 
### Ashes & Raven Feathers Extended Preview Edition

Copyright 2017 T. C. Clover

Published by T.C. Clover at Smashwords

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This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your enjoyment only, then please return to Smashwords.com or your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

I. Differentiation

II. Archuleto

III. The Guest in 336

IV. Artimus & Hailey

V. The Odd Hours

VI. Destiny's Fifth Symphony

VII. Tender Loving Spurs

VIII. Prom King

IX. Quantum Hysterics

X. No Draymont No Cry

XI. Wings of Affections

XII. Non-Celestial Bodies

XIII. Dray's Penthouse

XIV. Montclair New Jersey

XV. Refresh

Other books by T. C. Clover

Connect with T. C. Clover

Acknowledgements

Dedication: For Tatyana Alexandra Khorishko, a genuine warrior of incredible passion; my inspiration, and someone I love very much.

To my father and siblings (in alphabetical order): Robbie Griffith, James Sellers, Jodi Sellers, and Shane Sellers.

To my mentors Jacque Turner-Schettler and Don Miles. I hope this work does justice for the wisdom that you have shared. I'm grateful.

To Tierney Roberts for your beautiful and inspired cover artwork. Please visit: www.TierneyRoberts.com for some incredible designs.

Twitter: @TierneyRoberts

I. Differentiation

R. H. R. R. Harrington relaxed his fifty-two-year-old body against a cheap plastic seat at a beach cafe in Paris, France. It was a bittersweet morning for the best-selling author, and he wasn't excited for another interview to promote his most recent novel. Richard fantasized about a twenty-five-year-old woman who propositioned him at a book signing ten days ago in Alabama. In the midst of this fantasy, he unconsciously slid his right hand between the buttons of his white shirt and began playing with his left nipple. Memories of her dark hair and animated brown eyes were haunting him every few hours as the author imagined the pleasures she could have afforded his ego.

"Richard Harrington?" A voice called out from a few feet away.

Richard froze in the white plastic chair, realizing that he was biting his lip and rubbing his chest with his eyes closed.

"Yes, one moment," he replied without opening his eyes, pretending that his eyelids were some form of a public dressing room.

The shamefaced author slid his hand out of his shirt and used it to scratch the underside of his chin. He opened his eyes as his fingernails dragged against the beard hairs on a jaw that went unshaved for three days. Richard's expression shifted to confusion when he noticed that the interviewer from Publishers Weekly was more fashion savvy than he.

"Good to meet you, Richard, I'm Ronny Hibiscus," the middle-aged journalist stated as he sat down opposite his subject in a similar plastic chair. "Should we get started talking about your new book? Isn't it entitled UTR Cults and Their Followers?"

"Boy, you get right down to business, don't you?" Richard posited anxiously. "Don't we usually talk about my childhood and how I got established?"

Ronny trained his eyes on the author in a manner that made him shift his weight away from the journalist. The interviewer had a strange and captivating body language, and he changed his expression every few seconds like a boxer trying to keep his opponent off balance. Richard held his breath during an uncomfortable silence between them, wondering if he saw the man give him a threatening look before breaking into a broad smile, or if fatigue was getting the better of him.

"We already have a story on file about your childhood, Mr. Harrington," the journalist assured him. "Apparently, your agent told my office that you'd like to keep this short so that you can get back to relaxing. Isn't this also a vacation?"

"Yes, by all means, let's keep it brief," the author agreed with a forced smile. "Charlie is a good man; I owe a lot to him for his dedication and tenacity."

"I'm sure Charlie is a good man, but your agent's name is Katia," Ronny said with bemusement. "Have I passed the test, sir? Can we begin your interview now?"

"Okay, what do you want to know about the book?" Richard inquired as his chest relaxed and his gaze drifted into the distance. "I'm all yours, Publishers Weekly."

The journalist leaned in closer to his subject, and his eyes became bright with a hunger for knowledge as he clasped his hands together on the tabletop.

"There's one particular under the radar cult that I'd like to explore," the journalist began, using his tongue to moisten his lips. "In your book, you call them The Lords of Atlas - a cult that worships the universe and its movements."

"Was there a question in that sentence?" The author redirected after a short pause, defensively folding his arms.

"No," Ronny confirmed and unclasped his hands to rest them atop the table. "You mention that every cult has a moment of crescendo, where the leadership implodes, like a black hole, taking all of the members with him or her. Why does that happen?"

"During my research, I found that cult leaders have sociopathic tendencies, and those tendencies become more self-serving over time." Richard began with a thoughtful gaze, keeping his attention fixed on the crowd of pedestrians. "Their selfishness expands like gravity; it pulls in and destroys everything that they cared about...until they need to escape from the horrors of their actions."

"Your book talks about stages of implosion," the journalist stated with a twist of his neck, "and you describe an incident with The Lords of Atlas, but you don't elaborate on it. Why?"

"My computer was hacked, and all of the files were stolen!" The author exclaimed with a shrug. "You could have read about that without getting on a plane." He added and chuckled.

"Were the files actually stolen?" Ronny challenged with a callous stare. "Because I heard that you were shaken almost to the point of cardiac arrest by a member of that cult. Didn't they do something to your family?"

"No, my sister's abduction had nothing to do with my work," the writer fumed, tilting forward and back in his chair, "and she's back at home safe with her husband. That ended months ago! How dare you bring that up? I'm going to call your editor when I get back to the hotel!" He growled and ran his right hand over his soft, white hair.

"What if you were wrong about the structure of the cult?" The interviewer proposed with his right index finger pointed at the center of the table. "After all, these groups can't be universal, and you don't seem to know much about them. What if the cult leader had someone to oversee his or her activities?"

"That's not possible," Richard blurted out, causing the interviewer to raise his eyebrows, "the cult leader would destroy anyone who undermined his authority. There's no balance of power when you deal with these people. The leaders always devolve into their animal desires and destroy everyone in the group. Why don't we move on to one of the other cults, in the interest of time?"

"The other organizations are of no interest to me, Mr. Harrington; nor are you, or your pithy career."

There was the faint wail of sirens coming from about three blocks away, and the interviewer got to his feet, staring dominantly down his nose at the plump writer.

"You guys really screwed my sister up," the author muttered weakly, looking at his companion with dread. "It took a team of psychologists six weeks to get her to speak to us; you're the scum of the earth!"

"When two celestial bodies collide, regardless of the circumstances, there is beauty and reconfiguration." The mysterious stranger preached as he wiped off the sleeves of his black suit jacket. "In our world, there's no difference between assault and sports, torture and hugs, or even life and death. You find yourself in awe of asteroids because of their destructive power. When there is a supernova, a primal curiosity takes over, and we can't look away. The same phenomenon applies to a car accident; we can't avert our eyes. The symphony of the universe is the only God you'll ever have, and you can't deny the awesomeness of the power therein. It is a real and tangible religion, based on science and discovery. In other words, from our perspective, we have proven the concept of God, and you are the cultists. Does it make more sense to worship mythologies or grandiose objects that can be seen and studied? Like the universe, we are meant to move, and the only real evil in the vastness of eternity is stillness and apathy."

"I promise not to release any of that information," Richard replied in a louder voice over the sounds of the sirens.

"You already have, Richard," the man argued as he stepped several feet away from the table, glancing at his watch, "and the books are printing in Wisconsin as we speak. But I apologize...I'm not going to look away."

The Witness flashed a Machiavellian smile to the author and moved farther away from the outdoor dining area. Richard felt a little implosion of defeat radiate from the core of his body as his nemesis celebrated prematurely. He looked to his left and saw a yellow sports car roaring up the roadway without regard for life or property. There were at least two police cars in pursuit of the speeding Maserati, and it headed towards the author with menacing precision.

Every cell in the doomed man's body demanded that he take flight from this 4,000-pound threat to his life, but he refused to display cowardice during his final seconds on earth. Richard Harrington squared his shoulders and placed both hands on the cold plastic table, feeling the chill sooth him while his insides churned with the anxiety of an unfair ending.

People were glaring at The Witness as he stood above them on a poorly maintained bus bench, but their moods changed when the sirens and racing cars broke the silence of the Parisian beach. He felt tears drip from the corners of his eyes as the universe presented a public death - one of its rare pleasantries. His right arm extended above the crowd holding a smart phone, which he used to film the events as if he were on safari.

The Witness cried more when the sounds of chaos shifted the focus of the crowd with a continuity that was nothing less than living poetry. In a brief instant, he saw uniform concern from every person in the area, and then returned his gaze to the author who awaited his doom like a loyal bull. He wondered if the man had decided to die bravely due to guilt over his sister's abduction, or if his posturing was pride.

His quiet contemplation shattered to obscurity when the yellow sports car wiped the outdoor dining tables from the face of the earth as if a tsunami had swept them toward the sea. There was a slight impact and a hint of blood shooting through the air, and then only an empty street corner remained. The people around him were in immediate shock; some of them screamed, while others looked on in silence.

As he stood over the group of frightened and confused beings, The Witness felt a warm sensation radiating from his pelvis. This debauchery was not a pedestrian feeling of omnipotence; he was experiencing something greater - omnipresence. A woman placed her hand on his shoulder and patted it with comforting grace, and he greedily clasped his hand over hers, realizing that his tears had humanized him among the crowd.

The Witness smiled and posed like The Madonna, becoming a statuesque figure for the people to embrace from afar. But beneath his vulnerable exterior, a wicked pride grew fiercer, and he let himself be their angel of death. The universe had blessed him with a moment in time as perfect as he could have ever wanted.

II. Archuleto

'I hate them, but their toys and palaces by the oceans make my spirit rise,' Zigmund Archuleto confessed to himself while trudging through blinding sheets of frigid rain. The twenty-four-year-old New Yorker observed his feet as they cut through puddles of dirty water on a private Manhattan roadway. His forehead seemed to emanate heat from the harrowing flu that he had caught two days ago. Each time he raised and lowered his legs, steaming breath from his lips escaped into the twilight abyss. It seemed like the bitter cold was a vacuum of death, purging the life from his body in a suffocating display of nature's ironic fury. Zigmund was amused at the idea that one of the few decent men in attendance may die of a high fever only minutes into the gathering. He smirked at the thought of aggrandizing himself as a 'decent man;' perhaps the severe influenza was too liberating.

A pair of bright headlights appeared just thirty feet from where he stood, and a black Jaguar sports sedan pointed the beams at his body as the vehicle came to an abrupt halt on the saturated asphalt. The hedge fund manager stopped walking and fumbled in the left pocket of his black overcoat. Another pair of headlights shone upon the street from his backside, and he heard a second vehicle approaching. Zigmund gripped an object in his pocket with anxious fingers but swore at himself when he realized that it was a bottle of recreational Percosets. He turned slightly to the right and saw two shotguns protruding from the driver side windows of a limousine that was approaching him with aggression. The panicked man dropped the painkillers and dug deeper into his overcoat until he felt the familiar ridges of a hollow object. Zigmund snatched the object from his pocket like the ripcord of a parachute and heard the faint sound of something splashing down into a puddle near his feet. He immediately dangled a necklace composed of red-stained seashells with his left hand in the bright rays of light produced by the Jaguar. Archuleto had covered the right side of his face out of instinct and was awaiting the sounds of gunfire. The necklace was more than just decorative; it contained infrared LED lights that the security cameras recognized easily on the private street, even from a distance and during a rain storm.

Zigmund inhaled the cold air until his lungs were filled and refused to move as the limousine came to a stop at his right. He heard the humming engines of the two cars despite the relentless splashing of rain drops throughout the city. The fearful man realized that his hosts had decided not to shoot him, and he elected to lower his right arm, allowing them to see his face. After a brief inspection of his profile, the shotgun barrels retreated inside of the limousine, and the windows rolled up to the closed position. Zigmund lowered the seashell necklace and nodded in a silent apology to the unseen guards. He was relieved when the limousine began to roll slowly forward, but the driver hit the accelerator when the rear wheel was close to Zigmund and soaked his pants with filthy rainwater. The limousine then maneuvered into the middle of the wide road in a reckless display of dominance, almost striking the front fender of the stationary Jaguar.

The day trader exhaled with mixed emotions and glanced down at the bottle of Percosets that flipped out of his coat pocket when he retrieved the seashell necklace. Zigmund wrapped the necklace twice around his right arm, securing it near his elbow with a small gold clasp. The Jaguar flashed its high beams three times, signifying that he was in compliance and allowed to pass. Unlike the occupants of the larger vehicle, the driver of the Jaguar drove past him in a smooth and steady line toward the end of the road.

Zigmund coughed and turned his head to the right as he watched the sports car move ninety yards away from his position and disappeared around the corner. He bent forward and fished in a shallow puddle by his left foot until the bottle of drugs was firmly in his grasp. The hardened plastic in his hand gave him some form of comfort, and he shoved it back into his coat pocket as if it were his oxygen supply. Zigmund felt his fever ascending to levels of delirium from which he surmised there was no reprieve. As a longtime member of this society, he should never have entered the grounds without a symbol of indoctrination. He coughed again, and his chest felt as if it were filled with broken glass. This disruption inspired the ailing businessman to quicken his pace, and he crossed the remaining hundred yards like a convict on the run.

Archuleto rushed toward the three-inch-thick mahogany entryway doors of a mansion at the end of the street. He gripped the black steel door handle at the right and felt too small to gaze up at the heights of stone from which the fortress was constructed. Two guards in the coat check room drew black, semiautomatic pistols from holsters under their jackets and aimed at the center of his body as he stumbled through the front door. The unhealthy houseguest put his hands in the air and leaned back against the door to demonstrate that he meant no harm. Both guards smiled at the confusion in his soft brown eyes with relaxed gazes of superiority and put their weapons away. Zigmund's fever was so dominant that he couldn't determine the motive for their devious smiles. He was like a child made to sing for his supper and dragged his feet across the fancy carpeting in the entryway before setting his coat on the counter. The young man wiped some rain drops from his short black hair and shook more moisture from his head to aggravate the guards.

"Kteinein khein," Archuleto muttered to the men as he watched them put a tag on his overcoat and lock it away in a closet.

He awaited a response from them and leaned further over the wooden coat check counter. One of them finally waved him off before engaging in a conversation of whispers with his colleague. Zigmund heard an electronic lock disengage at the second set of heavy wooden doors and he made his entrance from the right side again. The sounds of people talking and laughing were a bit much for someone in his condition, and he coughed loudly in the foyer, hearing his discomfort echo off of the grand architecture high above his head. Zigmund saw three upside-down paintings mounted to the walnut-colored wall of the main staircase and decided to indulge a closer look. The orange staircase carpeting was embroidered with neat blue diamonds, and Archuleto had to look away for fear of vomiting. Zigmund loitered under the paintings for several minutes, intentionally avoiding the hedonistic activities that he knew were taking place throughout the mansion.

The art was simple in its elegance, bearing neat strokes covering underlying sketch drawings; none of which would have been remotely close to the sophistication and charm of Leonardo da Vinci. He focused on a painting at the center of the set that was popular among those who visited the home. It featured a battlefield scene juxtaposed with a royal birthday party. On one side, soldiers clashed with iron weapons in armor, and on the other, partygoers engaged in twisted games of deception using blindfolds and packages adorned with stylish bows. Zigmund knew without closer inspection that every character in the painting was in motion, which had been explained to him by The Witness on a tour of the property.

