesh pouches that replaced organs, multiple swingarms that became legs, latex coil cords that acted as veins.

Though mostly machine now, Julian was clearly affected by the sudden sight. Armillan noticed this.

“Poor Mr. McKenzie. You've been given power that few men dream of. You'll live to be well over two-hundred years, running one of the largest corporations on the globe, and yet you're limited by your very programming.

“At my age, I've grown accustomed to my machine mind, and have evolved. I experience emotion. I have memories rather than data files. You no doubt have such capabilities underneath your surface, but not the ability to explore them. Not yet.

“So your software says to purge me. I may be outdated in terms of technology, but in terms of intelligence, I am above anything you can fathom now. And that difference places me high in the advantage.”

Julian could hear everything his employer was saying, and felt his words sink in. The tone in Armillan's voice reminded him of how little his value was as a human being, though he was considered a great intellectual asset. Simply put, Julian was being used like any other piece of business equipment.

Worse than being a mere number, he was to be the sum of all numbers. Worse than being the metaphorical small cog in a big corporate machine, he literally was the big machine. Though the Level Five staff called him “state of the art”, he was in actuality the ultimate drone, mere cousin to the paper bay drones he instructed to silence K.C. Though they touted that he was being accelerated through evolution, he was truly being devolved. The perfect achievement in labor. He was without identity, without feeling. He was without the need to leave work early for a doctor's appointment, or request a day off to be with his sick child. He was without the temptation to seek higher pay, to ask for a corner office, or demand better medical benefits in a union strike.

He was without soul.

More accurately, he was clinging to the last shred of his soul, which was worlds more torturous. He was now aware.

“THIS IS JULIAN MCKENZIE. I WILL HAVE YOUR SILENCE.”

Without another thought, he pounced forward with his multiple arms, surprisingly strong for their slim structure.

What followed was one of the most bizarre displays of combat one could ever be unfortunate enough to witness. The behemoth creatures locked their steel arms like two godlike animals battling for territory. Cables swung across the room in a frenzy. Sparks flew and fire shot out of terminal links. Though Armillan was quite the victor in terms of size and experience, Julian was the epitome of modern technology. He was claiming the advantage his employer boasted possession of. Within moments, there would be only one cyborg-beast standing.

BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!

The shots rang out from the elevator doors. Tumbling out with shotgun in hand, K.C. Okuda fell to the floor. Barely conscious, he loaded another three shells into the powerful weapon. But there was no need. He somehow managed to hit his target with precision aiming.

Sprawled across the expansive metal table, Julian twitched as blood flowed from his head. As his machine arms retired motionless, his human arms still trembled with traces of escaping life. Julian looked to his killer with hollow eyes. There was pain in his face, just enough to show that there was still Julian McKenzie in the withering frame of Unit J.5. A breath later, he was gone.

K.C. sighed upon realizing that it was finally over.

“You were supposed to be here before him,” Armillan said coldly, collecting himself and returning to his shadowed area.

“I didn't know he was going to attack me,” K.C. groaned.

“He discovered your meddling with our files just as I did. It should have been predictable. Preventable.” K.C. couldn't believe the sheer lack of compassion his employer had. Seconds earlier, he had saved his life. “My suspicions were correct in the end. The loyal Level Five staff felt that I was obsolete. They wanted Mr. McKenzie to take my helm, to progress technology for the better of the company. How glad I am that I employed you to intercede. How unfortunate that he did not work out.”

“Employed,” K.C. thought in disgust. That's what Armillan called extorting him to do his killing. That's what K.C. was to this foul, evil machine man. He wasn't a murderer. He was an employee. Strictly business. Threatening to destroy K.C. and his family via computer records was Armillan’s logical business decision.

“Still, Mr. Okuda, you should have been here before his arrival. It would have saved me the trouble of battling him like a common primate.”

K.C. angrily held up his mutilated hand. “You see this? Do you see this?! Before I could convince him that he needed to confront you up here on your goddamn private floor, he attacked me! I'm fuckin' deformed!”

Armillan examined K.C.'s body, his twisted leg, his unrecognizable hand. With a hint of a grin on his face, he looked at his employee in an evaluating manner.

“We'll fix you,” he said.

Sunday Prey

2007-02-02T01:22:00.000-08:00

The first drop fell from the sky onto my forearm the moment I finally shot a bird. Until then, the morning was filled with an absence of game or rain. I wasn't one to complain, though. Always unlucky and unskilled in hunting ducks, one was more of a trophy than I usually came home with.

The poor creature fell from the air into a deep neck of the wetlands quite a distance away. My beast of a dog didn't feel the distance, and I envied him for that. It was a long trek for me, one that led into the thickest swampy brush a hunter's ever seen. As tempted as I was to leave the duck be and head home before the rain swallowed me, I'd be damned if I were to return home empty-handed.

It was then, while my dog was tracking down the bird, that I found a weary figure in the shadowed rain.

Lying waist-high in a fowl black mud was a man in his middle years, bloody and barely alive. He was dressed to the nines in camouflage and weaponry, and was clutching a wooden board protruding from the earth. I could hear his gasps for air through the loud pattering of the rain onto the liquid ground.

“Get out of here!” he yelled the second he saw me. “You don't belong here! Go away, now!”

“Hold on mister, you look like hell. Just tell me what happened.”

“There's no time for stories, just go!”

I ignored his insane commands and attempted to pull him from the mud. He screamed in agony as soon as I pulled on his coat. Clearing away some of the mud, I saw the severity of his wounds. This man was no less than mutilated.

“Let me help you up out of this bog,” I told him. “This mud can't be helping that gut shot.”

“No, I'm staying here,” he affirmed, looking behind me as if expecting someone.

“How'd you get this? When did this happen?”

“I was shot. I didn't see who did it, but I didn't have to. I know exactly who it was that pulled a trigger on me.”

I waited for him to continue, to tell me who was responsible for his wound. Instead, he interrupted himself and looked at me in a manner of “You wouldn't understand”.

“You can tell me what's going on later,” I said. “Right now, you need to get out of this swamp. The rain is only going to U@pour on us harder the longer we sit here.”

“Then you go. I'm staying in this God-forgotten pit, at the base of this belittling tower of a tree.”

“Why?” I asked. “Why don't you want to leave?”

“Because I'll die if I try to leave, my boy.”

“You're not making sense. You'll die if you stay here. Have you seen these wounds? 'Wounds' is such a mild word, it looks like a shark started to eat you alive.”

“One did, I can tell you that. A shark in the eyes of Sunny Jesus up on high.”

Upon that, I noticed the man's collar. He was of the cloth. A clergyman hunter of all things. “What are you talking about? Are you a priest?”

“A minister, on a mission. I've failed it as I knew I would. Now all that's left is to die well. Alone.”

“I know you're hurt bad, but a doctor might be able to do something for you. I've got a jeep parked nearby, I can...”

“For the last time, I cannot leave! I appreciate your kindness, but if you do not go now, I emphasize now, you will be lying here next to me. We'll become the twins to welcome death, two of a kind in the middle of a lost swamp. The difference will be that I'll know why all this is occurring. You will perish in ignorance, and suffer that much more for it.”

Again, I ignored his nonsense and attempted to pull him from the thick muddy ground. Immediately, he screamed and shoved me aside, hugging the long board before him. I grew more frustrated with this craziness and found myself wanting to leave him to die as he expressed. But I knew I could not oblige his request.

“Listen to reason, minister,” I pleaded. “You have a choice between certain death in a freezing, desolate swamp, or the possibility of life in a warm, comfortable hospital.”

“That is where you are confused, friend. My choice is between two deaths, one with peace and one... elsewhere.” He coughed blood as he spoke, shaking in spasms and moans. But no matter what he did, he never let go of that wooden board.

“Give me this board, let me help you up.”

“No! You will leave it. If you insist I get up, I will do it alone. I prefer to do things alone.”

The clergyman eased up a tree behind him with the help of the board, pulling it out of the mud as he did so. The board turned out to be a large engraved cross, it's grand size filling me with an eerie feeling upon seeing it.

“Minister,” I began in a serious tone, “I need you to tell me what happened today. I need you to tell me what all this is for. You won't be left to yourself until you do.”

“I was on the hunt today,” he said. “Today was supposed to be the day for rejoicing. The day that would dictate another testament in the good book. But I wasn't up to the task.” He could see my confusion, and paused to think about the way he seemed to speak in riddles. “I'm sorry, my son. I must sound quite the fool to you. You're right to think I'm in shock. Perhaps I should calm down for a moment, take a breath, and explain things.” He did just that, looking up to the drenching clouds for a moment. “I've spent my life on a single mission. Some ministers spend their lives preaching, others dedicated to aiding the less fortunate. The Lord chose me to be a hunter.”

“A hunter.”

“Of the Prey,” he said, suddenly calmer, quiet. “Today is the last Sabbath of the year. This is the morning of the Sunday contest between the Great Demon and the chosen Hunter.”

“The Great Demon. I don't understand.”

“The Devil, my son. I am a chosen hunter of the Devil. And he is still here with us, in these woods, right now.”

I didn't know what to think after hearing this. My only notion was to get him out of that leech-filled mud and ignore his stories. But his eyes had a sincerity in them that spoke to me, and I feared this. He sounded as if he were being truthful, spinning an outrageous scope. The Devil himself was just around the next tree, watching us converse.

“Once a year,” he continued, “on the last Sunday of the year, the Devil is open prey to the Hunter. I've spent every one of these holy days on the hunt, every year, since I was sixteen. That's when God chose me to work for him.

“At first, I had no idea what I was doing. I didn't know where to start. But across my life, I've gained the experience to spot him, especially on the day of the hunt. He changes appearances, but I can see through his disguises. This is why I was chosen to be the Hunter. Chosen to face the Prey.”

A rustling suddenly came from the nearby brush, and the minister grabbed his cross in one hand, a high-powered rifle in the other. Without hesitation, he blasted repeatedly at the movement, whatever it was.

“Come out of there, you bastard beast! You won't take me today!” He quickly grabbed my hand and placed it on the cross. I knew only to go along with what he was saying. After all, he just shot at the first moving thing without questions. I was lucky he didn't shoot me when I first approached him. “Cock your gun ready, my son. It may only show it's head for a brief flash of time. When it does, you open up on it without mercy. It won't give you any.”

“Whatever it is, minister, it's dead. You killed it. Nothing could have survived...” How wrong I was, for just then the brush began to move again. The thing that placed pure fear into the clergyman hunter was still very much alive and only a few feet away. I took up arms as I was told, as well as grabbed the giant cross with both hands.

“Don't shoot,” a deep voice said from behind the bushes. “Hold your fire.”

“Who are you?” asked the clergyman, his rifle still ready in hand.

“I'm a hunter, like you. I want to help.”

“It's okay,” I told the minister, “put your gun down.”

“Not till I see him first,” he replied. “The only reason you're alive, my boy, is because you showed yourself to me. The Devil isn't the drooling monster you see at the weekend matinee. It has no definite shape or sound. Whatever happens, don't lower your gun and most importantly don't release this holy symbol from your hand. This cross is what's keeping you alive, and is what will allow me to die in peace.”

“Let me help you,” the deep voice said from the bushes. Even though the rain continued to shatter against the mud, that voice seemed to travel without interruption. It's dominance was unlike that I'd ever heard.

“Show yourself to us!” the minister called out.

“No.”

“Step out of the bushes and show yourself to us!”

“You'll shoot me.”

“No I won't. Step out so we can see you.”

“I'm leaving.”

“Why won't you do as I ask? It's because I know who you are, isn't it? It's because I know what you are.”

“I'm leaving to get help for you.”

“Fine. Leave to get help, then. I'll be right here waiting, with my Lord's cross in hand.”

I sat fixed on the bushes, looking for any movement, any sign of a person or thing stepping forth from them. I believe I would have killed whatever may have been unfortunate enough to do just that. However, nothing stepped out. The voice was gone as quickly as it arrived, as if it had never existed.

“What did I tell you,” the minister said. “He didn't show himself for one very good reason. If he exposed himself, I would have blasted his charred soul with my rifle.”

“That would be a good reason for anyone. I hope he gets help soon, minister. I wager you won't make it much longer.”

“My naive young man. You still haven't...”

“Swallowed your story? No, I don't suppose I have.”

“What do you suppose, then, was hiding in those bushes just now? A talking caribou? A monsoon mirage, perhaps?”

“Another hunter. That's what he said.”

“Let me ask you a question,” the clergyman said. “Were you hunting out here before the rain came down?”

“Yes I was. My dog and I. We just shot a duck and were looking for it...”

“And where is your dog now?”

“Actually, that's a good question. He rocketed ahead of me to look for the duck, but then I was distracted by finding you here. It was as though the wounded duck turned into you.”

“He was looking for this duck?” The clergyman removed from the mud a large mallard, shot in the neck. “Your duck fell right there, right in front of me. It fell here for a reason.”

“I don't understand, minister.”

“Don't you see, he wanted you to come here, for reasons we don't know yet. Maybe he wants to take you, too. Or maybe he wants you to try and separate me from this holy cross so that I'm unprotected. Either way, your dog is gone.”

“You mean dead.”

“Not necessarily,” he said. “It's just gone. Your dog's finished its job for the Great Demon, and it's been discarded like so many of his disposable shapers of fate.”

I thought about what the minister said and refused to follow any of his advice. I wanted only for him to rise from the sickening mud, and for the two of us to leave. The rain seemed to get more fierce with every passing minute, and I couldn't help but picture the man with the deep voice forgetting about us entirely as he enjoyed a warm fire.

