

DEADMAN'S TOME

October 2011, Issue 39

SMASHWORDS EDITION

* * * * *

PUBLISHED BY:

Jesse Dedman on Smashwords

COVER ART BY

Jesse Dedman

DEADMAN'S TOME

Copyright © 2011 by Jesse Dedman

Smashwords Edition License Notes

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 person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

All of the content is either the property of Deadman's Tome, of other owners under an agreement with Deadman's Tome, or of other parties that have agreed to allow their content in the online magazine. The material in this document belonging to Deadman's Tome is not to be copied, altered and republished, or redistributed in any way without the permission of Jesse Dedman.

Do not copy material from this published document without the permission of its owner(s) and author(s).

Introduction

Welcome back ghoulish fiends, did you think we wouldn't return? Did you think our reign in horror, our monthly serving of gut-wrenching terror had dried up like a river struck by the unrelenting heat of Texas summer? Well, think again, because as mentioned in the September 2011 podcast, we've only took a hiatus to allow for a much fuller and much richer issue. It just so happened that our latest anthology, the Best of the Tome, was available at the time to be given the treatment and attention it deserves. A lot of work went into the anthology; rounding up former columnists from the Demonic Tome days and reaching out to other editors and fans wasn't a walk through the park. No, it was like a stroll through a creepy cemetery, at night, and with a struggling flashlight. Through the process, we exhumed some horrors that defied nature just by merely existing, but you can't make an omelet without breaking an egg like you can't have a party without bringing a keg.

We don't need to go into detail about the tumultuous and unrestrained life of former columnist Bill Goldberg, delving deep into that cesspool of a life will result in a corroded mind from all his infectious bull shit. Besides, it would distract from the thrilling, engaging, and oddly humorous content in this month's edition. Alessandro Cusimano and Jerry Williams will kick off this issue with speculative poetry that may disturb the deeper you wish to analyze. Then we present Richard Lee Landridge's The Missing Limb, an excellent story of a horrific haunting that doesn't rely on ghost and spirits, but rather the mind and body split in relation to a known medical phenomenon known as phantom limbs. After surviving a horrific night a slave to your own body's sinister unconscious intentions, take a break from the bloodletting with Every Twenty-two Days. It's a slightly dark tale with a hint of erotica with a man cursed to live in torment, denied of freedom and bliss until he can find that certain lay.

Though I would love to go into more detail about the previously mentioned stories and share some insight about the others, time wouldn't allow for it. Besides, this isn't Mr. Deadman story and rant hour, but if you want to listen to Mr. Deadman story hour, check out the new podcast.

Mr. Deadman

Table of Contents

Introduction

Boogeychild

Alessandro Cusimano

The Stone Temple at Dusk

Jerry Williams

The Missing Limb

Richard Lee Landridge

Every Twenty-two Days

Melvyn Chase

Monthly Curse

LaVa Payne

And Cyndi Lauper Sang

Chuck von Nordheim

Me vs. the Tooth Fairy

Alvin Atwater

The Cradle of Ruin: An Old Fossil

Jesse Dedman

The Bleeder Resurrection

Jesse Dedman

Hell's Doctor

Review by Jesse Dedman

Alice and Dorothy

Review by Jesse Dedman

Boogeychild

Alessandro Cusimano

The fury of the crumbs

is not a childish epiphany

is a breathtaking ride

a foundling

with the face hidden

a child always first

with a frantic laughter

has

the Seven of Diamonds

a little boy saddened by

the opening of the womb

of a lean mother and given

to a vigorous nurse crazy

about him

a sharp-shooter

a heedless burglar

who causes insecurity

and whispers like

a locomotive

a rascal who bangs

every idiot

and babbling boor

slamming the door

the frenzy of an obedient

inquisition

a lawyer

who does not seek

to make money a poison

that does not grope

the rattle

of a long-running torpedo

The Stone Temple at Dusk

Jerry Williams

Peel back the eyes of night,

and dreams flood and engulf you

over many forgotten worlds.

In this shadow land, filled with crumbling temples

of sinister natives and terrible warlocks,

are things to evoke dreams and nightmares in stone

still pock marked by neglect,

and wrapped in the jungle blanket of rot.

Skeletons dance like faeries in this realm,

and the music is of the waterfall of sick honey and regret.

Before you is the citadel

from the first age

Debris and armor are all that is left

of titanic battles and crashing swords.

Lurking in the heart of the stone temple,

is a creature, a monster unbound,

that madmen and poisoned poets scream softly about.

It battered against its cages of time,

and the stones shatter and spray into the night air,

for this nameless monster has come back.

A shivering fluid of flesh monster

with eyes as white as the coldest winter,

and a roar that bleeds

into the nightmare realm.

You run from this monstrous vision,

and fall into the stream of light.

Awaking to our world,

and pondering was there any weight

to such a dream?

Eventually the cold leaves you,

but in the dark

muses turns to solids and then to grotesque concepts

of the thing lurking in the citadel of dreams.

The Missing Limb

Richard Lee Langridge

My arm is back, Evan thought as he slowly awoke from his slumber. He could feel the place where his arm had been, tingling, as though it were being pricked by thousands of hot, tiny needles; however, the feeling was not entirely unpleasant. He raised his index finger, put it down, and then clenched his hand into a fist, marvelling at how real it felt. He could even feel the bed sheet that lay beneath it, pressing against the forearm that was no longer there, and he had to check to be sure it hadn't spontaneously grown back in the night whilst he slept. Evan reached down and groped at the mangled stump of his right shoulder. Nope. Still gone.

He tried to prop himself up with his remaining arm, but the pain was too much and he let himself sink back down into the mattress, defeated. Luckily, the hospital had appointed him a carer—Lucinda—and had given him what Evan supposed you would call a 'distress' button. He reached for it then, nearly knocking over a glass of water, and pressed down on the worn, red button.

Whilst he waited for Lucinda, Evan looked around the small, well-lit hospital room with an expression of distaste. It really was tiny, only marginally bigger than what he imagined a prison cell to be, and there was only one small window in which he could look out of. Not that the view was any good: the only thing he could see was the wall of the building opposite. It made him wonder why they bothered putting a window there at all.

After a moment, Lucinda waltzed into the room, carrying a tray of what Evan hoped, were painkillers.

"Good morning, Evan" she said, as she set the tray down at the foot of the bed. She reached down somewhere and the bed began to slowly rise, elevating him into a sitting position. "I hear you had a rough night again?"

Evan eyed her sulkily and gestured towards the tray.

"You could say that—are those for me?" He could hear the desperation in his voice, but he didn't care. He needed something for the pain.

Lucinda rummaged through the tray, found the Oxycodone, removed one of the pills, and handed it to him.

Evan liked her: she was a nice one, unlike the other nurse that had tried to change his bandage a few days ago. He had ended up kicking her out—too rough, he had told Lucinda when she'd asked him about it the following morning.

"Is it bad today?" she asked.

Evan considered and replied: "It's been worse; I think these painkillers are messing with my sleep though. I keep having these weird dreams."

She pulled a chair over from across the room and handed him a glass of water.

She was a young girl, maybe late twenties, with dark skin and long auburn hair, and Evan thought she was pretty. Certainly too pretty for that ass she was dating; what was his name? Armando? He couldn't remember. She had mentioned him a few times during their routine, morning conversions, and from what Evan could make out, things didn't seem to be going all that well between the two of them. He seemed like a bit of a hothead.

Evan took the glass, flicked the pill into his mouth, washed it down, and handed the glass back to her.

"What kind of dreams?" she asked, as she set about inspecting his stump, unwrapping the bandages with a practiced delicacy that belonged solely to those in the healing profession.

He wondered whether or not he should tell her. It wasn't your run-of-the-mill, kind of dream; in fact, now that he thought about it, it was pretty damn bizarre—she might think he was hallucinating and try and take his Oxycodone away, and there was no way he was going to let that happen.

"Never mind," he said, moving the subject along. "Is the doc' paying me a visit today? Or does he plan on keeping me here indefinitely?"

She chuckled. It was a nice sound.

"I'm sure he'll be down at some point. Why don't you get some rest? That arm isn't going to heal itself you know."

He gave her a cheeky salute as she left the room and laid his head back down on the pillow. Maybe getting some sleep wasn't such a bad idea. God knows he was tired.

Evan closed his eyes and let his mind wander as the painkillers kicked in, loosening the muscles in his body and making him feel more and more relaxed with every minute that passed. The relentless hum of the monitor next to him made falling asleep difficult, but after a while, he managed to block that out also, and he drifted off in to a deep sleep.

Evan awoke a few hours later, disorientated and confused, the stump of his right arm itching maddeningly. His throat was hoarse: he had been screaming in his sleep, it seemed. Evan looked down. There was a pool of sweat on the mattress beneath him and he had to fight to free his legs, which had become entangled in the bed sheets. He reached over, thumbed the switch on the nightstand, and a light came on. That was better.

What the hell was that? He thought, rubbing a shaky hand through his hair.

He went to swing his legs out of bed and nearly propelled himself out of it instead, grabbing the nightstand just in time. He was still getting used to the imbalance caused by his missing appendage.

Using the nightstand for support, Evan pushed himself up. The itch in his arm was burning like a low-grade fever and he fought the compulsion to scratch it with all his might, knowing he would tear the stitches if he did. He looked around for his 'distress' button. Maybe one of the night nurses could get him some Oxycodone, he hoped. He picked it off the nightstand and pressed down on the button.

Whilst he sat there, waiting, his thoughts returned to the dream that had pulled him so abruptly from his sleep. It was different from the others; it was as if he was watching through the eyes of somebody else, and the things he saw... the things he saw were terrifying. Before, everything had been blurry and vague, as if looking at the world through frosted glass. This time the dream was unbelievingly vivid; the colours and shapes that his previous dreams had hinted at suddenly came to life with horrifying clarity.

In the dream he had been standing on the fire escape of some apartment complex, and it had been raining—a real downpour, like the one they had had a few nights ago. Except he wasn't standing, he remembered, because the height was all wrong. It was as if he were lying down, crawling on his belly like a snake or a worm, crawling laboriously over each step with painful slowness. He remembered trying to look down at his body and being unable to: he was an observer and nothing more, it seemed.

He watched as he/it shuffled awkwardly over to the sill of the window and climbed on top of it, and Evan started to get the feeling that something bad was about to happen. The dread he felt was overwhelming, even in the dream, and he remembered trying to pull away, but it was no use. This thing that he had somehow stowed away inside of had something on its mind, and Evan thought it might be murder.

He had blacked out then for a moment, the dream moving on without him as it sometimes does, and when he came to, he was on the other side of the glass and dripping on to the carpet of what he guessed would have to of been the living room. There was a beige leather couch in front of him and he could see the back of a man's head, bent over the top of it. He had known the man was sleeping, just as he had known how the vessel he inhabited had waited for him to fall asleep so it could make its move.

Evan stared in horror as he was dragged helplessly towards the couch, a foot at a time, in the direction of the sleeping occupant of the apartment he/it had broken into. He/it climbed onto the armrest and Evan could see the man's face, the drool hanging out of the corner of his open mouth, and was startled to find he recognized him, although he couldn't remember from where. He/it crawled over the couch cushion, the TV remote, and then into the man's lap.

The man stirred, but didn't wake.

No! Evan had screamed inside his/its head. Wake up! Wake up dammit!

Whoever was running the controls heard Evan's cry and for the first time, Evan got a brief glimpse of the vessel he was hitchhiking in.

It turned him to face the window so Evan could see its reflection, and all sense of reality disappeared instantly.

It was a severed arm.

His severed arm.

He stared dumbly at it, at the fleshy, gore-streaked stump that up until three weeks ago, had been attached to his right shoulder, and pure revulsion filled him. The wedding ring he wore even though his wife had been dead for ten years was still on his finger, as it had been when the man in the pickup truck had blindsided him after running the lights.

As he watched, the arm raised its hand and waved its index finger at him as if saying: Tut! Tut! And then bent to the right and picked up the TV guide that lay on the couch next to it. It rolled it up tight, until the plastic cover creaked, and then he was pulled away from the window, and his/its reflection.

Evan knew what it planned to do, but there was nothing he could do to stop it. He watched as he/it climbed up the man's sleeping body, hooking his/its fingers into the creases of his shirt for leverage, and raised the magazine above his head; then, without any hesitation at all, he/it shoved it into his open mouth.

The man's eyes flew open in surprise, Evan looking down into them as he/it shoved the magazine further down the man's throat. His hands came up and pawed at the magazine, at the arm, but it was too late, and the arm was far too strong—far too determined—that the man should die. The sound of the man's gagging was horrific, and Evan wished he could cover his ears, but of course, he couldn't. He watched the light in his eyes fade, gripped in a state of terror and disbelief, before finally, mercifully, blacking out once more.

It was a few hours before Evan managed to get back to sleep again, but when he did; his dreams were of the normal variety. He awoke the next morning feeling tired, but otherwise like his normal self, the dream having receded to some dark corner of his mind (but not completely forgotten) and he ate a double helping of breakfast, with Lucinda's encouragement. She stayed with him for an hour or so, talking about this and that before realizing she had forgotten her other patients and hurrying off. He did not think of the dream again until a few hours later, when he had received a visit from an unexpected guest.

"Mr Quinn?" the man said, leaning his head around the door.

"That's me."

He walked in then, and Evan saw his trench coat, his polished shoes and general smart demeanour. He should have guessed straight away that this guy was a cop: he looked like a wannabe Inspector Clouseau—minus the fedora.

"I was wondering if I could speak with you for a moment?" he asked.

Evan heard the lack of a French accent and was bitterly disappointed. Oh well. He gestured towards the chair by his bed and the man sat down, removing his wallet from his coat pocket and flashing it briefly at him.

"I'm detective Harlan Jones; I want to ask you about the accident you were involved in on the twenty-fifth?"

"What about it? I've already been over it with the other guys," Evan said. He was starting to get a bad feeling.

"I appreciate that sir, but I was wondering if you wouldn't mind telling it once more."

Evan shrugged. "I was driving home from work; I came to the light, it was green, so I went through, then out of nowhere this guy in a pick-up truck smashes into the side of me; I black out, wake up here—minus an arm—end of story."

The detective nodded his head as if agreeing with him, and then reached into his coat for a second time, removing a small, brown file. He didn't open it, just placed it in his lap, and the bad feeling Evan felt when the man came in, intensified. He suddenly felt guilty.

"And that's all you remember?" the detective asked, his face blank. Noncommittal.

Evan was starting to sweat. He shuffled in his bed.

"Look, I don't wanna be rude, but I've been through this twice already, and it hasn't helped any. You still haven't found the guy who hit me—or found my arm, for that matter. I don't see how I telling you again can make any difference."

The detective nodded again, as if he had expected that reaction, and opened the folder. He turned it over so Evan could see.

It was a picture of a man, a man that Evan recognised, and he suddenly felt cold all over.

"Do you know this man?" the detective asked.

Evan quickly shook his head—perhaps a bit too quickly, because the detective frowned and asked him again.

"You're sure?" he asked

"Yeah, I don't know him. Why?" But inside, Evan did know him. It was the man in his dream—the one he had murdered by choking him with his own TV guide.

"This is the man suspected of hitting you with his car. His name is Arthur Hill."

Evan stared at the photo, at his eyes, the same eyes he had stared down into whilst his severed hand had forced the magazine in. He remembered how they had bulged out of their sockets like some grotesque party trick, and he felt his stomach give a warning twitch.

"Are you alright? You look very pale," the detective suddenly asked him.

"I'm ok, it's nearly time for my pain relief, is all," Evan lied. He wanted the detective gone, and fast.

"Do you want me to call the nurse?"

"No, that's fine; she'll be along any minute now, anyway." He motioned towards the file with his remaining arm. "You didn't bring me that just to ask if I knew him, did you?" he said. It wasn't a question.

The detective sat back in his chair, sliding the file back into his coat pocket.