"Why are you so late?" A sullen male voice called out from the top of the stairs.

"Oh, hello, Brick," Zigmund blurted out, attempting to hide his displeasure by feigning a stabbing pain in his head.

'Brick' Joseph Beckham had been a member of Ashes & Raven Feathers since middle school - a detail that he kept desperately close to his heart in every conversation. He shuffled down the stairs like a deified corpse, entitled and pale with haunting eyes that seemed to track every movement in his midst.

"I know you're a phony," the tall man whispered as his black tuxedo pant legs swayed above the fabric of the carpeting. "What was it that got you into this house? Wasn't it manipulation and clever networking? I'd hate to see what The Witness would do to you if he felt what I feel every time I see your face!"

"Brick, I'm not in the f***ing mood, okay?" Archuleto warned and held up his left hand to the oppressive attorney, feeling like a cast member in a contrived stage play of Cinderella.

"Your real name is Arthur Higgins," his nemesis continued as he locked eyes with Zigmund at the center of the staircase. "I've looked up your house, and your vacation home - mine are much nicer, but yours don't fit..."

"Mine don't fit what, Brick?" Zigmund demanded with irritation, turning his attention back to the painting and popping his neck in the process.

"Twenty-five-point-eight inches wide by twenty-five-point-eight inches high," Brick stated, shifting his attention to the paintings as well. "Did you know that they're almost 666 inches square?"

"Satanists are imbeciles," he agreed with Brick and silently excused himself by descending the staircase toward the ground floor.

Zigmund glanced back at Brick and caught the man looming obsessively over him, watching his footsteps with too much fascination. He quickened his pace with a reaffirmed sense of belonging, muffling his cough every few seconds into the right sleeve of his suit jacket. The halls of the mansion had ominous, flickering fireplaces with flames enhanced by incandescent red and yellow lamps strewn throughout the winding labyrinth of smooth, seamless black walls. Archuleto happened upon a few groups of men and women in these heavily trafficked spaces, kissing and groping one another for the visual satisfaction of the party guests. He almost believed the attractive performers, but behind their masks of leather and scintillating outfits, lurked murderous ambitions that far exceeded the perverted acts in which they were indulging.

The hallways opened up to a grand ballroom, where over a hundred members socialized around the base of a broad marble staircase. Zigmund lifted his gaze to see statues on platforms at either side of the staircase. Each statue had the combined features of angels and demons. There were devilish faces with angelic bodies and all manner of blasphemous hybrids amongst the chiseled figures of eighteen ten-foot statues. His eyes locked on a security door at the top of the stairs, where many of the envious partygoers had congregated. It had taken Archuleto half a decade to gain access to that door, and the guards that surrounded it seemed no less foreboding than they had on his first visit to the titular mansion. Each member of the security team had dyed their hair white and covered their faces in black grease paint. They carried AA-12 automatic shotguns as their primary weapons, and each had a 9mm submachine gun slung around his or her torso as a secondary weapon.

In addition to the armed forces that protected the VIP entryway, there were black Miniguns mounted to the banisters at the top of the staircase. Each six-barrel rotary weapon was capable of firing 5,000 rounds per minute, enough to slaughter every person who dared to rush toward the secure area of the building.

He felt dizzy looking upward at this living tapestry of power and had to close his eyes every few seconds while walking toward the stairs. Zigmund ascended the bluish green staircase, dodging past socialites on his way to the top of the structure, feeling a fair amount of vomit trying to force its way past his esophagus to the outside world. Although a few patrons tried to delay him for conversations, they knew he wasn't going to bother frolicking with deer on his way to the lion's den. After what seemed like a Herculean feat of climbing the stairs, Archuleto approached the security gate that led to the VIP wing of the mansion. A male guard in his fifties nodded to him and looked over his body in search of any potential threats.

The security gate featured a three-foot black, biometric security scanner that could be mistaken for a modern steel cannon. Zigmund took a deep breath and put his right arm inside of the steel cylinder until it covered his elbow. He also gazed into a retinal scanner that was mounted just above the fingerprint reader. During his tour of the mansion, the guide advised him that the fingerprint scanner could rip someone's arm off at the elbow if they weren't authorized to enter the area. The retinal scanner was also too modern to fool as it would only react to the eyeball of a conscious, living person listed among those in its database.

"Why is your heart rate so high?" The checkpoint guard demanded after glancing at the small security monitor.

"I have the flu," Zigmund muttered with embarrassment, keeping his gaze fixed on the man and refusing to appear intimidated.

"Welcome, Mr. Archuleto," he said with an expression of relief.

The security chief punched a six-digit code into the computer, and the gate behind him opened, allowing Zigmund access to the VIP area of the mansion. Archuleto coughed into the sleeve of his jacket again, watching the militant man recoil somewhat from the raucous sounds of his illness. It took a few seconds for the narrow gate to open, and he concluded that the VIP section would never accommodate an obese person. Zigmund stepped past the open security gate on his way to the marvelous oak double doors that led to the honey pot of power. He ignored the speed at which the gate slammed shut behind him; its hydraulic screech sending echoes through the ballroom below. Archuleto imagined the jealous faces of those who weren't allowed into the VIP area and their internal fears of never in a lifetime knowing what was beyond the fifteen-foot doors. He gripped the right door handle and pulled the large door aside, slipping into the bosom of the most powerful organization in New York. Zigmund smiled with delicious entitlement, relieved to be in the section of the mansion that was high above everyone else. This exclusive area had no door locks, and nothing was off limits to those few members who were fortunate enough to pass through the hallways.

He stopped in the VIP foyer and saw something he'd never witnessed before in that area of the building. There were three bodies face down on the white marble flooring of the entryway. Each body was surrounded by a small pool of dark blood and smelled awful. Archuleto knew better than to ask questions; murder was not considered a sin among this group, and it was celebrated under the right circumstances. This betrayal of his senses caused vomit to creep up in his throat again, trying to force his humanity to the surface. Zigmund held the liquid back with intense control of his mouth and esophagus. He didn't know if the bodies were of fallen comrades, enemies, or just performers splayed out to test the loyalty of those in the inner sanctum.

Among the victims were two men and a woman; each of them middle-aged and dressed in formal clothing for the event. There were no wounds in the back of the woman's dress or the suit jackets of the men, and Archuleto stepped over them with woeful reservations. Despite the empathy that was welling up within him, members of Ashes & Raven Feathers were required to ignore these acts like obedient houseguests. This decree meant that he was expected to step over them like spilled bowls of fruit on the floor. It was a macabre scene that seemed several hours old, and he detected cowardice in his heart for walking past the victims like a mess made by any normal five-year-old boy.

Archuleto felt fortunate that none of the faces were familiar to him, and he tried to calm his breathing as he strolled towards the lounge. Zigmund knew that mentioning dead bodies, assault, or any other acts despised by the outside world would result in a painful execution for him and his family. During his suspended denial of events like these, he took comfort in the fact that the next room contained the most expensive and exotic drugs on the planet. Although he fancied himself a stronger man, Archuleto knew that he would proudly wear the monkey on his back. The drugs spoke to him in ways that nothing else in the physical world could. They took away his pain, time, regret, and most of all, the dullness of being a mere mortal.

Zigmund made his way from the shadowy, gothic marble surfaces of the foyer to the dark, cerebral hardwoods and digital displays of the lounge. There was no place in the mansion like the lounge; it consisted of six floating wet bars suspended from the ceiling by black steel cables. Each bar was hand-carved from cherry wood and fashioned with black leather padding. The sinks and faucets were custom-made from black steel, each with raven's claws to operate the hot and cold water, having only a single pliable tube feeding through the floor for drainage. Every other surface of the room was covered in Ultra-High-Definition LCD panels, projecting images of the solar system, black holes, supernovas, and other heavenly bodies. A digital artist had been hired to create an immaculate loop of footage set to a mix of powerful industrial music, resulting in the most expensive and lengthy light show of the solar system ever conceived.

"Archuleto! My favorite Homosapien," Bernie quipped from the far end of the room. "Come and join our spiritual journey."

Zigmund smiled at the devious faces of guests through the flicker of the celestial light show, noting that the room was particularly dark despite the radiance of the LCD panels. The senior members of Ashes & Raven Feathers had grown out long beards and dyed them pure white to appear godly among their lesser colleagues. The men kept their hair cropped short and dyed white, while the women grew their hair down to their waists and dyed it the same color. On his way to the back of the lounge, he saw Senator Rothschild talking in animated fashion to a senior male member. They were saying something about decorative boulders and landscaping projects. Zigmund got chills whenever he saw the senator, and he wondered why the man didn't grow a beard out like his colleagues, though his reasons seemed politically motivated. The light show was suddenly ablaze with the aftermath of a supernova, and Senator Rothschild caught Zigmund spying on him in lighting as bright as day. He stared down his nose at the inferior member and grabbed his companion by the shoulder, taking their conversation to a more private area.

"Archuleto, it's okay, the universe is calling to you," Bernie shouted over the pulsating beat of the digital soundtrack. "Come to us, bring forth your majestic bounty of manliness that we might use it to entertain our livestock. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's ass or whatever."

He couldn't help but laugh at Bernie, a forty-seven-year-old child with a bright white beard. Whatever drugs Bernie was on were worth the price of admission.

"Having problems with Senator Rothschild?" Sylvia declared through her decadent black and red glossed lips. "You look like you pissed yourself back there."

"I went to high school with his son Draymont," he replied to the hedonistic thirty-five-year-old vixen. "Draymont and I didn't get along."

"Draymont is a sexy beast; why would you get along?" She inquired with a stare of animal ownership. "But don't worry, Archuleto, Draymont's asteroid shower will come, and it will bath him in beauty and light."

"Beauty and light," Bernie and a few others repeated, raising their glasses to salute the splendor around them.

"What do you mean-" Archuleto began to speak, but Sylvia stepped forward and shoved two brown, round soggy objects into his mouth.

"Shhhh, Archuleto, it's time for you to come into the light," she kissed him with ferocity, trying to show her dominance and passion in a few deliberate movements.

Zigmund felt guilty kissing Sylvia while his wife was at home caring for their four-year-old son Trenton, but he was glad that someone with her cold exterior would soon have his flu virus.

"Did you like our decorations in the foyer, Archuleto?" Bernie beamed with excitement. "What Sylvia just gave you is called Aristotle's Glitch; it's a mind-bending cocktail of all things sensory. And the best part is...it hits the bloodstream like a gamma radiation shower."

"What did you mean about Draymont?" Zigmund asked Sylvia.

The arrogant woman rolled her eyes at him, and he grabbed her hard around the throat, kissing her with murderous intent. His right arm freely groped her body while he constricted her neck with his left hand until he could feel her heartbeat under the surface of the skin. The senior members cheered this lustful attack and celebrated two heavenly bodies colliding in a manner that had no predictable outcome. Whether Archuleto killed her or just got the woman excited, they would praise him for his bold embrace and demonstration of chaos. Zigmund hated the way he felt when he indulged in the ways of the universe, but around him, there were signals of approval, even from Sylvia's eyes whose life was growing shorter by the second. After the guilt passed, he felt powerful watching her die. There was a sinister part of him that also enjoyed not knowing if this moment would be her last, and the energy in the room was electrifying.

Despite the howls from the crowd, he thought of his wife and her irreparable disappointment at his actions. Zigmund knew that he couldn't keep something like this from her and mercifully released his grip from Sylvia's throat. His heart sank with her body as it dropped to the floor, but he felt the eyes in the room upon him and forced a smile to his lips. There was nothing he could do but wait to see if she recovered. If he bent down to provide her aid, they would consider him a traitor for tampering with the laws of the universe.

"And the b****'s hostility was what drove Archuleto to her destruction," Bernie cheered in a preemptive victory toast, holding his glass up in the air and receiving applause from the other members in the room. "Thank you for that beautiful moment! Every part of my body is alive with the fires of chaos and the waters of destiny." He moved forward and hugged Zigmund with the ferocity and zeal of an older brother, stepping on Sylvia's delicate hand in the process.

The drugs began to take effect, and Archuleto felt a wicked quivering in his bowels. He became suddenly terrified that his body would empty its contents from every orifice in the middle of the hug with Bernie. His flu symptoms were somehow amplified by the dose of Aristotle's Glitch, and the squeezing of his body was possibly the worst thing that anyone could do at that moment. As he focused on holding back these bodily functions, his hand began to tremble. Zigmund glimpsed down at Sylvia's unmoving body, and he felt dizzier by the moment, settling into a state of perverse numbness from which there was no return.

Archuleto thought he saw Sylvia's left eye flutter and pushed Bernie back to witness what was happening. After a short pause, the woman gasped in a life-saving breath and began to cough as she lied on her back amongst the images of a burgeoning solar system.

"Oh, wow, she stabbed him!" Bernie shouted to the other members in the room with excitement.

Zigmund turned to peer at his left side where blood was seeping from a small wound in his abdomen. The woman had stuck him with a thin blade that dropped to the floor when she fell due to asphyxiation. He looked closer at the small knife, seeing smudges of his blood on its gleaming surface and pearly white handle.

"She's alive!" Bernie marveled when he saw that Sylvia's legs were flailing on the floor of the lounge. "Thank you so much for this moment, brother," he said with a more aggressive grapple of Archulto's torso. "This is so beautiful! Thank you, Sylvia and Archuleto, for dancing with the hands of fate, and coming back to us with righteous fires in your hearts!"

Zigmund looked at Bernie's face and saw tears of joy streaming from his eyes. He turned toward the other members in the room and saw their fists raised in approval and expressions of gratitude. Archuleto was feeling the full effects of Aristotle's Glitch, and his face was breaking out into a blistering array of sweat. His fellow members of Ashes & Raven Feathers had never appeared so daunting and devoid of humanity as in this moment. Their celebrations of life were almost enough to scare him away from the luxurious lifestyle that they afforded to him and his family. But just when he concluded that this lifestyle was too dangerous for him, Aristotle's Glitch kicked in with the most fantastic state of denial he ever experienced.

His heartbeat began to quicken and his muscles became engines of hydraulic destruction, powered by the steam of a demigod. Archuleto saw the woman on the floor as his prize and the fool in front of him as a dancing bear for his amusement. He wrenched Sylvia up from the floor and began to kiss her madly, and she responded in kind, celebrating their brush with death in a cocktail of love and hate. After several seconds of heated passion, Archuleto pulled back and breathed in fiercely.

"I wanted to tell you about Draymont," Sylvia said through heaving breaths. "He'll fall in a moment of glory before millions of witnesses! It will be a spectacle of savageness!"