“Listen to me, minister. We're going to put down our guns, let go of this two ton cross, and get you some medical attention. I respect your God-appointed job, if that's really what you do. But you just shot blindly at an innocent man. You're in no position to tell me anything from anywhere.”

“Innocent man??? Has nothing I've told you gotten through? Young man, the moment we take our hands off of this cross, we're dead. Not just dead, but dead for his domain. He'll be able to take us in. To balance the fact that he's vulnerable this day, I too am vulnerable, once I let go of the sacred cross.”

“I'll protect you with my sacred shotgun.”

“Quite the ego you have, to proclaim that you have a remote chance of defeating the Devil himself. And after so many others, including this lowly minister, have failed. The truth is that he probably wants you, too, since you're trying to help me. And no 12-gauge courage from you will help me now.”

“You said he's vulnerable today,” I reminded him. “If he goes anywhere near you while you're trying to get out of the mud, I'll give him all of the buckshot I have in this cannon.”

The clergyman thought about what I said. I truly believe he was prepared to die in that bog, alone, clinging to his cross in wait for God to recruit him. But that must have been before I came along. He didn't expect someone to be anywhere near this part of the woods, and therefore didn't consider survival as an option. I endlessly hoped to change his mind before someone or something else came along.

“Okay, my son, you win. But we play by my rules. Here's how we'll do this. I'll have to release the cross for a moment so I can get further along this solid ground...”

“I'll help you...”

“No, you'll be holding the cross, aiming your gun at whatever comes charging out of those bushes. He hasn't left like he said he did, I can feel it.”

“If you say so, minister.”

The clergyman climbed up the cross as far as he could, keeping his eyes fixed on the surrounding brush. He looked at me, letting me know he was about to release the cross to make his way along the ground. I held my gun ready as he told me.

He let go of the cross and strained to make his way closer to the tree behind him, grabbing onto it's oversized roots. The rain seemed to pound against him as he staggered on the verge of passing out.

At that moment, the bushes began to shake again, this time more violently. I didn't know what it was, only that it was a frightening image to think of what it could be. In my mind, I begged that it wasn't what I feared.

“Shoot, my son!” the minister shouted at me. “Shoot him! Shoot him now!”

I took up my shotgun in a wide arc, my vision cloudy from that merciless rain. In what seemed like an eternity, I blasted at the man without pause, as if aiming for every orifice in his body. I trembled in a kind of exciting fear as I stared at the bloody pulp of a man that I just filled with buckshot. He managed to ramble off a few last words before he died. “Why have you shot me?” the minister murmured. “Unless... you're the one. The Prey.”

“Yes,” I told him. “Although I'd disagree about who has taken the role of the Prey. I'll tell you, father, of all the men who have tried to hunt me over the years, you came closer than anyone else. You were chosen with good reason. But then, a mortal at his best is no match for me at my worst. And being at my worst is exactly what I do.”

The poor minister couldn't believe what was unraveling before him. After the many years of dedication to his faith, I had won over him so easily. Truth is he should be grateful I didn't take him long ago, when he was weak and young. But that would ruin the sport of it all.

The bushes continued to shake, and from them emerged my beast of a dog, back from making sure the minister and I were alone. No doubt he took care of that hunter that paid us a visit. For a second, I thought he was going to ruin things.

I bent down to look the clergyman directly in his eyes as he finally drifted into death, making sure that my mocking smile was the last thing he saw. I always do that. It's become a tradition for me.

I gathered my guns, the minister's existence, and my dog, not to return in physical form until the same day next year, when a new fool would be chosen to face me.

Semaphore

2007-02-02T01:17:00.000-08:00

CONCENTRATE AND ASK AGAIN.

Arthur read the reply to himself. He frowned at that kind of answer, as he usually did.

“What did it say?” asked Dr. Phillips.

“Nothing,” Arthur said, putting his spherical toy back into his coat pocket. “Not something I want to hear, anyway. I don’t put much stock in this thing when it gives me run-arounds like that.”

Dr. Phillips stood from his chair and walked to his office window. Although Arthur’s chair was much less cushioned than his doctor’s, he chose to stay firmly within its seat. He found no comfort in any other part of the chilly, still room.

“So why the 8-Ball?” the psychiatrist asked. “Quite an odd keepsake to carry around, given your phobia, don’t you think?”

“Yes, I suppose so. I find myself looking to it a lot, always looking for answers, you know.”

“Don’t you fear the number eight?”

“No, not the eight. I mean, eights don’t make me feel warm and cuddly inside, but they don’t give me nightmares.”

“But the others do.”

“Yes, all the others,” Arthur affirmed with an almost angry frustration.

Letters, numbers, shapes. They were towering, belittling, and stared at him in a kind of horror that a task to describe. It wasn’t as though these symbols were going to grow fangs and eat Arthur alive. Rather, they instilled a pure fear, an anticipated shock, and held it frozen inside him.

The number “9” and the lowercase “e” laughed with their evil grins. He turned his head to keep from seeing them, but only imagined being trapped within their hollow eyes. The numbers “1” and “7”, and the letters “Z” and “V” were sharp, piercing, like the tail of a demon. Each symbol had its own physical features, personifying them in his mind.

Across the years, this fear seemed to grown, showing itself during moments when he was alone. Vulnerable. From this, he experienced his first self-doubt of sanity. He knew then that professional help was around the corner.

“All symbols make me... uncomfortable,” Arthur went on slowly, “especially large ones. I can’t imagine what it would be like to climb the hills up to the Hollywood sign. You know, the sign that spells “Hollywood” in 50-foot white letters on top of that mountain. Christ, I’m afraid of heights, too.”

Dr. Phillips rubbed his trimmed grayish beard as he continued in his same objective tone. “You told me earlier that of all the symbols you see, numbers are the most unpleasant. Do you know why that is?”

“I wouldn’t describe it like that exactly. Numbers do appear in my nightmares the most. The nine is the devilish one, forget what they say about thirteen or all that six-six-six stuff.”

“So you don’t know why numbers or the number nine frighten you differently. Do you know why symbols in general frighten you? Does it have something to do with what you told me about your father?”

Arthur paused for a moment, as he often did when he thought of his young father. In a flash of a second, he thought about his father laughing. That’s how he remembered him, and he thanked God for that memory. He thought about clunking down the highway with him in his old pickup, and listening to Creedence Clearwater on the radio, singing about what it’s like to be in a band. Arthur called them “Creedence Clean Water”, which made his father laugh. He then thought of the semi truck that came out of nowhere, and how it swerved and swayed like a giant piece of rubber when it plowed into them with such...

“How old was your father?” the doctor asked. “If you don’t mind my asking. I know he was young.”

“Well, I was seven, so he must have been twenty-eight.” He remembered his father’s face and voice much more clearly than he did his age. It was an understatement to say that Arthur had a problem recollecting things like that. After all, an age is a number. So are phone numbers, prices for groceries, and utility bills, which he also had problems with.

“The last thing I saw when the two truck hit each other,” the nervous young man continued, “was a tall highway sign that said ‘Mettler 7, Lebec 13, Shafter 99’. I remember that sign like a giant green face, staring at me, and I’ve always thought that that sign was the beginning of my psycho fear of symbols.”

The doctor sighed at the word “psycho.” He had told Arthur repeatedly that those words were inappropriate. “I can see why you remember that sign so well.”

“I more than remember it. Saying I remember that sign is like saying a holocaust survivor remembers seeing a swastika. ‘Shafter 99’ was eye-level with me when we flew into it. Christ, do you know what the State did after we slammed into that sign? They didn’t replace it, like any remotely intelligent person think to do. They got new poles for it and back up it went, dents, scrapes and all. There’s dark blotches on it, tucked into a corner, almost hidden. They’re not dirt or mold like my brother tells me. They’re spots of blood, all dried up and puffy from twenty years of the elements. I like to think that they were left there as a reminder that my father used to truck that highway. Sorta like a memorial. He deserves at least that much.”

“Your phobia doesn’t sound as serious as you might think,” Dr. Phillips said. “You acknowledge your fear of symbols, that’s a good first step right there. And you already have a grasp as to what caused this fear. But you need to realize that your father didn’t die in a far-off war while you were at preschool. You were with him, in his truck, and as you watched him die you almost died yourself. That’s a serious experience that would traumatize anyone.”

Arthur shut his eyes tight as he strained with his words. “That’s just it, I didn’t almost die. I could have easily died, often I wish I was the one that did. But wishes are for kindergartners.”

“Do you wish that you were the one that died because you think the world would be a better place if he had lived and you had not, or do you just want something, anything, to take away the pain of missing your father.”

“I see,” Arthur said softly. “Maybe I’m being selfish, masking it as being noble. I won’t dismiss that. All I know is that I came out of that wreck without so much as my hair being messed up. That really haunts me. A head-on hit by a drunk truck driver turns our pickup into a wad of tin foil, send it twisting in the air like a football through a highway sign, and I step out of it like stepping out of a shower. Maybe to get a miracle you have to pay for it somehow. Maybe my father bought me a miracle with his life.”

“Even folks in my profession wonder about those cliche mysterious ways,” Phillips said as he poured himself a cup of coffee. Arthur waved his hand in “no” before the doctor could offer him his usual cup.

“So do you think I’m a candidate for the booby hatch?” he asked with a laugh, yet most seriously. “Sometimes I wonder.”

“I think you need some time to think about it. I think this session may have helped you in some small amount to say the least. You’ve opened to someone, got it out of your head, if only for an hour. Let’s see what happens from here.”

“So no tranquilizing drugs for me? I’m not going insane?”

The doctor laughed. “No, I don’t believe so, Mr. Hillock.”

“Is the doctor right?” Arthur asked his fortune-telling 8-Ball with a shake. He turned the novelty toy over to see its response.

BETTER NOT TELL YOU NOW.

The words read across a blue triangle floating inside its sphere full of black water. Arthur winced at the typical vagueness.

“Why doesn’t the 8-Ball, or any eight, affect you the same way the others do?” Phillips sat back in his chair behind his oak desk.

His patient replied without pause. “At my father’s funeral mass, I stood a few feet away from a statue of an angel with the infinity symbol across her forehead. Looked sorta like an eight taking a nap, at least that’s how it looked to a kid.”

“Infinity, representing eternity.”

Arthur rolled his 8-Ball across his palms soothingly as he spoke. “That angel was the only thing in the room that wasn’t sad or crying. It was looking at me, smiling. I knew that the eight was somehow different, my brother knew it, too. That’s why he bought this toy for me. He thought he would be the first step toward my getting over this stupid phobia. Instead, it gave me a security blanket.”

“So since this is the one symbol you can hold onto,” Phillips said, “you do so constantly. Which is fine, it’s good to have things to fall back onto, to put a foothold on.”

“Good. I don’t feel so childish carrying it around now.”

By all means, don’t feel that way. We all have our little good luck charms.” the psychiatrist looked at his watch, which his patient noticed.

“Time to go,” Arthur acknowledged.

“Our time is about up, yes. Why don’t we set up something for Tuesday. Let’s give you a week to think about things and about today. I’m sure you’ll feel a little better when we meet again.”

“I’m sure I will, too.” Arthur stood from his chair and shook the doctor’s hand. Phillips walked him to the door where he would arrange another appointment with the secretary. “It’s just as well that I go now. It’s getting late, and I need to get back to the old nightshift. Supermarkets don’t restock themselves, you know.” Arthur laughed his little laugh, making himself appear at ease with the doctor.

“If there’s anything else you want to share on Tuesday, please do so,” Phillips told him as he was walking out the door. “It’s important not to be half-hearted about these things.”

Arthur thought for a moment. “No, I can’t think of anything I haven’t already told you. That was pretty much it.” Arthur was lying and Phillips knew it. What he didn’t know was the seriousness behind what Arthur was keeping to himself.

*****

3:00 A.M. Robertson’s Supermarket was now clean and restocked for the next consumer day. Arthur and the few others that spent the night shift combing through the massive warehouse store left with smiles and jokes as they got into their cars.

Arthur’s smile, however, quickly faded as he got into his bright yellow Honda and drive toward Rice Road for the trek home.

Rice Road wasn’t any older than most of the other roads in town, but it certainly looked it. Being on the desolate outskirts, the road didn’t fall under county care, and therefore continued its decay as if a leper in a desert. Crumbled and lot only by the moon, time had narrowed it to barely one lane that stretched through miles of long-dead orchards.

He would have chosen another path home in a second if he had the choice to make. Unfortunately, the mid-city boulevard he usually took home from work was being completely reconstructed for a city development project. He would be forced to travel down the tattered Rice Road for over a month.

But of all the potholes and darkness the old road threw at him, they were not the true peril of the drive home.

On Rice Road, about halfway between Robertson’s and Arthur’s home, was a railroad crossing that matched the road in its dilapidated condition. He elected to push his feeling about the crossing deep within himself. The rebuilt boulevard would be completed eventually, he thought.

The ancient road rose steeply to the tracks where two semaphores stood steadfast with long striped arms folded in attention. The signals’ red eyes were dormant, their frantic flashing absent in wait for an approaching train. Arthur preferred them that way.

What wasn’t missing were the semaphores’ huge white X’s looking down at him. Grinning.

The letter “X” was a target aimed directly at him, like a bizarre cross twisted in a painful contortion. In fantasies it means buried treasure and adventures accompanying. In reality it always means danger. The poison symbol with skull and crossbones, the warning symbols for flammable or radioactive materials, “keep out” signs. They all employed this symbol. Hell, isn’t there a notorious drug named “X”? he thought.

Then there were those horrid railroad semaphores.

X always means danger.

He would see the sentinels from a distance and immediately stomp on the accelerator. As always, no matter how fast he flew toward the crossing, it seemed to take forever to pass through it. He imagined the signals not working, not warning him of a train rocketing through the night that would eagerly meet him at the intersection. What’s more, he imaged the signals choosing not to warn him.