"Indeed not," he said. "Mr Hill was found dead this morning in his apartment. Murdered. Looks like somebody found him before we did. Forensics are still over there now, sweeping the place for prints." He watched Evan's face whilst he told him, presumably measuring his reaction.

"Anyway, I just thought you should know," he said, and then suddenly stood up.

Evan didn't know what to say; he felt as if somebody just punched him in the gut.

"I see..." was all he could manage.

The detective made for the door, but turned at the last minute and looked at him.

"Feel better, Mr Quinn," he said cheerily and then disappeared out the door.

Despite his pleasant tone, there was something distinctly ominous about that last comment that made Evan feel nervous.

He suspects me... he thought.

He waited and listened to his footfalls until he was sure the detective was gone before leaping out of bed and vomiting into the waste bin by the door. He vomited in big, breathless gasps, the world greying around him, and he put his hand on the wall to steady himself. It really happened... was all he could think, repeating it over and over in his head, like some kind of strange chant. He vomited until there was nothing left, and then dry heaved for the encore.

At some point he made it back to his bed, but not before taking time to empty the bin of its contents out the window. He could have poured it down the sink, but he wanted to check the window for a fire escape.

The rest of his day went without incident, but he could not stop thinking about the man in the photo. Whenever he closed his eyes, he saw the man's face; it was as clear and vivid as the dream that had started it all.

Not possible... he thought. My arm's probably lying in a ditch somewhere—not running around killing people. For Christ's sake, it's just an arm!

He told himself that, but that didn't explain the dream. How could he have a dream about a man he had never met? Unless you count the time the man had hit him with his car, that is. It didn't make any sense.

That night sleep came slowly: he was afraid that his arm would kill again, and he would be made to watch, its unwilling accomplice. Eventually sleep did come, but there were no dreams that night; only the fleeting feeling that things were about to get worse.

The next few days were quiet and Evan used the time to reflect on recent events. Now that he had had some time to think, it was obvious what had happened: the Oxycodone had caused the dream, and the guy's death had just been a coincidence—stranger things have happened, right?

He had told Lucinda that he had been feeling unwell, that he thought it was the painkillers that were doing it, and she had changed them to something called Fentynal patches, which seemed to be doing the trick. The dreams hadn't come back and he was actually getting his sleep pattern back to somewhere close to normal, when the detective paid him another visit.

"Ah, Mr Quinn—how are you feeling today?" said a voice from the doorway.

Evan was dozing at the time, and the voice startled him, jerking him awake.

"Detective Jones," he said feebly, his heart in his mouth. "You caught me napping." It was all he could think to say.

"Did I startle you? My apologies; how are you feeling?" the detective asked again.

"Ok, I guess. Doc' says I'll be able to go home in a few days, if there's no sign of infection."

The detective made his way inside and sat himself down, his trench coat flapping around him.

"Good. That's good," he said, settling back into his chair. He Looked at Evan quizzically for a moment, as if unsure how to proceed, and then ran a hand across his stubbly cheek. He leant forward in his chair.

"I have a question I'd like to ask you, and I would appreciate it if you could be one hundred percent honest with me," he said, all of a sudden dropping the formalities.

Evan stared at him. The question had caught him totally off guard, and his head was still foggy from the Fentynal.

"I... what do you mean?" he said. Suddenly, his mouth felt very dry.

The detective's face was a blank canvas.

"The other day when I asked you if you knew Mr Hill, you told me you'd never seen him before, right?"

Evan didn't like where this was going.

"That's right," he said, careful to keep an even tone. Inside, he felt like a plate of jelly.

Detective Jones eyed him and pressed forward.

"That's what I thought," he said. He reached an arm in to his coat as he had during their previous conversation, and removed the same, small, brown file. Frowning, he skimmed through the contents until he presumably found what he was looking for, and stopped. He sat there quietly for a moment, reading what he had found.

Evan didn't know if the detective taking his time was all an act or not, but it certainly made him nervous.

What do I have to be nervous about? He thought, suddenly angry. I haven't done anything. It was all a dream—caused by the Goddamn Oxycodone. Changing to Fentynal proved that: I haven't had a bad dream in days!

The detective continued.

"I have here the forensics report taken from Mr Hills's apartment. It shows three sets of fingerprints: one belonging to a woman—his girlfriend—a Miss Daisy Forester; the second belonging to Mr Arthur Hill himself; and the third belonging to a man."

He stopped then, and looked up from the sheet of paper, eyeing Evan with that same, blank expression.

"They're your fingerprints, Mr Quinn."

Evan's mouth fell open. He could hear his heart beating in his chest.

"But that's impossible!" he exclaimed.

"Possible or not, the fact remains—you were there. Prints don't lie. Now do you want to tell me the truth?"

Evan's mind was racing. It did happen, there was no doubt now. His arm had sought out the man who had crashed into Evan's car, the man who had fled the scene, leaving him for dead. It had found the man and dealt out its own brand of justice, whilst Evan watched, an unwilling observer.

"But I'm telling you the truth!" he said. "Ask the nurses: I haven't left this bed since I got here—they'll tell you!" He was starting to panic now; he could feel sweat building on his brow and down his back.

The detective settled back in his chair and looked steadily at him, almost contemplatively.

"I have already. They attest that you've been here the whole time, and for what it's worth—I believe them." He stood up then, his knees cracking under him, and slid the file back into his coat. "But you were there. Maybe not at the time of the murder, but you have been there, the prints prove that, and that tells me you did know him. Only thing I can't figure is why you lied about it."

Evan was silent, staring at the window with fixed concentration. He feared anything else he said would just incriminate him further.

The detective sighed, and took a step towards him as he fastened his coat.

"I suppose you could have paid someone to do it. It wouldn't be hard for a guy in your position to figure something out. Even guys in prison can manage a hit on the outside, you know?"

He turned to leave then but stopped in the doorway, turning his head.

"Oh, and I'm placing you under police observation. An officer will be outside your room at all times, just in case you decide on discharging yourself early." And with that, he was gone.

Evan stared after him.

What the hell is going on? he thought.

He sat in bed awake that night, gazing at the window opposite. He was thinking about what the detective had told him: 'you were there' he had said. Evan pondered this in the dark, listening to the rain as it beat monotonously against the window and the side of the building opposite. Surely if they had found his fingerprints, they would have discovered them on the TV guide also? That was the murder weapon after all. But if that were the case, wouldn't they have arrested him already?

Yes, he thought. They would have arrested me on the spot. So what does that mean?

Footfalls in the corridor broke his concentration and he looked up towards the sound. A uniformed cop strode past his door, stirring a cop of coffee with a plastic spoon. He did not look at Evan as he walked past: he was too busy trying not to spill his drink.

Evan looked back towards the window.

It means they haven't found it yet, he thought.

He stayed awake for another hour or so, listening to the rain outside, and the cop in the corridor attempting to chat up the night staff, who giggled at his come-ons, but otherwise didn't seem that interested. His stump was itching like a bastard as it had done on the night of the murder, and Evan thought it was a bad sign. He thought it meant that somebody was going to die.

One of the night nurses had come in to give him his Fentynal, but he had refused to take it, knowing it would make him drowsy, and when she had insisted—for his own good, of course—he had slapped it out of her hands and told her to fuck off. He felt ok about it: she wasn't Lucinda.

He had fought the urge to sleep with all the willpower he could muster, and on the occasions when he caught his eyelids drooping, he had slapped himself, hard, across the face. It had worked for a while, too, but there was something else willing him to fall asleep, it seemed, because after a while that stopped working also.

Eventually, with his strength reserves depleted, Evan drifted off, and it wasn't long before his dreams took a sinister turn.

It's raining, was Evan's first thought as he slowly came around. He realised where he was instantly, because like before, the height was all wrong and he couldn't seem to move his head.

Suddenly, something slammed, and the floor shook and wobbled slightly beneath him. There was a short grinding sound, and then the unmistakable whroom! of an engine starting, and he realised he was on the backseat of a car.

Oh God... he thought.

He felt himself be turned upwards, the arm/thing pointing him towards the driver of the car, as if it wanted him to see. He could not see his face, but he realised with dawning horror that he didn't need to: the coat the man wore told him everything he needed to know. It was a trench coat.

The detective!

He watched as detective Harlan moved the gearstick, and felt the car move as they pulled away. It was not long before they were going at quite a speed. It was what the arm/thing was waiting for.

Moving with surprising speed, he/it leapt on to the headrest of the drivers seat, clinging to it with his/its fingers dug into the soft, leather padding. The detective drove on, unaware that he was seconds away from a grizzly death.

Evan pleaded with it again, to stop, to let him go, but it only ignored him, digging its fingers deeper into the headrest.

Please—you can't! he pleaded. He's a cop!

As they approached the turnoff, the arm/thing stood up on the fleshy stump of its shoulder, poised like a snake, and darted forward, covering the detectives face with his/its hand.

The detective screamed and bucked beneath his/its grasp, clawing at him/it to release him. He did not scream for long. The arm/thing let go moments before the car crashed into the central reservation, and the detective caught a glimpse of the thing on the seat by his head and screamed.

The scream followed Evan into reality as he awoke, shaking with adrenaline, and covered with a thick film of sweat. He could see the detectives horrified face, clear as day, as if it had been seared into his mind.

As he began to comprehend where he was, he realised that the scream was coming from his own mouth, and he put his hand over it. He could not seem to stop screaming.

Weeping, he threw himself out of bed and rushed, half naked, into the corridor, knocking a nurse over in his blind terror. The cop, who had heard his screams, rushed back down the corridor from where he had been flirting with the desk lady and tackled him to the ground, presumably mistaking his leaving his room as an escape attempt. Evan hit the ground hard, landing on his stump, and wailed in agony as the stitches there ripped, blood seeping through the bandages instantly.

Leaning with a knee on Evan's back, the cop removed his cuffs and flicked them open before realising that Evan was shy an arm and he hesitated, unsure what to do. He thought for a moment, then hauled Evan up, dragging him back to bed in a headlock as he screamed and wailed like a madman.

"But you don't understand!" Evan screamed into the burly cop's armpit as he was led back to his bed.

The cop ignored him, throwing him onto the mattress and pinning him with an elbow as he quickly applied the handcuffs, first to Evan's wrist, and then to the metal frame of the bed.

"Please!" Evan pleaded. "You have to listen to me!"

The cop got off him and turned back towards the door.

"Save it for the judge," he said, and left the room.

He shut the door and disappeared out of view, but Evan knew he wouldn't have gone far. He shouted through the door, pleading that somebody listen to him, and after a moment the cop reappeared, this time with a nurse.

The cop held Evan down as the nurse, who didn't look more than eighteen, injected him with something, and the world went suddenly dark.

He awoke sometime later to the sound of a woman shouting out in the corridor. She was joined by another voice, this one male: they seemed to be arguing about something, but Evan couldn't make out what. The sedative had knocked him out pretty good, and he was struggling to get his bearings.

He looked out the window—it was still dark. He couldn't have been asleep that long, then.

Suddenly the door burst open and Lucinda stormed into the room, the cop following closely behind her.

"Evan!" she cried. "Are you alright?"

She looked at his wrist, at the handcuff strapped to it, and her face changed. She turned on the cop.

"Just what the hell do you think you're doing, handcuffing my patient?" she shouted into his face. She was shorter than him by at least a foot, but the cop backed up a little regardless.

"The guy's a psycho, lady," he told her. "He was trying to escape; I had to restrain him—for his own protection."

She turned back to Evan, leaning over him to inspect his stump, and he watched as her face changed for the second time.

Man, she's pissed, he thought. He was starting to go again, the sedative still strong in his system. He shook his head.

"Did you have to do this as well?" she demanded, her voice close to screaming. She grabbed him by his shirt and pulled him over to the bed, pointing at the stump that used to be Evan's right arm.

Evan couldn't see what they were looking at, but he didn't have to. He could feel how wet and sticky it was. Blood. He had a vision of the cop tackling him, knocking him to the floor, and he seemed to remember hitting his stump, but he couldn't trust it—not when he was as high as he was.

Meanwhile, Lucinda was on a roll, berating the cop as he stood looking at her, the expression on his face telling Evan that the cop no longer felt so sure of himself.

Lucinda continued: "...and you can bet your ass I'll be filing a complaint with your department!" she said, and the cop suddenly walked away, apparently having had enough.

She turned back to Evan once more, muttering something under her breath that Evan thought might have been 'asshole' and put a hand on his shoulder.

"Your alright," she said, and gave his shoulder (the good one) a brief squeeze.

"Just try and get some rest, ok?"

He wanted to talk, to say thank you, but his body wouldn't allow it. He was slipping again, but this time he did not try to fight it.

Evan let his eyes close, and was once again taken by the darkness.

He did not wake up, at least not in the traditional sense, but he did gain some comprehension of what was happening. For instance: he was aware that he was dreaming, that he was not truly 'awake' but he understood that he wasn't really asleep either, but rather somewhere in-between. Somewhere between the conscious world and the sub-conscious, the living realm and the next.

He floated there, weightless in the dark, trying to remember how exactly he came to be there, but he couldn't. Everything was just... black. There was no sound, no colours to accompany him in the dark abyss—there was only him.

After a while, the dark began to peel away, folding backwards like a breaking wave and merging together to form images and sounds. It was not long before the images and sounds formed a picture, and Evan began to understand where he was.

The arm/thing.

He was back inside the arm/thing.

He/it was sitting perched on the ledge of a window, looking into a room that Evan immediately recognised as the rain fell all around him/it.

It was his room.

He/it could see himself lying asleep in his bed, his head turned slightly to the side, and suddenly he felt very afraid.

For me... he thought. It's coming for me now.

The arm thing began to move, and that's when Evan came to.

His eyes flying open, Evan woke up—really woke up, this time—and he frantically scanned the room, fear tying a knot in his stomach. He reached for the light, but his arm wouldn't move, and he realised he was still handcuffed to the bed.

"Oh, Christ," he whispered.

He yanked on it, and twisted his arm, but it was no use.

He wasn't going anywhere.

Suddenly, there was a noise from somewhere across the room, and Evan froze, a scream held precariously behind his lips. It was far too dark to see anything: the rain was beating down so hard now that hardly any light made it through the window, and the light that it did let through cast abstract and illusory shapes on the wall around him.

He listened.

The noise he heard did not repeat itself, but Evan somehow found that even worse, as if it knew he was listening. He listened harder, but all he could hear was the pitter-patter of the rain as it beat up against the window and the side of the building opposite.

He was beginning to think he had imagined it when the noise came again: a scurrying sound, coming from somewhere in the back of the room. It sounded like fingers rapping on something—linoleum flooring, perhaps?

This time it sounded a lot closer.

Evan waited with held breath for the sound to repeat, but it didn't. It had suddenly gone quiet.

A flash of lighting outside the window caught Evan by surprise and he let out a frightened yelp, bumping his stump against the frame of the bed. The pain was terrific, but he ignored it, not wanting to miss the scurrying sound, should it decide to repeat itself.

As the accompanying thunder rolled overhead, he looked towards the window, and what he saw there made him gasp aloud. The window was open, not a lot—just a crack, but enough for something to small to slip through.

Something like a severed arm.

Evan opened his mouth to scream, and a second crack of lightning flashed outside, illuminating the hospital room with its stark, brilliant light, and that's when Evan finally saw it.

The arm/thing sat perched at the foot of his bed, a silhouette in the dark, its fingers clutching the bedding, reminding Evan of claws on a bird's feet. He could see the dried blood around the stump, and the gristly, tedious matter that protruded out from it, hanging out in short, fleshy strips along the part that used to be attached to his body.

"Please..." Evan whispered, starting to weep. He could hardly breath. "Don't..."