Zigmund kissed her again with all of his might, cherishing the comeuppance of a bully that had tormented him through all of high school. In the climax of Aristotle's Glitch, he found himself to be an enthusiastic fan of Draymont's downfall.
III. The Guest in 336

Eddie watched the girls blow him a kiss before the elevator doors closed. The hotel waiter knew that the Aircropolus Corporation could terminate him for letting escorts operate on the property. He smiled, and his heart began to pound from the deviousness of his behavior. Aside from the hundred dollar bill they had given him, the girls promised the young man a 'sweaty delight' after his shift ended in the late afternoon. Eddie breathed deeply and gazed at the fancy breakfast, arranged to perfection on his sterling silver tray table. From a reflection on the entree serving dish, the twenty-one-year-old could make out the Asian features of his face, including the goatee he had been growing all winter.

He stood rigid and imposing despite his five-foot-one-inch frame, clasping his hands behind his back and marveling at the mysteries surrounding the meal. For the past month, Eddie had taken over the duty of food service to the 'agoraphobic guest' in room 336. Apparently, the man or woman living in that room had issues with his or her immune system, and nobody from the outside world was allowed to enter.

The waiter twisted his head with greater curiosity, wondering why the guest never changed their diet from one day to the next. Every morning, the meal was salmon, poached eggs, and oatmeal with brown sugar, soy milk, orange juice, wine, and cranberry juice. Eddie had heard stories from his coworkers about the eccentricities of this guest, and rumors that they had stayed at the hotel for over fifteen years without venturing outside. There was gossip about a man in chains howling after the maids to set him free. Others went as far as saying that a deformed person lived in the room, writing stories for The New York Times to maintain their lifestyle.

Eddie was stunned back to action as the elevator chimed before the doors opened, and he rolled the cart with deceptive innocence through the grand hallways of the third floor. He knew that the story about maids was ridiculous since the guest was provided supplies to clean their room.

When the cart approached room 336, Eddie felt his heart pulsating with intrigue and fear. He noticed that the door handle was getting dusty and removed a small cleaning cloth from his back pocket to wipe it down. Among the oddities regarding this room, it was the only door in the building fitted with digital and analog locks. The door handle was also old-fashioned by way of comparison to the décor throughout the building. A digital dumbwaiter had been installed into the outside wall to the right of the door. It was a stainless steel compartment that would only open from one side at a time.

Eddie became aggravated, recalling the many deliveries he made to this resident over the years and the fact that no one gave any tips. Although the hotel quietly took care of him on his paychecks for this service, he felt it was unjust for some anti-social 'bastard' to cheat him out of his rightful wages.

The young man glanced around the hallway and saw two women talking at the far end of the building. He smirked and snatched the wine from its tray, hiding it on the middle shelf of the cart beneath the shroud of the cotton topper. Eddie then removed a security key card from his pocket and inserted it into a card reader next to the dumbwaiter. The small door unlocked, and he brushed it backward before reaching to grasp the breakfast tray with both hands. Once the tray was steady within the compartment, he snapped the door closed and watched the ultraviolet lights turn on inside.

After the lights went out, Eddie began to wheel the cart away, drumming his fingers on its surface in no particular order.

"EEEAAAHHHH!" A male voice boomed from behind the mystery door.

Eddie turned and felt his heart rate rising with the urgency of this new threat. Something smashed hard into the door three times and then stopped. The waiter stood dumbfounded in the middle of the hallway for a moment, wondering if he should give up the wine and leave. But another part of him wanted to know more about this guest, and he felt the risk of a complaint would shed light on the mysteries that his colleagues were too afraid to investigate.

The young man wheeled the cart forward with determination, realizing how odd this arrangement was and wondered why the hotel had so many rules regarding secrecy. He remembered having to sign a non-disclosure agreement, which seemed to detail this scenario, along with many others. Eddie smiled at his cunning nature; all the schmucks downstairs had no idea the amount of free wine, free money, and women that one could have in the hotel business. He was on top of the world.
IV. Artimus & Hailey

Artimus lamented the hierarchy from which he was descendant; his lineage spilled out onto the earth like a biological cocktail of Matryoshka Dolls. He knew that most men would feel enchanted by the lifestyle he was leading. It was midday in Manhattan, and he was enjoying the company of an alluring redhead. The two smoked cigars and gazed at the ceiling, having exhausted their bodies of every pleasure conceivable. She was divinity incarnate on the outside, but the seductress had holes on her insides that would have sunk a battleship. Her companion played at being superior, despite knowing that he was as rusted out in his core as she was hollow.

"How many other people in your life mean something to you?" Artimus asked without being prompted. "I mean, other than your family and friends."

"Three," she whispered just loud enough for him to hear, realizing that he was doing it again.

Hailey waited for another question from her adoring lover and his scarred psyche. She clenched the pillow between her forearms, fearing that he would delve too deep into her life for anything positive to emerge.

"You're too quiet," she said after wading through an uncomfortable silence. "Why?"

Artimus leaned away from her and clenched his cigar with the fingertips of his right hand. He then stared at her with an unsettling darkness in his brown eyes and held up three fingers from his left hand.

"Jealousy is beneath you-" she began to fence with a charming smile, only to be cut off by her dark lover.

"Charlie Marley is going to pay you a visit this week," he said with brazen indifference. "He'll give you five minutes."

A teardrop rolled down her right cheek after this sentence was handed down. The bold redhead shook from her core outward, thinking of all the pain that her honesty just purchased.

"Can you please have him do it next week?" She pled with a tone of hopelessness, sensing a sting of betrayal after giving the senator so much pleasure. "I have a photo shoot this week and would like to look my best."

"I'll tell him to leave your face alone," Artimus replied, running his fingers through his wavy black hair.

"Unfortunately, I have to be almost naked for this shoot," Hailey countered with a wounded smile.

"We'll move it to next week," the politician uttered with fading patience, indicating that his wishes were non-negotiable.

"How is your son?" The young woman pried with a sincere glow in her blue eyes. "Doesn't he have a fight coming up?"

"Draymont is doing well," he responded with prepackaged rhetoric. "I'm glad he stayed away from the drugs and the party people."

"Well, a senator needs to maintain his image," she evoked with a distasteful expression. "Do you love him, Arty?"

"You need to remember that father is always watching," Artmius scolded his date with aggression, gesturing toward a large mirror above the hotel bed.

Hailey stretched out next to the senator in the king bed, gazing at their naked bodies reflected in the massive mirror. The frame that surrounded it was fashioned from stainless steel and engraved with intricate patterns of Roman and Greek influences.

"Perhaps some day I'll have my own Charlie Marley to pay you a visit," she stated playfully, wrapping her left hand around his right.

"Why start now?" He preached to the stillness of the hotel room, gripping her hand with a spirit of youthful need. "But, it would give my secret service agents more to do than sitting out in the hallway, wishing they were me."

"Let's invite them in; it could be hot," Hailey teased and kissed him with eager affection.

V. The Odd Hours

Zigmund was in a state of seething detachment. His hands were locked in forms as if to grip an imaginary surface while his forearms trembled. He sensed something primal hovering over him; it ambled forward to lash out and then retreated to a state of brooding vanity. Archuleto's forehead throbbed with waves of heat that seemed intense enough to redden the top of his skull. Although he wanted to cower and rest until the firestorm within his brain subsided, the massive creature continued to provoke him.

He opened his eyes to an episode of extreme sweat flowing across his forehead and upper torso. The salty, warm liquid stung his right eye as Zigmund glimpsed a swan-like animal flapping its incredible wings and puffing out its chest towards him. It was a gigantic bird of pure white, save for the head, which was striped yellow and red with a pronounced sharp beak. He stopped breathing momentarily to avoid a confrontation with the hulking beast. However, this act seemed to anger the bird, and it stomped forward in a rage of confusion, craning its neck from side to side and glaring at him with a pair of deep black eyes. The demonic swan lowered its head close to his face, and he saw the left eyelid twitch, conveying universal irritation. His breathing became more intense with the threat being this close to him, and Archuleto prepared to grapple the great bird around the neck with his forearms. But the moment he moved his arms, the ferocious animal began to peck at his right side near his waist. He was horrified to watch its beak plunging into his flesh and emerging with blood and sinewy strands of fat and muscle. Zigmund attempted to turn away, but the fever was keeping him weak and vulnerable - an ample meal for a hungry predator.

Lucinda Archuleto eyed her ailing husband with contempt and compassion. Their four-year-old son Trenton was bawling with his face buried in the gray sofa cushions. She couldn't blame the little boy; his whimpers and screams of frustration were an audible testimony of the darkest moments in her five-year relationship with Zigmund. Lucinda looked around their swanky penthouse apartment and bit her lower lip while applying a fresh gauze bandage to the wound on her husband's right abdomen. Every month, he returned from a secret meeting with their unscrupulous benefactors; some nights he came home happy and playful, but he often returned to his family wounded or unruly.

She saw her phone light up on the kitchen table across the way and knew that Hector Guerrera was wondering why she hadn't closed out the books for the night. Her heart sank as Lucinda assimilated that the New York mob would never let her take a sick day. It had been a lucky evening for several of her clients, and while those targeted by mob collections were always content to wait a few days, winners wanted to be paid 'cash in fist' hours after the event.

Lucinda closed her vibrant blue eyes and cleared her head; the sounds of Zigmund's mumbling, the screaming child, and the vibrating phone faded to insignificance. She stood up tall and rolled her right hand into a fist, socking her husband in the right eye with an unforgiving blow.

"Mommy punch daddy," Trenton exclaimed with a giggle from his position near the interior corner of the sectional sofa.

The young mother was thunderstruck by a rush of guilt, but she was relieved to see her child smiling for the first time in two hours. Lucinda put her right index finger to her lips and strutted to the kitchen freezer to retrieve an ice cream bar.

"Stay away from me you f***ing swan!" Zigmund ordered in a late reaction, twisting on the dampened sofa cushions to bury his face in the fabric.

"Ice cream!" Trenton cried out with joy, abandoning the sofa to join his mother in the kitchen.

"That's right, buddy, but tonight you're having ice cream in your room, and you get to watch cartoons all night!" Lucinda emoted with excitement escalating in her voice.

The child let out a shriek of indecipherable joy and marched into his room like a soldier filming a state-sponsored propaganda video. His mother followed closely behind, taking a few seconds to tuck him into bed and started streaming an animated feature on the boy's thirty-six-inch high-definition 3D television. She paused to look at Trenton and verified that he was adequately distracted by sugar and brilliant, colorful characters. Lucinda then marched back to the kitchen, closing the door gently behind her.

Her eyes darted to Zigmund on the sofa, and she verified that his torso was still moving in a life-giving rhythm. The determined mother then pushed back her long brunette hair with her right hand and picked up her satellite phone to weigh the damage created by this episode. She sighed with a mighty heave of her chest and dialed Hector's number, watching a small golden boxing glove dip into her cleavage suspended by a vibrant silver chain.

"Where the f*** have you been, Luce?" He answered on the first ring. "I've got client payouts from the football game tonight!"

"I'm at my place; there were some-" she began but was interrupted.

"I need you to get down to the vault and pay these people; our reputation is going to s*** by the minute! Teddy is on his way with my limo. Did you get some breakfast?" Hector asked carefully, using their code word for a firearm.

"Yeah, I'll bring breakfast-" Lucinda confirmed before another interjection.

"I want you to get a big breakfast; some of these guys may need smoked sausages," he relayed with a proud rhetoric.

"Okay, I'll-" she snorted with angst as the phone went silent. "You men are pushing us closer to an Amazon civilization every day. Hey, honey," Lucinda muttered to her incoherent husband, "I've got to take care of somethin' for work; if Trenton needs anything, can you just flail your arms and mumble at the ceiling? Thanks, a**hole," the distraught beauty announced, wondering how many months of marriage her statement and the punch to his eye would buy them.

Lucinda retrieved her purse from the kitchen counter and verified that the Glock .45 caliber pistol was in its proper place. She dropped the phone inside of the black, designer bag and slung it over her shoulder, stepping softly across the shag carpeting to Trenton's bedroom door. Upon cracking the door open, the concerned mother was greeted with a chocolate-covered smile from her adoring four-year-old. She returned his grin and winked at the boy, closing the door tightly behind her.

The twenty-eight-year-old woman did an about-face and began to transform from a mom into an elitist bookie. She fixed her hair and glared down at Zigmund's useless body on the sofa, knowing that her associates would dispose of him with a single phone call if she desired. Lucinda recalled Hector's request for a big breakfast, and she hoped that Teddy would have an AK-47 in the limousine. The last thing she wanted to do was spend fifteen minutes removing her car seat to transfer a hidden rifle from her Mercedes into the limo.

"How did we get here, Zigmund?" She asked lovingly and rubbed her left hand through her partner's short black hair. "This is no life for little teetee..."

Lucinda shut her eyes and kept them closed tight for a while, feeling the stillness in the air. She hoped that her husband would pull through his fever, and that the payouts to her clients would proceed without incident.
VI. Destiny's Fifth Symphony

'Stop lying to yourself,' Artimus thought and glanced down at the production floor of the massive warehouse. The senator stood on a bright blue catwalk above several drilling crews and engineers. On the concrete flooring of the warehouse below him, teams of men and women in Hazmat suits worked 24-hour shifts drilling into giant boulders to hollow out their cores. The sounds of diamond drill bits ripping through solid rock were disturbing enough to give someone a permanent anxiety disorder. Senator Rothschild noticed that the college laborers seemed distant and hollow like the boulders they were transforming. He surmised that their permanent quarters at the military base and the zero tolerance policy for security breaches were wearing them thin of patience.

The main floor of the warehouse looked like a bathhouse for circus elephants. There were over a dozen 7,000-gallon water tanks fashioned from transparent carbon fiber surfaces and steel supports. Each tank contained a boulder that was at least seven feet in diameter, weighing an average of 5,000 pounds. The water tanks were fitted with enormous drill presses operated by various natural gas and oil drilling experts.

Artimus heard something out of the ordinary echoing through the production facility. He scowled at the polished concrete beneath him and turned his head sideways in an attempt to isolate the sound. After a few seconds of concentration, his ears detected that Another Brick in the Wall Part II by Pink Floyd was playing for the men while they worked.

"Gilbert! Gilbert! What the f***?" He decried to the production manager who was chatting with two colleagues on the catwalk nearby.

Gilbert closed his eyes for a moment and breathed in deeply, sensing that Senator Rothschild had another complaint to deliver. The production manager was in his early fifties, exhibiting a well-maintained body for his age, but after hours of enduring the overbearing politician; the man gave his heart a 50/50 chance at making it through the night. Gilbert gestured lazily for his people to depart and buttoned his lab coat like a gladiator getting ready for the arena.

Artimus noticed that the production manager had lost any hint of feigned loyalty and was mocking him with exaggerated eye movements. He smiled at the overworked man and approached him with a disarming gaze of brotherly affection.

"Gilbert, why are the men listening to Pink Floyd?" Arty inquired with raised eyebrows.

"It helps them...to enjoy their work." The middle-aged scientist replied with a shrug.

"Well, that's a problem, Gilbert," Artimus scolded in a callous tone, "I told you that every detail matters. Do you think that I've been up here yanking on a tire swing for the past few hours? This song is about rebellion and individuality - hardly the type of message that I want to send during a classified operation."

"Well, Senator, a lot of people think that the song is about overcoming isolation and confronting your fears," Gilbert stated absently, pushing a pair of cheap black eyeglasses closer to the bridge of his sweaty nose.