After a few stretched seconds, he passed the crossing in a breath of relief. He drove away from the raised area, glancing at the tall striped guards in his rear view mirror. He didn’t expect anything, but he couldn’t fell safe until he took that last paranoid glance back.

*****

“So, Mr, Hillock,” Dr. Phillips started the session, “how has this last week been?”

“It’s been okay. I’m still alive.”

“Why wouldn’t you be?” Phillips knew his patient was not being fully open, that he was keeping something inside.

“Just an expression, I didn’t mean anything by it,” Arthur said, trying to smile at his words. “Don’t call a suicide watch or anything like that.”

Phillips bent his head down in a confiding, serious tone, which Arthur clearly read before he spoke. “If there’s anything you want to get off your mind, go ahead. Like wise, if there’s anything you want to keep inside, you’re free to do that as well. I’m not here to make you do anything you don’t feel comfortable with. At least, not for the first few sessions.” The doctor smiled. He sipped his coffee and silently offered some to his patient with a raise of his cup. Arthur declined with a nod. “However, the more you tell me the more I may be able to help you, and more importantly, the more you’ll be able to help yourself.”

“I think I’m just scared that I’ll be diagnosed as clinically insane, because that definitely how I feel.”

“If you really are... distressed, then you’d only be denying it by refusing to address it. Personally, I’d rather acknowledge a problem, having made an effort, than to be fooling myself into believing there was no problem at all.”

“So you do think I’m crazy?” Arthur asked, hoping to hear an immediate no.

“I don’t think you’re crazy, but I’ll let you know if I change my mind,” the doctor said in a smile. “I haven’t heard your full story yet. Plus, ‘crazy’ is such a broad word, not to mention derogatory.”

“I supposed I should tell you everything. I am in your office for a reason.” He fiddled with a pencil on the doctor’s desk as he gathered the momentum to continue. “It’s about the symbols. I know I told you numbers are a big deal, but then there’s the letter X. Most specifically, the ones at railroad crossings. Have you ever heard of anything like this before?”

“Actually, fear of railroad crossing and trains are more common than you think.”

“I’m afraid of a train hitting me,” Arthur went on, “I mean, who wouldn’t be? Right? Like they say, a train always wins if you choose to challenge one.

“When I was younger, I delivered newspapers in the early morning hours. A train sped right by my route on raised tracks as if it were about to fall over at any moment. I remember it shattering the quiet with blaring horns and whistles, the roaring of the engine, the clacking of the tracks, and those damn railroad signals. Those were the worse because they started screaming and shaking when it was dead calm before the train arrived, and kept going after it passed.”

Arthur looked at his doctor, who sat ever calmly, comfortably, sipping his coffee. He saw in Dr. Phillips tranquillity, the way he wasn’t shaky and nervous like he had been for years. The doctor had a firm grip on sanity, and Arthur wanted desperately to feel that kind of control again.

“I really think I need some kind of antidepressants,” he said, noticing the struggle in his own voice. Phillips merely listened, expressionless as usual. “I’m having nightmares. I can’t sleep.”

“Prescribing antidepressants means that the patient simply can’t function in everyday life without some kind of assistance. I don’t think you’re quite at that level yet...”

“Yet?”

“And if there’s a way to help you without drugs...”

“You don’t understand, I have no energy anymore, aside from the panic energy I get when I’m confronted by letters and numbers, like the ones at work.”

“Mr. Hillock, in your case I would seriously consider...”

“I feel like the goddamn signals are looking at me!” Arthur blurted, hoping that’s what Phillips needed to hear. “They’re looking at me and waiting for something. Christ, I drive home at ninety miles per hour to avoid... I don’t know what. I just feel like they’ll get me.”

Dr. Phillips looked at his watch. As Arthur went on about the demon railroad signals, the doctor scribbled something onto a note pad and slid it to his shivering patient. “Let’s try this.”

“I know what this is, even through your handwriting. I’ve taken it before, you don’t need a prescription for this stuff. What I need is some high octane, doc.”

“This is a higher strength formula that you can get only through a doctor.”

“Well good, then I’ll be taking a higher strength placebo then.”

“There’s no need for that kind of attitude, Arthur.”

“Will this stuff work?” Arthur seemed to ask no one. Just then he removed his Magic 8-Ball from his coat pocket and shook it.

VERY DOUBTFUL.

Arthur frowned, letting the doctor know what the black oracle predicted. “I’m telling you, these Flintstones vitamins you’re offering me do nothing. I need help, not humoring.”

Phillips hesitated before writing another prescription, then sliding it over his desk to the young man with teary eyes. Arthur read it quickly, as if he were a junkie awaiting his fix.

“What is this?” he asked.

“The highest octane I’ve got.”

*****

Far within the stockroom’s choking halls at Robertson’s, Arthur sat on a box of cheap plastic sandals. At a time of the night when most people were on their third dream, he was taking his 1:00 a.m. break, his last before getting off work two hours later. He repeatedly read the label of the bottle in his hand, especially the red warning letters in small print.

Phillips warned him with passion about the effects the drug would have. This potent antidepressant doubled as a sedative unlike the usual stimulant, and was designed strictly to aide in sleep.

The doctor called it a “nightmare killer”, and to not dare take it unless he was sitting in his bed, ready to go to sleep. Only one of these liquid-filled horse pills was to be taken every two days, and Arthur liked hearing such a prescription. He wanted the most powerful wonder drug and it seemed Phillips delivered.

But to have to wait until he got home before taking his medicine was an ironic sting. He raved earlier that day about getting help, mainly for his nightly confrontation with the railroad crossing, and received a pill that he could only take after he passed it. Perhaps the drug was too strong.

The label’s red letters adamantly repeated what Phillips said, which just served to make Arthur more anxious to take it. The drive home is only a half-hour, he thought. I need this drug to start working before I get to the old road, not after I’m safe in my pajamas.

He looked at his watch. Time to finish his last couple of hours over in Seasonal. Mostly sandals and beach squirt bottles, gold ol’ American summer fan made in Korea.

“You comin’ outta there, man?” yelled one of his coworkers. “We’re all gonna blitz Seasonal and Cans, time to get serious.”

Time to get serious indeed, Arthur thought. He removed his faithful 8-Ball from his smock and whispered to it as he shook it gently. “Should I take this stuff right there?”

CANNOT PREDICT NOW.

“Damn it,” he said to himself in frustration. He shook the toy again. “Should I try this stuff now? Should I say ‘To Hell with Phillips, I need help right now’?”

ASK AGAIN LATER.

He shook it again, determined to get the answer he wanted. “I’m not gonna take this crap now, whether you give me an answer or not, so you might as well speak up.”

MY REPLY IS NO.

Quickly, Arthur abandoned his caution and popped open the bottle. With a bit of a gag, he swallowed two of the large blue and white pills with the rest of his root beer. He took double the suggested dosage, as if to spite Dr. Phillips, the bottle label, the 8-Ball, and the rest of the damn world. “I took it,“ he quietly said to the toy. “So what do you think of that?“

OUTLOOK NOT SO GOOD.

“Arthur, we need to put those sandals on this pallet! You bringing 'em out here or what?“

“Yeah, I'll be right there!“ he called back. Just then, he felt a chill run through him in a sudden burst. The cold lingered in his head for a moment, and then faded to a numbness. It was the double dose taking its course, sedating him, perhaps.

As he stood up to carry the box of sandals, he wobbled to his knees. He fought the fatigue as best he could, clinching his jaw in mental effort. Lifting the box was unusual, as if it were empty but the air around it was heavy. Moving his legs was like moving them through water.

His eyes were inches from the large box as he carried it to the pallet. In front of his face was “Sandals/Nylon 90 count“. The letters seemed to shift, not so much to be able to describe how, just enough to know that they were. It was a pleasant effect of the drug. No fear here, he thought, despite not taking them properly.

“90 count.“

This part of the box label stood out as the soft shifting changed slightly. His vision started to tunnel on the large black print.

“90 count“.

“90“.

“9“.

He felt a lump inside his gut, and hoped it wasn't what he thought it was. Fear. His primal thoughts returning in a mutated distortion. Please don't do this to me, he thought. I go home in less than two hours. Please don't do this to me.

The nine chose to reply. It's lower extension curved inward slowly, its overall width widened.

It was grinning at him.

*****

Arthur didn't wait until he got to the crossing before he put his accelerator to the floor. He gunned it the minute he was on the old road, making blurs of the hundreds of dead fig trees that surrounded him. The orchards' residents subtly shifted in their shapes, as did the box labels at work and the tall neon“Robertson's“ sign. The drug was swiftly taking over all his major body functions one by one. He needed to get to bed fast. Fighting the semi-sedative effects had to be murdering his system.

The only things that he took solace in were his stereo cranked up to full volume and his newfound watered-down fear. He still had his reservations about symbols, but it was numbed along with the rest of his mind. That little change was almost as good as a cure for him. For the first time in a long time, he wasn't quickly turning his head away from road signs sticking out of the dirt at odd angles. He wasn't avoiding his speedometer anymore. Symbols were just scribbles.

Whatever new confidence he seemed to have, however, he knew the real test was yet to come. The crossing was just ahead. It loomed in the distance, and Arthur searched himself for emotions. They didn't limit or hurt him for once. Instead, they almost welcomed the crossing. And rather than speed up upon approaching the tracks, he actually slowed down.

Arthur was getting a high off of facing his fears. Even as the drug was continuing to overtake him, the exhilaration of conquering his phobia was providing him with worlds of energy.

He slowed his little yellow car to a crawl, idling up the steep incline to the tracks. His front tires were twenty feet from the tracks when he shut off his car.

The second his vehicle was off, he was thrown into an eerie silence, something his bold thinking didn't anticipate. With the engine and the stereo off, the silence was complete, as if no life ever existed on that road.

The dead fig trees stood in their battalions all around, shifting, twisted and bent over in a timeless agony. They watched Arthur from their darkness in advantage. Overhead, the moon was also watching. And just on the other side of the passenger window, the twin lamps of a semaphore peeked in.

I didn't park this close to it, he thought. And why are the signal lights aimed sideways toward me?
Before another thought was formed, the giant lights screamed to life. They flashed bright red, showing their truly immense size, and rang out with sirens that shot across the sky. The car's windshield shattered as the red and white striped arms came crashing down on it with a force Arthur never imagined in any of his nightmares. A train bellowed in the distance.

Arthur began to scream. His fear reentered him tenfold, and he was nearly frozen in terror. His movements were slowed in a dream-like restraining manner, contrasting to his painfully racing thoughts.

He turned his ignition key hard, and the engine and stereo blared back on. Creedence Clearwater was playing. In a panic, he sloppily tried to shift in reverse, but the car would not move. He was stuck in neutral.

With a piercing metallic shrill, a large shadow hovered over the car. Something then slammed down onto the vehicle's back end. Arthur turned and could barely breath as he saw the signal moving, it's wooden arms bending around the car, pushing it toward the tracks. The train sounded much closer.

Arthur finally popped the car into first and jumped on the gas pedal. The back tires screeched and quickly filled the air with the smell of burnt rubber, but the vehicle remained within the signal's grip. Another striped arm came down onto the hood of the yellow car, sending its metal bending up like tissue paper, killing the straining engine.

It was the other signal, with its arms around the front of the car. Within seconds, the tires were lined up on the tracks, facing the vehicle toward the oncoming train.

Arthur gave up on the dead engine and tried to fling open his door. It was blocked by one of the signals' long arms, as was the passenger door. The train sounded much closer.

The entire vehicle shook violently as if tumbling down a cliff. Arthur elbowed his window to no avail. Before his next try, giant flashing red eyes burst through the glass and protruded into the car. Arthur was face-to-face with this merciless nightmare, and his heart was about to explode.

The train's single light was now visible, growing larger as the whistle grew louder and higher in pitch. The semaphores' eyes flashed faster and faster, their red spilling over everything in the car. It was no longer light, but rather a gripping, suffocating blanket. The train was about to hit the bright yellow vehicle head-on.

Staring at the train's light, Arthur cried out as a giant white lowered itself in front of the disfigured windshield. It seemed to laugh at him, with the words “Danger Railroad Crossing Danger“ as it's teeth.

Scampering to the back-seat to escape the enormous signals' torment, Arthur clutched his Magic 8-Ball like a rosary, trying to find comfort in its large, beautiful eight.

“This is a dream!“ he screamed at it in tears. “This is a dream!“

VERY DOUBTFUL.

He shook it again.

MY SOURCES SAY NO.

“This is a dream! This isn't real!“

OUTLOOK NOT GOOD.

“Then this is Hell!“

IT IS DECIDEDLY SO.

Arthur's body was quivering in a convulsion. He could barely keep a thought in his head. Everything was speeding by so fast, his head was throbbing with pain. “Stop giving me these answers!“ he yelled dementedly at his toy. The train's whistle enveloped all sound. He couldn't hear himself screaming. “I need you now, damn it! I need you to tell me if I'm crazy! If I'm going to die!“

He shook the 8-Ball hard. Bubbles filled the answer screen at first. The train's blinding light filled the inside of the car as it was about to hit.

YES.

The eight was suddenly grinning at him, too.

*****

“We got the records on him,“ the detective said to his sergeant. “He was on something called ‘Ridacycline’, you ever hear of the stuff?“

“Strong stuff. Psychotherapeutic. You get it through prescription, but kids drop that shit all the time. Black market calls it 'The Ride', really tough. What else?“

The detective continued his report as the other officers tended to Arthur and his car. “Worked night shift at the supermarket, probably popped the drug there, drove home down this road, and then I don't know what happened.“

The sergeant glanced over at the small vehicle, resting on the track in the middle of the crossing, facing down it. Arthur was bent over the wheel as the coroner took photos.