As he watched, the arm/thing began to slowly drag itself forward, moving towards him with painful, deliberate slowness. It climbed on to his leg, his stomach, and Evan wanted to buck his body and throw it off, but he was too terrified to move, his body seizing up in the face of the abomination that lay before him. It reached his chest, and then stood up on its fingers like a crab, and Evan stared down at it, petrified beyond anything he had ever felt before. It stood there, perched on its fingers and seemed to stare back, although it had no eyes.

Evan tried to plead for his life some more, but all he seemed capable of was a frightened, incoherent whimpering.

"Please..." he said again.

Suddenly it leant forward, using its other fingers for balance, and put a finger to his lips, shushing him instantly. Then, as Evan watched, it crawled up past his head and reached behind his pillow, where it rummaged for a moment, before crawling back on to his chest.

Clasped tightly between the bicep and forearm, was the TV guide from Arthur Hill's apartment. The one that had choked him to death.

Evan stared at it with his mouth open, his eyes wide, as it crawled down his body and on to the floor, before the darkness enveloped it. He could hear it scurrying still, as it made its way back towards the window. Evan tracked its movements across the floor, using his ears as a guide, and then it was back on the ledge of the window, in all its gruesome glory.

Another flash of lighting lit up the room and then the arm/thing was gone, but not before Evan got a final, fleeting glimpse of it.

Standing on the ledge, illuminated in lightning, the arm appeared to be waving.

The next morning, Evan awoke feeling better than he had in days. He ate his breakfast when the nurse had brought it, even managing a smile and a thank you as she passed the tray over to him. The rain had cleared, and the sun was out: things definitely seemed to be looking up.

He went over the events of the night before in his head, trying to make sense of what had actually happened. It was obvious that the arm did not want him dead—it could have killed him right there and then, but for some reason it hadn't. In fact, it had even hid the murder weapon with Evan's fingerprints on from the cops that would surely have landed him in the electric chair.

Evan wasn't sure, but he thought it might have been protecting him.

He was interrupted from his thoughts when Lucinda strolled through the door, over an hour late, her usual, cheery face, replaced by one of sadness.

Evan asked her what was wrong, but of course, she said she was fine; however, Evan could see a dark bruise rising on her left cheek that she had tried, and failed, to conceal with makeup.

He had an idea that maybe Armando, Arnaldo—whatever his name was, might have roughed her up a bit. He had a temper: she had told him that on several occasions during their routine, morning conversations.

Either way, Evan thought Armando might be getting a visit tonight.

Every Twenty-two Days

Melvyn Chase

It was the fifteenth day, and he could feel the hunger begin. The hunger to find her. It always began on the fifteenth day.

He didn't know what she looked like. He didn't know when he would find her, or if he would find her. He knew that he had to find her, but he didn't know why.

Over and over, in an unending cycle, every twenty-two days, the hunger was born, grew stronger and consumed him. But it was never consummated.

He remembered virtually nothing of his life. He couldn't recall a single moment of his childhood—not a school, or a teacher, or a friend.

He may have had a family, but he couldn't recall a father or brother or sister. All he had was a distant, faded memory of his mother's face, a beautiful, sad face. And her hands, strong and gentle.

Almost everything else, the fragments of his past, dissolved each time the next cycle began. And all he was left with was the hunger.

Now he was working in the stockroom of a Manhattan discount clothing store. He was renting a cramped studio apartment in a dreary West Side neighborhood that was waiting to be gentrified. He often moved from neighborhood to neighborhood, from city to city. He traveled light. He didn't have a television set or a computer. He had a radio. Sometimes he listened to soft rock music.

And he waited for the fifteenth day, when he knew he had to begin looking for her again.

It was a late afternoon on the twentieth day, a warm summer day. He was shopping in a supermarket. Time was running out.

She was in her thirties. Plump. Pretty. Her knee-length flowered dress clung tightly to her heavy breasts and round belly and wide hips. Her red hair was long and straight. Her lipstick was too dark for her pale skin.

He thought he could feel the aura, the promise.

He was about to play the game again. He was good at the game because he had played it so many, many times.

She was standing in front of the shelves of cereal, trying to pick one.

He walked up to her, smiled and said, "Sometimes there are just too many choices."

She looked at him, studied him for a moment, decided to return his smile and asked, "Do you have any advice for me?"

"How do you know you can trust me?"

She shrugged. "I didn't say I would take your advice."

"I'm a Raisin Bran lover from way back."

"I hate raisins."

"Does that mean we can't be friends?"

She hesitated, looked around for a moment, looked back at him and said, "Not necessarily."

He held out his hand.

"I'm Mark."

She shook his hand.

"I'm Lucy."

He held onto her hand and said, "After you decide on your cereal, there's another decision I'd like you to make."

"I don't know if I can stand all this pressure," she said.

She took a box of Cheerios off the shelf, put it into her cart and asked, "What's the other decision?"

"Will you have dinner with me tonight? At a restaurant of your choice."

She tilted her head to one side.

"I don't know you," she said. "I don't know anything about you."

"According to the FBI, serial killers never eat cereal—especially Raisin Bran."

She pursed her lips. Thought about his invitation. Didn't respond.

"We could meet at the restaurant," he said. "Neutral territory."

"Gian Marino's. Do you know where it is?"

"No."

"Eighty-eighth just off Broadway."

"Seven o'clock?"

"Seven-thirty."

"I'll make a reservation."

"Get a sidewalk table. I like to people watch."

"Okay. You watch people and I'll watch you."

She laughed.

"See you at seven-thirty," she said and walked away.

Women told him he was handsome. And by trial and error, he had learned to be charming.

There was also something about him, something intangible, that seemed to attract women. He wondered if they sensed the danger.

At dinner, Lucy was tentative at first. Two glasses of wine relaxed her. She was still cautious, but friendlier. After a while, even a little seductive. He thought he could feel the aura. Or was that wishful thinking?

He didn't want to press his advantage, but knew he couldn't be too patient: it was already the twentieth day.

Lucy was an accountant. Mark said he was a salesman.

"What do you sell?"

"I'm in retail now. Clothing. But I've sold cars. Advertising space."

"Where do you work?"

"I'll tell you when I get to know you better. A man has to have some secrets."

She invited him to take her home. She gave him her phone number. She didn't ask him in and he didn't suggest it.

She kissed him lightly on the lips.

"Are you busy tomorrow night?" he asked.

"Not yet."

"Do you mind if I monopolize your time? Is someone else going to be jealous?"

"At the moment, there isn't anyone else."

"I'll pick you up at seven o'clock."

"Okay."

He put his arms around her waist, pulled her toward him, felt the soft mounds of her breasts against his chest, smelled her perfume. He kissed her mouth.

"Good night, Lucy."

"Good night."

The next night when he came to pick her up, Lucy invited him in for a glass of wine.

It was a comfortable two-and-a-half room apartment, generically furnished and decorated, with a large living room/dining room and a small kitchen. The bedroom door was closed.

They shared a love seat and drank a pleasant Cabernet. And then a second glass.

Her eyes softened.

"Lucy, I think I should be completely honest with you," he said.

"That sounds a little ominous."

"The fact is, I'm beginning to lose my taste for Raisin Bran."

"Am I to blame for that?"

"I'm afraid so. I don't want you ever to smell raisins on my breath."

He leaned forward, kissed her cheek, then her mouth. She parted her lips and pushed the tip of her tongue into his mouth. The kiss lengthened, lingered.

It was the twenty-first day. The hunger for her, the yearning for her, swelled in him. He was almost certain she was the One.

He stroked her hair and kissed her again. He caressed her breast lightly, then more firmly.

She embraced him, felt his body, sighed.

He couldn't wait any longer. She must be the One.

He held her tightly in his arms, kissed her, felt the soft flesh of her hips and thighs.

She reached down and rubbed the stiff outline of his erection.

He pulled her to her feet and tried to move her toward the bedroom door.

She shook her head.

"I won't unless you have—protection."

He reached into his pocket. He showed her the slim, silver packet.

But it won't protect you, he thought.

"Come on," she said.

She led him into the bedroom.

In what seemed to him like a few seconds, they were in bed together, naked.

She may be the One, he thought. She is the One.

He thrust his erection, his need, into her. The rhythm accelerated as the hunger pulsed through him like a silent drum roll, until his fluid, his seed, burst out of him, tore through the rubber and searched for something inside of her.

Searched and couldn't find it.

Angrily, his seed turned on itself, killed itself and killed her, too.

She wasn't the One.

He sank back, exhausted. The hunger burned away, but it didn't burn out. It was still lurking in the embers. It wasn't over yet.

There would be another cycle. Another failure? Sometimes he failed this way—because the woman wasn't the One. Sometimes he failed because he couldn't find anyone who might be the One. Either way, there was anger, pain, emptiness.

Tomorrow was the twenty-second day. The day after tomorrow, it would all begin again.

He never thought about the women, about their suffering, their death. He simply had no room for morality. His whole being was filled with the need, the hunger, the search for the One. It crowded out the rest of his life. It erased his sympathy.

He wasn't even sure that he was human. Maybe he was a new species that hadn't quite worked out. A dead branch on the tree of life.

Maybe that was true. He didn't care. He only cared about finding her.

More cycles passed. More failures, of one kind or the other.

Mark moved to Boston. It wasn't safe for him to live in the same place for too long: he left too clear a trail behind him.

He stacked shelves in a Washington Street department store; rented a basement apartment from a crippled widow in the North End.

He thought a Harvard instructor was the One. She wasn't.

He was certain he felt the aura from a Cambridge waitress. He was wrong.

Then, on a Saturday morning at the farmer's market in Copley Square,

he met a young woman. It was the nineteenth day.

She was slim and dark and shy, but in the depths of her eyes, too deep to see, he sensed the heat of desire. Was it the aura?

She spoke to him first.

"Those cucumbers are too green," she said and laughed, as if she had just told a joke.

"You could have fooled me. I'm a terrible judge of vegetables. I could use some expert guidance. Will you be my guide?"

"I'd be delighted."

They walked around the square, spoke softly to each other, bought some vegetables.

They ate lunch at a tapas restaurant on Newberry Street. They talked. They laughed.

He offered to take her home. She lived a few blocks away, in a brownstone.

She invited him up to her place for a cold beer.

She lived in a tiny, two-room apartment that had been carved out of a much larger railroad apartment. The furnishings looked temporary and impersonal, second-hand pieces that had been left over from previous tenants and would be passed on to the next tenants.

They sat on a stiff, uncomfortable sofa.

"This place doesn't look like you," Mark said.

"It isn't me. I won't be here for much longer. I don't like to stay in one place."

"Neither do I. I used to live in New York."

"I lived there for a while."

"I can't stay in one place."

"Neither can I."

They watched each other, smiled at each other, said very little.

After a long pause, Mark said, "I'm searching."

She nodded. "So am I."

"But it always ends badly."

"It always does. Very badly."

For the first time, he thought that a woman could understand his hunger. That she could feel it, too.

He knew it was foolish of him to say it, but he said, "Every twenty-two days."

She smiled and said, "Every twenty-eight days. Today is the twenty-eighth day."

They reached out to each other. Kissed. Caressed each other.

Her body was slender and strong. Each time he thrust into her, her hips rose to meet him, echoing his rhythm, over and over and over.

His hunger throbbed in him, burned in him, until his fluid, his seed, burst out of him. It searched within her—and found what it was looking for, the egg that was waiting for it.

And when his seed had penetrated her egg, a quick poison flowed from that egg through his erection and into his bloodstream.

His cycle had finally ended. His search was over. He had found the One. He had fulfilled his purpose. He was at peace. He was dying.

She leaned over him and stroked his forehead.

She said, "You are the One."

The last thing he ever felt was her farewell kiss.

Monthly Curse

LaVa Payne

"There you go fucker," Claire was boxing again, "c'mon you ain't scared that a girl is going to stomp your ass are ya?"

The medium sat in the far corner of an alley way with the money tucked in his pocket. He knew that the girl always won the fight. It was in her soul or some shit like that. The bitch loved to fight, and more importantly, she loved the smell of fresh blood. It was as she called it a 'wonderful aroma.'

"You got in a lucky punch bitch!" Wade began to dance around like a boxer in the ring. His feet were tangled after a few moves, and he began to slump to the left.

A sudden and hard left hook caught the bridge of his nose. There was a loud sound. CRACK!

"Damn bitch," Wade touched his nose spitting blood out of the corner of his mouth, "I am going to put your little wiry ass down!" He stepped closer to the Claire.

She smiled, "Here I am big boy. Take a swing if you can." Claire's taunts were almost overshadowed by the roar of the alley crowd watching the make shift fight.

Wade moved from side to side looking like a duck with a huge bill. He would be an easy target. Wade lunged with his right fist toward Claire's left eye. He barely grazed her cheek, but she could feel the hot stingy in her eye socket. It was about to happen.

"You hit like a pussy," Claire touched her cunt, "right here."

"Fuck this and fuck you," Wade reached out with a long jab to her mouth. He wanted to shut this bitch's trap. He felt his knuckles contact her delicate looking mouth, and he could hear her little teeth crack behind his strong punch.

Claire fell and grabbed her chin. The blood was pouring from her mouth. Everyone was cheering for Wade. And Wade was parading around the small inner circle of the crowd with his fist held high in the air.

She fell to her knees still holding her chin. Claire could feel the beast stirring in her cunt. It wanted to kill this fucker, but it was not time, yet.

Ever since she was fifteen it had been this way. Claire had had her first period, and nothing had been the same. She did not know why. All her adoptive parents would tell her was that she had survived a really horrible tragedy, and that none of her family had lived. Of course, Claire did not remember any tragedy. She just knew that blood excited her—it changed her.

The swell in her cunt rose up through her chest and the never-ending hunger filled her throat. The smell of her own blood drew her limp, wiry body to its feet. The beast was fixing to emerge faster than she had wanted it to. And the fight was not over yet. He was going to succumb, but not before she made some pocket change.

"Stupid fucker. Do you think you have won?" Claire was motioning with her left hand for him to bring it on.

Wade turned his back to the crowd to stare at this little wiry girl. She was bleeding from her mouth, and it was pouring all over her cute little tits. What a waste to have to beat her ass down. She would make a fine piece of ass.

"I can see I am going to have to tear you down bitch." Wade lunged at Claire swing his right fist high and tight and his left low and mid abdomen.

Claire waited on his right hand to get close enough, and within a split second she rolled around his arm pulling it. There was a terrible scream.

"Argh! Oh, my God, I think my arm is broken." Wade fell to one knee looking at his mangled shoulder with the arm dangling against his right shoulder blade.

Everyone in the crowd stopped cheering. There was an unbelievable silence.

"All right folks," the medium pushed his way into the inner circle, "fights over. Girl wins. All bets are final."

The crowd began to curse. "This is a bunch of shit. There ain't no way that girl could have beat him like that."

"Yeah, look how small she is. Man I just lost fifty bucks!"

The Medium was collecting cash from the onlookers beginning to waddle away from the girl. They always gave her the same look. It was a matter of distrust. But what did Claire give a righteous shit about these street rats. They were all the same.

Wade was still on his knee crying with agony when Claire walked over to smell his blood. "Get away from me you...you, monster!" She ignored him and inhaled deeply his blood scent. Then with no more word to him Claire motioned to the Medium.

"What? Is there something wrong with his blood?" The Medium's voice was at a low whisper.

"Yeah, and I am too tired to fight again tonight," Claire's eyes looked around the alley with its dim light and dirty puke filled corners. There were plenty of junkies around, she would have to try her luck with one of them or go hungry this night.

"I am sorry. I thought..."

"Forget it, just hand me my cash, and I will see you in week." Claire was holding her blood dried palm out for her cut of the winnings.

"Ok. Ok, here, we made five, here is two." The Medium held out some twenties and tens.

"No. You know the deal," Claire paused for a second, "I get a seventy-five percent cut. It is my fight, and I am the one with my ass on the line." Her hand reached for the other. But the Medium pulled his hand back and stuck it in his pocket.

"Are you going to kill me over it?"