"Shut up, while there's still air in the room to breathe!" The senator exclaimed, silencing his subordinate. "Are you trying to tell me that I'm unaware of the meaning of a song by one of the greatest musicians in history? Do your balls come in any shade other than dark blue?"

These unfamiliar phrases confused Gilbert, and after a short pause, he smiled in a friendly manner, hoping that this was the correct response.

"What would you do if Charles Manson and Gandhi were arm wrestling down on the production floor right now? Hmm? Would you praise the isolationist overcoming his strengths?" The senator demanded with elaborate hand gestures.

Gilbert wanted to reply, but his mind couldn't keep up with such abstract references, and he stood motionless with his mouth agape. The fourteen-hour shifts had been getting to him, and he wasn't prepared for this type of political stick whipping.

"How about some AC/DC, Gilbert?" Senator Rothschild recommended in a voice just above a whisper. "Their songs are about obedience and building the dream; that's exactly what we need here in this...industrial sweatshop - make it happen!" Arty ordered with a snap of his fingers, giving Gilbert an excuse to strut away in peace.

The senator smiled at the departing scientist with calculated superiority, knowing that changing the music was well below the man's pay grade. He recalled the first time his father taught him about forcing people to march to his beat. It consisted of getting his grade school classmates to dress in donkey costumes and play a game of musical chairs. While the teacher thought it was an adorable gesture, his father had lamented how easily the children obeyed their classmate for a two-dollar piece of caramel cake. Arty smiled wickedly at the men on the production floor; each of them clueless of the horrors they were creating for what amounted to a larger piece of a sweeter cake.
VII. Tender Loving Spurs

'I'm not afraid of the man who stalks the forest for years - I fear the one that stares at the same spot each day in quiet contemplation.' Archuleto awoke from a nightmare that was like the final movement of a symphony of terrors caused by Aristotle's Glitch. He rubbed his lower right lip to remove some slobber that dripped from the corner of his mouth. Based on the heat emanating from his forehead and the chills that tingled around his abdomen, the investment advisor assumed that his fever had worsened.

"Draymont," Zigmund announced to the empty apartment as he snorted hard to clear his sinuses. "Why are they going to kill Dray?"

He attempted placing his hands together in a pyramid shape but decided to settle for two bony elbows against his thighs when his hands failed to cooperate, shaking violently.

"I need some TLC," the New Yorker stated to the blinding morning sunlight that invaded the penthouse like an unwelcome relative.

Zigmund attempted to connect why Draymont was a problem for Ashes & Raven Feathers but had a hard time keeping his thoughts clear. He felt his body screaming for oxycodone and prayed to the pigeons of Central Park that his last bottle was still in an overcoat pocket. The sickly man stumbled up from the sofa and began trudging across the recently cleaned shag carpeting with one eye open like an ornery teenager.

Archuleto glanced at the coat rack near the front door and saw the rounded, white plastic hook where his coat would have been hung. His nose began to run in a sudden rush of clear fluid, and it poured like water down the front of his wrinkled shirt. He coughed violently as if the flu virus needed to announce that it had also awakened fully.

"Dear God!" The young man exclaimed when the coughing triggered immense pain from some fresh stitches in the right side of his abdomen.

Although he wanted to inspect the wound, his body was demanding an ample dose of painkillers, and Archuleto shuffled through the living room to the master bedroom. When he pushed the solid, white oak door open, Zigmund was unsurprised to see that Lucinda hadn't made it home from work. He knew that the football game winnings would keep her out until noon, tallying the transactions and reporting to her bosses.

After inspecting the large bedroom, he began to panic with a desire for relief from the symptoms of withdrawal. The desperate addict moved like a wounded animal back to the living room, checking the hook near the door for the second time. Archuleto heard movement coming from Trenton's room, and his parental instincts overruled the demands of his casual drug habit. He moved swiftly at first but decided to maintain a moderate pace to avoid scaring the boy.

Trenton's bedroom door was open halfway, and there were chocolate fingerprints on its surface below the door handle. When he entered the room, Zigmund discovered the magical sight of his son playing with action figures while wearing daddy's massive overcoat. The moment was one of pure fatherly joy, save for when Archuleto noticed the many small chocolate handprints on the expensive fabric.

"How are you doin', buddy?" He asked his son fondly. "Thanks for helpin' daddy to find his coat."

"Daddy's candy is yuck!" The boy exclaimed, sticking out his tongue and shaking his head wildly.

Zigmund was about to laugh when he stepped forward and saw the bottle of Percocets spilled out onto the carpet next to the child. A drop of sweat trickled underneath the man's hair, adding to the undeniable horror of the situation.

"How many of daddy's candy did you eat?" Archuleto asked in a panic, placing his right hand atop his head with vigor.

"I ate...this many," the boy exploded with a giggle, showing his father all ten of his fingers.

"Trenton, please don't joke with daddy," Zigmund said in a grave tone as he stepped around the boy and snatched the bottle from the floor, securing the cap tightly. "How many did you eat?"

Trenton didn't answer him and pretended not to hear the question; Zigmund recognized that the child felt like he was about to get into trouble. The concerned father picked up his son and stripped off the overcoat as if it were some deranged spirit that had caused the boy danger. His four-year-old began to flail his legs in tandem and screamed for his mother as Zigmund carried him like a bag of luggage toward the main bathroom.

"PUT ME DOWN! PUT ME DOWN, DADDY!" Trenton called out hysterically.

"C'mon, buddy, we need to make sure you're all right!" He tried to reason with his son despite clumsily dragging the boy across the walls due to some minor vertigo. "Please, Trenton, daddy is trying to help you." The man pled and set the boy down in the center of the gleaming white bathtub.

"I don't want a bath!" The boy screamed as Zigmund wrestled him into submission on the surface of the bathtub basin.

"Okay," Zigmund said through labored breaths, "Daddy needs you to throw up; he's gonna' help you, and it'll all be over."

"No!" Trenton declared as his eyes filled with copious tears and he jerked his torso away from his father.

"God, Trenton, I don't have time to explain," the overwhelmed father stated in a shaky voice, hoping it would calm the youngster. "Please just trust me, buddy, okay? Daddy loves you!"

This statement calmed the boy for a moment, allowing Archuleto to embrace him and grip the back of his small head with an unsteady left hand.

"Okay, here comes Mr. Butterfinger - just like the airplane," the man instructed as his right index finger made its way toward the boy's mouth.

Trenton kept his mouth open as Zigmund's alien-looking finger entered the small, damp space, but the youngster's teeth clamped down hard on the center of his finger before he could push it any further.

"Ow! Trenton!" He exclaimed, causing the boy to break into a fit of tears.

"It tastes like poo!" The preschooler exclaimed, grimacing at his father as if a stranger had abducted him.

"I'm sorry, buddy!" Zigmund replied with sincerity, cursing himself under his breath for not washing his hands first. "Okay, I'm gonna' turn on the faucet and wash my hand off."

The boy saw this as an opportunity to escape and began to struggle, but his father easily detained him with one hand. Archuleto pumped some pink soap from a dispenser on the top right corner of the tub. He then attempted to twist the shiny stainless steel handles and felt his fingers slip. This failure gave him an empty feeling, but he looked into Trenton's eyes and noticed his son's enlarged pupils. Zigmund frantically wiped his right hand on his shirt and turned on the cold water, using it to cleanse his filthy fingers from a night of socializing.

"Okay, here comes Mr. Butterfinger again," he said in a soothing voice, but the child refused to open his mouth. "Come on, son; I need to get daddy's candy out of your stomach. Please open up and let me help you! We don't have much time, buddy." Zigmund begged the boy to cooperate, but his desperate pleas made the young man burst into a hysterical fit of anguish. "I'm so sorry..." The conflicted father admitted as he hung his head in preemptive regret. "Daddy doesn't want to hurt you, but it's the only way to save your life!"

Zigmund used his left hand to squeeze the boy's shoulder hard. When Trenton screamed in agony, it felt like a bullet had gone through his negligent father. Archuleto shoved his index finger into his son's throat and immediately begged him for forgiveness. The boy bit his finger again, drawing blood after a few seconds, but his jaw wasn't developed enough to break the bone.

He shuddered with disgust at himself when his finger penetrated the child's mouth and throat. Although it was his son, and his intentions were good, Zigmund felt like the lowest form of a violator in society. His bare finger slid over Trenton's tongue and down his slippery throat, causing the boy to convulse.

For a moment, the boy couldn't breathe, and Archuleto felt his heart begin to race with thoughts of suffocating him or scratching his oral cavity with the end of his fingernail. Trenton was staring at his father with confusion, hatred and mortal terror. Zigmund began to bawl when he realized that he would never be able to wipe this moment from his memory, especially if Trenton died. He wiggled his finger back and forth, noticing that the youngster's slim stomach was beginning to convulse.

"That's it, buddy!" The fearful father emoted with hope as he removed his index finger from the boy's mouth.

Trenton heaved once and then vomited a sticky mass of chocolate and malformed pills into the basin of the bathtub. The boy screamed and smacked his father in the forearm with both hands, swallowing hard from the sting of his stomach acids.

"Daddy, my throat is a fire!" The child bawled to his father, seeking comfort from the torment. "I want mommy! I want mommy! I want mommy..." Trenton sounded helpless and abused as he stared at the chocolate mess in the bottom of the bathtub.

"You did good, son, daddy is sorry," Zigmund assured him while stroking the back of his small head. "It's over now, sweetheart, you were a brave boy. You were a - brave boy." His voice trailed off as he counted at least five pills in the vomit.

Zigmund turned on the warm water and began to wash his son like a priceless artifact, reassuring him the entire time. Despite his efforts to make peace with the child, Trenton no longer trusted his father and continued to cry and protest. He took a moment to check the boy's pulse and pupils, gauging that they seemed satisfactory. By the time Zigmund was able to towel the child off; he had stopped throwing a fit but remained distant and quiet.

"Trenton, Daddy is very, very sorry for what you had to go through today," he attempted to explain with a loving expression. "Daddy has been very bad, and he should never have let you get into his medicine."

"Bad Daddy!" Trenton exclaimed, showing a somewhat positive expression for the first time since the ordeal began.

"That's right, bad Daddy," Zigmund agreed and gave his son a loving embrace, sensing tears of relief flooding down his cheeks.

The distraught father found himself in a peculiar state of mind. Part of him wanted to repent for his failure as a parent, but another part wanted to manipulate the child into keeping this experience a secret from his mother. Archuleto felt awful when he realized how desperate he was to conceal this event from Lucinda. Although they had been together for five years, he had no idea how she would react to this horror story. Would she pack up all of her things and leave, or worse yet, call Hector and tell him to dispose of her hapless husband.

"Look, buddy, I need you to keep it a secret that you took daddy's medicine or mommy will be angry with you." He lied to the child as bubbles of guilt exploded from the acids of his stomach. "Do you understand, Teetee? You can't tell mom that you took dad's medicine...'cause she'll be upset." The dishonesty felt better when he spoke to the preschooler in a sweet way.

Trenton nodded in affirmation, and his father picked him up out of the bathtub with a towel wrapped around his body. Before they took leave to the next room, he glanced at the chocolate-covered pills in the basin. Although most of his sin had washed down the drain already, he felt like his words were just as poisonous to the child as the drugs. Zigmund brushed his son's hair delicately and embraced him as if asking for validation. The boy returned his embrace, and the insanity of the world washed away as he carried Trenton back to his bedroom.
VIII. Prom King

"No! Wait until we get into the house!" Artimus protested as his seventeen-year-old prom date enveloped his manhood with her mouth. "Mary, oh my God! Stop! My dad is looking out the window!" The young man cursed himself as the nuances of earthly pleasures ceased too soon.

Mary's head almost smacked Artimus' nose as she snapped it back to gaze up at the Rothschild Mansion. They sat in a white 1996 Corvette convertible with the top down, and from the third floor of the residence, it was easy for Martin Rothschild to spy on the teenagers. She felt embarrassed to know that Martin had seen her pleasuring his son, and tried to force a smile while waving her right hand.

Martin stared at the couple for a moment with an alcoholic beverage in his left hand. His silhouette was defined rigidly by tracks of soft lighting from the upstairs hallway. The oil heir lingered for a moment and then strode toward his bedroom, disappearing from view.

"Don't worry," Artimus assured her while biting her earlobe and groping her breast with his left hand, "we can go to the guest house in the back. He's just drinking wine and listening to music."

"Arty, wait!" Mary demanded, twisting her head sideways to detach his mouth and forcing his hand away from her chest. "Why don't we just get a hotel? I want tonight to be perfect – and private."

"Sweetheart, the guest house is basically a hotel – there's only one set of keys, and I'll lock it up tight," he reassured her with longing admiration.

"Okay, let's go," the young woman stated, biting her lower lip with devious anticipation.

The teenagers giggled with hormonal energy and exited the car without bothering to lock the doors. They pranced across the cobblestone pathway that led to the mansion, joining hands along the way. Artimus grinned at Mary as he led her through the main entrance toward the pegboard that held the keys to the guest house. His heart was thundering in his chest with raw love and lust, but the young man had anxiety about the cleanliness and preparedness of his body. He tried to remember if every inch of his body had been groomed properly and shuddered at the potential for even one toenail to appear unkempt.

Mary saw his distress and pushed Artimus up against the wall, stealing a moment to enjoy an aggressive kiss. The teenagers felt their bodies writhing in delight again and were tempted to attack one another like animals in the hallway of the large home. To his infinite delight, the young woman guided his hand up under her dress, allowing him to feel how moist she was getting. The shock on his gleaming face revealed his status as a virgin, but she was apt to pretend otherwise. Mary allowed his hand to wander inside her underwear, and with a bit of guidance, she was soon enjoying unprecedented naughty pleasures.

"You bring fresh p**** in this house to disgrace your mother?" Martin Rothschild's voice echoed through the enormous mansion. "I can't believe you'd fornicate on the floors that she used to vacuum. Why don't you just dig up her casket and f*** inside of that – on top of her bones?"

Artimus and Mary froze with faces of terror and innocence. The young man slid his fingers slowly out of his prom date and wiped his right hand on his pants to gain his composure.

"We were on our way to the guest house," Artimus answered without turning to face his father, hoping that Martin would leave them alone.

"Well, you're not f***in' in my guest house, boy," his father elaborated with a raucous tone. "I didn't build this fortune so that you could bring the local cheerleaders here for a game of pin the DNA on the sofa."

"It's fine, we'll get a hotel room," the young man replied with disgust as he and Mary made their way closer to the front door.

"IT'S NOT FINE, ARTY!" Martin shouted and smashed his drink on the bamboo hardwood flooring of the hallway. "You brought her in here to mock me, didn't you?"

"No," his son answered, urging his date to move at a faster pace toward the door.

"STOP RIGHT THERE, STUD!" The oil millionaire commanded as if threatening their lives. "What point are you trying to make, Arty? Did you bring her here to show that you've still got it, and I don't? Do you know HOW MUCH PAIN I'VE BEEN THROUGH SINCE YOUR MOTHER DIED?"