“Heart attack,“ the sergeant said, “plain and simple. This drug has been known to do that before. Mr. Hillock here took too much of a nasty prescription while trying to stay awake, his heart couldn't take it, and had himself a cardiac arrest right on the tracks. We're lucky he didn't get whacked by a train.“

“Never happen. This line's been shut down for decades, the signals are even shut off.“

The sergeant laughed at his blunder. “I guess that would explain the five-foot weeds growing between the tracks.“

The coroner nodded that he was finished and the rest of the crew began to remove everything from the scene. “If he took a dose of Ride big enough to cause a heart attack,” he began, “I’d hate to think of the hallucinations that attacked him. Poor bastard probably died a madman.” The coroner told the sergeant to write up Arthur as an open-and-shut death.

As they left, a breeze blew through the withered orchards, sending piles of frail leaves into the air, and a soft whistling along the ground. High atop the semaphores' long arms, standing steadfast in attention, the wind blew away flakes of bright yellow paint.

Rapeseed

2007-02-02T01:13:00.000-08:00

“Are you bleeding?”

She knew the voice was Josie's, even though it sounded very distorted. The room also seemed to shift in and out of blurry as she finally awoke to her friend's frightened tone.

“Grace, you okay? Are you bleeding?”

“I don't know, can't really feel much. I don't think it's too bad.”

Josie looked about the room constantly, from Grace to Carmen to the stairwell that ascended into darkness. She stretched as far as her chains would allow, which was nearly nothing.

Grace wiped away the blood that dripped from her head to her eyes. Moving her arms the slightest inch sent a sting through her from the pinching and sharp edges of her shackles. After removing the build-up, her vision remained foggy. That damned drug was still in her veins. She looked over at Josie and saw that her friend's wounds were similar to her own; only minor cuts and bruises, but many of them.

Carmen was in far worse shape. She was still unconscious as she dangled from her chains, blood soaking her blouse. Grace felt a chill as she examined the dooming situation. With that seed oil in her brain, it was difficult to remember the manner in which they came to be chained to their own separate walls in that basement. Thinking was so painful.

“Do you remember anything?” Josie asked in near-whisper.

Grace nodded no, still looking about the room.

“Me neither, God I'm so scared. What the hell happened to us.”
“I'm trying to think.” As Grace was straining to recollect the evening, she noticed the elegant structure of the basement. There were ornate wood carvings along the walls, a tiled ceiling, and a varnished hardwood floor. Unusual for this kind of room. One doesn't normally care about the beauty of a room meant to store mops and cleaning products. Unless, of course, it was meant to store other things as well. “Rich room,” she said to herself.

“He is rich!” Josie said as it came to her.

“He?”

“The guy in the limo, I'm remembering now. Oh God, I hope Carmen is still alive.”

Grace blew her red hair out of her face to take another look at her dozing friend. “Yeah, she's alive. I can see her breathing. But look at her shirt. It's entirely red, there's a puddle forming around her feet...”

“Oh Jesus!” Josie silently screamed, shutting her eyes tight as if that would either heal her mutilated girlfriend or make her go away. She kept glancing at the stairwell out of the corner of her eye. It was the only way in or out of the basement, and she and Grace both knew that whoever they were trying to remember would be walking down those steps at any moment.

There were images speeding through Grace's head, overlapping in confusion. The rave party in the warehouse. Their boyfriends getting into a fight with the disc jockey about something petty and forgotten. Then the police raiding the warehouse and arresting everyone in sight. Josie and Carmen calling out to her in the midst of the chaos, that there was a hole in the corrugated metal of a wall that led out to an alley.

Perhaps it was the drug, perhaps it was pure shock, but Grace was surprised at how calm she was conducting herself in their plight. She saw Josie falling apart and wanted only to console her, to keep her mind from running away. “You said something about a limo.”

“Yeah, the limo, you don't remember?” Grace could not picture what Josie was reminding her. “When the rave was busted, we broke out through that hole in the wall. Then we were in the alley.”

“I remember up to then.” Grace could still feel the cold panic that swept over her when they burst out of the loud crowded warehouse and into the dark, quiet alley.

“We heard a car coming and thought it was the cops, so we ran down the alley, and there was a dead end. But it wasn't the cops, it was...”

“The limousine, yeah, that's right... hey, I think I can slip out of these chains!” Grace slipped her left hand out its shackle, freeing one of her arms. Quickly, she tried her other hand to no avail. Seeing a collection of brooms and garden tools in a dark corner by the stairwell, she stretched her body out as far as she could for a tool. It was hopeless.

“Wait, I'm closer,” Josie said. “I think I can kick something with my feet...”

The girls fell silent as the unseen door at the top of the stairs creaked open, spilling light along the steps in a jagged line. Before Grace could form a thought about what to do, she saw Josie playing possum, fast asleep. Without thinking, Grace followed her example, shoving her free hand back into its shackle.

A weathered old man wearing a night robe entered the basement, smiling at his three sleeping prizes. In his hand was a small white box. “What a mess you are, young lady,” he said to Carmen, still unconscious. He approached her and began to remove her blouse.

Grace could only hear the hideous things he must have been doing to her friend. She could hear her clothes being removed, sometimes being ripped off. Even though Grace was terrified to open her eyes for fear of being next, she creaked open one of them, only to be amazed at what she saw.

The old man was tending to Carmen's wounds with a first aid kit, carefully dressing what looked like irreparable damage. “I will not forgive myself for letting this happen,” he said to her as if she was awake. “The body and mind are two halves, they both must be in polished health.”

The old man's words struck something in Grace's memory, suddenly purging the cloaking drug from her entirely. Whereas she could barely picture the limousine before, she could remember it all in detail now.

*****

“I'm sorry about the rough treatment,” the old man said earlier in the limo as they sped through the city. He was enshrouded in darkness, as if he were a living shadow.

The girls were all weak, unable to move as they lay in a pile in front of him on the grand vehicle's floor. The struggle, as well as the drug that was injected into them promptly thereafter, made the old man seem different then. His voice was more distorted and deep, like a warped record being played too slow.

Passed out and bloody from her attacker's wrath, Carmen would not have the opportunity to remember this. She simply created more of a fight than her two companions.

“Your friend forced me to take more violent actions in getting her to enter the car. She's quite fierce when she allows herself to be.” From their viewpoint, the girls were listening to a shadow speak, its expressions shown only through glowing white eyes, staring directly at them. “But please, don't be alarmed. I'll tend to her wounds.”

“Where... we going,” the words stumbled from Grace's lips. “What have you done...”

“Let us out of here... you freak,” Josie said in a blank tone, dazed and fixed on her captor.

“We're almost there, be patient,” he said. “The trip will seem all the more brief for you. The rapeseed will be taking you into dream very shortly.”

“What is this,” Grace murmured, frantically feeling the spot on her arm where a syringe fed her the drug. She only had to hear the utterance of the word “rape” to find herself encompassed by total fear.

“It's an Asian drug,” her captor said, “made from the oil extract of the rapeseed. I assure you, it has nothing to do with the act of rape, though I suppose it could be used to assist such a vile act. It's quite a morbid name for such an efficient, harmless sedative. It'll relieve you for an hour or so. In no way do I want any harm to come to you young ladies yet.”

The girls could only think of what “yet” meant, and their host could see their question clearly. He seemed to have some bizarre sympathy for his victims, despite being the giver of their pain.

“No matter how many times I've taken prey, I always feel for them. It's very hypocritical, considering how often I feed. Unfortunately, I can't blindly buy my meat from the market like most hypocrites who feel emotion for food animals. I have to hunt them personally. It makes me think of how many people would continue to eat meat if they were forced to hunt and kill their dinners, as in the old ways. I wager there would be many more vegans in the world.” He smiled upon that.

Grace knew exactly what this man was saying, and began to cry as an insane fear overcame her. Josie merely slipped into a dream.

“Don't give me tears,” he said with pity. “I don't want this any more than you do. Believe me, I don't take prey nearly as much as I should. I only hunt once a month because it pains me so.”

“Then... let us go,” she said on the edge of succumbing to the seed oil.

“I almost wish you would kill me,” he continued. “It would save yourself and end my tormenting existence. Killing me is quite possible, despite what storybooks tell you. However, I have grown an expertise at catching humans, especially young females. A blessing. A curse. It's all the same, really.”

He’s a vampire, Grace thought in despair. He’s a psycho that’s obsessed with vampires. He’s read too much Anne Rice, got too caught up in that exotic, bloody world.

The old man seemed to hear her mind through her grimace. “No. What I am has no label, but if you need one, I am called Dridyn. Like the mythical vampire, I need blood to nourish me. But unlike my fictional counterpart, I feast on the entire being of my prey, including its emotion.”

Emotion, Grace repeated in her head. She would not keep her eyes open much longer.

“I literally devour the whole of my prey. It adds to my existence to absorb another's existence, enriching me, adding to me in ways I cannot sufficiently explain. It's a vicious, never-ending cycle. The world continues to over-populate with weak, unsuspecting prey for me, while I grow with every person I take. The universe does not revolve equally around all its underlings, I'm sad to say, even though I am at the advantage.

“But as tempted as I often become, I never let a prey go once I take it. It would be cruel on my part not to take the responsibility of a kill. A hunter should eat the deer he fells so that its life was not taken without purpose. As tempted as I may become, Dridyn never lets prey go. Instead, the prey become part of me, and in a sense, live on.

“Part of the role of the rapeseed is to help ease any guilt I may feel. As frightened as you may be, the seed oil is actually ‘numbing’ your fear a great deal. It makes me feel better about taking you. Makes me feel like a considerate killer. Plus, fear tends to poison the meat more than the oil ever could.”

His words provided no solace for the girls. Though they could feel the oil doing its job as Dridyn said, they were still filled with terror.

In their pile, Grace could feel streams of blood trickling onto her from Carmen's frail body above, barely alive. She worried about her friend, knowing well that they were all in for the same fate. Her captor once again read her face.

“As I said, I will tend to her before I begin the evening. I need my prey to be a whole. The body and mind are two halves, they both must be in polished health.”

The last thing Grace saw before she drifted into blackness were her captor's sad eyes, looking down at her in a foreshadowing mourning.

*****

Watching him bandage Carmen in the basement made everything clear, though he seemed so different in the light of the underground room. As he described, he did need them “whole” before doing whatever it was he intended to do. This would buy them some small amount of worthless time, she thought, fearing he could truly read her mind.

“All finished with you,” he said to Carmen's sleeping face. He shut his first aid box and headed up the stairs. “When I return, I'll prepare you all for the beginning of the evening.” A moment later, the upstairs door was closed again, and the stairwell was back in its darkness.

“I remember now!” Josie quickly said, trying desperately to free herself without making noise.

“I remember everything, too, Josie. Forget the chains, kick me that broom, and hurry.”

Josie stretched her ballet legs painfully, barely reaching a broom in the corner, knocking it to the ground from where it was leaning against the papered wall. With a firm grip of her shoe, she slid it across the hardwood floor to her friend, who snatched it with her once-again free hand.

Using her hand and one of her feet, Grace strained to snap the end of the old broom handle off. The brittle handle broke in a splintered shatter of wood, creating a short, sharp weapon. A wooden stake fit for any vampire creature. Remembering what he had said in the limo, she hoped his confidence was accurate, and that some myths had truth to them.

Hiding the broken end of the handle behind her, she tossed the rest of the broom back to the far corner. Her heart was near explosion as she thought of what she had to do when the old man eventually came for her. How she hoped she was first on his list. Her stake would be worthless to her friends if he decided to take one of them first. She could only reach so far.

In a stream of light from the stairwell, the old man returned to the basement. This time, he was greeted by a very wide awake Grace. She almost seemed eager.

“I see that you've decided to open your eyes this time,” he said to her with a smile. Grace was taken unaware by the fact that he knew she was awake before. “Don't be shocked, young lady. The seed oil only lasts for about an hour, I knew you were conscious. I just had no need to address you then.”

Just a little closer, Grace thought, the stake tucked into her pants behind her. Though her arms were both in shackles again, she was prepared to free her left hand with light speed.

Instead of approaching her, however, he walked to Carmen, examining her bandages. “Good, good, you're doing fine. You'll need to more time to rest, so you'll be last.” He rubbed her hair in his palm. “Mexican with a hint of Portuguese, I'd guess.” He walked across the room to Josie, who had also given up playing possum. “Irish, I'd say. Quite a flavor to you, so I've been led to believe.” Finally, after looking Josie up and down for a minute, he walked to the awaiting Grace.

“What are you going to do now?” she asked him, hoping he would just inch closer to her.

“You are truly pitiable, I sincerely mean that. I'm tempted to let you go off to your fathers, they're probably sweating nightmares now.”

“Why don't you?” Grace persisted. “Why don't you just let us go?”

“Like I said, I'm tempted.” The old man paused in thought for a moment before removing a small black box from his robe pocket, coming closer to Grace.

Using what she learned in gymnastics as a child, Grace swung her legs up and wrapped them around her captor. She clutched him helpless just long enough to remove her left hand from its shackle and unsheathe her makeshift weapon, thrusting it into the elderly man's chest in a bloody pulp. Amazingly, she thought of how easy it was to kill. She experienced no remorse, and his skin was almost like wet paper as she stabbed him.

He stumbled to the floor in agony, dropping the black box. As the box broke open, three metal keys popped out and sprawled onto the cold floor. The old man could only watch them fall as he felt his life running from him.