"No. But I will take it from you if you don't give me what is mine." Claire was still eyeing the man on his knees behind him.

"Fine then! I should get a bigger cut but whatever here just take it." The Medium did not want to become her next victim.

Claire snatched the cash and left the Medium standing in the alley with the broken man. "Don't forget to clean up the mess when you are done!"

She could hear the sniveling man on his knees begging the Medium for help. But she did not care. She was beyond caring because she was starved and had to feed.

#

The junkies were collected along the alleyways. Some were staring blankly into thin air seeing what the drug was wanting them to see. The faint smell of their blood was lingering on the syringes mingled with different street pharmaceuticals. It wasn't what she wanted, but she would have to feed on a junkie or the consequences would be severe.

She had only tried to go without feeding one time since she had become. But, it was devastating. The sounds and smells were heightened so much so that even the smallest acorn falling to the ground had sounded like a jackhammer inside her brain. There was something about her senses that would not allow her peace.

Close to the corner of the street, there were a group of junkies freshly tripping on either acid or junk. It did not matter. One of them had to be acceptable; she had grown too weak.

As Claire walked closer she could smell the first one's blood. It was unfit. Too poor the smell was akin to a weak dog turd smashed between blades of grass in a mower.

The next one was similar. His blood smelled of rotten ashes in a damp fireplace. There was only a minimal amount of life force within him. He was almost burned out.

But it was the third man lying on his side with the needle still in his vein that smelled promising. She bent down toward him. His eyes were closed, but he was not dead. The aroma of his blood filled her nostrils. He smelled like a hoagie sandwich with pastrami and liverwurst combined. The rich iron in his blood stirred the beast between her thighs. He would do for tonight.

Claire looked around the corner. The street was deserted there was no one that would hear him. Even his junkie friends were too high to realize what was happening. She unzipped her jeans and slipped her panties down to her ankles. Anyone watching would have thought she was a simple crack whore fucking a john.

She moved his arm and his whole body collapsed against the alley. He was lying flat. That was what she needed. Claire unzipped his pants and pulled them down to his knees. It only took a few seconds. Of course, his dick was as limp as a noodle but that did not matter.

Claire took her straight razor out of her shoe, and cut a little strip along the length of his cock. He never moved. The blood was pulsing out of his cock, and the urge between her legs pulled her to it. She squatted over his dick and lowered her bare pussy down.

The tentacles latched onto him. There was a strong sucking noise. But no one heard it.

Claire could feel the strength and vitality move through her, and the immense pleasure filled her brain. The sweet smell of his blood perfume filled the air as the tentacles in her pussy sucked out all of his blood.

A car drove past the alley. But it kept going. Claire looked over at the two companions still tripping next to the dead junkie. He was cold and pale—all of the blood was gone.

The tentacles began to withdraw from his body back inside of her. She was gorged with his blood. Tomorrow when they found his body, they wouldn't even care. He would be another crazy junkie that died from the dope. And tomorrow Claire would begin to look for her next victim to feed upon, and maybe even a sweet blood perfume would cure her monthly curse. But for now, she would zip her pants and leave.

Tomorrow didn't matter right now. Licking her fingertips, Claire wandered down the street in full lamplight swinging her hips her pussy lips fully satisfied.

And Cyndi Lauper Sang

Chuck Von Nordheim

So, you want to know why a devilishly handsome guy like me, who can pull off the half-unbuttoned look based on my rock-hard abs and scrumptiously hairy chest, needs to lap up a pair of beer goggles? Would it be worth one on the house to you to find out? You know how it is, lucky in love, but not with money. What if I told you it had to do with time travel?

Forget I asked, Slick. I'd rather be clean of the grievous crime of toppling the pillars of your business model.

What about you, Specs? Does time travel pique your interest? No, it's not like in the movies, except for maybe the part about it not being such a good idea. No, there's not a machine per se—Cyndi Lauper sings and there you are.

I'm drinking the Samuel Smith Pale Ale on tap. You can't beat that hint of caramel. Put down enough coin so Slick will pull me one and you'll get the rest of the story.

Whew, nothing goes down smoother—not even Martian King's Malt back from where I'm from. Even a place as shitty as this has to have one good thing going for it.

Whoa, Slick. No disrespect intended. Your last mayor tidied up the town tremendously. I'm talking global status quo. I know if we could cross over to where I come from, you'd agree the air smelt sweeter since we stopped burning coal and oil after she explained fusion. And you don't catch whiffs of B.O. and piss and puke when you walk the streets. When there's enough for all, homelessness hardly happens. Sure, we got our share of citizens who board the magic bus—doesn't everyone like to now and then? But she showed us how to unlatch stuck circuits that cause addiction with a dab of T-waves.

The lady nursing the Blue Hawaiian inquires as to who midwifed said miracles. Sweet-buns, we're talking Ellen Angeline Bryant, the girl who could make you understand anything. Anything, that is, except how to override the levers for my personal hydraulics. She's the one woman who kicked me to the curb, the women who left me twice in two different timelines. Did I mention she's why I'm here? The reason I can't go home? Why I'm beyond lost?

Well, Mister Merlot, I'm sorry you don't want to hear another somebody done somebody wrong song. But this is the ditty that changed the world. No, it changed the worlds. Once Ellie figured out the Portal, we shipped the tools of peace and abundance to all the realities up and down the time-stream. Who asked your opinion anyway? Sip your wine and shut up.

You want to know where me and Ellie met, Sweet-buns? Long before she took Doc Joshi's physics class and taught him how to crack the code on his equations for quantum gravity. My old man had threatened to cut me off unless I pulled my grades up—so I strolled over to the Scorpion Learning Center and got assigned Ellie as my tutor.

I'd done the Learning Center drill before; I wasn't a virgin to it or anything else for that matter. I planned on flexing my pectorals five, six times and getting whatever nerd-ette I drew so twitter-pated she'd make a B plus effort on my English 2A essay. Ellie had as much trouble as other girls in regard to accidentally on purpose brushing her nibbled-on fingernails against my denim-clad thighs—but instead of pounding out a project for me, she explained split infinitives and how to frame a thesis. When she spoke it was like she injected little building blocks of info into my brain and then reached in and built a cathedral out of them. I authored my own paper for once, and, for the first time, was simultaneously sexiest and smartest dude in the classroom.

You're off, Mister Specs. You've seen too many Galactic Fury flicks. Ellie's no mutant. No more than any of us, anyway. We all got gifts. For instance, am I right that's the smoothest martini you've ever tasted? I've been here at this bar for hours trying to get drunk enough so I can do what I need to do, and I can vouch for the fact that everyone esteems Slick here a master mixologist. It's his thing. His talents would be wasted doing anything else.

Ellie's thing was making you understand stuff. After she explained something, you knew it like you knew how your own body works—the facts seemed part of your bone and muscle. You saw different, better approaches to problems when she talked. And if you're someone like Doc Joshi, your mind already tweaking on the mysteries of space-time, all sorts of wonders can opened up by listening to her.

You're certainly a sour son of a gun, Mister Merlot—maybe Slick slipped you vinegar instead of vino. I guess I am peddling the idea of innate nature if by that you mean something you happen to be born with. But I'm not here to sell you on the idea of it and I don't see how it would make me a fascist even if I was. Maybe, though, the reason you're so balled up is that you turned your back on your gift. You were probably born a world-class knitter or the god of the glockenspiel, but instead of being true to whatever gift you got, you locked it up in a closet or a basement and went out to chase filthy money. And all that leads to is a grimy soul in a dirty world.

Oh, step down—I'm for sure a knack for boxing isn't your thing. And no personal put-down meant by the money remark. If there is anything built into us, it's that we all get blinded by the dollars.

Speaking of dollars, I need someone to spot me a few for my next chug of Sam Smith. How about you, Specs? I know you dropped fifteen bills before even factoring in the cost of a Pepsi and popcorn for the last Galactic Fury prequel. Certainly my story's worth a three buck beer, even with no mutants. And we did meet chatty, spaceship-flying dinosaurs and telepathic octopi who grew coral computers that eventually went on strike for civil rights in the realities on the other side of Ellie's Portal—which kind of makes up for lacking five-eyed freaks. You're tossing down for two brews? Specs, you are a prince among men.

No, Sweet-buns, wrong on both counts. First, while it may take two to tango, one stupid dude is really all it takes to stomp love dead. Second, I'm the opposite of a good guy. You only think that must be so because you like what you see under this Ami Sanzuri floral print.

The words I spurted out on the night in question spewed from a part of me fertilized by too many hours raiding the old man's Playboy stash, they weren't a reaction to anything Ellie had done or hadn't always been so. And even that's putting too much blame on dad's ineptitude at outwitting a horny eleven-year-old when it came to picking places to hide his porn. The totem raised in my mind to my personal female ideal was erected before I ever took a gander at a centerfold's bared boobies—its satyr-eyes probably leered from the part of the brain we used as reptiles. Although I suppose that tees up the innate nature idea that Mister Merlot so hates, but the truth is that some of us come out of the womb with bruises on our soul. And it would be better for everyone if we were thrown out like a bad apple.

Ellie, though, let us undo the spew of wounding words where I came from. You could zip down your individual timeline and expunge cruelty, listen to the part of yourself capable of building computers and spaceships on the second go instead of what slithered and slunk in your cerebellum.

Mister Specs wants a lecture on the nuts and bolts and I guess he bought the footnote with his beer support. First off, the right metaphor for the journey is memory not machine—so, think Billy Pilgrim in Slaughterhouse Five, not H.G. Wells. By the way, we got a few more novels out of Kurt in my world; Ellie's nanos sponged out most of the crud left by all the Pall Malls he smoked.

After you sign up for a jaunt at a branch office of Ouroboros Inc, the prep is like a visit to a spa, not boot-camp for space. You're slicked with aromatic oils and massaged. You eat meals crammed with chili peppers. You sweat gallons and sniff sage in a faux medicine lodge. You do these things because they increase endorphin output and make it easier for the dragon-robed staff to make synaptic maps.

No, Mister Merlot, I'm no bloody boffin or anorak. Ouroboros includes briefings as part of their package. As I'm sure you got lectures tossed in on the progression of cirrhosis the last time you did rehab. Got to hand to you, Slick, you are a tolerant man. I'd have bounced our irritable Brit buddy by now if this were my bar.

Anyway, according to Ouroboros Inc, it turns out time happens all at once and that our perception of one thing after another is due to how our brains process time, not how it really is. And these time-processing circuits can be reset, like the jammed ones that make addicts, with a little dab of T-waves.

Why can't you go to Tomorrowland? The Ouroboros flunkies say it's because you got no synaptic associations tied to it. The staff grills you endlessly about where you want to go as part of the prep, making charts of what lights up inside your skull when you're asked about what perfume she wore that night or if the air chill made your skin prickle. Enough questions, enough charts, and you end up with map back. But, the road ahead remains hidden since there's no way to give honest answers about what, in your perception, hasn't happened.

Specifically, one song sends you, one song brings you back. The dragon-robes sample snatches of this tune, that tune, until one sparks your synapses to match your map. Then they sift out another that mates your current straddle. Insert earworm here, there. Add a trigger word to make them squirm on command. You're ready to be trundled to the T-wave chamber.

Once again, too many movies Specs. The songs work because they produce a particular synaptic signature on a given individual, not because of any nostalgia they conjure. I pulled a Cyndi Lauper chart-topper as my departure ramp. It played on the radio the year Ellie explained stuff to me, but she was strictly a cassette tape type of girl—either The Cure or Phil Collins.

It was, indeed, the one with the repeating refrain about time. But worshipping the ticks of the clock spent with the man of your heart or weeping over the loss of special moments that were have to be two of the top ten pop themes. My exit music should have been Jim Croce or the Alan Parsons Project if you built the bridge back from crumbs of personal significance. At least I like those songs.

Unhand my thigh, Sweetie. I may look as yummy as a ramekin brimmed with crème brûlée, but spoiled milk sour is more likely what you'll savor. I decked myself out in this gigolo shirt and these battle-weary, bun-hugging Levis because I doubted I could get properly arrayed after I had downed enough Sam Smiths to do the deed. Take someone else home tonight.

Sugar, you leaped to that assumption. I came to no such conclusion concerning your occupation or moral standing.

Sit down, Merlot. "Impugn her honor?" "Blackguard?" This is the twenty-first century, pal, not Victorian England. Admittedly, a crap version—but still the Internet and I-pods, not hansom cabs and lighting with coal-gas. Sit down or I'll knock you down.

Listen, Sweet-buns, I stopped you for your own protection. I break hearts. I torpedo self-esteem. I do it even though I know I wound and scar the women who get near me because the thing that does the stabbing is too down deep in me to control.

Even before she changed the world, when I lived my life the first time through, I knew how wonderful Ellie was. She explained why she loved me and, when she spoke, I felt good about myself. Doubt clouded other relationships—but certainty flowed from Ellie's embrace.

You'll put up with redundancy when it comes to Ellie, you Brit shit. I don't care you've already heard me say I love her more than once.

Play nice? Make him play nice, Slick. No, I want to stay. I'll behave. I'm not ready to go yet.

So Cyndi Lauper sang and I looped back from jaded, forty-six-year-old middle school English teacher to shiny, twenty-four-year-old literary hot-shot. We continued with lit because that's what Ellie made me understand to begin with and, on the day I re-surfaced downstream ten months beyond the Scorpion Learning Center, I had published in 'zines like the Shakespeare Quarterly and the Modern Language Journal and had five firm fellowship offers. Academic superstardom glimmered upstream. To grab it I only had to knock out a GE science requirement and then strut across my alma mater's oak-shaded dais with the rest of the mortarboard-heads. Of course, no problem to be seen there, since Ellie signed up for the same section of Doc Joshi's Physics 105 class and would explain it all.

Slick, snap your bar-rag at Specs. He hasn't been listening. Doc Joshi didn't steal Ellie from me. I broke her heart. I torpedoed her self-esteem. I spurned her.

Wait. First, I better cue up version 1.0. I hope Merlot will forgive an occasional flourish or two here. It's a story that's always replaying for me, that I live afresh again and again. And literary flair is one of the few talents I retained from when Ellie loved me.

Ellie and twenty-four-year-old me share a meal. The site selected is link in a middle-brow chain that strives to give the illusion of upscale excellence. We hear glasses clinking and the burble of alcohol-loosed tongues echoing from the cavernous, frescoed lounge at the front of the restaurant. We smell flaky pastries and yeast rolls baking—this is the kind of place people buy pies from for Thanksgiving and funerals. Our fingertips slide across a polish-slick tabletop; a big difference from the sticky, plastic surfaces the boy and the girl knows from their typical nights out.

Inside, the girl and the boy bubbled with the anticipation of moving on to a new vista—this was a celebration dinner, a crossing the Jordan dinner. I'd finished fussing over the offered fellowships; I would say the name of the university in this place, where light flickered over our faces from a candle burning in green glass bottle, and our future would be solidified.

Aside from the upgrade in academic status, aside from an escape from the too-familiar landscape of where they had grown up, another transition beckoned. As they walked from her Civic into the restaurant the girl's eyes glowed when she saw, in the left rear pocket of the boy's Levis, the outline of a box. Inside said box, twenty-one quarter karat diamonds mounted on a band of ten karat white gold. The boy had flipped the box open dozens of times that morning as he practiced his speech, the hinges squeaking at the same pitch as the squeal Ellie made when he dove in to her deepest depth.

At that moment though, walking through the parking lot, the boy, me, twenty-four-year-old I, that's person's mind drifted from that vista in front of him of wide-open possibility to the consideration of the lumpiness of his lover's ass. Particularly how said ass seemed to swell now beyond the confines of her panties, leaving indentations like strap marks left on packing crates.

You see, Ellie stopped nibbling her nails, nervousness cured by being in proximity of my alpha-male grandeur. Now she noshed on donuts, crunched on cookies, and slurped on Slurpees, favoring the Coke Classic flavor above all others.