"I'VE BEEN THROUGH HELL TOO, A**HOLE," Artimus shouted and turned toward his father to see the man pointing a pistol at him and his prom date. "What are you doing with that gun?" He was awestruck by the ruthless expression on his father's face and used his body to shield his date from the weapon.

"No," Martin responded with strained eyes, gazing at the line where the wall met the floor. "No, no," he continued with laughter and shook his head. "No, you haven't been through hell, but I'll show you what hell is like. Why don't you spend the night in your room jerking off while I have sex with a horny girl?"

"YOU'RE NOT GOING TO TOUCH MARY!" The young man shouted at the top of his lungs. "I'LL KILL YOU!"

There was an earsplitting sound as if the room had popped like a balloon. Artimus felt a burning sensation in his left thigh and saw smoke coming from the barrel of his father's weapon. At that moment, he turned his head sideways and gazed at his guardian in a dumbfounded state of emptiness. His leg muscle went into a spasm, causing him to sink to the floor, but he never took his eyes off of Martin.

"Please don't kill him! Oh, my God, I'm so sorry!" Mary begged as she went into immediate shock from the sight of the gunshot wound. "I'm sorry, Mr. Rothschild, I just wanted to have a good prom – like teenagers do." Her face erupted in an unrelenting display of tears as she attempted to shield her date from his unpredictable father.

"Do you know why I get the girl, Arty?" Martin taunted his son and grabbed Mary violently by the wrist. "I get the girl because I'm willing to do what you're not. Men in our family have enjoyed wealth for that reason alone."

"Let her go, Martin!" The teenage boy threatened and lunged toward the older man but was stopped short by the excruciating pain in his thigh muscle.

"It's not dad anymore, is it, Arty?" His father boasted as he aimed the pistol at the side of Mary's head. "It's just Martin now. Or maybe it should be Mr. Rothschild? Hell, after tonight you'll be calling me f***face."

"Please don't," Mary sobbed violently, her chest heaving from the suddenness of the moment.

"You're coming to my bedroom, and we're going to have my second honeymoon," Martin ordered as he pulled back the hammer of the pistol and led Mary toward the staircase.

"Mary, you need to run!" Artimus instructed his love with eager tenderness. "Just run out the front door, he's not going to shoot you!"

"I'll do whatever you want," the young woman agreed, turning away from the incredible anguish displayed on Artimus' face.

"Don't worry, my dear, I'm going to be gentle and romantic," her captor said in a drunken whisper. "In fact, if you close your eyes, you may not even be able to tell the difference."

Martin stared down his nose at Artimus with a sneer of contempt, delighted by the many emotions that the young man was feeling. He pulled Mary with all of his might by the wrist, hoping to dislocate her shoulder in front of his ungrateful son. She howled in agony and followed his lead, tormented by the pistol pressed against her head.

Artimus allowed his rage to become omnipotence, and he let go of logic, using his arms to drag himself across the floor to the coat rack. He was alone on the first floor and summoned his upper body strength to break away one of the six long legs of the wooden unit. His raw angst helped him to rise from the floor with the aid of the wall and the haphazard crutch. And with every bit of drive in his body, he limped forward to the kitchen, slipping a few times along the way but powering through nonetheless.

When he reached the kitchen, Artimus used his free hand to open the top drawer near the back door. His eyes located the neon green wand of the barbecue lighter, and he snatched it up like a relic of absolution. The young man glanced down at his leg and saw his tuxedo damp with blood. He snatched a long hand towel from the handle of the stove and used it to tie a tourniquet tightly above the wound.

Artimus felt his animal side come to life, and he used the crutch to maneuver through the mansion in a state of purposeful panic. Regardless of how the night ended, he needed to know that he tried everything in his capacity to stop this horrible crime. The thought of his father violating Mary stung his core and forced him to stop moving. He began to wail in a state of broken madness, but his animal senses came back, and the awful images went away, allowing him to proceed.

The angry teenager was covered in sweat and blood by the time he entered his father's prized library at the center of the first floor. He went to the closest shelf of books and struck the barbecue lighter, but it merely hissed with clear fluid.

"Come on!" Artimus urged the inanimate object, feeling the terror of what was taking place upstairs filling his center again. "Come on! COME ON!" The flame sparked on the second try, but he flicked it a third time and cursed himself.

At this most frustrating point, he held his breath, flicked the lighter again and watched the flame bloom, illuminating the books near it. He wanted to smile but disciplined himself to wait until the books were aglow in self-sustaining flames. After seven seconds, Artimus allowed the smile of wickedness to blossom forth, and he welcomed the heat of nature that would end his father's hateful games.

He dropped the lighter and began to run clumsily through the halls, getting only a brisk walk from his best efforts. Every step was like an arrow tearing through the front of his thigh. Artimus wailed throughout the home, hoping that someone would hear him, even his drunken father.

The mansion was beginning to smoke when he reached the stairs, causing the sprinkler systems to turn on throughout the building. He found himself at the foot of a three-floor staircase that was drenched in water. Artimus hung his head toward the heavens, cursing this impossible task. Despite the obstacle and the likely outcome, the young man jutted his chin out and put the bottom of his makeshift crutch on the first stair. He then closed his eyes, preparing himself for extreme danger and pain.

"Arty! Arty!" Mary's voice called out from the top of the stairs. "Stay there; I'm coming to you!"

Artimus was stunned to see that Mary had escaped and was unharmed. He didn't know how much time had passed but was grateful for the brevity of the repulsive encounter.

"Are you okay? The house is on fire, we need to get out," he said to Mary when she got closer.

The teenager was stunned when he saw Mary wearing a belt with a seven-inch black phallus made from polyurethane dangling from her waist.

"What the hell is that?" Artimus asked through the pain and exhaustion.

"He, he asked me to wear this and – do things to him," she admitted without making eye contact. "Then he passed out, and I ran! Did you say the house is on fire? We need to wake him." Artimus' date suggested with a confused look of guilt.

"No, let him sleep, we need to go!" The young man exclaimed and began shuffling toward the front door.

Mary paused and gazed up at the smoke that was traveling to the higher floors of the residence. She couldn't allow a person to die so casually.

"Mary, he's an awful guy," Artimus insisted as he turned to look her in the eyes. "Look, I set the fire. Whatever happens is on me. I did it for us!"

The young woman started to cry but allowed her prom date to guide her to safety out the front door. Artimus assured her that he would send the fire department in for his father, and they would get him some help. She managed to loosen the belt and let it drop on the front porch of the home, sparing herself any further indignity.

Mary ran to the passenger side of the Corvette and helped Artimus to sit down. She then sprinted around to the driver side and used the car to back a safe distance away from the fire along the driveway leading up the grounds. After they stopped and relaxed for a few seconds, a fire truck arrived, and the driver called out to them from the open window.

"Are you okay?" He asked and watched them nod in unison. "Is there anyone else in the house?"

Mary opened her mouth to answer, but Artimus wrapped his hand around hers and squeezed it tightly.

"There's no one else in the house," Mary answered with a cracked voice. "My boyfriend has been shot. He needs help right away!"

Two men jumped from the fire engine with medical supplies, and the truck continued to roll toward the mansion. Artimus gazed lovingly at his prom date as the firefighters opened the driver side door and helped him out of the vehicle.

Artimus gasped in terror and stared up at his half-naked body in the massive mirror above the hotel bed. His hands tightened like rocks ground by the weight of a giant stone wheel. It took him a few seconds to escape the nightmare of his prom date from almost twenty years ago.

"Hey there, senator, calm down," Hailey muttered softly, yawning without making a sound while covering her mouth with her left hand, and massaging her companion's shoulder using her right. "What was it this time?"

"Prom," the politician stated in a voice as feeble and uncertain as that of a teenager.

"Was he attacking her?" She asked with sincerity, rubbing her eyes to achieve better focus.

"I don't want to give him the satisfaction," Artimus stated, keeping his eyes fixed on the ceiling and tracing the wall down to his girlfriend's nude body.

He was beginning to enjoy the nuances of her curves until something caught his eye near the door of the hotel room. The junior secret service agent, Kendall, was twisting his head sideways to stare between Hailey's legs.

"What the f***?" The politician growled as he bailed out of the bed, tossing a blanket over the top of the naked model. "You've got some awful big balls, Kendall! This is EXACTLY the wrong time to f*** with me! Did you get to see her p****? Are you enjoying having my life at your disposal, so that you can gawk like a child molester at my woman? ANSWER ME!" He smacked the young secret service agent across the face, causing the man to raise his arms in defense and lower them immediately.

Kendall stared at Artimus' chest as though he were a member of The Queen's Guard in England. His pale face was drawn and displayed nervousness, and he lowered his head in a silent apology, showing off his orange hair and pristine crew cut.

"Bring those baby blue eyes over here; you're going to help me," Senator Rothschild demanded, leading the man by his right arm to the edge of the bed. "Give me your left leg, sweetheart."

Hailey bit her lower lip and felt her insides gushing with anticipation at this macho display of force. She kept her body covered and raised her left ankle, allowing Artimus to grip it with his thick fingers.

"Here you go, Kendall, hold her leg!" Artimus demanded as he pushed Hailey's left leg into the agent's right hand. "Okay, good, now I need your other leg, honey. He moved behind Kendall's back to the left side and placed her right ankle in the young man's left hand. "This is excellent!" The politician stated with restrained hatred. "Whatever you do, don't let go of her legs." He ordered while staring directly into the eyes of the offending agent. "Don't you dare intervene, Jack!" Artimus warned with a twist of his neck toward the senior agent.

Artimus ducked below Kendall's outstretched arms and mounted Hailey in the missionary position. He pulled the covers back to uncover her naked pelvis as the vixen gazed into his eyes with majestic wonder. Senator Rothschild then pushed himself inside of her while bending her legs backward.

Kendall began to sweat from his brow as the senator pulled Hailey's legs up and back, forcing his pelvis tight against the man's rear end. Artimus then began to thrust with building aggression until his posterior was ramming into Kendall's sensitive nether regions.

"Ow, ow," the agent complained as the senator's body impacted his groin. "Ow, please stop! I'm sorry. Please stop!"

The senator pulled away from Hailey and thrust his buttocks backward with all of his strength. This maneuver caused the agent to release his grip on her legs, and the man fell onto the short, gray carpeting of the hotel, wailing in agony.

"GET OUT! BOTH OF YOU!" Artimus snarled at the two agents as he grabbed his lover anxiously around her waist.

Hailey smiled with ecstasy as the senior agent raced over near the bed to help his colleague up from the floor. She kissed Artimus wildly, feeling freedom and power like nothing she had ever known. Her fingernails dug deep into the senator's meaty biceps, and she gazed up at the mirror, knowing that satisfaction would be visiting her in waves like a category five hurricane.
IX. Quantum Hysterics

Archuleto held a twelve-inch tablet steady in his grasp, studying a fight between Jordanesh Al-Sannah of Iran and a former Israeli Mossad agent. It had taken him most of the day surfing the dark web to find fighting clips from the underground circuits in The Middle East. Trenton was watching cartoons on the sofa, and Zigmund peered up at him every few minutes, showing extra discretion after the scare he had earlier in the day. The boy seemed fine, and enough hours had passed to assume that he was out of danger.

On the tablet screen, the fighters appeared to joust with their fists, diving close to one another and following through with elaborate strikes. But most of the strikes were blocked, and to the casual viewer, it appeared to be something of a stalemate. The camerawork was shaky and its audio of poor quality, but Archuleto could easily distinguish the boldness of Jordanesh in the dim lighting of a military bunker. In just two days, this man would be fighting Draymont Rothschild, and if the drugs hadn't muddied the facts, he assumed the Iranian would kill Dray in front of God and Madison Square Garden.

Zigmund glanced up at his son again and heard men shouting in Arabic from the tablet. He returned his attention to the clip and saw the Israeli Special Forces combatant falling to the concrete. The man's expression was devoid of all hope as he crashed down to the pavement in an unnatural manner. Archuleto leaned forward and rewound the video clip to thirty seconds earlier in the fight. When the clip refreshed, the men circled one another wearing cheap boxing gloves, and there was nothing unique about their movements. It was the typical boxing dance of two warriors attempting to preserve their strength. But after fifteen seconds, the dynamics changed, and Jordanesh threw an elaborate combination of punches that cut through his opponent's defenses like bullets through cheese. The punches landed in sequence: head, stomach, chest, stomach, head, head, chest, chest, chest.

He found himself chewing on the topmost knuckle of his right hand, attempting to gauge the impact of these blows to the other fighter. Archuleto was stunned by how rapidly the fallen fighter dropped out of consciousness. His hands grew tense as he realized that the former Mossad agent was in serious trouble. The man didn't put his arms out to catch himself and fell to the dirty cement like a stone. Zigmund rewound the clip again and pushed his face closer to the screen, examining every detail

The front door was unlocked in a familiar way and Lucinda strode into the apartment with an aggressive demeanor.

"Hi, guys, mommy's home," she announced to her family, tossing a set of keys loudly on the kitchen table before removing her jacket.

"MOMMY!" Trenton exclaimed in a sudden rush of melodramatic urgency. "Mommy, daddy hurt me! He gave me the bad candy!" The little boy began to cry and ran toward his mother with his arms outstretched.

"What the f*** did you do, Zigmund?" She demanded with a temper that was as instant as cow's milk. "I've only been gone for a few hours. Trenton, baby, what did daddy do to you? Are you okay, buddy?" Lucinda scooped the boy up and led him away from Archuleto in a protective manner, taking him into the bathroom.

In Archuleto's mind, he hoped that his family might work this problem out devoid of any intervention on his part. He watched the video quietly and listened to his son issue one indictment after another regarding his character. But the video screen was more engaging, and he smirked when the pattern of punches became apparent to him. Jordanesh had a dominant right hand, and every punch to the head or stomach was issued by his weaker hand. Further, each shot to the chest was delivered right above the heart of his opponent. Archuleto knew that enough force could damage the heart and cause cardiac arrest. He assumed that the repeated strikes were fierce enough to enlarge the heart and disrupt its rhythm. If this punishment continued over the course of a thirty-minute fight, it would be unlikely for his opponent to survive. Zigmund raised his head and saw Lucinda shouting, but all he could think about was warning Draymont.

"Zigmund, Trenton says that you gave him the bad candy! What the f*** does that mean?" His wife placed her hands on her hips and awaited his reply with a pirate scowl. "Tell me what happened, a**hole, or they'll be picking your bones out of an ashtray in Queens by this time next week."

"Trenton snatched my overcoat off of the hook and was wearing it around the house-" he began before she exploded with rage.

"Oh, f***in' great – he got into your Percosets!" Lucinda concluded with outrage, closing her feminine hands into tight fists. "Where's your phone? I'm going to call your dealer!" She announced and searched the room with her eyes.

Archuleto set down the tablet and attempted to leap from his chair, but her hands threw open the top drawer and retrieved his phone with the efficiency of a Vegas card shark.

"Don't mess with my s***!" Archuleto expressed in a manner that was juvenile. "You'll never get the pass code," he conveyed in a cocky tone, walking behind his wife as she strutted through the apartment with the device.