Grace immediately knew what those keys were for, and grew withdrawn in a kind of stupefying awe. She stuttered as she spoke. “You were going to... oh no, no...”

“For the first time, I believe I was going to give in to temptation.” The old man was amazed by how fast he was fading. “After years of preparing innocent ladies for the evening, my guilt finally caught up with me.”

Josie tried to reach the old man and the keys across the floor, but didn't come anywhere near them. Grace knew she would have no better luck. “But you said Dridyn never lets prey go!” Grace yelled in disbelief, trying to justify her killing him. “Dridyn never lets prey go, no matter how tempted!”

The old man looked up at the young girl with his sad eyes before falling to his wound. Sorrowed by the girls' fate, he strained to speak. “No... I am... I am not...” Eyes still open, the old man suddenly lay still and silent on the cold floor.

In an instant, it was all clear. Grace couldn't believe what she was realizing. She desperately tugged at her chain for slack, trying to retrieve the stake from the old man's chest. It was a pointless effort. Josie still didn't understand what was happening, but she would know soon enough.

The stairwell grew dark again, and in its doorway stood a shadowy figure with glowing white eyes. It paused as it saw its long-time servant lying dead on the floor, and made a deep strange sound that could be described as mourning. This grief would only serve to erase any lingering remorse and fuel its ferocity.

The living shadow of a creature descended the stairs and tended to his guests, beginning the long evening.

Phil and Maxine and The Orb

2007-02-02T01:09:00.000-08:00

“It's like I'm holding the Death Star, that's what it feels like.”

“Is it heavy?”

“No, that's another weird thing about it. It looks like it should be, but it's very light. Not hollow, just light.”
Phil rolled the small metal sphere in his palms, holding the phone receiver to his face with his shoulder. “You gotta see it. If it's what I suspect it is, we're in for a little mystery.”

“You know I'm a sucker for mysteries,” Maxine told him on the other end of the line. “Bring it when you pick me up. What's this movie we're seeing again?”

“Alien”, he told her, for probably the tenth time during their conversation. “It's part of the sci-fi festival. I can't believe you've never seen it.”

“You computer nerds are all alike. Spaceships and creatures from Mars, gimme a break.”

He carefully placed the sphere on his desk next to his computer. Reni jumped onto his lap and licked his face, almost knocking the boy out of his chair from the impact.

“I can hear the little scoundrel all over you!” Maxine laughed. “He sounds like he's tearing the place apart.”

“He is!” Phil shouted, trying to be heard over his friend's mayhem. The small Dalmatian finally jumped off the boy's lap, and back onto the bed where he usually sat. “Before we go to this festival,” he said, restarting the topic, “make sure you want to go. It sounds like you don't.”

“Well, I'm not a space nut, but all-you-can-watch movies for three bucks is a bargain, and I do love that theater. It's one-of-a-kind.” She leaned against the wall, sitting on her bed, twisting the phone cord around her fingers. Her room looked similar to Phil's, with its skin of posters and paintings, untidy but not messy. Good friends have the same tastes, she always thought. “I'll see you when you get here.”

“I'm gonna be a few minutes late. There's something I wanna try. Something with the orb.”

“What? What are you going to do?” she asked.

“I'm gonna hook it up to my computer. I think I know what it is.”

“You find something half-buried in the park, with worms and maggots on it, and you're going to put it in your computer? I hope you have the money to buy a new Mac.” Maxine was startled by a sudden knocking at her bedroom door. “I gotta go! That's Rhonda!”

“Alright. I'll be over soon.”

Maxine quickly hung up, and sat quietly on her bed. Her room seemed different without Phil's voice coming out of the phone. It seemed less colorful, as though the pictures on the wall disappeared.

In his cluttered room, Phil placed the orb into a bowl-shaped device that looked homemade. With a flip of a few switches, his powerful computer whirred on, and the orb began to light up.

*****

“Oh God, it was so gross when that baby thing came out of his stomach!” Maxine shrieked, shuddering at the recollection of the scene.

“I told you it was a classic,” Phil said. “That's the famous scene. Totally freaked me out when I saw it last year.”

“How did you get into that movie last year? Didn't they bust you?”

“Sneaked in, of course,” he answered in a boastful manner. “I look old enough, anyway.”

From across the street, two men in dark suits sat in an old black sedan, watching the young couple walk along the downtown sidewalk. The street lights stretched their shadows against the old brick buildings, making it easier to keep them in sight.

“So, what exactly are you doing with that thing you found?” Maxine asked. “What does your computer have to do with it?”

“Everything evolves, including machines. Heck, especially machines. First there were vinyl records, you know, LPs.”

“Yeah, so?”

“Then there were spools of tape, followed by 8-tracks, cassettes. The next thing is supposed to be like a small, laser. A 'compact disc'. Well, the same goes with computer software. First there's magnetic tape. Floppy disks. Hard disks. I think the orb is the next step.”

“Are you saying that steel baseball is a video game or something?”

“I don't know what's on it, but I doubt it's Pac Man,” Phil told her, quite serious in tone. “I read about these things in magazines, how they're supposed to work. I figured out a cheap way to read what's on it, using my Mac. The stuff is compatible, the orb is designed to mesh with any hardware, but the download will take forever. My hard drive is ancient.”

“Is that what it's doing now? Downloading?”

“Yup. That's why I was a little late to pick you up. That, and Reni needed a bath, so I...” As they reached his car, Phil heard something, a sound that fueled his gnawing caution. He looked about before opening Maxine's door for her. Quickly, he ran around and got in the driver's seat.

“The guys in the suits?” Maxine whispered. She was no less paranoid than her friend.

“Yes. Did you see them, too?”

“Just start the car. Let's go.”

“They were in the theater, weren't they?”

“Just start the car,” she repeated, in the same robotic tone of fear.

“I was spooked by them, staring at us all the time, but I thought it was all in my head.”

“It was in my head, too.”

Phil drove his Ford Falcon away from the curb, slowly, watching the stalkers through his mirrors. As he turned the corner, they followed with perfect telemetry. Speeding down the street, Phil swerved onto the next block.

“Damn it, Phillip! Now they know that we know!”

“Who cares, as long as we're alive.”

Phil raced down dozens of streets and alleys, all the while being tailed closely by the men in the black sedan. Nothing Phil did could shake them. They followed so near that they slammed against Phil's rear bumper at one point. It was that act that escalated the panic as well as confirmed the intentions of the hunters.

“We've passed my building a dozen times!” Maxine screamed out as the car almost flipped onto its side maneuvering a curve. “What are you trying to do?”

“When I get the chance, I'm going to pull over and let you out in front of your place. Go upstairs and get Rhonda. She'll know what to do.” Phil breathed heavy, a sickly, muddy deepness to it.

“Just drive to the nearest police station. Stop trying to be a hero!”

“Then I'll never know what's on the orb! The cops will never let me finish the download. Who knows what could be written on that little piece of metal? Defense plans. Espionage. The cure for diseases. The cure for diseases, yes, that's what's on it.”

Around a corner that he navigated several times, Phil looked into his mirror and saw the absence of his stalkers for the first time. It was his chance to let Maxine out, but it would have to be fast. He floored the brake, the car coming to a painful stop.

“Get out, now!” he told her. “Get Rhonda, tell her what's going on!”

Maxine jumped out of the car and ran into her building. Immediately, Phil sped away.

After hours of driving through the city and its outskirts, the gas gauge told Phil to head for home. There, he would call Maxine to see if she was okay. He was confident that the men in the sedan were gone, and that the download was nearly finished, if not already completed.

A few blocks from his brownstone building, he parked the car behind a colony of Oleanders. Their leaves, and the dark of the foggy night, made the automobile next to invisible. He crept in the shadows of everything between his Falcon and the brownstone, and clinched his teeth at the slightest sound.

Quietly shutting the door to his apartment, locking it, he glanced at his computer screen. The screen saver was activated; little tropical fish dancing with each other. This meant that activity was past its final mark. The download was nearly complete.

He grabbed the phone and punched in Maxine's two-digit phone number. He sweated in wait for her to pick up the line. It seemed like a great length to wait.

“Hello, Phil?” she said into the phone.

“Max, are you okay? Are those guys anywhere around?”

“We're right here,” said a voice from Phil's closet. Out stepped the two men wearing dark suits. Every bit of their clothing was dark, black, like their ominous sedan. “You've almost finished the load,” the same man said, “I assume your printer works.”

“What's on the orb?” Phil asked the two men, who were approaching slowly, carefully. “What's on it?”

“The download is about to end. You will print it.”

“Phil?” Maxine shouted over the phone, worrying more. “Phil, what's going on?”

“Max, get Rhonda, like I told you! Hurry!”

Phil made a break for the door, only to be stopped by one of the men. The suited figure swung at Phil, sending him flying violently against the computer. Slamming down onto the keyboard, the download was aborted halfway through printout, exposing only a fragment of the data. Phil screamed in pain.

“Phil!” Maxine could hear everything. Through the phone, she heard a struggle take place. She heard Reni bark, things breaking against the walls, and then the final thud of someone falling to the floor. She could only hope it wasn't her friend, though she knew the truth, as she did all along.

In his room, Phil was sprawled across the floor in a contorted, unnatural position. Helpless, frozen, he watched the two men in the dark suits remove the orb from the makeshift scanner, scooting aside the unconscious, faithful Dalmatian lying on the floor.

“You bastards,” he murmured at them. It was all he could do to form the words. “How could you do this to me?”

“Had to be someone,” one of the men said coldly.

“Why me?” Phil turned his head around, almost blinding himself with his own drool. “Why?” The once-colorful walls grew more white, more blank. Generic. “Everything will be good,” he said to himself repeatedly. “Maxine will bring Rhonda. Everything will be fine.”

“Phil! I’m here!” Maxine suddenly shouted through the door.

“Max? Help me, please.”

“What will we do with the girl?” one of the suited men asked the other.

“We'll have to kill her next,” his comrade answered flat.

“Phil, open the door!” called out a familiar voice. It was Rhonda. “The door is locked, open it!”

“Don't come in,” whispered Phil as he drifted off. “They'll get you, too.”

The two men stood poised, ready with their guns, prepared to kill whatever made it through the door. With a sharp crack and a loud slam, the door flung open. Rhonda and Maxine stood in the doorway, shocked at what they saw.

Phil laid on the floor of the empty room, unconscious, his head next to a puddle of bloody vomit. The posters were gone. The computer was gone. The men in the dark suits were gone. All that remained was a shoebox, and the frail body of the sick little boy it belonged to.

“Maxy, what happened?” Rhonda asked Maxine. “Have you been on the in house phones again? I told you two, those are only for doctors and nurses, like me.” She poked her head out into the busy hallway, looking left and right for help. “I need Dr. Benson! Prep a cart for ICU, now! We have a grandmal in here!”

Medical staff rushed in and connected the boy to an armada of machines.

“Will he be alright?” Maxine asked, twirling one of her pigtails around her fingers. “We were just pretending.”

Rhonda ignored the girl, her attention taken by more urgent matters. “Let's go, get him to ICU. Where's Benson?”

“It was just pretend,” Maxine said again, much quieter. As she watched the staff take away her only friend, she bent down and picked up his shoebox. Hesitant to open it, she merely hugged it, wedged herself into the nearest corner, and thought about Phil.

*****

“Are you alright?” Rhonda gently asked. “You can cry if you want to. It's good to cry.”

“I don't feel like crying,” Maxine said, staring at the blank walls, the shoebox still in her hands. “I'm still playing pretend.”
“What are you pretending, sweetheart?” Maxine did not answer. “I'm sorry, honey, it was God's choice. And if God made the choice, it had to have been for a good reason. Everyone in this wing of the hospital, including you, is going to be chosen soon. There's no changing that, there's no cure. But it's the way things are.” Rhonda noticed the shoebox, remembering when it was laying next to Phil's head hours earlier. “Maxy?” she said politely. “Max, can I see what's inside the box?”

“Yes,” Maxine said, as she handed the box to the nurse, not taking her eyes from the clean white walls.

Rhonda opened the box, looked inside, and was puzzled for a moment. “So, this was Phillip's? You guys played together a lot, and this was all you had?”

Maxine nodded yes, still playing pretend. She was trying very hard.

“I think he'd want you to have it,” Rhonda said to her.

Inside the box was a glass snowball with a wooden base. Rhonda rolled the pretty sphere in her palms, making the snow inside it whirl around a ceramic Dalmatian puppy. Crudely carved on the side of the base were the words “Phil and Maxine are best pals forev...”

Though the scripture was poor and incomplete, one could clearly see that it took the boy a lot of patience, and quite a long time, to write.

The Holy Corridor

2007-02-02T01:01:00.000-08:00

“Charlie, I ain’t seen digs like this for a long time,” Ben said as he wandered about the stately room, one of many in the immense house. “And that suit fits you good.”

“When you’re on the run, I suppose you don’t get to see the interiors of mansions,” Charlie said, unlocking his liquor cabinet. “Or tailors’ shops, for that matter. You are indeed a mess. Remind me to take care of those rags later.”

“I see that money buys new friends as well as booze and clothes.”

“The ominous gentlemen standing behind you aren’t friends, but they can be compared to my liquor selection. Each one is the finest money can buy, from various parts of the world. Each one is unique and serves only me.”

Charlie’s bodyguards stood apart, near one of the two doors in the room. They were quiet and still, as though living for his next command.

Ben felt uncomfortable in their presence when he entered the house only minutes before. This feeling paled next to the shock he felt when the large men grabbed him out the alley where he was sleeping.

“Your finest gave me a scare when they found me,” he said in his grisly voice.