Images of flabby thigh flowing over chair edge, of butt protruding through the open space between backrest and seat, distracted the boy—even though seeing actual evidence thereof in the flickering candlelight was unlikely. Images of Playboy centerfolds intervened between the boy's intention to reveal the sparkle of the twenty-one quarter-karat diamonds nestled in the box in his rear left pocket and the command of the muscles necessary for said presentation—this happened even though the boy loved the clarity of mind she invoked, knew she made his life better, and felt his best destiny was with her by his side.

A slice of lime lazed in his drink, a rime of salt encircled hers—the name of the grad school remains unspoken. Impressions previously submerged by bliss flooded the boy's mind—the deepening of a belly-button, the appearance of dimpled flesh, the change from springing out of their shared bed to huffily rolling. Skirt-steak seasoned green peppers wriggle down the boy's throat, morsels of rosemary chicken disappear down hers—the box remained in the rear pocket of his Levis. Was the line of her chin less firm, a ridge of meat forming there? Or was it a trick of shadow?

Dirty dishes depart. With a magician's flourish, a waiter dispensed one, two ramekins of quivering crème brûlée. The boy, tensed as a bridge-cable by his thoughts, excused himself with some vague statement about hand-washing.

He scolded himself outside of the echoing lounge with pictures of gondoliers embedded in its plaster. Was he crazy? Was this some sort of stereotypical cold feet scenario? Ellie made people respect him. Before the Scorpion Learning Center assigned him to her, everyone rated him a loser, a feckless Gen-X slacker who couldn't kick off the training wheels of adolescence.

Did he want to be his dad, shucking off marriages every few years because a stepmom changed her hair color, or voted Democrat, or whatever? Did he want to spend the intervals between girlfriends eyeballing issues of Playboy that you only made a nominal effort at hiding from your lonely son?

What difference did a few pounds make if she was the girl who made him the best person he could be? Was there really any pork added to her waist or ass, or were they phantom inches layered on by his fear?

The boy convinced himself his fear was in error. He shifted the box from the rear pocket of his Levis to the front pocket of his polo. He went back to their table.

But the reptile in the back of his brain had not been quelled. The satyr eyes had not been closed. This is what happened.

When he returned to the table the desserts had been devoured, one, two. Ellie shoveled in the last residue in the second ramekin as he approached.

"It was so good, I couldn't stop," she said. "I hope you don't mind."

And the boy could not keep the thing that slunk and slithered caged in the back of his cerebellum.

"Two desserts," my twenty-four-year-old self said. "You're kidding me, right? No one needs two desserts."

"I'm sorry," she said. "We can order you another one."

And even though I understood completely and absolutely how sorry she was, the reptilian thing in me went on.

"You're disgusting," I said. "All you do is stuff your face. How much weight have you put on anyway?"

"I went on the Pill. It's a side-effect," she said. "I never had to before because I didn't have a boyfriend."

"Oink, oink, oink," I said. "Being on birth-control doesn't make you eat two desserts."

"It was really, really good," she said. "And I guess I'm hungrier when I'm happy than when I'm sad."

"You're so fat," I said, "I'm surprised I can even get it up for you." I took the box from my front pocket. "You probably outgrew it." And I threw it at her.

Yes, these are tears. No, Slick, I'm not going to be OK. I haven't been OK since then.

You can cork up the ironic applause. I know I'm asshole. I'll wipe the smirk off your face. I'll kick your ass back to Piccadilly Circus.

I'm getting to the time travel, Specs. I'm laying down the bass-line so you can follow the rest of the riffs.

Quit grabbing the merchandise, will you? The view of Ellie I gave used primeval eyes inherited from Jurassic days, that of the king carnivore seeking an appropriate mate to breed better vessels to tote his DNA. This, though, is the more evolved perspective: a boy enamored of emaciated models suspected of having a hankering for heroin, a scrawny girl prone to puking and nervous chatter who loosely fills size 2 pedal-pushers, that exploiting late-night Ethiopian aid appeals for pornographic purposes is morally objectionable, that describing a woman who wears a size 6 as fat is inaccurate.

Bottom-line, Sweet-buns, I've got somewhere else to go tonight and I'm not drunk enough to do you. Stuffed sausage is what I think when I look at you in that sheath-dress. Can you even breathe in that thing? Warped as I am, I'm pretty sure the consensus is against strained seams as a fashion statement. I'm surprised they haven't split yet.

Borrow your towel, Slick? Lady had a lot of Blue Hawaiian left in her hurricane glass.

Who you playing the guard-dog of honor for, Merlot? Sweet-buns left. You should go after her. She needs someone to patch the breach I left in her self-esteem and you're as likely a rebound candidate as anyone. Goodnight.

Up for financing another Sam Smith, Specs? You want to hear about the time travel part, don't you? And listen to my plan for pushing this rank universe into a jollier forward slant? Merlot and Sweet-buns caused the ruckus—they're gone. That's right, put down your dollars. Stay for the story's end.

So, Cyndi Lauper sang . . . No, wait, I didn't finish version 1.0. I say what I said and Ellie runs out. She knocks the table over and I have to deal with the mess and the waiter and the bill before I can follow. The Civic is gone when I get to the parking lot. Her drawers emptied when I get to the apartment.

Here's a multiple choice quiz. A) I dropped Doc Joshi's physics class before the first test because a humiliatingly low score loomed. B) I dropped Doc Joshi's class because she refused to speak and made me feel like a stalker. C) I dropped Joshi's class because it was all buzz, pop, crackle static without her explanations. D) I dropped the class because I got jealous when Ellie yakked up Joshi by the lectern and I saw his eyes glow as she began building cathedrals in his mind.

Joshi plus Ellie equaled the Portal and Martian ale and diplomatic missions to realities ruled by dinosaurs with warp-drives. King and queen of a world Camelot they became, their adventures and discoveries the lead story in every news-cycle. And she more full-figured in every holo-cast, but then, Professor Joshi grasped geometries and calculus beyond normal keen and would have, therefore, been more appreciative of curves.

Me minus Ellie equaled a department chair convinced that, given the utter ordinariness of my thesis, all prior academic output had to be the product of plagiaristic fraud. My lot, middle-school lackey oft berated for the Lolita-like responses he engendered in female students. But then, Ouroboros Inc offered a second go.

So Cyndi Lauper sang. Yes, Specs—here comes the time travel. Cyndi Lauper sang and forty-six-year-old up-river poured into twenty-four-year-old down-stream. Instead of Tourette's-like jitters spawned by a mind frazzled by epiphanies related to his almost-fiancée's expansion, see now Spock-like calm produced by a course of action planned over two decades of middle-school misery as the boy stood in the shadows outside of the restaurant's lounge.

And besides his plan, the Kevlar of Ouroboros Inc's psychically inserted return trigger shielded him from enduring the possible decades-long consequences of insensitively pointing out a lover's loss of sexual attractiveness. Not to mention other dire scenarios, such as nuclear war.

What song served as an escape hatch? Jerry Garcia and Willie Nelson harmonizing on the old hymn, "Peace Like a River" was my reset. Grateful Dead's tune tally is two, three thousand longer at home. The way it works, Slick, is mix in a dab of Ellie's T-waves and a nudge from her nanos and you get more of the good stuff and less of the crap.

New impressions nuanced old memories. The bland bouquet of cheap American beer thickly frothed the alcoholic odor exuded from the lounge. Tremors rippled from the exuberant foot-stomping of wait-staff delivered birthday wishes. The scratchy swish of a hostess' skirt said polyester.

"It was so good, I couldn't stop," she said. Her tongue flicked to lick the spoon. "I hope you don't mind."

"I love my two-dessert girl," I said. And I took the box from the pocket of my polo and squeaked it open to reveal the sparkle of the twenty-one quarter-karat diamonds mounted on a band of ten karat white gold. "Would you?"

The distance we drove to my selected grad school site measured almost the exact same as Mohammed's Hajri from Mecca to Medina. I opted to take up an alternate fellowship offer on this go, doubting I could unlearn my disdain for the department chair who called me a fraud the first time around. Our transcripts now indicated that our Area B1 requirement had been met by completing Geology 118 in tandem.

I overcame the diminuendo of libido that ran counterpoint to Ellie's fortissimo surrender to appetite by convincing her that my Renaissance studies caused curiosity about corsets. As long as she stay strapped in during all intimate encounters and I refreshed myself with Ethiopian porn after the snoring started, I could ignore her burgeoning bodice and cruise on to ever-greater academic accolades as her explanations birthed one brilliant monograph after another.

Now, Slick, as a man acquainted with cash registers, you'll be interested in this. I learned the first go that graduate literature study usually led to well-read poverty. So, I enrolled Ellie in all the seminars on arbitrage and entrepreneurship the School of Applied Arts and Management offered and made her explain to me how to grease the gears of money-making.

You've watched too many movies, Specs, way too many. I failed to experience any of the following: a "time-quake" or any other snazzy shorthand for time-travel induced special effects, recruiting pitches from secret agents embroiled in a chrono-war, or a particular moment when I realized a particular act severed the string of the timeline I knew.

Stuff went different for me, of course, but the world otherwise unwound as I remembered after the replay in the restaurant. A volcano still blew up in Columbia. A space-shuttle still blew up seconds after launch. A Ukrainian nuclear power plant still blew up, and the disaster was still made much less worse because three brave men dove into the reactor's reservoir and opened the sluice gates before the water was turned into a lethal cloud of radioactive steam.

Sure, Slick. Obviously, Doc Joshi's discoveries needed to be duped to deliver the chatty dinos and extra Vonnegut volumes we had back home. I intended to invent the Portal. My plan included Ellie figuring out physics and then explaining it all to me. Before that, though, I wanted to blot the memory of being accused of fraud on my first go by publishing a book of criticism so brilliant every English professor had to read it before they ever again talked about Shakespeare. Before that, I wanted to make some money because I had chewed on too many ramen noodles and plopped too many globs of gummy, dollar store shampoo on my scalp during my days as a middle-school lackey.

It went more like this, Specs. At first, the tune Ouroboros Inc implanted and the trigger-word they engineered seemed immediately available in my consciousness, like the details of an event as it is experienced. Let's say you are hurtling to the earth with a parachute on your back. That a good enough movie metaphor for you, Specs? Plunging down with a parachute? As it happens, you feel the two molded rests in the ripcord's handle for your dominant digits, the index and forefinger. You feel the grit-pitted surface of the handle's plastic through your gloves. You feel the thickness of the pliable steel cord to which the handle is attached.

Afterwards, though, the details fade. Are you sure there were only two holds molded in the plastic? Are you sure there were any at all? Was the handle really pitted? Are you sure the cord was steel? Could it have been plastic?

When middle-aged me poured into that kid trembling outside the lounge, the trigger-word bobbed in my consciousness like a light-cord. One yank and this playing area blacks out while lights come up on a scene upstream of a man lying prone in a T-Wave chamber. Soon, though, it's like going back to your dad's basement after being away at school and not being able to remember if it's a switch or a cord that turns the lights on; the immediacy fades and you're not exactly sure what word opened the escape hatch, or if Jerry and Willie added verses to "Peace Like a River," or whether Bobby Weir joined in on the choruses.

Your pick, Specs. Maybe each action I took after I walked away from the lounge made the trigger-word go dimmer in my mind. Maybe it's a natural function of memory and everyone who loops downstream gets stuck if they stay too long.

So, Cyndi Lauper sang, and I said the right thing, and Ellie drove us four hours north in her Civic, and we were happy. Twayne Publishers called about adding my article that connected Coriolanus to Brecht's epic theater concepts to an upcoming collection on The Bard's continuing legacy, a major coup for a mere TA. Ellie found employment as a snack-bar wench slash docent at a nearby knockoff of the Old Globe, a corset-friendly community where tourists gave up coin in exchange for explanations of Renaissance slang and Elizabethan plot intricacies.

Wealth whispered. Recalling the land rush that occurred in Ellis County, Texas, after the Superconducting Super Collider punched out the first Portal, I purchased plots of undeveloped brush near Waxahachie. Ellie buzzed likely business models to leverage my knack for criticism. On this go, it would be risotto instead of ramen, salon shampoo instead of dollar store.

But appendicitis derailed that bright destiny of pricey pasta and high-end hair products. I'd like to lob full blame on the meddling emergency-room M.D., but the lizard that lives in the basement of my brain bore the brunt of the responsibility.

I return to Queen of Mercy after my Kerouac colloquium, the numb weight of exhaustion squeezing my sacroiliac, circadian rhythm having been disturbed by adrenaline and urgent action the night prior. The waxy, green paper wrapped around the appropriate bouquet that I purchased in the gift shop makes continual crinkling noises as I trudge up to Ellie's floor.

I knew Ellie would be unbound, entirely au naturel under her gown. Nurses had snipped off the corset Ellie came in and it had then been made quite clear that such constraints would not be condoned while she was in their care. Still, I might have gone into her room armored with the necessary will to suppress outward signs of my disgust at the progression of her pudginess that would now be apparent if that damn doc had not seen fit to ambush me before I went in.

He called me a disgusting deviant. He insisted the corset's compression caused a cascade of internal maladies that had crested in Ellie's midnight crisis. I was in no mood to put up with his pontification. I was tired and, since surgery had prevented explanations on ocean imagery in Big Sur, my comments in the colloquium had been ridiculed. I shoved him against the wall so hard his stethoscope flopped off his neck and clattered to the floor.

I would have crossed the curtained-off border of Ellie's hospital boudoir like this if the doc roadblock had been absent: with a placid squeak of oxfords on linoleum, with a "Hey Ellie" in warning before drawing the drapes back, with notice given to allow unseemly displays to be concealed. Instead I burst in and caught her doing it.

Even at that bend in the time-stream, appendectomies posed zip medical challenge. Ellie probably should already have been released. Roadblock doc likely delayed discharge to urge a life equation correction that included factoring me from her personal polynomial. Anyway, Ellie did not appear impaired by pain when I barged through the curtains.

What I saw, Specs, would have made your lenses crack. Appendectomy scars typically measure no more than a Starbucks stir-stick in length. The surgeon usually hides the incision in the natural fold above the groin. Ellie's indiscretion may have started as an inspection of said scar.

Blanket kicked back and gown hiked up, Ellie bared pale flesh to the open air. Cellulite stippled. Stretch mark striated. A dollop of drooping hip oozed over the bed edge. The outcome of a two-dessert regime displayed.

Her unmasked adiposity nauseated me the way that photos of highway accidents sans seatbelts did when I took drivers ed. That, though, was not what made me turn in terror Specs.

She gripped a roll of flaccid meat near where the incision must have been. I think she must have done more than merely grip—her fingers must have stroked, must have massaged. Her eyes rolled back. Short, staccato breaths huffed. But a second roll of flab sprawled above the one she grasped, waggling as she shuddered like a toga made of flesh rippling in the wind, hiding her hands from view.

I fled. Crushing dropped roses under anxious oxfords. Tasting spewed blood in the back of my throat as I screamed myself raw. Straining pressed foot against gas pedal as Santa Barbara County sheriffs pursue with wailing sirens.

Without cease, I longed for a chiropractor during my eight week stint at the local lock-up. Three months tenure earned an actual cell; until then the sheriffs issued a flimsy foam pad in lieu of a bed that you used to stake claim on your square in the hardwood gymnasium that served as an overflow dormitory. I snuggled up with a copy of Webster's 9th Collegiate each sweat-stench night, trolling for my trigger word. The trigger wasn't there. It wasn't in the OED. It wasn't in any of the hundreds of dictionaries I read, including ones for Hittite, Inuit, and Esperanto.

I pled nolo to nudging the doc. If incarceration accountancy balanced, I would have been refunded forty days of my life. The judge growled at the prosecutor for recklessly exacerbating overcrowding by demanding remand for a minor kerfuffle and gave me four to one credit for my foam pad naps. Our condo had been emptied of Ellie's belongings when I returned.