"What's your dealer's handle?" She asked with a pause. "Never mind, I'll just read your texts and find him." Lucinda led her husband to the master bedroom where he followed her until she slammed and locked the master bathroom door in his face.

"Sweetheart, Trenton's okay," he pled to the door with shaky hands. "It won't happen again!"

"Yes, this is Lucinda Archuleto, I'm Zigmund's wife! No, don't hang up!" She insisted in an authoritative tone that could almost be felt through the thick wood. "Are you familiar with the Garambato crime family? Good, because if you or your supplier ever sell to my husband again, I'll have my employer take care of you. Do we understand each other? Yes, but I want to hear you say the words...okay, 'bye."

"Lucinda, he's okay, I got everything out of his stomach." The troubled husband broadcast through the door with urgency.

In a flash, the door opened, and Lucinda tossed Archuleto's phone hard at the center of his face. She stomped forward without apologizing or listening to him cry out in pain.

"I'm taking Trenton to the emergency room," his wife said in a frenzy of hard emotion. "We're going to make sure that our son is okay, and that you haven't permanently damaged his little throat with your dips*** fingers! This is the last time, Zigmund – you either need to choose us or the drugs. And don't think that I'll let you become a junkie. I'd sink you to the bottom of the ocean before I'd let you break our son's heart that way."

Archuleto coughed from his ongoing bout with the flu and wondered if his fever was returning. He attempted to follow Lucinda, trying to explain himself, but she had gone into protective soldier mode. Every movement that she made was meant to cut him off or prevent eye contact. She scooped up their son and made her way to the door, ignoring the many explanations that were being offered by her addict husband.

"Us or the drugs!" Lucinda insisted, glaring at him as she opened the front door to leave.

Zigmund knew better than to argue with her in this state of anger. He felt love and hatred for himself and looked upon his innocent son with fond eyes.

"I love you both," he emoted with sincerity, feeling his tear ducts swell with heartache. "Please forgive me!"

Lucinda refused to look into his eyes and stepped out into the hallway, clutching her son to her chest like a mother gorilla escaping into the jungle. She slammed the door shut as an answer to his pleas, and Archuleto found himself in an apartment that was far too silent.

The ashamed father put his head down and tapped the fresh stitches in his abdomen, realizing how chaotic a force the Ashes & Raven Feathers society had become in his life. He remembered joining their group with aspirations of living an upper-middle-class lifestyle, but nothing could have prepared him for the sacrifices required in return for his luxurious accommodations.

"I need to warn Dray," he surmised in a soft tone, shuffling over to the kitchen table in a state of deep regret. "Please don't leave me, baby," Zigmund said to a photo of Lucinda on the wall.

He sat down at the table and picked up the tablet again, attempting to track down his old high school nemesis on social media. Although Draymont was a famous welterweight boxer, and his father Senator Rothschild cast a shadow that stretched halfway across the country, Zigmund hoped that he could gain an audience with the man.
X. No Draymont No Cry

'Chee-hee, chee-hee,' the birds outside seemed to taunt Draymont Rothschild all morning as he attempted to enjoy a cup of unsweetened black coffee at the kitchen table. He wrapped his hands around the warm, blue mug and glanced at a tattoo of King Kong on his right bicep. Rastafarian Kong always made him smile; an iconic character drawn in hues of green, yellow and red similar to album cover images featuring Bob Marley. Draymont often thought of himself as a mixture of these two personas; both larger than life and big in their hearts.

His thoughts were interrupted by a woman moaning loudly with post-coital pleasure from the bedroom. He scoffed at her plastic efforts to feed his ego, and although they were compatible in bed, she wasn't in the same stratum as him. Draymont recalled her looking through him with soft eyes, begging him to bring her into his world of privilege and notoriety. It was the same look that his father had given him over the years when expressing love. Although Senator Rothschild was a master of showing affection on camera; it was as staged and rehearsed as the latest Hollywood blockbuster.

Draymont chuckled when he remembered the phrase that he had used to replace 'I love you' on his father's lips - an unflattering 'I say words.' He also imagined a federal judge ordering his father to say the words, and instead of looking at his son, he was staring through him at the judge - 'I say words.'

The middleweight boxer shook his head and decided to end the breakfast pity party. He stood up from the wooden chair wearing only a white pair of Jockey undershorts. His face melted to a devious smile as he tugged at the front of his underwear and admired his penis. Draymont always enjoyed the vitality that surged through him after an hour of intense intercourse, and he shook his member back and forth with a smile of youthful delight. The muscular twenty-one-year-old caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror and was bashful to a fault.

He laughed out loud spasmodically and then stopped himself short, thinking of his father's embarrassment if the Paparazzi snapped photos of him enjoying the nuances of his body. Draymont set aside his playful thoughts and began to mull over his next fight with Jordanesh Al-Sannah; an Iranian man who had surged in the world boxing rankings over the past three months. He noticed his demeanor changed to stoicism in the mirror, and Draymont began inspecting his muscle mass with the sociopathic tedium of a local butcher. His body was in fantastic shape for making love, but it wasn't close to ready for making war.

The upcoming fight with Jordanesh gave him an eerie sensation, and he tried to shake off the fears that huddled around his core like a Burmese Python. There were rumors that the Iranian fighter had destroyed several men in bare-knuckle boxing matches throughout The Middle East. He had also heard that Jordanesh often fought outside of his weight class and that his wife was beaten to death in an honor killing. Despite the spookiness of these rumors, Draymont was familiar with the powers of racism and exaggeration. He considered that the Iranian man might have friends in a similar circle, and they would be cooking up stories based on Dray's ethnic background.

Draymont snickered at the racism that his African-American friends exhibited toward Muslims, wondering how the human brain could have such blinding discrepancies in logic. His mother had always told him that he was like an Oreo Cookie, white on the inside with sweet blackness to spare. He thanked God that wealth transcended skin color, and was immediately ashamed of himself.

The young man bit his lower lip and thought about his mother, Flavia; it had been six years since she passed away from an impossible bout with cancer. Draymont sensed tears forming in the corners of his eyes and attempted to wipe them away in desperation. Although he didn't respect the arm candy in his bed; Dray didn't want to be known as a weeping warrior.

"How can cancer take someone so quickly?" He asked the empty living room of his home in the Hamptons, placing his forehead against the mirror. "There were a lot of things I wanted to say to you, mom. I know that Arty wasn't good for you, but at least he gave you - me... I miss you..." The fighter sensed he was beginning to bawl and used his right fist to pound his chest until he came to his senses.

He choked back the tears and had an urgent desire for pleasure. Draymont knew that he could lose himself inside of Crystal for an hour, and he wanted relief from the unbearable pain.

"I'm not ready for this fight yet," he muttered to himself in the mirror and then raised his eyes toward the ceiling.

After an appropriate moment of silence, Draymont removed his underwear and stared at his penis in the mirror with discerning eyes.

"We're going to f*** this girl one more time, and then we're going back to the gym!" He instructed his phallus with the tenseness of a lion trainer. "Do you understand?" The young man shook his hips back and forth, causing his seven-inch member to nod in the mirror.

Draymont felt better after having this discourse with his selfish desires and retreated toward the bedroom for another dose of parasitic euphoria. He took a few steps and heard his phone chime with an alert. Although the fighter was eager to escape the claustrophobic feelings of dealing with grief, he felt that this might be a spiritual signal and stepped back to the kitchen table. Draymont unlocked the phone with his thumb, and he saw a social media alert on an old account that he used rarely.

There was a message from Arthur Higgins, and according to the screen, they knew one another from high school. Draymont sighed with contempt, sensing that another of his classmates was desperate for money or wanted to meet and parade their family around the boxer's mansion. He was about to close the message when the man's photo became familiar. The young athlete recognized Arthur as a senior that he used to bully in high school when he was only a freshman. His face radiated with amusement, and he was intrigued as to why someone who had received numerous beatings from him would want to interact. He read the message in short form, and it said that Arthur had 'urgent news,' claiming that they should meet right away to 'discuss someone conspiring to harm' the athlete.

Draymont set the phone down on the table and stared out the window at the small birds, watching them rearrange their nest. Despite considering every gangster he knew on the east side, the boxer was baffled as to who might be trying to cause him problems. He cocked his head back and decided that spending five minutes with someone he used to torment might be good karma. Even if Arthur turned out to be a nut, at least it would be an entertaining encounter.
XI. Wings of Affection

Hailey clicked her designer high heels hard on the stone flooring of the Aircropolus Hotel lobby, signaling other women in the area to beware. She wore dark sunglasses and carried a large coffee in her right hand with a designer clutch in her left. The recent photo shoot had left her exasperated, and the Italian photographer had worn her out in the dressing room with a performance that was more than mildly amusing. Her phone had been chiming every few seconds since she had posted one of the steamy pictures from the shoot on social media, and Hailey loved the sound of their approval. Every chime was an affirmation of lust from the world; a decadent signal that men and women everywhere were getting off just from the sight of her body.

She took the elevator to the penthouse, a stylish permanent home provided by the senator who owned the hotel. Fortunately, he was enough of a gentleman to avoid physical encounters in her living space and opted instead for room 236, which had his favorite layout. Hailey thought about her older lover's naughty fetish and smiled wickedly at how his desires were rare compared to others. The twenty-five-year-old model had developed feelings for Senator Rothschild, but she worried about meeting his sexy twenty-one-year-old son Draymont and the temptations that would follow.

The young woman noticed a fifty-five-year-old man staring at her rear end from the corner of the elevator. She was wearing a gorgeous white cocktail dress with a shiny black leather belt, and both adorned her figure without missing any curves. Hailey grabbed the short dress just above her knees and raised it at a painfully slow pace, watching the man's face turn red with lust.

It was difficult to maintain her composure as she teased the bearded Jewish accountant. After all, he would have been too nervous to speak to her, even during the aftermath of a natural disaster. Hailey brought out her small, feminine tongue and used the tip to lick her upper lip as the dress continued to rise above her thighs. She bent her knees and let her backside stick out as the fabric threatened to show the stranger why underwear was wasted on such a glorious body. The elevator chimed at her floor, and the young woman let the dress slip back down around her thighs. She enjoyed how stunned her sole audience member appeared. The man seemed to be holding his breath as though he would scare away a rare and precious butterfly.

"You are too damn sweet, honey," Hailey admitted, flipping her shoulder-length red hair back and forth. "Maybe next time." She strutted out of the elevator like a goddess, walking strong in her heels and ensuring that he wouldn't dare breathe until the doors closed behind her.

Hailey strode past the other penthouse suites on the ninth floor, hoping that a day would come when Arty combined them all to make one space for his queen. She pouted in silence and removed a key card from her clutch, watching the red security light go out as the green one was lit. The model opened her door and kicked off her $500 heels as if they were grocery store produce. She set her clutch and coffee on the kitchen table and then immediately unzipped the dress, freeing her shoulders and dropping it to the floor. It had taken her only twenty seconds to get fully nude, and she smiled with delight from a game she had been playing since she was in high school. The socialite recalled a time when she had been proud to embrace full nudity within ninety seconds.

She ambled seductively to the door and was disappointed that nobody was walking past. Some part of her wished that the accountant had the balls to follow her down the hallway. Hailey exhaled with frustration and threw the door shut, folding her arms across a set of perfect C-cup breasts. The young woman smiled after a brief pause, reminiscing all of the shocking moments she had supplied the public over the years. It took a few seconds for her thoughts to descend back to earth where mere mortals lived, and she decided that the bathroom was long overdue.

However, she stopped herself along the way and paid a visit to the stainless steel side-by-side refrigerator. Hailey removed a clear wine glass from her cupboard that featured a frosted Eiffel Tower on either side. She then opened the fridge and poured herself a gluttonous portion of pinot noir for her trip to the restroom. The adventurous woman then used a remote control to turn on a music player. As she strutted to the master bathroom, the sounds of Johnny Cash filled the home with his song Ring of Fire.

Hailey screamed when she entered the restroom, splashing red wine on the quartz vanity and pristine white tiles. Charlie Marley sat on her toilet with his pants around his ankles.

"Calm down, I got tired of waiting for you," the career gangster pled in a thick Brooklyn accent. "Don't get your panties in a – where the hell are your panties?"

"What the f*** are you doing here?" Hailey asked in a vengeful voice. "Arty said that you weren't going to do the thing until next week."

"Yeah, but you lied about your photo shoot," Charlie replied in an urgent tone as he strained his digestive muscles. "You wanted to spend all of next week f***ing that Italian photographer before he flies back home."

The anxious model drank the red wine with a sense of purpose, deciding that it was the only action that would make her feel normal. She pretended that the stench in the restroom was a passing breeze, but the audacity of the man on her toilet wasn't lost on her.

Charlie Marley was extremely muscular yet pale all over, and his eyes seemed to have aged twenty years ahead of the rest of his body. He appeared tired and unshaken by the splendor of life. His hair was a mass of long curls, and he had eyebrows that reminded the model of pirates in old movies.

"I don't want to do the thing this week," she admitted with a shaky right hand, nearly dropping the empty wine glass. "If Arty wants to have an abusive relationship with me, that's fine, but he needs to be man enough to do it himself."

"Arty can't hit women; it makes him sick inside," the gangster admitted as he stood from the toilet and wrapped his left hand in tissue paper. "It's actually worse than that for him: I think he feels like he's dying when he hurts a woman."

"You've been friends for a long time, Charlie," Hailey stated with her head turned away from the man's full-frontal pelvis. "You should tell him that hitting me isn't the way to my heart. It's not the way to any woman's heart."

"That's true," Charlie began as he reached back and flushed the toilet, "but you keep playing games with his head, and he's trying to teach you to stop." The mob enforcer pulled up his pants and clasped his belt, gazing at her naked body as if it were any other object in the world.

"Every woman plays games," she reasoned with a haunted expression, setting the wine glass down on the vanity. "We hurt men so that they remember to give us respect – don't take us for granted."

"Yeah, well Arty's in love with you," he answered and started to wash his hands in the sink, "I guess that comes at a price. Are you ready?"

Tears were already streaming down Hailey's cheeks as she nodded for her boyfriend's muscle to deliver a five-minute beating for her transgressions. Charlie squared up his shoulders and stared through her, emotionless.

Artimus strode with confidence through the sushi bar to a private table where some of his most generous political donors were waiting to meet. He wore a black pinstripe suit with a paisley tie and a silver Rolex watch. The senator had rehearsed his appearance at this dinner, including his approach to the table, a devilish smile, and a gradual, aggressive handshake. His wealthy supporters returned his smile in a way that said he was worth every penny, and he was eager to finish the transaction.

Artimus noticed that his phone had been ringing since he entered the bar, and he knew that someone had called him multiple times.

"Excuse me, gentlemen," the senator said with all of his fingers outstretched, "I have a family member in the hospital and need to take this call in private."

The donors believed his story and excused him from the table with smiles that were dog-eared from repetition.

"This is Artimus Rothschild," he answered on his way to an isolated area of the establishment near the restrooms.

"He raped me, Arty," Hailey said through the phone with a sniffle, indicating that she was crying. "You set your f***ing dog on me again, and this time he raped me! I f***ing hate you!"