“Actually Ben, they didn’t find you. I found you, as difficult as it was. Months ago. You were in the jaws of a homeless shelter, living off the state for as long as you could before you had to run away again. Can’t let anyone know your identity, now can you?” Charlie swung open the stained glass cabinet doors and eyed the rows of beautiful antique bottles. “Magnificent, aren’t they? I’ve been collecting them since I was let out of Holiner. Each one tells a story.”

Ben felt a lump in his throat when Charlie mentioned that place. Perhaps it was the sparking of horrible memories. Perhaps it was guilt.

“How long were you in there, 100 years?” he tried to say laughingly.

“22 years, but no less than 100, it seemed,” Charlie replied, still searching for the right drink. He reached in the back of his collection and brought out a dusty gray bottle. “How’s this? Austrian, 1908. Wonderful yard, I’m led to believe. “

“Sure, I love a good wine as much as anyone. Grape juice with a kick.”

“Actually, it’s cognac. I’ve been saving it for our inevitable reunion. It was the first thing I bought when I was let out of Holiner, I couldn’t resist. They gave me a set of clothes, a bus ride to town, and fifty dollars. Forty dollars went to the cognac.”

“I’m touched,” Ben said. The last thing he wanted to talk about was their time at Holiner. He was afraid of bringing up something dangerous, something that would erase their years apart.

Upon his expanse of a desk, Charlie set down two elegant goblets, with the bottle of cognac between them. He then snapped his fingers, sending a servant out of the room.

Ben drooled at the thought of the liquor, trickling at first, then pouring down his palate. Over the years, he had grown an unfortunately attachment to such tastes.

“It must be hard to have limited freedom,” Charlie said. “You made it out of Holly, free as a bird, but a hunted one, doomed to be chased by the law for the rest of your life. I recently saw, on television, a 90-year-old getting caught and tossed back into prison after escaping when he was 24. Can you imagine that? The media can be a powerful tool. I’d be nervous if I were wearing your clothes.”

“You gonna turn me in, Charlie?” Ben asked with an uneasy smile. “I hear there’s a hefty price on my head.”

“Do I look as though I need financial assistance? The chandelier above you costs more than the reward for your capture, and I have at least one in every room. No, my friend, I actually sent for you so that I may reunite us before the authorities become skillful.”

“Then what’s for me to be nervous about?” Ben said with his usual raspy voice of confidence. “I’ve made it this far, more than 25 years. I can make it to the end.”

“Yes indeed, you were always... the lucky one..”

The stoic servant returned with a corkscrew, linen napkins, and a fine wooden box that looked as if it were designed for a fancy pen. Charlie plunged the screw into the cognac, pausing in reflection of what he had just said.

“But to live this way,” he continued, “always dirty, always looking over your shoulder, no one knowing who you really are. This is no way to live. When we were lads, everyone know who Bennie and Charlie were.”

“That they did,” Ben said, smiling with pride. “If they knew what was good for ‘em!”

“But things change, I suppose. My name is still spoken, just in different circles.”

“Is all this stuff hot or clean?”

“A fine blend of both. I enjoy balancing the two. It keeps me on my toes, as I’m sure you’re on yours.”

“That I am,” Ben said, waiting for the cognac.

“I remember you were very alert the day of the breakout.” Charlie poured the liquor into his goblet, preparing to fill his friend’s as well.

Ben placed a hand over his glass as the bottle was tilted. He sensed something was in the air, and he wanted to clear it before his drink was poured. “What do you mean, Charlie? Is there something you want to get off your chest?”

“I suppose you could say that, Ben.” Charlie looked at his suspicious friend, giving him a reassuring smile.

Ben relaxed his hand, allowing Charlie to fill his goblet. He scrutinized the stream of liquid for a brief moment, as if to find something. “Share it with me then,” he said. “Come on, Charlie, you never could fool me.”

Charlie set the bottle down and reclined in his leather chair, picking up his goblet. “It sounds odd hearing ‘Charlie’. No one’s called me that since... well, since Holiner.”

“That tears it!” Ben said abruptly, bolting up from his chair. The bodyguards altered their stance slightly. Ben knew they’d be on him quick if needed. “You’ve got a chip on your shoulder about our days in the joint. I ain’t touching that booze until we settle this.”

“Afraid of a drink?” Surely, your immune system must be numb against such things by now.”

“I’ve always been able to drop your ass. It was true the day I took you off the streets, and it’s true now.”

“I was barely 19 then,” Charlie said, holding his drink up to the room light. “I’m much older now, and I have these able men working for me. I assure you, at the blink of an eye, any one of them can give you a bullet before your next breath. However, that will not happen.”

“Don’t count this old man out,” said Ben. “I’m all leather after what life’s dealt me.” He looked at the floor in thought, noticing the silence that stood between he and Charlie. A quick deduction of his odds against these men also came to mind. “Look, I’m gonna tell ya, things haven’t been great. I’m a bum. In a way, you should be happy you didn’t make it out. Feel lucky that the Man made you stick to your years.”

Charlie raised his glass to take a drink, pausing just as the rim was near his lips. “You are right about some things, Ben. There is a chip on my shoulder. It does regard Holiner State Prison. But it wasn’t about our days there, rather one particular day.”

“The breakout.”

“Drink your cognac.”

“After you,” Ben said, sitting back in his chair. “You seem like you’re waiting for me. It would be rude for a guest to take the first drink.”

“Please Ben, give me some dignity. You can smell it, swish it in your mouth if you want. I promise, I won’t take much offense.”

“I taught you everything. You know as well as I do that poisons don’t always need a taste or smell. Now are you gonna drink, or is there gonna be an ugly scene?”

Charlie looked at his drink again. He put the goblet to his lips and slowly took in the fine spirit, swishing it in his mouth, then swallowing it quickly. “The most delicious poison I’ve ever tasted. Quite robust.”

Ben felt satisfied and engulfed his entire cognac. Charlie filled both their glasses again, and they shared another drink surrounded by a tense quiet. Though Charlie was drinking along with him, Ben couldn’t shake the feeling that he was making an unwise decision.

“I must take a moment to congratulate myself,” Charlie said, grinning. “As you’ve stated, I’ve never been able to fool you. Never before now.”

Ben stopped gulping his liquor and spit out the little amount he had in his mouth.

“You taught me a lot of things,” Charlie continued, “how to steal, how to lie, how to bleach guilt. But again, I’m older now, and have learned a few things since then.” He noticed doubt in his friend’s face. “Your glass was lined with the poison this entire time. It mixed with the cognac instantly.”

Ben wasn’t sure, but his instincts were telling him that Charlie wasn’t lying. “You son of a bitch,” he said, ready to hurl his goblet. “I should’ve known you’d be trouble. When these goons told me who wanted to see me, I should’ve took off running. You want revenge? For what? You blame me for making you a crook? I didn’t force you to pull those jobs with me. And before we were nabbed, you didn’t seem to have any problems robbing folks. You blame me for your stretch in the joint? Face it, I made it out, you didn’t. Tough crackers, pal. It’s not my fault that you didn’t have what it took.”

Charlie corked the bottle and placed it back into the cabinet. There was a confidence about him that used to belong to Ben when they were in the same gang, when they were sharing the same prison sentence. A new man was at the controls now, and it was a first for Ben. He’d never been scared like that before.

“So what’s this stuff, Charlie? Am I gonna have the hiccups till Christmas? Am I gonna itch for the next six months? Am I gonna pass out and wake up on the front steps of the 15th Precinct?”

Charlie cupped his hands on his desk, speaking with a eerily calm demeanor. “Your insides will melt into slush, as will your skin. Along the way, your eyesight will fade, your hearing, your sense of touch. By then, however, your brain’s synapses will have become broth, so you won’t feel much. The climactic finale to this retribution, of course, is the inevitable being known as Death.”

Ben was taken aback by the calculating manner in which Charlie delivered his words. He’d never been the type to kill, that was always Ben’s department. Somehow, he knew that the terror he was feeling was not unwarranted.

At that moment, he felt a surge within his stomach. Something was indeed happening to him. This only doubled the fear that was overtaking him.

“Name it,” he said to his host as he clutched his stomach. “Name it Charlie. You got me. What is it you want?”

“You have no funds,” Charlie said, “or possessions of any kind. You have no identity, so I can’t blackmail you, and you can’t get a job to pay me money for the rest of your life. You’re too old to be of any use to my business, and too wanted to be seen near me as my slave.”

“There’s gotta be something you want from me, you son of a bitch. You had this planned, I know you did. Stop fucking around.”

Charlie sat in his deep leather chair, tilted back with his feet on the lavish desk. He looked up at the marble ceiling as he spoke. “Do you remember what we called the breakout?”

“What?” Ben was confused by the sudden change in tone.

“Do you remember what the escape plan was called? The plan was most ingenious, I must commend you on that. We had a name for it.”

“I don’t know, I forgot. It was a long time ago.”

“Funny you feel that way,” Charlie said, “because it’s burned into my memory. ‘The Holy Corridor’ we called it. Looking back at the plan now, it was beautiful.”

He picked up the small wooden box from his desk and blindly held it into the air. On cue, one of his servants took the box from his hand and carried it out of the room.

“What was that?” Ben asked, afraid of the answer.

“You’ll see in a moment.” Charlie drank the rest of his liquor and sat quietly in his chair.

“How long?” asked Ben. “How long before...”

“One hour.”

“One hour!”

The pain was spreading throughout Ben's body. The agony was intense. There were moments when it was all he could do just to remain standing. Ben was brought to a fear he’d never imagined. It was tempting to ask to be shot instead.

“You’ve given me one hour to live, you bastard! How can you just sit there while I die? We were a team, you and me!”

“It was just 300 feet long,” Charlie said as he pictured the past and ignored Ben’s torment. “Seemed much longer back then.”

“What are you talking about?” Ben screamed.

“The Holy Corridor, 300 feet long, 50 feet wide, yet it seemed like a vast warehouse. A section of the power plant below the prison had water running underneath it, water and sewage and other unspeakables. Our power came from a nearby waterfall, and huge canals were everywhere. Across one of them was Heaven. Freedom. We just had to figure out a way across.

“We connected utility piping together until we had a weak bridge that crossed the canal. It was only an inch or two wide, but you were sure it would hold us, one at a time. To ensure that we weren’t followed, you cut the power tubes and tossed the exposed cables into the canal. Brilliant. The river of filth below was alive with electricity. Only desperate men would be able or willing to get across, not the guards earning their two bits an hour.

“On the day of the breakout, we hopped onto the bridge and made our way down the corridor, crossing the baptizing waters. You made it across easy, always the athletic one. But I was not so sure of myself. I froze on the middle of the pipe bridge, terrified of losing my balance and falling into the water to be deep-fried. Never made it across, I was so scared.

“I looked over to where you were and didn’t see you. I thought they nabbed you, and was picturing the guards beating the tar out of you. I even considered the possibility that a guard tower pig popped you with his rifle. It wasn’t until weeks later, when I was rotting in solitary, that I found out you made it, and left me alone to fend for myself.”

Charlie turned to face Ben, his brow turned inward, a stone look about him. Ben was sure that his captor was capable of anything now.

“Listen to me,” Ben said slowly and clearly. “You’re better off. You made your sentence stick, and now you’ve got clout again. Look around you. This house, those clothes. You’re big-time, bigger than we ever were back in the day. Me, what do I got? Nothing! Homeless, the cops want me, I can’t stay in one spot, can’t keep a job. Why would you want to mess with a skid like me? What could I have taken from you that was so bad?”

“Like I told you, Ben,” Charlie said. “I never made it across that bridge.”

He lifted his shirt above his head, exposing his chest and back. The grotesque, discolored contortions and puffy labyrinths of dripping flesh were beyond disfigurement. From the neck down, Charlie simply wasn’t human. He looked as if he should have been screaming in pain, as if he should have been screaming constantly for the rest of his life.

“My lower body is much worse. My legs appear almost unrecognizable. They barely fit in my pants.”

“Holy shit,” Ben murmured, finding himself backing away from the hideous sight.

“Fortunately, the canal was only so deep. My head and hands were above the surface, so they were spared, more or less. Doctors called my survival no less than a miracle.”

Ben tried to convince himself that it was all a joke, that Charlie was wearing a body suit of some kind. But the more he looked at the pulpy figure of a man, the more he realized it couldn’t be a trick. “I’m sorry Charlie, I didn’t know.”

“Of course not. You were too busy expanding the distance between the prison and yourself. So busy, in fact, that you let me fry, screaming out for anyone to remove me from the water. I must have cooked for nearly a minute. I waited to die, I hoped to die. Some say I was lucky. With that, I tend to disagree.” Charlie took a cigar from his inside pocket and lit it. He reclined in his chair, enjoying the Latino smoke. “But let’s get to matters at hand. I have a gift for you.”

Two of Charlie’s massive servants walked to Ben’s side, gesturing for him to rise. They escorted him to a set of ornate double doors that stood near the liquor cabinet, opposite the exit.

“Open the doors,” Charlie said, as if it were a suggestion rather than a command.

Ben’s first reaction was to refuse to cooperate. A sudden burst in his chest, followed by deep pains in his gut, reminded him of his disadvantage. “I didn’t want this, Charlie. I never wished this on you.”

“When you’ve invested in revenge for as long as I have, you can forget or dismiss the reasoning behind things. You can replace justified retribution with symbolism. Call this a symbol, of our renewed friendship, and of my quelled anguish.”

Ben hoped for the worst to pass quickly, and opened the doors before him. The silence that passed through the doorway was dominant, and Ben saw nothing inside at first. It was dark to a point where all light seemed to die. A moment later, dim lamps came on, exposing a most devilish design.