She spent a semester with Doc Roadblock after she left, dodging me behind a restraining order enforced by hired bodyguards. She must have explained where to find money in medicine and a few others things. We failed to field full face implants where I come from, Slick. Gaga fans can get lookalike lips and similar hairstyles, but a mirror match is beyond our means.

Anyway, their partnership expired for unknown reasons. I suspect he offered liposuction or some such and she took umbrage. Given the obvious fondness Ellie had developed for her fat, I'm certain she would have rejected any attempted alteration of her increasing abundance.

As for my sad story, even middle schools spurned me this go—felony assault convictions equal lawsuit liability in the eyes of most administrators. Luckily, convenience stores hire less selectively. I ended up with sixteen stores of my own using the sliver of entrepreneurial insight I retrained from Ellie's explanations. And when I ran the cash register, I was always good for a free Slurpee to anyone who could teach me a new word, a new potential trigger.

I built my empire of suds and munchies in your fair city, dear Specs, because it's where Ellie went. And as you may remember, Ellie had a yen for my chain's frozen concoctions—in particular, the Coke Classic flavor.

No, it's not a contradiction. I haven't been poor-mouthing you for Sam Smiths when I could pay. I had sixteen stores. We're talking past tense here. I sold them to get this face.

Yeah, I know it's nobody you know. This face shared an MTV Silver Bucket for his role in a John Hughes film, but fizzled after. He ruled the brat pack roost back in '85, though, and Ellie kept clippings on him from Tiger Beat and the tabloids in a three-ring Trapper Keeper she covered with doodles of his initials and hers connected with ampersands and encased in hearts.

I felt unthreatened as he was, as she said, merely a movie boyfriend. I think, though, that someone with wearing his face would be hard for her to turn away if he stood on the threshold of her boudoir ready this time to treat her the right way.

Funny thing is, nobodies cost more. The surcharge for casting a new mold sucked up the proceeds from the sale of ten stores.

She finally showed at store when I was running register last year right after that hurricane gouged out Galveston. September's always been a peak period for Slurpee sales.

Of course, she sent someone else in to get it. When you're as important as Ellie is you don't do your own schlepping. But the she lowered the limo's window while she waited for her brain-freeze fix. And even with the new padding and pouches, there could be no doubt.

You don't read the financials, do you Specs? They do keep her off-camera, but her name surfaces fairly often as an agreed-upon guru. We're talking Ellen Angeline Bryant, the mistress of money, the maven of the collateralized debt obligation, the Madonna of the TED spread. They say her explanations keep our economy pumping upward at a constant eight percent.

I'd rather have the Portal, though. I'd rather have a million worlds to explore and talking dinosaurs and Martian ale and nanos and T-waves. With endless horizons, you feel free. Totally different from this solitary, stinky, soot-stained place that we have wrecked like dorm residents left unwatched over a long weekend.

I can still steer us to those other worlds, Specs. City's schedule lists a large flock of physics classes. Only takes maneuvering myself into the right mind-frame. Only takes getting drunk enough.

Ellie deserved a more discreet Slurpee serf; her oafish eye-candy did, however, provide important intelligence. He presented a business card from Chippendale Escorts and disavowed being anything other than a mercenary for hire. He insinuated, as he fluttered about puffing on a clove, that a relationship between he and I would be on a different basis and that I should please, please give a ring-a-ling on the private line he had penned on the back of the card.

Given the gigolo genes that gifted me with these rock-hard abs and hairy chest, selling Chippendale Escorts on adding me to the lineup took little encouragement. Given the facsimile face previously the subject of so much infatuation, snaring Ellie's attention after being included in the service's catalog near inevitable. In fact, she picked me out tonight.

Slick, Specs, some things I've learned better. I guess that's to be expected, since having double dipped a couple of decades, I'm technically pushing seventy and you're supposed to get a little wiser if you get that old. A world built on fun and freedom is better than a world built on the pursuit of dollars and distinction. And you have to strive to live in that first kind of world, otherwise end up living in a prison. You've got to seek the light of the bright Portal, even if you are uncrowned in that new Camelot, even if you are banished from the groves of the Academe, even if you are never again quite the man you were when Ellen Angeline Bryant loved you.

I've locked you all up in this prison because I couldn't stand losing when someone else won. Of course, you don't realize your crap life here is the equivalent of sleeping on a hardwood floor on a foam mat. Your ignorance, though, doesn't let me off the hook.

And I could set you free, if only . . . .

I focused on her eyes in the bar. She still liked margaritas. She still made me understand everything when she spoke, isotherms and isohumes dancing in my brain while she complained about New York summers.

I looked at her earlobes, with their dangling diamonds, when she made a remark about the performance in the theater. She still liked Shakespeare. I could now do a treatise connecting the dots between Titus Andronicus and Quentin Tarantino.

But back at her apartment, before I came out of the bathroom, before I could blow the candles, she undressed and my eyes were raped by the sight of her quivering body. I could not see where her bones where. I could not identify her as a member of our species. She covered all the area of the queen mattress, her flesh unfurling side to side like the stretched skin of a flying squirrel. She was shapeless as an amoeba. She looked like a gigantic pus-filled boil topped with an off-center chignon.

I stood there as the candles sputtered, effusing the air with vanilla, while she moaned. And then, knowing she was waiting, I . . . .

I came here. I came here because I needed a Sam Smith. I came here because I would need many, many Sam Smiths before I could satisfy the thing that sprawled on that mattress.

What do you mean, Slick, last call? Haven't you been listening? Brew must flow. Worlds hang in the balance. I must get friendly with a fat girl or the future is FUBAR'ed.

Okay, I'll play nice. Don't call the bouncer. You're right. There probably ain't enough Sam Smith on the planet to short-circuit the picky lizard at the back of my brain.

Maybe I could have tamed it with T-waves. If craving for crack can be clamped off, then changing up who you want to cuddle with must be cake. Before Cyndi Lauper sang, though, I only saw the motes in her eye, not the lumber in mine.

Can you contribute for one more, Specs? One more for a traveler who, going upstream, ended up on a terrible tributary that flowed to a strange sea.

I appreciate it. I know you hoped for more stunts and special effects. But, like I said, Hollywood fills up the screen with folderol when they do time travel flicks, except for the part about it being a bad idea. Time travel is much more like a foreign movie with subtitles where everything is in black and white shadows and people occasionally think about suicide. More like real life.

One final word of advice: if you ever do buy a package from Ouroboros Inc, but sure to write down your trigger word.

Me vs. the Tooth Fairy

Alvin Atwater

I

Kids annoy me sometimes. They really do. Okay, so mythical creatures like Santa Claus and the Easter bunny give people a reason to throw away money or make egg farmers rich. However, there is one creature I highly despise and that is none other than the tooth fairy. I mean seriously –she disgusts me. She breaks into peoples' homes, raids their children's rooms, and steals their teeth. Uck! Well no more. I'm going to destroy her once and for all.

It all started on a nice and windy Tuesday afternoon. I jotted down some notes from the internet, relating to the tooth fairy. I had seen her plenty of times, sneaking into homes. Oh and get this, she's blonde. No wonder why she touches people's teeth!

After I gathered all of the collected notes –about fifty sticky papers – I sat them in a stack on the table.

"Just wait," I muttered. "I will catch you." My younger sister just lost a tooth; so as a result, I saw this as a perfect opportunity.

"The tooth fairy's coming tonight! She really is!" my eight-year-old sister, Kelly, chanted as she burst through the door, free of summer school for the day.

I smirked. "Yeah, yeah, squirt –just make sure you don't overexcite yourself."

"I won't," she said and then scurried off.

That night, after my parents and Kelly went off to sleep, I set up a clever net trap. Oh, you may have guessed this wasn't an ordinary net. It was equipped with a radiation detector, since the tooth fairy's wings emitted small waves of nuclear. That aside, the device also recognized my sister. Who knew the internet sold such convenient devices?

At midnight, the window suddenly opened and a blonde woman with glowing wings crawled in. I grinned. Since when did a magical being use the window? Was she drunk –no...she was blonde. Right on cue, my net caught its prey.

"Ow!"

"Having fun in there?" I snickered. The tooth fairy, quite frankly, looked no older than me.

"Let me out of here...please?" she pleaded.

"No way," I said. "Your horrid days are finally on its way to an end. You're now my prisoner."

I dragged the net, with her in it, all the way to my room. Man it was a lot of work –what did she eat anyway? What made it sad was that I was the weight lifting champion last year at school.

II

"So what's your name?" the tooth fairy asked. She was chained to a leg of my bed. Why was she asking such a question during her most doomed hour? Was she fearless?

"Shut up," I growled, "Stupid tooth hoarder." She blinked at me twice with those stupid bright blue eyes and her wings fluttered.

"I'm hungry," she whined.

"Will you shut up?" I grabbed a bottle of Extreme Hand Sanitizer and bathed her hands. She probably touched millions of rotten teeth and so, I didn't want to take any chances in the case of possible airborne diseases. "It's one in the morning. I suggest you keep your mouth closed and avoid waking everyone up, for your sake."

She stuck her tongue at me. "You still haven't told me your name."

I ignored the tooth fairy and pulled a book from my dresser called, _Ways to Destroy the Tooth Fairy._ She didn't even give a nervous look.

"Am I allowed to sleep?"

"What?"

"Well, I see you're holding a book. Are you like going to give me homework and tests and stuff?"

I stared at her blankly. "Why are you still talking?"

She raised her hand as if we were in school. "Yes? Wait –no, idiot, just stay quiet and remain still. Okay?"

She smiled. I frowned and then tuned back into my book. Every minute or so, I would look up and there she was, staring at me. Creepy. Really, really, creepy. A blonde half-brained tooth fairy, who steals children's teeth for a living, staring at me, was not a pleasant feeling. This was equivalent to being face to face with a criminal. After fifteen minutes, I couldn't take the staring anymore.

"WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING AT?" I yelled. Suddenly, I heard the switch of my sister's room click on. Crap. I glared at the tooth fairy. "Stay quiet. If you do so –you'll win the game."

Her face brightened up. She wanted to scream, "yay." I could tell that just by glaring at her. As expected, my sister knocked on my door.

"Big brother, are you okay in there? I heard screaming."

III

"No, I'm fine," I lied, "just a nightmare."

"Can I come in? I want to tell you something." Not. Good. I felt myself running around in circles. Finally, my eyes caught contact with the closet.

"Quick, get in there," I whispered.

"Okay, but could you uhm...release the chains?"

My eyes fell to the chains on her legs. I quickly unlocked them and shoved the tooth fairy into the closet.

"Just stay quiet," I reminded.

"How long do I have to –" I closed the door before she finished that sentence. After hiding my tooth fairy destruction books, I opened the door for Kelly.

"What took you so long, Kevin?"

"It's one in the morning, squirt. Give me one good reason why I should move at a speed faster than a turtle."

Kelly laughed.

"So what's bothering you, pipsqueak," I said.

She frowned. "Well...the tooth fairy hadn't shown up yet." I nearly choked. "Do you think something has happened to her?"

There was a small sneeze. I froze.

"What was that?" A surprised look overtook Kelly's face.

"Nothing," I quickly said, while trying not to curse the tooth fairy under my breath. "Nothing at all. Look, the tooth fairy will come, but when you're awake –she takes longer."

Kelly gasped, notifying me that the fish had taken the bait. "Hurry." I guided Kelly to her room. "She's waiting."

When I finally put her to sleep, I slugged back into my room, ready to focus on the matter at hand: destroying the tooth fairy so I can go to bed. (No, I'm not totally insane; I'm just a boy of reality....I think.)

The tooth fairy was on my bed, fast asleep. I balled my hands into fists in order to prevent myself from exploding with more anger than I had already. My sheets will have to be burned, but I'll focus on that later. I shook her as hard as I could, but she didn't awake. Furious, I darted into the kitchen, filled a glass with water, ran back into my room and splashed it on her face. She still didn't awake. Was she dead? Urgh, in my bed –I could never sleep there again. However, if that was the case, I wouldn't hear her annoying snoring.

"Wake up!" I snarled. Surprisingly, she did. What. Just. Happened?

"So, your name is Kevin?" she said softly. Just then, a puzzling thought smashed into my head.

"Why didn't... you escape? Are you that stupid or something –that window was your one chance of freedom."

She blushed. "You see...anyone that goes through this much of trouble must really like me."

I ran to the bathroom and vomited. How dare the tooth fairy come up with such an awful conclusion!

"Are you okay?" she said when I drifted back into the room.

"Let's get this straight. You are a prisoner not a guest, not a friend, not a lover –just a prisoner." I grinned. "A prisoner on death row." Still no shriek or look of terror; she blushed instead.

IV

"Sit down and await your death," I said while retrieving the book of tooth fairy destruction. After a few minutes of reading, I closed it.

"I'm so hungry," groaned the tooth fairy.

"Oh don't worry," I laughed, "you'll be put out of your misery soon." I opened my dresser and dug toward the depths until I finally had a good grasp on a crystal object: a green diamond, the size of an orange, known as an emerite. According to the book, one touch from this gemstone should turn the tooth fairy into pixy dust. Her eyes widened upon sight of it. Bingo –she had to be scared (which means I totally didn't waste my money buying this off the internet) –so I grinned.

"Oooh, pretty," she awed, rearranging my previous thoughts. "Is it a gift? I love presents!"

I snickered. "Oh, it's a gift alright, but before I eliminate you, do you have any last words?"

"What does eliminate mean? Does that mean kiss? Are you proposing to me with it?"

I face palmed. "No you idiot, this stone will destroy you."

"Destroy? Why are you using such fancy words?" She smirked. "Are you like a teacher or something?"

Okay, at this point, I was WAY beyond frustrated. I was on the verge of just eliminating myself.

"Will you please, please, PLEASE...shut up," I managed to prevent myself from yelling.

"Oh I'm sorry –I just never had someone propose to me so suddenly. My answer is –"

"I am not pr –"

"Yes."

Grenade. I needed a grenade: One with an explosion that would blow my body to pieces so no one could find them.

"This is not a proposal," I growled. "Here –hurry and take the jewel. You must die immediately!"

Nothing. Happened. When. She. Held. The. Jewel. Why me? Seriously, why was it so hard to destroy a mythical creature? I opened the book.

"I can't give up," I whispered. "I came this far."

For hours, I followed a series of steps from the book. Each of them failed. Salt, Salt milk, silver bullet, silver bullet drink (don't ask), incantations, water, pudding (once again, don't ask), sand –absolutely nothing worked. Then I realized something. This emerite –it had to be fake somehow. Either that or the tooth fairy was just invincible.

VI

3AM. I threw the book at the wall and stared at my enemy. She stroked the emerite, admiring its physical appearance. I hated the stupid thing –it was the most useless object ever.

"I give up," I said. "This is so impossible. You're free to go." She didn't move. I opened the window and sighed. "Hurry –get out of here." She still didn't move. "Are you deaf or what –finish making your rounds for tonight and go home. I'm done with this mythical destruction crap."

"I won't leave." The horror. Okay, I failed to destroy her, but now, she won't leave. This had to be a nightmare. My archenemy –yes I declared that –refusing to go away? Has this world come to an end?

"What did you just say? I'm sorry; I didn't hear you quite well?"

"I won't leave," the tooth fairy repeated, "We're engaged. There's no way I'm leaving you." Her blue eyes were slightly brighter than before. Moron.

This situation was now a catastrophe. My original researched plan backfired, terribly. What if I turned out to be like one of those whackos who make multiple appearances on daytime talk shows? I gasped.

"I'm going to tell you one more time," I said with a raised voice, while at the same time straining not to lose control. "You are free to go back to your tooth collecting life and putting smiles on kids' faces over small change and touching rotten tee –argh. Just get out of here!"

She folded her arms, frowned, and said, "No. I want to be here with you." Did I mention I hated the tooth fairy? Did I also mention that my sheets had to be burned?