"It couldn't have been Charlie," Artimus asserted as his insides twisted in time with the planet. "There's no way Charlie would ever do that to me."

"I hate you, Arty!" The young model exclaimed in a solemn voice and hung up her phone.

Artimus tried to speak, but the phone went silent, and all he saw was Hailey's name and the log showing that they spoke for seventeen seconds. This event transported the senator back to the night when his father shot him in the leg and forced his prom date to the bedroom. The politician hurled his phone to floor of the bar, smashing it into pieces. He then approached the men's room door with the footing of a grizzly bear and kicked it repeatedly.

"Hey, man, what are you doing?" A young male bar employee asked as he approached the senator. "Settle down!"

Senator Rothschild kept kicking the door despite the pain it caused in the bones of his feet. The door opened and closed several times, but Artimus held fast to the handle and kicked with all of his might, breaking the bottom hinge from its steel frame.

"Jesus Christ! Calm down, bro!" The bar employee tried to restrain Artimus, but his secret service agents briskly tore him away from the politician.

Artimus saw the wealthy donors staring at him from across the bar. Their faces were horrified and amused by the strength that the thirty-eight-year-old exhibited. He made his way swiftly toward them, pretending that everything was going as planned.

"Gentlemen, we'll have to set something up for later this week," he apologized in a hurry with his secret service agents in tow, "but I promise you our next meeting will be just as exhilarating." He turned to Jake, his senior agent of the secret service. "I need a new phone right away!"

The senator waved to everyone in the bar with both hands outstretched, flashing them a reassuring smile, and then made his way out of the establishment in a rush.
XII. Non-Celestial Bodies

The evening had become a dance for misfits and night gawkers with designs on carving out their space in the world. Archuleto was flattered by his wife's expression of adoration as she smoked a marijuana cigarette next to him in their deluxe hot tub. She wore a revealing two-piece bikini made of sheer white material that left nothing to the imagination from less than ten feet away. He loved how her brown eyes teased him every few minutes, and that she was flirting like a college coed on spring break.

Zigmund grabbed a semiautomatic paintball gun from the side deck of the hot tub and aimed it at the windows of an apartment across the street. He held his breath to aim and squeezed the trigger, hearing a release of CO2 gas that propelled a paintball toward the windows of the imposing apartment building. Lucinda giggled with delicious enthusiasm and urged him to give her the gun.

Archuleto laughed at the messy orange paint splotch that he created on his neighbor's window from over a hundred feet away. He passed the tactical, black paintball gun to his wife and waited for the second round of graffiti.

Lucinda took the non-lethal weapon in her arms and pointed it with precision at the same set of windows across the street. She felt her husband watching, and took a moment to shake her hair from side to side. The young woman then stood up tall in the hot tub, slipping somewhat in the process, making her husband feel unnerved. Lucinda spotted up on her target with careful attention to detail and let loose a volley of paintballs that sounded menacing and robotic.

"I'M CALLING THE COPS!" A man's voice shouted after Lucinda stopped firing the recreational weapon.

"GO AHEAD AND CALL THE COPS, PERVERT, THERE'S TWO SCIENCE TO EVERY STORY!" She handed the paintball gun back to her husband and fell backward into the warm water, cackling at her neighbor's displeasure.

"Oh no, you blocked his view, what's he going to use those binoculars for now?" Archuleto mused as he gazed at over twenty fresh orange splotches that covered the offending windows.

"You know what, Zigmund," Lucinda offered in a state of innocent drunkenness, "I think that paintball gun was well worth a thousand dollars." She moved closer to her husband, prompting him to wrap his arms around her mostly bare body in the steaming pool. "I'm so glad that you decided to quit opiates, baby. It makes me want to take the month off work to f*** you every day – until you can't stand thinking about your grandma anymore."

"You smart-ass," he said with an awkward smile, "I'm not one of those guys who thinks about my grandma to last longer."

"Oh, then you'll get tired of thinking about the president," she teased. "I've seen the way you look at him. When's your meeting with Draymont?"

"It's in about two hours," he answered with his voice trailing off gradually. "I'm surprised that he agreed to meet, and that he remembers me."

"Wouldn't it be cool if he gives you front row tickets to his fight?" Lucinda inquired absently. "Wait, I guess you're trying to stop the fight-"

"So, yeah, that wouldn't be cool," he interjected with a playful wink.

"Do you really think that they're trying to kill him?" Lucinda asked with caution. "I can't imagine what that would accomplish for anyone."

"I'm not sure, his dad is a member of the society; maybe he screwed up somehow," Archuleto surmised. "But they are serious people, and that's why I can never miss a meeting."

"Hey, Mr. Mystery Pants," she said with a wink, "I've got a meeting that you won't want to miss."

Lucinda stood up in the hot tub again and reached for her towel, shoving her healthy rear end into Zigmund's face. He rose from the water with immediate interest and spanked her gently on the right buttocks. The couple burst out laughing at the night sky and retreated to their bedroom to continue celebrating.
XIII. Dray's Penthouse

"Golden goose. Motherf***er! Golden goose," Archuleto sang along with the Tribal Fierceness hip hop music in his black Mercedes sedan. "G-g-g-golden goose. Motherf***er! Golden goose... I was a man on a train pullin' husbands outta' bottles. They ain't know how I livin' 'cause their glass jaw's hollow. I don't want the jaws of life, sharkin' for God in a skyscraper, and his imported wife. But I always advised your dumba** not to bite at the breast that feed yo' fighter, 'cause when love turns to lies, you'll stalk the streets like a tiger. Stalk the streets like a tiger!"

Zigmund recalled watching Draymont strut down to the bowels of Madison Square Garden to this song that wasn't well-known at the time. The music thundered throughout the interior of his car, utilizing the latest audio technologies to create full symphonic immersion. He was unashamed to practice escapism, having just given up opiates the night before and awaiting the sting of withdrawals. The young man peered down at the directions that Draymont had provided him to access the penthouse and pulled his vehicle into the underground parking garage, pretending to be an original gangster.

When the music cut to silence, Archuleto transformed his demeanor to something matured and wiser. Gone was the seventeen-year-old geek who pined for the attention of a student athlete two years his junior. He grabbed the briefcase from the black leather passenger seat and walked at a brisk pace toward the elevators.

It was a short trip from the elevators to the penthouse, and he was grateful that the security codes for the front gates and elevators had worked as expected. Deep in his core, he was ashamed to learn that he still carried a torch for Draymont's popularity, but Archuleto let these thoughts subside in lieu of more pressing issues. When the elevator doors opened at the penthouse apartment, the day trader felt like he was staring into heaven. The doors were coated in a dark walnut stain, which contrasted with the celestial patterns of clouds and lightning painted on the marble that was embedded flawlessly from floor to ceiling in unbroken patterns. To his delight, the double doors were open, giving the impression that Draymont was a discerning businessman who liked to keep his appointments on the hour and sharp.

He stepped forward from the elevator onto the marble flooring and felt nauseous. Archuleto's breathing became shallow, and he detected sweat starting to accumulate on the top of his brow. His mind manifested a cruel memory of Draymont attacking him in high school. Zigmund never understood why he had received beatings on a weekly basis from the overprivileged senator's son, but his hands shook at the thought of the impotent humiliation he experienced.

"Arthur, is that you?" A confident voice called out from within the penthouse. "Come on in; I'm just getting ready to meet my sparring partner at the gym."

Draymont was smiling at him from the center of a sunken living room, standing in front of a fireless fireplace. The professional athlete held a large, black Adidas gym bag in his right hand. His smile faded when he noticed the expression of distress on his old classmate's face.

"Come on in, dude, we don't have a lotta' time," Draymont ordered in a natural voice as he took a seat on a stylish, brown leather sofa to his right. "You said this was an emergency, so I'm all ears."

Archuleto used the muscles in his gut to push down the invisible opiate monster that had come for a reckoning. He wiped his brow and forced a smile, moving with urgency toward the center of the open penthouse.

"I changed my legal name to Zigmund Archuleto," he stated with his right hand outstretched for a greeting.

"Oh, you're one of those trendy New Yorkers that have to change their name to change the game?" The professional boxer asked with a smirk as he shook Zigmund's hand and gestured for him to have a seat on a matching sofa opposite him. "So, if my memory is right, we weren't exactly friends in high school, correct? You'll have to excuse me, but I need to get this outta' the way. Are you here on some revenge kick or to ask me for money?"

Zigmund was amazed and terrified by the power that the boxer wielded in a casual handshake, and he sat down fixated on how a person could become so strong.

"Nah, no," he replied after snapping out of the spell that the celebrity fighter had cast on his ego. "I'm not here for money. I wanted to warn you about a possible issue with your next fight."

Draymont leaned back and gazed around the room with calculated suspicion. He bit his lower lip and stared down his nose at Archuleto like a dung beetle that was trying to invade his next meal.

"So, you know something about Jordanesh Al-Sannah?" The fighter asked with aggression. "What would Arthur Higgins of Manhattan, New York know about a fighter that comes from Iran? Is this a swoop and squat?" Draymont stood up tall above his guest, causing his black tank top to fall open and expose heaving pectoral muscles.

"I watched some fight videos on the dark web that featured Jordan, and he killed someone intentionally!" Archuleto fired back at the impulsive athlete, causing the man to stand silent and focus. "Listen, Dray, I wouldn't have come here if I thought that this threat was bulls***, but it seems legit, and I need you to know what I know."

"All right, I get you, Arthur," Draymont replied with a condescending smile. "You watched some videos of my opponent, and now you feel that he's dangerous – I shouldn't fight him? Are you stupid, man? I'm contracted for ten million dollars on this fight, win or lose."

"Hey, don't dismiss me like that!" Zigmund declared with more passion and outrage than he intended. "I watched this guy methodically pound his opponents in the heart. His whole fight strategy is based on overloading your chest with too much pressure. Look, Dray, I know some bad people on the wrong side of town, and they told me that you're going to die in this fight."

"So, that's your game, huh?" The boxer surmised as he closed the space between him and Archuleto, staring his guest down with authority. "You came here to get in my head two days before I have the fight of lifetime? Do you know what we call this in the industry? It's professional jealousy! You're a small, pathetic, weak man, and you want to come in here and get me anxious about the fight so you can make some money. I had my boys do some research on you, and your wife Lucinda does the sports book for Hector, doesn't she?"

"Yeah, my wife runs the books for Hector, but this meeting has nothing to do with getting in your head, Dray," the investment banker pleaded, feeling panicked and claustrophobic standing next to his old nemesis.

"Are you f***in' sweatin', b'?" Draymont inquired with dogmatic tenacity. "Why would I trust you if you're friends with criminals? How could I believe anything you say?"

"Look, a**hole, you're gonna' be as dead as your mother if you go to that fight!" Archuleto felt his lips moving, and he sat in silence for three seconds, hoping that the words were just a passing thought rather than something he said.

The first punch landed heavily at the center of Zigmund's left eye, smashing into his skull like the head of a baseball bat. He raised his arms to protect himself as he had done many times throughout high school, but this stronger and more mature version of Draymont was deadlier than he remembered. His gut felt the impact of a severe blow that caused him to curl up in a ball on the sofa, and more punches followed without mercy. The dominant athlete engaged him with absolute ferocity, pounding his face, ears, neck, eyes, fingers, and anything else that his mighty fists could reach.

"Stop it! You're going to kill me!" Zigmund cried out amidst ninety seconds of hellish punishment.

"You don't say anything about my mother, f***face!" The fighter exclaimed, leaning over his guest defiantly. "You have no idea what it's like to watch someone die of cancer when they're the only parent who loves you!"

Another volley of punches flew at Archuleto's head, but these blows were sloppy, and they didn't get past the shield he had created using his arms. Draymont spat on the bloody investment banker and took a few steps back. Sweat was dripping from every corner of the boxer's face, and his eyes held the intensity of a world leader preparing for a nuclear strike.

Archuleto was overwhelmed by memories of abuse from high school, and he began to wail like a toddler. His face was drenched in blood from two deep cuts that sprung open during their encounter with Draymont's bare knuckles. He expressed a cry of anguish that penetrated the walls of the penthouse, letting the world know that the pain was unbearable.

"I'm trying to help you!" Archuleto screamed through his shaking arms, keeping his body taut in a ball of miscarried masculinity.

"Get the f*** out of my house," Draymont responded with callous restraint. "Get the f*** out of my life! You've got thirty seconds to be gone."

The boxer stared at Archuleto with devout hatred, backing away with an ounce of regret. He began to count out loud after five seconds had passed, making his way to a wet bar in the kitchen nearby.

Zigmund didn't want to move, but the threat of experiencing a beating like that again forced him to push his body off of the sofa. He dropped to the floor with a thud and found himself crawling through the penthouse, leaving a six-inch trail of blood along the otherwise pristine marble.

As the countdown escalated, Draymont began shouting the numbers, and Archuleto scrambled out of the penthouse using all manner of odd movements along the way. He couldn't see the elevator buttons through the bloody mess on his face, so he frantically massaged the stainless steel until the standard up and down buttons were located.

The boxer was getting to the end of his countdown, but Archuleto noticed that he was giving more time between each number. After an intense silence, the elevator chimed and opened its doors to the wounded investment banker. Zigmund crawled into the steel compartment and pressed several buttons on the inner control panel. He remained on all fours, trying to make out Draymont's figure through droplets of blood that kept hindering his vision. When the doors closed, he dropped to the cheap tile flooring of the elevator and passed out.
XIV. Montclair New Jersey

Charlie Marley looked on as wind gusts of up to thirty miles per hour tossed the trees and bushes in his neighborhood to and fro. His five-year-old son Jack was having a birthday party in the backyard, and the sudden change in weather made him consider moving the party into the house. He glanced at his wife, Victoria, who seemed to know Charlie's intentions right away and began shaking her head, putting him in his place with her clear blue eyes.

"Okay, sir, I'm all done back there," a male voice interjected, stepping with haste between the couple.

The mob enforcer took a deep breath and held it in his chest, hating that someone sneaked up on him at his home. He glared at the Public Service Electric & Gas employee, fighting his urge to smash the man's head against the outdoor glass table on his patio.

"Any problems?" Charlie inquired.

"No, I was able to check the line clearance and power box, but it took a bit of digging to get there," the technician replied.

Charlie glanced at the technician's fingers, noting the lack of calluses, and wondered how this prima donna had gotten a service job. He sneered at the odorless, tasteless white privilege that stood near him – a sack of premium melanin marinated to mediocrity.

"Okay, thanks." He muttered with little interest. "But don't ever sneak up on me again – EVER!" Charlie looked sideways at the young man, flashing a promise of cruelty from his dark eyes.

"Have a good day, sir," the young technician said with a snarky smile as he made his way through a gate in the wooden fence toward a white utility truck on the street.

Charlie sensed his masculinity returning after suffering the indignation of watching five-year-olds frolic like feral cats in his backyard. He surmised that many fathers would be proud to see that their son was popular, but this expectation had been set years ago when Jack first learned to speak. The boy understood that being part of the Marley family meant causing tears for others and having none of his own.