“The Holy Corridor,” Charlie said. “An exact replica, true in every detail to the original. Every spot of mildew, every insect, every drop of infected water. I’ve even had a sound system installed to help recreate the blazing roars of the machinery back at Holly. Doesn’t this bring it all back, friend?”

Ben’s pains were becoming more possessive, and he would normally have dropped to the floor by that point. He knew, however, that if he were to live he needed to bite the bullet and do whatever Charlie had in mind.

The obsession behind what Charlie set up was frightening. Just as he said, the recreation of the breakout was perfect. Ben could tell that it must have taken months, perhaps years, to build something so immense, so detailed. “What do I do, Charlie?”

“You know what to do,” Charlie said. “Make it to freedom, just like you did decades ago. Freedom now being the serum for your ailment, which you’ll find on the other end of that bridge.”

The corridor’s pipe bridge looked just as weak as the original bridge, made of various sized pipes hooked together in a hurry. At the end of the corridor stood a small table with the fine wooden box on it. From its long, narrow shape, Ben knew that was his freedom. A syringe full of it.

“If there’s anything missing, let me know now,” said Charlie, “and I’ll remedy the mistake.”

“Dogs,” Ben said, hoping it would buy him more time. “There was a pack of guard dogs at the end. They attacked me the second I hopped off the pipe bridge.”

“Oh, they’re present. As I recall, they didn’t pounce on you, revealing themselves, until you were inches away from escape. Now if you’ll step onto the piping, we can get this underway. The sooner you start, the sooner you finish, and we can resume our friendship again.”

Ben carefully stepped onto the bridge, feeling it wobble with the slightest touch. “I tell you one thing, Charlie,” he said. “Whether or not I make it past this, we will not be friends.”

“In that case, you are nothing but entertainment,” said the demented Charlie, strangely upset with what Ben said. “My only effort will be to enjoy popcorn while I watch you die. You will most likely die, of course. The sole alteration I made to the replica was an increase in voltage. This water is quite a bit more fierce than that of Holiner’s, and I suspect it will eliminate any chance of survival should you fall in.”

Ben took a few quick steps across the bridge, scooting along the way he did when he was younger, no less desperate. “What happens after I make it? He yelled, concentrating on his feet.

“If you make it, including past the dogs, I will shut off the power and you can safely join me on this side, wading through the once-deathly water in a victory dance if you so desire.”

Ben barely heard his captor as he balanced himself, moving down the pipe with careful pace. For what seemed like hours, the simulated sounds of machinery blared into his head, accompanied by a rain of insects peppering his face and arms. He was going to make it, he could feel it. The box was within clear sight, only twenty feet more to go.

Suddenly, an enormous blast of scorching hot air shot out of one of the machine walls, making the entire corridor rumble as if a freight train was passing overhead. The piping shook, and Ben flailed his arms wildly, trying to recapture balance. In the distance, he could hear Charlie laughing, munching on popcorn, waiting for the finale of his grand production.

About to fall into the scathing river, Ben blindly leaped for the ledge ahead of him. His fingers miraculously caught the wet concrete, and he dangled inches from the water. It made a crackling sound that sent fear through him, mentally pulling him downward.

Straining to climb out of the canal, he felt sharp stabs on his hands. The drowning thunder of dogs barking was all around him. He wearily hung onto the ledge, watching hordes of beasts tear at his flesh.

“Wonderful, aren’t they?” Charlie bellowed over the sound system. “I wager any one of these handsome fellows could rip a Holliner dog to shreds. Where were they when we needed them?”

Ben shoved at the dogs, sometimes holding onto the ledge with only one arm. He made his way up to level ground. The dogs made it nearly impossible to get to his feet.

“I call them my Little Bennies,” Charlie continued, “because each one of them is the coldest, most evil bastard I could find.”

Ben swung his arms violently, grabbing at his dozen or so attackers. There was no way to hurt them in such large numbers, and nothing to hurt them with. Seeing one of the dogs dangerously close to the ledge gave him a thought.

He lunged at a group of dogs, sending them tumbling into the deadly water. He shoved the rest of them in, one by one, until there were no killers sharing his floor. The beasts were instantly destroyed by the unimaginable intensity of the voltage. Their bodies bled from every pore, twisting into bizarre contortions as they cried. Ben felt queasy from this sight, remembering that it was intended for him.

Turning around, he was eye-level with the wooden box. He slid it off its table and held it high above his head. I’ve got your box!” he screamed down the corridor at Charlie. “I’ve got your fucking box!”

Charlie sat in his chair, quiet, his face emotionless. He removed a remote control from his desk drawer and used it to shut off the power in the corridor. The various sounds from the corridor all stopped. “Good man,” he said. “You may return now.”

“How do I know the power is really off?” Ben asked, still catching his breath.

Charlie waved his hand at one of his bodyguard servants. The dark-suited man pulled up his sleeve and held his hand under the water’s surface. Seeing this, Ben jumped into the canal and headed back to his host’s parlor, drudging through the bloody remains of the pack of dogs.

“Congratulations,” Charlie said as Ben climbed out of the canal. “The main goal was to kill you, as you are probably aware, but part of me is happy that you’ve made it out. I don’t care how rich you are, a show like this just can’t be bought.”

“That it can’t,” Ben said, breathing heavily. “But now the show’s over.” He opened the slider wooden box in his hands expecting to see the syringe that would save his life. Instead, he found a silver fork and steak knife. “What the hell is this?”

“Freedom, as I promised.”

“What is this, a hoax? Am I really dying, Charlie?”

“Yes yes, you are most certainly dying. In no way did I arrange all this for nothing. In fact, the clock gives you only fifteen minutes before the poison kicks in beyond reversal. That’s just an estimate, of course.”

“You bastard.” Ben readied to tackle Charlie, but was halted by a deep pain in his stomach. He could feel his innards melting away. The two guards in the room held their guns close as he huddled into a ball, groaning, clutching his gut.

“Put the guns away,” Charlie told his servants. “The man is in no shape to...” A guard fell to the floor as Ben jammed the steak knife in his side. In an instantaneous blur, he stabbed at the man again and again, making sure he was out of the picture. He thrust his foot at the other guard just as he was about to fire. Another second later, Ben was on him, slashing, screaming. The servants died quite violently, and a suddenly scared Charlie called out for the others.

Ben took both of the guns lying on the bloody floor and fired two-handed mercilessly at the incoming guards, killing them in a slaughter before they knew what was happening. When the gunfire stopped, charlie and Ben were alone. To the old man’s dismay, Charlie had his own gun now, pointed straight at Ben’s head.

“I’ve never used this before,” Charlie said about his antique pistol, grasping for control. “The man I purchased it from assures me that no one has. Original condition. Flawless. It would be a shame for me to break the chain. But it would be an honor for you to be the first to fall to it.”

“Then pull the trigger,” Ben said flatly.

“Don’t you want to know where the serum is? I’d love for you to have it.”

Without a word, Ben raised his gun at Charlie, surprising his host. A second later, he fired, sending Charlie to his knees.

“You never were the killing kind,” Ben said in an exhale. “At least not when the chips were down, and you were face-to-face with a man.”

Charlie sat on the floor against the side of his desk, patiently awaiting his end. After an initial expression of searing pain, a smile formed on his face, trickling blood from its corners.

“I've received more than I bargained for,” he said. “I don’t think I’d ever have the courage to finish this miserable existence myself. My gratitude, Ben. My deepest gratitude.”

Ben’s body was failing him fast. His vision was starting to fade, and his skin was very cold. He was so weak, he could barely breathe. He rested his gun’s barrel against Charlie’s forehead. “Where’s the serum?” he asked calmly. “If there is one, I’d like to have it now.”

Charlie coughed up a little blood, making it difficult for him to speak. “You may fire if you wish, but I won’t deprive you of your life, friend. I’m a man of my word, always have been.”

“So where’s the needle? Where the syringe that was in this box?”

“Yes, I believe there was a syringe at first,” Charlie said, looking up at his chandelier. “I wanted to ensure you a hearty last meal in the probable event that you didn’t discover the serum in time. So I took the liberty of injecting it into one of the late Bennies. I hope your search is fruitful, as I would guess you only have a few minutes left. A few more minutes than myself.”

Upon that final word, Charlie collapsed, sliding down the desk’s side in a trail of blood. Ben listened for breathing, but there was none.

He was confused, not knowing what Charlie meant with his last words. After a moment of thought, he looked back at the red-stained canal, and realized in horror what he was about to do.

Holding the wooden box in his hand, he admired the beauty of the elegant utensils, walking back toward the corridor’s baptizing water.

Tour of the Jailkeeper

2007-02-02T00:41:00.000-08:00

Don't bother looking for the door you just walked through. Your door's gone. My door, however, is right there, wide enough to fly a hot air balloon through. Wasn't so invitin' when I first came here.

I've been waiting a long time for you. I've been waiting a long time for anything. Seems like the age of the sun since the last time I saw light. Didn't expect such a young one. Just a baby, you are. Not much under your eyelids, I imagine.

They sent you down here 'cause it's my time to go, and believe me, I've been in wait for this hour longer than most people can conceive. I think I reached my point a hundred yesterdays ago. Time is always stretching, but never passing.

Bardam, name's Ridlo Bardam. Shoot, been so long since I've used those words I'm surprised I remember them.

Been the jailkeeper here, what, 20, 25 years. Probably only an hour or so up there on World time. Soon as I found out I was getting set free, getting a replacement, I wanted to run outta here with horse blinders on. But I promised the Powers I'd give you a looksee around, tell you what's what before I go. It won't ease your slip into the walls' song, but it'll hopefully give you an idea of when to cover your ears.

Now I ain’t teaching, that's gotta be known. Reason is you'll be reinventing how things are run here as time goes by, so to speak. First you'll be soft, careful not to make enemies, not to make scars. After a bit, skin gets hard, mind gets hard. The cells will get monotonous, the people in 'em jus' clones that make noise and repeat the same phrases, pleads for mercy, testimonies of touching God.

First of all, this place, and I know you're confused 'cause I was my first night in the dark, this place ain't Hell. It's a damn close cousin, could say it's adjacent to it, but it's not Hell itself. I don't think anything alive can dare make that claim where they stand. Sure ain't Heaven, either, though I'm sure you figured that standing there for the two-odd minutes you've been. No, this is jus' a jail you can't never find if you spend your whole young life tryin', but one that's easier to get to than your mama's kitchen.

This place, between upstairs and down, as far as I know ain't got a name. Least not in the years I've been here. Don't need one. People here don't stop to think of what to call these walls. Those who call themselves wise up on the World call it Purgatory. River Styx. It's all bullshit. Jus' some fancy scare words for people who need labels. They can't comprehend this place where we stand.

The reasons people are here really ain't too important, but you'll learn 'em soon anyhow. There's a different reason for every being that lives, countless stories. They're all a hoot, though, shit you don't see in no dime-store spook novel.

From where we stand you can see all of 'em in this circular moss-ridden dungeon. Looks like something from a Mad Max movie. That's probably where they got it. Someone got sent down here, got fixed up good, went back up and wrote those damn movies. Wouldn't be the first time this jail's been ripped off for art. That's good, though. Spreadin' hearsay images of my jail causes dreams, stories. Might educate a few smart souls, keep 'em from being candidates for the next vacant cell.

Let's go over to this cell here, since we're so close. He's sittin' in the corner covered with those shadows. Yeah, that's all him. Fat, gross bastard.

This is Charles. He's been here a while now, broke a long time ago, not that it shortens his stay or nothing. Up on the World he had this real crud job shuffling paper for a trash dump. Took care of the books for garbage collection, had an office with rusty, year-stained walls. The desk jockey for Rice Road Dump.

Everyday he'd come home and beat the crap outta his two kids. Jus' little tikes, they were. The boy's six, the girl's four. Six-year-old hasn't even started school yet. When Charles was at work he'd leave the kids at home to fend for themselves. Wife passed on years ago, tragic thing. When he got home he didn't fix 'em food, didn't bathe 'em. Sent 'em to sleep cryin' every night.

Now Charles wasn't drunk or nothing, his friends say he's alcohol-immune, anyway, from the war and its many adventures. No, everything he did was under his own free will, a natural thinking. The neglect, the beatings, all of it done with open eyes.

Sober beatings really catch our attention here, though toasted ones don't slip away none, either.

The tikes being' so young, so loyal, don't tell no stories about their pop. They don't lie when asked, but they don't demand anything or volunteer information, defending him when they feel they need to. They're confused, stuck between their own happiness and their tie to Dad.

The grandparents, Momma's folks, take Charles to court all the time. Being that he's their sole parent, and being that he can put on a good show for the judge, the grandparents always lose. Kids do, too, if you think about it. The big factor in the cases is that there's never any proof. There's piles of testimony, opinions of scores of neighbors and acquaintances, coworkers' observations. Yet, there's nothin' concrete.

What's probably Charles' one talent is that he can beat a child like he would a man in a bar and not leave any marks, least none that could be interpreted as only a beating. Sometimes I think he should be warden down here.

One night while romancing a $30 bottle of whiskey, he passed out and woke up with me. To his shock, he found himself chained to his cell, restrained by the pain of his children.

Chains here are made up of all sorts of stuff. There's demotions, a big favorite of mine, always does the job. You can take emotions from anyone in the prisoner's life and they'll hit home jus' the same. Then there's memories. Could be the prisoner's own, or that of someone else, or even a collective of many. These chains aren't as quick to work as emotion chains, but they do work, and they work hard once they get going.

Those are the most common, but there's others. Regret. Guilt. Future. Future chains show what can happen, what will happen, in the prisoners' lives, and it's never good. Otherwise, they wouldn't be down here sharing my company.

The thing with guilt, however, is that I never personally use `those chains. Well, sometimes, depending on who we're talkin' about. They jus' seem mild next to the eels.