I gave her a "you've got to be kidding me" look and then said, "You've got to be kidding me."

"I can make you breakfast tomorrow –and... I'm still hungry."

"Urgh," I whispered, thinking about the millions of teeth she touched as the tooth fairy. Then I asserted my voice. "Listen, if you don't buzz off, I'm calling the cops. Now scram!"

"Your eyes are pretty," she said, completely ignoring my threat. This was it –I had finally reached my limit. In fact, I didn't know whether to be angry anymore. In the case that none of you, who are reading my words get it, the tooth fairy is a threat to humanity. Her stupidity was that of a turtle and the back of my slippers. Her hands –uck – never touch them! And worst of all, DO NOT attempt to destroy the tooth fairy. You will fail. She doesn't have the intelligence to figure out the meaning to the word "destroy." I do not know what to think anymore.

VII

"So, you're just going to let every child in the world down?" In case you're lost here, it was 4AM, and I diverted to using my final and ultimate method of getting rid of her: The Guilt Routine. She narrowed her eyes and looked down. I had her exactly where I wanted. Eating at her mind became top priority. "You know, I have a younger sister –she's about eight – and she looks up to you. You've heard her voice earlier. Are you going to let someone so innocent down? How about the other children? Your job was to put a smile –God knows how – on their faces. Are you going to be selfish and stay here?" Tears streamed from her eyes. Nailed it! _Now just a little more –before I start an accidental celebration dance._ "You know, I dislike dishonest, selfish people who'd rather hang around a stranger's home rather than fulfilling their duties. I really, really, hate that." She gasped.

"Fine," she finally said. I bit my lip, hoping that I really had won. She edged closer to me. "I'll help everyone, but only because you insisted. I will come back after I finish tonight's work." Her wings fluttered as she walked to the open window. Within seconds, she jumped out and there was no telling where she went.

I didn't waste any time sitting around. If I wanted true victory, then I had to keep her out. So I did like any guy would do: set anti-tooth fairy traps all over the place. After that, I sprayed the entire yard with tooth fairy repellent. (I love the products from the majestic world known as the internet.)

By the time I was finished, it was 5AM. I rushed back into my house, tiptoed into Kelly's room and checked under her pillows. A shiny quarter rested in the spot where her tooth once resided. I tiptoed out of her room and into mine. First thing: sheet washing. Her hands were all over my sheets and despite the fact that I sanitized them with the most powerful stuff around, the old saying "better safe than sorry" still applied. After thirty minutes in both the washer and the dryer, I finally was able to go to bed.

The streak light of the 11AM's sunrays snuck through my window and awoke me. What I hoped to be an amazing start for the morning turned out to be the exact opposite. The tooth fairy was asleep in my bed with her hand on my face. The apocalypse. I rushed into the bathroom, grabbed the nearest bar of soap, and probably washed my face about twenty times before reappearing. How did she get in here? There were hundreds of traps and repellent all over the place. I couldn't win.

Her eyes slowly opened. "Hi honey –you should lie back down and get some rest."

Okay, so this is a terrible ending, but that's how I first encountered the tooth fairy. You know, the reason I disliked her so much –other than the reasons I've stated already –is because... Don't laugh, but I once lost a tooth when I was a child and in place of the quarter was an "I owe you."

What the heck? So since then, I tripled my knowledge about this pathetic creature, and plotted to have her destroyed. I could care less about the quarter, but no one dares to humiliate me like that and get away with it. Unfortunately, I'm stuck with her now. I guess you could call this punishment... So because of this, I'm going to write another story and tell you guys how I got rid of the tooth fairy (if I ever do) or maybe... I'll end up telling you how life is LIVING with such a dunce. Maybe one of you could help me.... Please. I may be "over-the-top," but at least I'm honest.

The Cradle of Ruin: An Old Fossil

Jesse Dedman

The dark curtain of nightfall draped heavily upon the grounds of the abandoned warehouse. The few and scattered light fixtures, the ones that managed to suck the few remaining ounces of energy left, failed to shine through the misty air. The teetering globes of light exposed the lingering feathered hands of fog in a dull illuminated aura. The scent of sun-scorched fish trickled on the salty, irradiated taste of the nearby harbor, which sounded with its usually peaceful song. All in all, it was the perfect place for a crime, and even better place for a man that flourished in such loathsome activities. McKenston's men patrolled the area with precision, but such a location featured too many blind spots for a complete inspection. With the shadow as my only ally, and a fair weathered one at that, I climbed to the highest ledge. The touch of cool steel along my back provided a sense of comfort, but the level of security waned to the nearing and distancing sound of footsteps. A moment of complete certainty would be too much to ask, particularly in this line of work, and especially in the midst of the cradle of ruin.

With gun drawn, I dared to step further onto the catwalk with as much grace as I could muster. My feet clanged on the rusted surface, but that sound, which could have given me an unwanted introduction and an early grave, went unnoticed. A commotion of sorts engulfed the circled group, and together they communicated in uneasy tones with abrupt, fragmented sentences, the most of which were too distorted to offer any clarity. Their possible awareness of my position anchored me to the wall, taking the cover of shadow in exchange for a risky observation. I feared their breaking moment. Images of McKenston's goons running up to the hovering catwalks, peering onto my line of sight seeped into my mind, and wrecked my concentration. Where I stood, there were two points of entry, and a possible solution just a few feet away. A small office of rusted sheet metal taunted me with possible security, but above all else, the location of the man I sought for. After a short period of shuffled footsteps, only the industrial creaking filled the silence, giving me the opportunity to either secure a deal, or die trying.

The office lacked the fitting image I imagined. Though it seemed complimentary with the warehouse as a whole, it remained untouched, and thus seemed unfit for one of the most important figures of this organization. A wide, metallic desk ran along the back wall, while a simple industrial cabinet stood adjacent near a small window. The smooth, poorly reflective top of the desk contained only a pencil, a battery powered fan, and the tools necessary for a traditional habit for its owner's profession. I felt at peace in his lair. The pivot point for a machine designed to reign in complete chaos. Though the cogs of this organization seemed almost impossible to reason with, the generator of their inhuman motion retained a bit of his ideal keepings; thus giving him vulnerability. Overwhelmed, I didn't know if I should engage in my enticed emotions, and do my curiosity a favor and search through his things. Needless, how tempting the drawers and locked cabinet may be, I already had an ace ready for use.

The knob turned, signaling me into the pocket of shadow that draped behind the door. A classic childhood prank, but a method most tend to overlook, even by those that glance over their shoulder while walking. A tall man of Irish origin entered the room, closing the door behind him. Most men in his position wore clothes of vanity, projecting a sense of strength and power, but his simple nature limited him to jeans and a T-shirt, which formed over his broad chest and muscular arms. With his backside towards me, I took the window of opportunity to seize him into a chokers hold. He swung near the finale of my approach, breaking the fluidity of my motion. In response, I grabbed his wrist with one hand and pulled it behind him, while slamming his face down to the desk with the other.

"It took me a long time to find a way into your nest," I said, hoping he would remember our not too distant moments.

"Oh," he said, with his Irish accent only remotely changed from the last time we met. "If it isn't the old fossil himself. It's been years since I had to worry about the police."

"We've been pretty busy with another," I said, knowing full and well all the other reasons for one of the highest crime streaks in years. The police force, at least what remained of it, was pregnant with internal conflict. The heroes of the days long passed reverted to a more drastic approach in maintaining justice, all the while aware that survival was of the most importance, placing the security of themselves over others. While my efforts may have changed, my cause remains as true as ever.

"Chivo, you mean," he said, spitting out some blood, I hadn't realized the degree in which I roughed him. "I think we can both agree he's insane, and ought to be stopped."

"Indeed, he has become a common enemy, and one none dares to touch," I replied, releasing my grip just a bit, while anticipating a counter blow. "I think I enjoyed it better when it was just you and I. The son-of-a-bitch Chivo should get his due, and rumor has it you know something."

"I don't know shit," he retorted, while its delivery seemed honest, I knew differently. "C'mon, I would really hate to mess up an old friend's face more than I have to."

"Friend," he said, followed by laughter. "You're not my friend. Don't think I can't handle the pressure. Chivo is mine. I don't need a lunatic, megalomaniac to help me out. You're a dying breed Michaels, a dinosaur that skipped extinction."

"Now that's just insulting. You would seriously think that I wouldn't know," I said, waiting for a change in expression, but the doubt failed to melt the mask of confidence. "You've been trading with them. I know you have a secret that you are dying to exploit. Why haven't you?"

"Who the fuck told you that," he said, wiggling out from my grip. As strong as he was, it was an exercise in futility to try to break from it.

"And, they have someone important to you," I said, grinning so smugly. "I know you have been troubled by the loss of your niece, such a pretty young thing. I suppose it is to your advantage that there are still a few dinosaurs like me to witness these things."

"Alright, I'll speak, but you better not be joking," said McKenston, hesitantly.

"I think my reputation still precedes me to this day, so don't belittle me just yet," I said, releasing my palm from the back of his head. I retrieved a small photograph from the inside pocket of my duster and dropped it on the desk. "Please, begin."

"Chivo doesn't protect his shipments at the loading point from what we can tell. With only two men watching the truck it would be an easy exploit, but we have nothing else. Even if we were to try it, our efforts would be in vain," he said, pausing briefly as if troubled by a sudden thought. "They better not trace this back to us. I swear. If they do, it would be all over. It's bad enough that he might be using snipers against us. I would be thankful for just one day without a body count."

"Leavire McKenston, don't you worry a single bit. From what I can tell, your little group of thugs is a blessing compared to the evils of Chivo. His hand single handedly brought this city further down into the rot we strive to bring it out of. I'm tired, but determined. After this, consider me an unlikely ally," I said, gritting at the bitter truth. I toyed with the idea for a while, and within the quiet recesses of my mind it began to sound plausible, but simple utterance shown the light for what it really was. A dirty deal by one of the few honest cops left. Perhaps I fooled myself in thinking that this dance had an end, that perhaps the song was one with a structured pattern. The chorus slowly grew in arrangements of cellos and pianos, but the ghastly change in the verse haunted me like an unrelenting entity, with a simple plot to destroy, steadily, the reason for my purpose; the reason for my breath, and the little honor I had left.

I left McKenston's hideout the way I came, like a disgusting fiend clinging to the shadows, trying like hell to remain unseen. Unfortunately for my old Irish familiar, I was left with no choice but to knock him out. Though it may destroy the chance for me to ever waltz through the front door of his heavily guarded warehouse, I could probably rely on the fact that my rat hole would go undetected. Speculation and chance, but I lived on it, thrived on it, and sure as hell made a life betting on it. For the air I breathe today, I'm one hell of a lucky bastard. I survived the gauntlet of a war gone terribly wrong to fight another that only seemed to continue with an endless wave of new faces, new toys, and new places.

Along that thought came the subtle horror of Chivo using snipers. For the length of time spent battling his goons, and trying with blind precision to catch the guy, it is a miracle we've been spared from his snipers' wrath. McKenston might not have lived an honest life, but he talks with an honest tongue, something I wished out of anyone from Chivo's crew. If the madman had snipers on payroll, then we should've heard about it from our own body count, and yet the few of us that remain continued to stomp the streets without the slightest fear of a few marksman. Perhaps they didn't exist at all, an urban legend traveling among the contagious tongue. If they did, they would've made examples of us by now. Further speculation, the type that brought shivers throughout my body. It would do me right to act wisely to the idea, but just the same with ghosts and goblins, there was nothing tangible to hold onto, not a single damn example.

Through my lonesome walk my lips hungered for the taste of scotch, it distracted me from the objective, rightfully enticing my senses with what pleasure I would feel from what might be my last drink. Not one to pass on the chance to savor another small favorable thing, I took a detour though a destroyed alleyway littered with mounds of trash and the shattered remains of the nearby buildings. In the distance, I could hear cries, yelling, and the occasional gunfire, and normally it would direct me to an honorable task, but not today, not now in the midst of these godforsaken ruins. Conflicts and hostility ran amuck throughout the dying city and the only way to obtain some sort of resolve was from slaying the many Goliaths that fuel the madness. But, first and foremost, I needed a break from it all. With only a few feet away from my safe house—a roughed up apartment with shattered walls and a ceiling bound to collapse located right above a bar—it was only customary to cave to the simple pleasures, as they were the only things left.

I walked towards the scorched mahogany bar. My boots crunched over the shattered glass, sounding an introduction for anyone willing enough to do me in. Reaching over, I grabbed a random bottle, in these times anything would do, and treated myself without further delay.

"Give it up," sounded from behind. Something I could only have guessed to be a gun pressed against the back of my head. "There is no use fighting. Just do exactly as I say."

"Convincing," I said, providing a moment for the man to retort. Smiling profusely, I couldn't help but interrupt. "But as you know. Everything is up for grabs. What's mine is yours."

"What if I want that jacket," said the stranger.

"Then we would have a problem," I said simply. I took a swig of scotch, swallowing the bold taste, all along thinking how pathetic it was to even try. "But, then again, I know it is you. Captain Williams."

"I figured you would smell me on mere entry," said the Captain, while igniting the tip of a cigarette that teetered on his cracked and weathered lips. The tobacco smoked with brilliant cinders.

"Perhaps I did," I said, turning around with a glass in hand. Sadly, he refused my offer, and though I tempted to toss the seriousness that usually followed as insignificant, the Captain never joked while wearing that face. Even after the fallout of the bombs had snuffed the last of anything remotely decent, he continued to dress like he was running the joint. A grey wool suit, spared from the filth that found its way on everything else in this hell hole, with a neatly pressed dress shirt worn with such confidence as to ignore the fact that the world spun closer to an end faster than ever. "Or, maybe, I just really wanted a drink."

"You shouldn't be doing this to yourself. Remember what we had to drag you out from before, that ought to be enough to ward you from this," he said, without the slightest regard for the frown that slipped past my otherwise sturdy face.

"Like it matters anyhow," I said, taking another swig. "Every where around me there is rot and death. I might as well treat myself like a spoiled king."

"I'm not talking about that," he said, pocketing his hands, delivering bewilderment throughout his expression. "You ought to know by now. This crusade of yours is going to kill you faster than the booze. You should really take this time to, relax a little."

"And let this world fall any faster than it has so far," I asked, refuting the remotest possibility of ever ceasing from my profession. Dedication echoed in my thoughts above and beyond the call of duty. Those that wished to consider me their equal only fooled themselves. Though I appreciated their work and effort, they could never measure up, not in this life, nor the next.

"You said it yourself, the world is gone. Why not take the time to enjoy what you have left," said Captain Williams, taking another drag, while walking slowly towards the shattered windowpane.

"As long as blood pumps through these guns of mine, I'll be fine as I am."

"Bullheaded fool," he said, tossing the words away like garbage. "I can't convince you, but whatever you do, do not go after Chivo. He'll take care of you real quick."

"You gonna stop me," I said, leaning against the bar, trusting that he wouldn't dare inflict any harm towards me, nothing more than empty words.

"You'll ruin a very good thing, something we've been working on for a while, something that will clean this dump faster than any atomic bomb. We were promised a clean slate, and in the next few days, that promise will finally be fulfilled," he said, squinting at the brilliant flickering of a distant neon light.

"What is that, exactly," I asked, expecting to be briefed, but only silence returned, the type of silence that chilled into one's spine, reaching all levels of discomfort.

I didn't wait for the Captain to leave, and I sure as hell wasn't going to stand around waiting for a response, that sort of punishment would leave my head spinning with all sorts of anxieties. I stormed out of the place with as much composure as I could muster, just enough to spare an ounce of hospitality towards my former boss. Not that I didn't like the man, but he knew me all too well, and knew how to slide beneath my skin like some possessive wench, though the reality made the worst of women appear like angels. Such rubbish through my head, I couldn't afford to allow my senses to fly loose like that. The little girl needed my help, even if it meant walking through the gates of hell.