"Do you have room for one more?" A familiar voice beckoned from behind the fence, his words just audible over the wind.

It took Charlie a moment to comprehend what was happening, and he turned his gaze toward the gate with suppressed hatred. He saw Arty standing next to his wooden fence, staring at his yard as if he was invited. With a raised eyebrow, Charlie forced his legs to move forward, resisting the urge to tell his employer to go to hell.

"Hello, Senator Rothschild," Charlie blurted out with masked frustration. "What brings you here today?" He approached the gate but didn't open it.

"Charlie, I'm here for your boy's birthday," the senator offered with a wink. "I brought some punch and a special gift."

"Yeah..? Well, the kids have enough to drink," the troubled homeowner answered deftly, scratching the back of his head. "You didn't have to do that, Arty. Where's your security detail?" Charlie inquired with a nod toward the street.

"They're at a strip club around the way," Arty admitted with a wink. "I wanted some private time to stretch my legs."

"What's this about, Arty?" Charlie challenged with a fierce stare as he squared his shoulders even with the gate. "There's no drama worth bringing to my home...I've done right by you...for years."

"I do need to talk, Charlie," Senator Rothschild admitted, tipping his head down and letting a few hairs fall out of place from his brow. "This one can't wait, and it can't be over the phone."

The enforcer stared through Artimus and thought about the pistol that was tucked away in the pantry of his kitchen. He could excuse himself to the bathroom for a few minutes and return with the .45-caliber handgun tucked into his waistband. Charlie gazed at Arty's frame and considered how strong his pale arms could be from doing nothing but cardio all week. His stomach lurched with fear at the thought of having someone this evil within reach of his family, and he shook his head, refusing to allow Artimus to enter.

"For f***'s sake, Charlie, I need five minutes!" The senator insisted with flared nostrils, glaring at his employee.

"Why don't we go to the strip club?" Charlie offered. "This party," he gestured to the group of children, "is for my son's birthday. Any business needs to be discussed away from my home. I need you away from my family; that's our arrangement!"

"Hello, Senator Rothschild!" Victoria called out from across the lawn. "Are you coming to say hi? Let him in, Charlie."

Charlie turned away and grimaced at his wife, berating her ignorance in silence. He then turned back and gazed at the bolt that was holding the gate of his fence shut. The savvy criminal slid the bolt sideways and gestured for the senator to enter.

"Stand right there," he instructed his colleague with immediacy, "I'm going to get a piece. Everything had better be cool."

The senator was holding a bright orange jug with his right hand, and he gestured with his left fingers in agreement. Charlie moved his athletic body sideways, strafing toward the kitchen, keeping his eyes on Artimus. He burst through the back door of the home and glanced at the senator through the kitchen window before darting into the pantry.

Senator Rothschild smiled and waved to the children after being introduced by Charlie's wife as an 'important public figure.' He crept over to a long folding table where a cheap birthday cake was decorated with colorful frosting and five white candles. Artimus set the punch down next to the cake and stepped back a few paces.

"What's that?" Victoria inquired with a parental stare of caution.

"Oh, it's just mountain berry punch," Arty stated with humility. "I enjoyed this flavor very much as a child and thought your son might as well."

"That's thoughtful. Thank you," the mother blurted out while shielding her eyes from the sun. "What brings you up here today?"

"Arty, I don't want my kids having any punch!" Charlie demanded, pointing an index finger at the orange jug with the authority of a professional wrestler. "They've had enough sugar as it is! Let's have that five-minute chat." He added with a fake smile, placing his right arm on the senator's shoulder. "Are you f***ing kidding me coming down here like this today?" His enforcer added in a whisper.

Artimus did an about-face and began to walk away from the table of birthday cheer. He looked at Charlie with restrained intent, signaling that something was not well with them.

"I spoke to Hailey earlier today," the senator relayed in a deadpan tone, glancing back at Victoria and the children. "She said that-"

"Wait! This is about Hailey?" Charlie asked with confusion. "Look, Arty, I don't care what kind of women you have in your life, but she is a G**damn cancer! I did what you asked and nothing more!" He removed his arm from Arty's shoulder and kept it down near his side, making it easier to draw the pistol.

"Well, that's funny, because your story and hers don't match," Artimus insisted and stared off into the distance.

"That's because my story is the truth!" The agitated enforcer blurted out with raw passion.

"Then why are you so nervous, Charlie?" His employer observed with a keen stare.

"I'm nervous because you're a f***in' psychopath, Arty!" Charlie declared without a filter, biting his lip after delivering this mistaken remark. "You know that you're never supposed to come near my family! That's always been our deal!" He leaned forward with a murderous rage in his eyes, signaling that no options were off the table in defense of his wife and child.

"I didn't know that you felt this way about me, Charlie," Artimus offered as he walked alongside The Marley's outdoor pool. "Tell me more."

"No, I didn't mean to say-" the infuriated father began and then scoffed back to silence. "Look, the guys at the shop call you Evil Arty. I've heard things..."

"Hailey says that you had your way with her, and you weren't a gentleman," the senator retorted with a malicious and pained expression. "Do you know how awful-"

"It's a lie, Arty!" Charlie insisted, flailing his arms in the air in bitter frustration. "Yes, I know how awful stories of assault are for you, but this is just a story; it didn't happen!"

"Do you know what this is, Charlie?" Artimus asked, producing a small, stainless steel rectangle from his right hand. "It's a dead man's switch."

"Arty," his colleague began with caution, "I did not hurt your woman. There is no reason for you to come down here like this and make threats. And if we're making threats, keep in mind that the pistol in my back pocket has explosive-tipped rounds that can tear through your armored car."

"What do you think it does, Charlie?" The senator asked with a slight smile, holding the device up higher where his colleague could see more detail. "Does it blow up your house? Is there a bomb in the jug of punch? Will it signal a sniper nearby to take out your wife and kid? Will it mix a slow-acting poison into the punch?"

"Arty, I-" Charlie began but was cut off with urgency.

"Do you think I'd walk in here with anything less than a royal flush?" Artimus chided the bombastic gangster with a stern look. "It's a dead man's switch, Charlie. Can you imagine the first guy who had to create something like this device? I mean, you have to assume that you're going to die. When you walk out of the house with one of these, you know you're dealing with someone smart. You know that you're embracing impossible odds. But you go anyway because the sweetness of that vengeance is too important to savor in life."

"Not today," the homeowner pleaded as he saw his son playing random games in the yard with his friends. "Not right now! Arty, this isn't fair, and I never violated your trust. You need to know that above all else – I never screwed our agreement."

Artimus put his left hand around Charlie and massaged his shoulder slightly. He held up the dead man's switch near the longtime mob enforcer's face and watched him break down in tears.

"There's nothing that breaks a strong man faster than helplessness in the face of tragedy," Arty explained. "Don't worry, Charlie, the switch doesn't poison the punch. It electrifies the pool." He dropped the switch to the pristine white cement under their feet.

Charlie lunged for the switch, reaching down out of protective instinct to scoop it from the ground and watching for any kids near the swimming pool. Artimus nudged him in the center of his back, and he plunged face first into the water. In the pool, Charlie's body convulsed with a splash that seemed to bite the air with an electric sizzle.

"Hey, what's going on with you two?" Charlie's wife announced as she stomped across the lawn to investigate. "Why would you push him like that?" Victoria demanded and stepped past Arty to the edge of the pool. "Charlie, honey! Oh my G**, Charlie!" She screamed after seeing her husband motionless at the bottom of the blue water.

Victoria squared her shoulders and bent her knees, wondering how she would pull her husband to the surface.

"No! Don't!" Artimus screamed as he wrapped his arms around her chest and abdomen, pulling her away from the pool. "The water is electrified! The water has an electric charge; it's dangerous!"

"THAT'S MY HUSBAND! LET ME GO, ARTY! LET GO!" She screamed and whipped her head backward, smacking it into Arty's front teeth and knocking out one of his incisors. "WHAT DID YOU DO? CHARLIE! CHARLIE!"

"Mom, what's wrong?" her son asked as he came running toward his mother at top speed. "Where's dad?"

The other children were terrified by all the shouting and had huddled under a tree in the far corner of the yard. Arty felt awful and vindicated simultaneously. He noticed that Victoria was now struggling toward her son and released his grip.

"Stay out of the pool; it's electrified!" Arty warned the terrified partygoers, glancing toward the concrete for his missing tooth.

"Come here!" Victoria shouted to her son Jack, gripping him in her arms in a protective manner. "Children, come in the house right now! Please come in the house right now! I'm calling the police, Arty! I KNOW WHAT YOU DID!" She screamed and ran toward the back door of her home with the boy in her arms.

Artimus dropped to his knees, frantically searching the pavement for his tooth. In the distance, the group of young children sprinted toward the house, fleeing from Senator Rothschild as though a lion had found its way into the backyard. After a bit of nervous searching, he found his tooth and looked for the small switch in vain. His heart was pounding almost as hard as Victoria's when he was holding her at bay from instant death. Arty realized that the switch fell into the pool with Charlie, and he cursed himself for being so emotional. Without another thought, he fled the backyard at a brisk pace, making his exit like a man going to an important meeting.

The senator started his car and drove off at a moderate speed. He had been across town all afternoon at a swanky party, and all that the guests from the party would remember was that he excused himself to a private room to make a phone call. Over fifty of New York and New Jersey's most upstanding citizens would be able to vouch for his whereabouts. He glared down at the tooth in his center console, reminding himself to get some water along the way and to schedule emergency dental work for later.
XV. Refresh

Arty stood against the railing on the deck of a fifty-two-foot yacht, watching the storm clouds and their growing damnation of the sky. The ship was rocking at an unsettling pace, and he surmised himself a fool for wearing cargo shorts and a red Hawaiian shirt. His son Draymont was smiling and maintaining a cheerful façade of nobility, chatting with the guests as if on still waters.

Senator Rothschild smiled with affirmation at his son, raising a glass of scotch in a silent toast to him. There was an abrupt crash on the port side of the yacht, and Artimus felt the vessel tilted at a steep angle, yanking him from the luxurious party into the sea.

His body hit the cold water in a shocking swirl of madness, and he felt the flesh on his right arm get torn up by a reef that had impacted the large boat. There were several lacerations from his elbow to the tips of his fingers, and he froze when the redness of his blood began to cloud the water. The senator sucked in a cup of seawater before remembering to hold his breath. His lungs began to convulse at the bitter nastiness of the salt, and he kicked his legs to help him surface, coughing up the unwanted fluid as his head protruded from the stormy sea.

He looked for the yacht, and his chest went numb as he realized that it was now over fifty feet away. Artimus tried to shout over the winds of the storm, but the waves seemed to dissipate his voice to nothing. The politician gazed at the wounds on his right arm and saw the black fin of a shark emerge from the waves not more than fifteen feet away. Although the shark was between him and the boat, Arty knew that he would never survive swimming back to New York. His legs began to kick in a feverish pattern, causing his heart rate to increase and pump his body full of adrenaline.

The endangered man's eyes were fixed on the yacht as though it was his mother, and he ignored the part of his brain that alerted him to the stupidity of swimming toward a shark. A second fin emerged from the water and dipped back below the surface just as fast. This motion took place at a speed that made Arty question whether his eyes were playing tricks on him. He attempted to discern a method to stop the bleeding on his right arm while maintaining his swimming pace, but there was nothing to be done. The yacht was now over 100 feet away and appeared to be picking up speed.

Artimus received a jolt of fear as the tail of a creature whipped at his right leg. He continued to swim for safety with all of his strength, ignoring the droplets of rain that were starting to pelt the surface of the water. He felt something push him forward in the center of his back, nudging him like a jet ski. The horrified man continued to swim, knowing that the only chance of safety was to pursue the yacht. His Hawaiian shirt pulled tight around his torso and then went loose. For the second time, Arty was nudged forward and felt something cut into his shoulder blade.

As he swam, the senator noticed that the sleeves of the shirt were falling toward his wrists and it was loose enough for a man three times his size. Artimus sucked in a panicked breath, realizing that a shark was trying to bite him in the back and had chewed away the rear of his shirt in the process. He desperately wanted to swim faster, but that speed would turn his body horizontal, putting his feet in line with the creature's mouth. Senator Rothschild peered into the water ahead and saw a menacing black fin nine feet to his front. The shark was swimming toward his torso but dived deeper when it got within six feet of him. Artimus screamed when the animal's teeth clamped down around the front of his right knee. It chewed for a few seconds, biting through the bone with an inhuman amount of force.

Artimus awoke to a darkened hotel room. Hailey's naked body stood over him, and she was gently massaging his back, whispering that everything would be all right. Despite the immediate shift in his reality, the terror was still real for him, and he mourned his loss with a solitary tear.

"It's okay, hon'," Hailey comforted him with a voice like windblown silk. "What was it this time: fire, suffocation, shark?"

"Shark," he admitted, annoyed that she knew all of his worst phobias. "I want a chocolate donut and green tea." The man muttered, hearing how ridiculous this request sounded coming from his thirty-eight-year-old mouth. "The sea is so vast and... Millions of gallons – I don't know how people do it. How could anyone let the water decide their fate?"

He felt ashamed for this display of cowardice in front of his lover and knew that Ashes & Raven Feathers forbade fears of death. Although his religious beliefs taught him that death was something to be admired and celebrated, he couldn't fathom facing his phobias.

"Do you want a bj, sweetheart, to help you calm down?" His younger lover inquired, hoping to inspire another session of intense pleasure.

"I want a chocolate donut and green tea," he repeated with the deadpan predictability of a toddler. "I want to escape this hell."

"You know that these dreams have to do with unresolved-" Hailey began but was silenced as he put his right index finger to her lips. "I'll call room service." She started to walk toward the phone and stopped at the foot of the bed. "I need to confess something," the silhouette stated with uneasy hand movements. "Charlie never raped me; I told you that because I knew that you'd hurt him. I did it because I was tired of him hurting me. I was tired of you...telling him to hurt me. And I wanted-"

Hailey's voice drifted off as she sat down in an overstuffed leather chair near the window. Her hands began to tremble as her lover sat in silence for over five minutes. She started to weep as Artimus stared at her in the darkness. It seemed that every moment was becoming more dangerous.

"Are you going to kill me, Arty?" The young woman blurted out after a long session of self-punishment.

"Donut and tea," he replied in a cold voice and turned his body away from her.

Hailey rose to her feet with extreme caution and walked over to the room phone. She never took her eyes off of Arty as she moved, imagining how awful his expression of hatred might be if the darkness didn't hide it.

The senator followed her movements with his eyes, tracking her across the room to the phone and keeping control of the situation. He refused to process Charlie's death in any manner other than business but knew that the fallout of her betrayal would pour down on him eventually. Artimus watched her place an order with room service, knowing that he would have to keep tabs on her for the rest of his life.

THE FULL NOVEL WILL BE OUT BY JANUARY 2018. THE END.

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Other books by this author

Please visit your favorite ebook retailer to discover other books by T. C. Clover:

Shots Fired in the Melting Pot

Dividers (as Travis Adams Irish)

She is Risen

The Golden Goose of Los Angeles: Extended Edition

Isiah's Skirmish

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