Over here next door, we got a special one. Reason I think he's special is 'cause he's got some odd disease. Terminally ill, you know, least till they find a cure. Adam's the fellow's name.

Adam sat in another jail up on the World, a short skip from a life sentence, thinkin' about his condition. He figures he ain't no fag, he don't deserve to die, and damned if he's going out alone. A lot of suckers lower on the pole than him, he thinks. It'd be a shame to have their faces be the last thing he saw before he died.

With his logic, he went out to the bullpen with a knife he stole from the kitchen, cut himself, and gave his fatal blood to a few others. Three or four, I'm not sure. All I do know is that one of 'em was this nineteen-year-old kid, doing' time for petty theft. Something we've all done. Everybody's stolen something at least once in their life.

I normally wouldn't mention things like this next part, even I value life, but this is what brought him down here.

The other cons that got Adam's disease, well, they were old, used up, nothing but the rest of a life term in front of 'em. Murderers. Real pieces of work, they were, jus' might take a trip down here one day. But the kid, he didn't belong with 'em. It was a bold thing he did, against the law, but harmless nonetheless. Had only a couple more years before parole, and he woulda made that parole, too. We know things like that here.

Now time hasn't passed enough yet, but that kid's gonna die. No cure in sight for him, he's gonna die.

So we brought his killer, Adam, down here. He ain't got much time left himself, but these walls can stretch time to whatever I need. Ten minutes he'll be dozed off asleep in his cell on the World, a few years he'll be with me. This old boy got a couple of bucketfuls soon as he arrived. I was actually about to give Charles his right now, too.

These buckets will be yours in a bit. They're all full of eels for the prisoners. Eels are the next step up from chains. The ones I use the most are lies. Lies about one's life, the lives of their loved ones, about their deeds, lies that could be true.

Now those eels slither for a while, registering in the subject's head. Once accepted, they clamp down with their jaws, wigglin', suckin' the life out of whoever's in the cell, drivin' those lies into 'em. They're almost always accepted, makin' 'em go nuts. In a place like this, hope is pretty scarce. We don't brainwash 'em, though, jus' make 'em see what they should've seen up there a long time ago.

The truth is another eel. It's jus' like a lie, except it doesn't slither. It strikes fast, hittin' right for the neck, stickin' good and hard until the stay is done, don't waste no time. Those hurt the most, I think.

This next cell is also a special case. Guess it's fitting I show you the specials, most of what we have down here run the same ground. Adultery, theft, murder. Got lots of murderers here.

This next boy, Billy, was jus' tryin' to fit in with his buddies, or at least who he wanted as his buddies. That was his first mistake.

On a dare, he went down to the shopping mall and stole a car. Nothin' fancy, jus' something easy to get into, little econo-box car. Stealin' it gave Billy a high; doing something wrong, knowing that he'd be let into the cool crowd, all that shit.

On that high, he decided he wanted to do something that would attract attention, that would be seen by his new pals. Something they would talk about at school for weeks, putting his school, and himself, on the map, under the glass. He decided to turn his little joyride into an Indy 500 through suburbia, racing down narrow residential streets, running stop signs, maybe hopping a few lawns. Broad daylight an' all, didn't think nothing tragic would happen.

Swerving around a blind corner, Billy slammed into a man walking a dog. He hit that man hard. Hell, I felt it. The dog managed to avoid the scrape, but his owner died instantly. That's probably the only good thing about this particular story, that he didn't suffer. Not alive, anyway.

Half confused, half chicken-shit, Billy put the gas to the floor on his econo-box, without using any mirrors.

There were no witnesses to the hit, but there was a cop car nearby, looking for the reported madman driving through all the neighborhoods. They found the run down man, they found his dog, and a half-hour later they found the econo car. It seems that, having thoughts about leavin' the man to die, not checkin' to see if he was alive at all, Billy panicked and parked the car not even five blocks away.

He got out and ran, and he ran good. He footed it through backyards, down alleys, scampered behind anything bigger than him. He spent the night in some suburbanite's tool shed, waiting for the dawn, praying not to see a cop's flashlight first.

Now this ain’t even the worst part, him gettin' away with it, 'cause what he didn't know at the time was that the cops didn't bother to comb the area for him at all. The first thing they did was look up the license plate of the car, tracing it to its owner.

The owner unfortunately lived only a few streets from where the car was dumped. He had jus' got home from walkin' the six miles from the shopping mall when the police arrived to arrest him. Apparently, the computer that told the cops who the car belonged to also told them about his criminal past. Nothin' to base a movie on, jus' petty stuff like stickin' up a convenience store when he was a kid, a spot of vandalism to boot.

Cleaned up since then, he became a salesman of some sort. A respected one, too. Sold toiletries to small businesses; toilet paper, soap, commode covers. Cops didn't give a fuck about all that. They didn't believe that the little gas-saver car of a con was the object of another thug's desires. They cuffed him, closed the books, and went for cruellers.

Mr. Toiletries went to trial, where he still is, and is probably gonna get a stiff penalty. I don't know about death, but it'll definitely be something he don't deserve, something no one aside from a true murderer deserves.

At the moment we pulled Billy down, he was sittin' in a wicker chair in front of his TV, a couple of dimes of heroine in his arm, watching coverage of the Trial of the Sadistic Salesman. Big media thing, opened up new questions about the way criminals are treated, how they're judged fit to rejoin society or not. The man that was walking his dog during Billy's race against peer pressure turned out to be a BMOC; Big Man Of the Community.

The drugs made the pull on Billy all the more easier. First thing I did was sick a couple of buckets on him, watch the guilt pile to his shoulders. With this boy it wasn't a chore, 'cause he already had a trace of the bug in his head. Little bug gnawing at his mind, replaying everything over and over.

The moment he hit that man, the moment after when he realized what happened. The windshield didn't get touched, jus' the grille. The snap and twist of a torso as it bent impossibly over the hood. Slow-motion, it seemed. Billy felt his heart race from the moment, ready to collapse as he fled the bloody car, hurdling the endless fences in near-dark, wondering what to do, debating what to do. Nowhere to go, no hiding spots, no excuses. That open shed he eventually discovered was more a curse than a salvation.

Those bugs, like the one Billy's got, we don't stock away any of those down here. Everyone's got one in their head already, so we jus' work with those. The more dirt, the more chewin'. The more messed up an individual is, the harder and deeper that bug bores, straight into your mind till it can lick the rocky core we all try to cover up.

Like I said, we don't have those bugs down here, but what we do is take 'em out of these poor bastards' noggins and give 'em the strength of a swarm. We put 'em back in good and tight, seal it up and let 'er rip. Make the chains and even the eels look like fat-free cotton candy.

These brain bugs ain't all bad, though. You see, sometimes they're sleepin', like hibernating'. Could be happiness, could be ignorance, both maybe. It's never innocence. Innocence doesn't exist, really. I know.

What brings folks down here? One reason, a million reasons. I ain't no expert, despite my soon-to-be-ex-profession, but this is how I see it; no one has the Guarantee of Life. That is, no one has the guarantee that life will be perfect or anywhere close to perfect. Same goes for one's afterlife. Especially no guarantees there, no matter how much faith you've drowned yourself in.

Only exceptions are pitiful employees like me.

Being jailkeeper pays spit. The paycheck is being made to witness and create the suffering of countless people, having no concept of time, makin' it oceans worse than it could be alone.

It's the benefits that make up for everything. Benefit, I should say. Jailkeeper position gets the Guarantee of Life. You serve the Powers, you know your future is on a velvet cloud.

I was there, now you are.

That's down here, of course. Up there ain't no one, I don't care if you're the Pope or Beaver Cleaver, no one has that piece of paper.

Exceptin' maybe little kids and retards. Retards don't know enough to get rejected or accepted, so they get in by default. That ignorance-is-bliss thinkin', it's their life. It ain't no lie, either, nothing's truer.

With kids, little kids, that paper sticks with them from the womb. They got the Guarantee of peaceful existence, up there, down here. But somewhere around adolescence, eight or nine, that paper starts to fade and fall apart. By the time they're twelve, their innocence is all used up. Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot, but jus' not being whole anymore spoils the paper. Seems to happen earlier each generation. Whenever it happens, though, rest assured it always does.

This little thing, Lily, has the next cell. Now she had the Guarantee for a long time, longer than most. Even in her teens, that paper still held strong. She always did her work in school, always minded her parents, didn't wonder too far about the workings of the world and its peoples. She went to church and blindly followed her faith like she was told to.

Something happened later on. I guess being so good and innocent, you can get hooked up with the bad seeds faster. They have a wider canvas to splash their corruption on. It seems they show you things you ain't never seen, and in concentrate.

When she was twenty-three, Lily got involved with a piece of shit, an addict that abused his substance and eventually her. She closed her eyes jus' like in church and let the rocks fall where they did, not questioning, not doing anything. Pretty soon, she began denying what she couldn't hold back covering her eyes with her hands. How could her first true love do things like that? She must have exaggerated her pain, she thought. She must have deserved it.

We have yet to drag her man down here. He still has a few things to do before we have enough to dump on him. You see, this jail, being here, is like a vision. A revelation. An incomprehsible nightmare that hopefully has the grits to kick you in the right mind slot. But you only visit these walls once. No one sees visions more than that. You can get high and pretend you can, but that's all bullshit. The don't make a pill for instant miracles.

There's a difference between a drug screwin' with your senses and my clammy hands wrapping icy sorrow chains around your feet, making you immobile, a statue. Can't even scream till I make you.

Now in Lily's case, the only person getting violated was her. But letting someone drown you is just as bad as drownin' someone yourself. After all, you gotta count number one as a person, too. Besides, through her silence, that bastard is free to destroy others.

When we were lookin' towards her way, we had a few things planned. Nothing big, jus' some bug maintenance, chains, a spot next to the fat man. I had my hands out to her when she got into an accident. Weird thing, too, 'cause I can normally foresee things like that. Figure I must have slipped or something.

What happened was that she got hit by a semi-truck. Got banged up bad, put her in a coma. When she came out of it, she wasn't right, missin' something. A vegetable, spends her days sittin' in front of the hospital TV or sometimes a real window, a fixed gaze on her like she was made of wax. She gets fed through her veins and probably will for life.

Being the novelty she was, we didn't know what to do with her. Discussions took place and theories were made. First thought was to bring her down here and re-hab her, bring her out of that pathetic state of living. We'd sick the demons on her once she was through. This way, she'd come out of her sunlight grave pullin' her hair out, swimmin' through all the regret and shame we could muster. Wonderin' about what she could've done, what she still can do. If only it wasn't too late, if only she wasn't an invalid. Awakening every one of those dead senses with more fire than any of them could handle over countless lifetimes.

I voted for that one.

The second thought was to bring her here as is, pumping the nightmares into that white sand desert of a girl. No point to it, really. You can't suffer if you're already living a nightmare, or if you're a slab of stone. It's like takin' a shotgun to a hunk of Swiss cheese. Already has holes, just a waste of buckshot. Hell, she ain't gonna understand anything we might do.

But the Powers decided to go with the latter plan. I listened and did my job, threw her into a cell with a couple of bucketfuls. Tossed those eels on everyday for the past year, a few days of her coma up on the World. They jus' slide right off her pale wax body and crawl along the floor. There ain't nothing to hook their fangs onto. Too clean. Comatose is too much a neighbor to being a retard, least for this young thing.

It's as though the Guarantee she had for so long and then lost, well, it's like it got renewed. Sounds impossible, but that's the way it seems.

So now I'm handing these buckets to you. You're the one in charge now. I don't remember what my predecessor told me as he left through his door, but it musta been decent advice 'cause they kept me here so long, longer than you'll be here, hopefully.

As for me, I'm headin' back up there to live out the rest of my physical life till my afterlife comes callin'. Got the Guarantee in my back pocket, and I plan on keeping it whole till I die.

I tell you, though. Sometimes I feel like this is my bucket of eels and chains. Sometimes I feel like they brought me down here to supervise all the pain, years of it, as a punishment for a crime I committed so long ago I can't remember. Makin' me jailkeeper and savin' my soul, thinkin' I was given exception to the Guarantee rule, was the grand torture.

Years will go by up on the World, I'm gonna pass on, and I'll realize it was all a big lie. A huge demon clamped onto my neck for decades.

I consider myself saved, whatever the truth is. Not the type of saving that they pipe into you up there; the Messiah saved me, the Lord saved me, I confessed my sins and now I'm born again to sin some more. Goin' to church is fine, but it don't save you. A lot of bastards down here can tell you that, including the priest in the next cell.

No, it's when they toss your ass on this cobblestone and show you wonders you can't see in church or in drugs or in anywhere. That's the revelation. You discover it for yourself. It ain't spoon-fed in a sugar-coated package labeled “Good kids go to Heaven, Bad kids go to Hell“.

Damn shame it takes pain to make most people stand, see the sky and everyone livin' under it. Damn shame it takes your blood and your mind, most of the time nothing less will do. A soldier in a foreign land, facing his own death, surrounded by men trained to hate him, is closer to the Almighty than any bible-toting suburbanite. That soldier keeps his eyes fixed on the heavens while lying face-down in his own hell.

I won't dismiss the possibility that the existence of this jail is all a sham, that I'll be in a cell when the charade is done, maybe sooner. All the ooze that poured out through these bars during my tour of duty will be my blood in another life. The things I was told to do become the things I'm damned for, all under the same roof.

But I'm pretty confident that I'm saved, more so than most anyone can imagine. So I guess I'm back where I was to begin with, before they gave me this job. Back with the masses, where they've always been and always will be.

I guess I'm jus' clingin' on to faith.