The heavens erupted with a tremendous clap and released a downpour as if it was years overdue. The deserts bake in torment, waiting for the day that an ounce of something moist would touch its surface, similar to me. But unlike me, this city didn't care for the seething, toxic touch. The droplets shattered upon impact, granting freedom to a cloud of steam. A heavy collar covered my neck, but I could feel the acidic liquid licking at my scalp, trying to burn through the skin. Wiping with a cloth offered little help. A metallic roof offered plenty of protection, for others and me. In the old days, I would've tossed them a dollar or two, but in these less than decent days, a dollar wouldn't even serve well to wipe one's own ass. Dodging the hungry, I ran through the twists and turns until I closed in on the location.

Normally, I would've expected the place to be heavily guarded, but from the recent news from McKenston, I strolled in without the usual precaution. I hugged the shadows, feeling comfortable that in the moment of trouble I could recoil into the nothingness just incase McKenston misspoke. However, despite my lurking doubts, the place was clean of anyone, with the exception of a few rats. Though an old trick, I took to the heavy metallic crates, stashing myself in a container of what smelt like packages of condensed food. It pleased me that my scheme would grant me, not only a break, but cover from the burning rain.

Chivo's lair rested within the walls of a luxurious government building that somehow managed to remain remotely sound during and after the nuclear devastation. Ironically, the new unchallenged crime tyrant set his base in a building that once stood for government policy. I wondered if the governor could've spun himself out from his little image-tainting debacle, assuming he wasn't among the thousand dead. These thoughts, though entertaining, couldn't elude me from the growing discomfort that staying in a fetal position for more than eight hours can do to a person. It helped that I could feel the movement of the truck, but even that failed to save me from wanting to prematurely leave my cover. Amazingly, the crew driving the truck didn't bother to place anyone to watch over the cargo. I waited ever so patiently behind the crates for the delivery to reach its destination.

With gun drawn and ready, I crouched with arms extended. My fingers itched at the trigger, eager to send a bullet into anyone that dared to release the hatch on the cargo door. The stuffy air increased the intensity of the heat, causing me to sweat as if it were my first time on the job. Salty beads trailed down my forehead, clinging to the thin hairs of my eyebrows, and stalling the inevitable. The truck had stopped for minutes and yet the precious cargo remained as if not important. I waited with ears as sharp as knives, but with metallic walls as thick as these an elephant could walk by without being heard. Giving up on the idea of my enemies coming to my rescue, I took matters into my own hands and pulled the door upward. My doubts retreated back into their far corners, huddling away from the sudden relief I felt. Someone might've forgotten to lock the hatch, but encountering that much luck in the Cradle of Ruin, let alone the presence of Chivo's men was absurd.

The passenger took a bullet to the head and was bending backwards over a railing. The driver--my curious mind couldn't help but investigating—was faced down in a blood-drenched steering wheel with fragmented glass around. From mere observation it screamed tactical, and though I should've embraced the wonderful, surprising gift, it came with yet another unforeseen condition. The snipers McKenston spoke about just illustrated the extent of their reach, and they were very real. The cold embrace of fear trailed my spine, but I couldn't allow myself to give in. Fear shadowed and it readied me for the danger ahead, but I questioned just how long I could out run it, while remembering my previous not so welcomed visits at the governor's building. The basement of the facility contained a number of hallways, all of which tarnished by the natural occurrence of rust and overlapped by a toxic stain.

Navigating blindly, avoiding the ever-curious beam of lights that sliced through the pervasive darkness, I shifted carefully closer to a couple of idle goons. Their flashlights pierced into the pockets of darkness without any real motive other than sheer randomness, while they shared a cigarette and a rather provocative conversation about whores. I felt subjective to a growing curiosity, a lurking question as to the importance of such a remote location in the darkest of all possible places. Too dark to properly aim down the sights of a silenced .45, I took a bet on their careless nature. I neared them, close enough for my breath to reveal my position, but like some wicked nightmare from hell, I sliced their necks before their brains could trigger for so much as a cry. The only sound, if important, was that of their collapsed bodies, shattered flashlights, and gasping struggle. The darkness wrapped around me, taking me deep into its welcoming home, shielding me from any curious onlookers. Still, I doubted that the creaking door would go unnoticed, and I moved as if guided by Hermes himself.

"You boys just don't quit do you," a woman said, suggesting a hint of sarcasm. The voice resonated off the moist, metallic walls of the shadow-draped chamber. From the pathetic light it was difficult to tell, but cages of iron bars stack on top of one another, expanding into the unknown.

"I think the boys you speak of are dead," I said. "Silenced, by my hand. You don't mind do you?"

"Nice try, but I'm not that easy to fool," said the woman. She dared to step closer to the bars, exposing the soft, lightly bronze flesh of her hands. A brilliant red painted on her nails, and a set of eyes that sought nothing more than to belittle me. Behind the confidence, seeping through ever so carefully was fear. "You better be for real. I wouldn't want to see what sort of hell they reserve for creeps like you."

"I don't joke, but it looks like they treated you rotten. You wouldn't happen to have seen a little girl here have you?" I pretended that she only glanced at me with distaste because of what the savages had done to her. I thought of her as a glimmer of someone else, someone once dear to me.

"A little girl," she said, rolling her eyes. "You don't know what kind of mess you're in, do you? If you are looking for a little girl, we've got plenty." Almost as if her voice called upon some elusive cure, the seeping, wandering light seemed to strengthen, revealing a dozen women clothed in rags, beautiful on their tarnished surfaces, but beaten, emotionally torn within. "What kind of sick mother fucker kills wannabe mobsters only to take part in what they do?"

"Don't be so rash," I said, lighting up a cigarette, enjoying a really long drag before handing it to her. She questioned me with her eyes, but the hesitation melted from her stiff lips. She obviously had smoked before, filling her lungs like a pro. "I normally get angry when people falsely accuse me, but for you I'll make an exception. I'm looking for a very little girl no more than eleven. She means something to an old adversary of mine."

"I think I can help," she glanced at a shadowed figure behind her. After some movement, a worrisome little girl with blond locks shuffled into view. "She's new here, came in just the other night. She's related to McKenston isn't she?"

"That's exactly why I'm here," I said, smiling smugly.

"The times must finally be getting to you, Detective. I would never imagine you would assist McKenston," she said, blowing a ring of smoke.

"And I never imagined I would survive this long. How about we make it possible for this girl to make a homecoming," I asked while releasing the troublesome locks.

"You're not gonna leave us here, are you," said the woman, stepping out from the large cage with an air of seduction. "You wouldn't leave a bunch of helpless girls to fight all alone, would you?"

"I couldn't," I said, removing an assault rifle from a distant cabinet.

"Don't flatter yourself," she said, while gracefully stealing the weapon from me. "You get caged, beaten, and rapped then, and only then, can you join our fight."

"Then I don't mean to keep your company," I said, picking up the reluctant girl into my arms. "Be careful, it'll be a sadder world without you."

"Chivo is the one that should worry. He has thirty something very angry bitches about to stomp all over him," she said, leading the ravaged women on a personal crusade of vengeance. Released after years of abuse and captivity, a wave of bloodthirsty women ran rampant throughout the grounds of this demented palace in the image of some long forgotten Amazonian tribe. Chivo's goons retreated for higher ground, taking shelter behind barricades of rubble, while I fled with McKenston's niece. Strong willed, she refused to cry, but her eyes were not without fear in its purest form. She would never rebound from this day. This trial would forever reshape her world, souring the images of past memories, while removing any shred of security from everything else.

The violent takeover provided enough distraction to allow us to safely leave Chivo's area of domination, navigate through the dismal ruins of an apartment building, and cross into an open plaza. No longer did my badge represent authority, no longer did my gun project fear into the hearts of the starving many, and I had to fight off a few brave souls. Their failed act illustrated the futility, sending the others to scurry off with a nervous anxiety reserved for those unfortunate individuals enslaved to a substance they could only dream of quitting. Simply put, I mirrored what they wanted, what they felt they needed, and even those that once valued a moral code were tempted to tear me down just to equalize their world just a little more. As close as I embraced my own moral compass, the fiends tempted me beyond what I could possibly control. Moments went by where like some unstoppable motion picture; I witnessed the motion of gunfire and brutal attacks as if alien to the reason, the will, and the cognitive functionality in the remotest sense. I held onto the constantly tested ideal of what wielding a badge represented, but even those abstract illusions couldn't penetrate my mind in time to prevent needless blood shed. Like everyone else, I slowly found myself sinking into the corrosive tar of perversion, which eroded the decency of mankind almost as rapidly as the explosions wiped out the city. I could only hope that my actions didn't further tarnish the girl's fragile mind. She shouldn't be exposed to this, and to give him an ounce of serenity, I stopped by my place for another drink.

On the second floor, she flopped on a ruined couch, trying her best to avoid the damp end of it. I thought about relocating what should be a welcoming piece of furniture, but the rain had already done its damage, and with a slowly crumbling ceiling, it would be an effort in futility. I watched her reaction to it all and smiled at her effort to make the most of an uncomfortable situation. Then again, living in a rats nest would've been better than stepping a foot inside a notorious sex slave operation.

"I hope you don't mind the mess," I said, trying to distract her from her troubled past. "It has become quite impossible to do much more than drink anymore. Do you want anything? As I see it, no harm in something that could sooth your soul."

Her lips parted, but nothing more than a slight sigh seeped out. She rested her cheek on her fist, which anchored into the grungy arm of the couch. Her red ribbons held up against all the trouble so far, keeping her two golden locks in place as they part away. Cute was the nature of her image, but the innocence appeared to have been stolen a long time ago. Her eyes exposed sheer emptiness when not projecting a shallow sense of indifference.

"I brought a bottle anyways, it's my favorite. I normally don't encourage people like you to drink, but I'd imagine it wouldn't matter at this point," I said, pouring a glass. "Please, make yourself comfortable. As far as I'm concern this is the safest you're gonna get. No one is gonna touch you here, you can hold me to it."

"My uncle sent you didn't he," she asked, looking off through the blasted dry wall.

"He loves you very much, and I can see why. You are blessed and cursed to be quite the treasure in these gloomy parts," I said, wanting to add more but the sound of an intruder broke my concentration. With drink in hand, I stepped down the steps to find Captain Williams pouring himself a glass at my personal bar.

"You might have a problem," he said, uninterested in the conversation. He placed the bottle down and pause just before downing the drink. "Your bar is running low."

"Then I suppose I'll have to relocate," I said, sitting beside him. I reached into my jacket and retrieved two cigarettes. The Captain declined my offer, but I took pleasure in respecting the ritual. The sudden flash of flame, the singed particles of paper and tobacco giving rise to a stream of smoke. The scent didn't lure him back, something terrible rested on his tongue, a line of dialog that I probably didn't want to hear.

"Give it up," he said, as if revealing the obvious. "If you haven't noticed, there is no more honor, there is no more badge, there simply is nothing left to protect. Give it up.

"What do we fight for then," I asked, already knowing the answer would ignore the generality of the question.

"This isn't a game. You have to protect yourself and not worry about the rest. They're all gone. We're all gone."

"How's that working for you? You're here aren't you? Telling me what I should and shouldn't do. That seems more inline with what I do now, worrying about others," I said, glancing at him smugly, knowing that it was bound to eat at him. I wanted to see his posture bend to the weight. I wanted to see his stern face melt into an unforgiving frown.

"In many ways, you are like family to me. We've been through a lot back in the days when there was something to protect," he said, rubbing his neck. He turned to look directly at me. "Please tell me you didn't go after Beatrice. I heard some very unfortunate news about a lone fellow walking out in the middle of an acid rain, snooping around Chivo's loading dock."

"And if I did," I asked, drawing a stream of smoke, filling my lungs.

"Do you want to die early? You survived this long, perhaps you should think about yourself for a change and stop trying to be a fucking hero. You are getting dragged into a world you don't belong in. You were a good detective before the mess, now you just a name on McKenston's books," he said, jabbing me with the ugly truth. I couldn't allow his curious comments to seep into my skin. I examined the reception of my actions, the disgusting shadow that lurked behind every step I made, I knew how close I danced with those I swore to destroy, but the music changed. No longer could we afford to act a fool, bend to protocol, and limit ourselves with the atrocity of some political agenda. Now, more than ever, we could only survive if we acted to their rules, for ours had long since perished.

"Captain Williams, I say this with as much respect as possible," I said, releasing a cloud of smoke into his face. "Get out of my bar."

"I was a fool for thinking I could change your mind. You better hope that girl upstairs doesn't cause you more harm than good. But then again, you don't fucking care do you," he said, finishing his drink. "Don't worry. I'll be out of your hair, for good."

I could only hope, but his leave left little time to use. I found Beatrice sound asleep, her head resting against the filthy fabric. Not wanting to wake her, I slowed my movement, monitoring every step, every jump, and every obstacle climb with extreme precision. It prolonged the inevitable, and rendered a five-minute trip into a twenty-minute charade of cops and robbers. Entering the McKenston's place through my personal favorite, and still undiscovered route, I placed Beatrice into a corner. Her head rested on the cold, hard steel surface. Her eyes flickered, and though I tried to silence her, she whispered with a soft voice that resonated off the walls.

"Where are we," she said, in a quiet tone that managed to defy the overall purpose of the whisper.

"You're in your Uncle's warehouse," I said, covering her lips with a single finger. "I hope no one heard you. That would surely sour things real fast."

Out from the corner of my eye, a tall, muscular figure walked across the grated catwalk, followed by slightly shorter, dark skinned individual. McKenston and one of his goons strolled towards the source of such an angelic voice.

"So, it would seem you made yourself a little private passage," said the Irish crime boss. "It'll give you something to do after we're through."

"This places me in an awkward situation," I said, watching for any foul play. "Look, I know you probably want to do all sorts of nasty things to me right now, but I have the girl."

"Beatrice," said McKenston, lost into shock, pacing towards me without the slightest concern. I would've been more welcoming hadn't been for the goon's raised iron sights. The Irish man brushed past me, crouching near his little niece. In a single second, his mind and body flooded with honest, but idealistic intentions for his little niece, wanting to rid the wrong, purge the horrid memories, while knowing the sad realization that the only thing he could do was assist in the present.

"How did you make it out alive," said McKenston, glancing at me as if I defied the odds, and in many ways I did. The taste of such recognition left behind an addictive quality that I couldn't relieve. "Were you seen?"

"No," I said, really wanting to part from the location and take the conversation somewhere else. "I don't believe anyway. Besides, my reputation precedes me; no one would even consider us working together. And on top of all that, Chivo is gonna have a mess on his hands for enough time for you to build up your resistance."

"What do you mean," he said, swallowing Beatrice into his massive arms like a stuffed teddy bear. "We can't afford another war with him. The man is insane. Any thing that could lead him back to us is too much to risk."

"Don't worry; as much as I resent your ways of life, you're a better man than Chivo, by far. If there was so much as a trace, trail, or person with knowledge of me working for you I would've gotten rid of it," I said, thinking about the beautiful creatures that Chivo held captive. Their victory would secure a more peaceful transition towards a possible alliance with McKenston. It could also ignite a fire storm unlike this world had ever seen. Worst of all, their efforts could fail, delivering a woman with all sorts of dirty, little secrets back into Chivo's hands, and he wouldn't be merciful.

"You said it best my friend, awkward. I want to kiss you right now, but our past also makes me want to punch your nose in again. Perhaps we could help each other more often, but don't expect to stroll into our premises anytime soon," he said, stepping away with the girl in his arms. The goon lowered his gun. Once relaxed, the African American reached for the back of his throat but stopped midway, failing forward in a pathetic collapse. McKenston ran for cover, while his men discussed the suddenness to their peer's demise. They were clueless, fending for themselves in order to make sense of the situation. I knew, full and well, who was responsible for this violent, intrusive introduction. I bolted across the grated metal, leaving for the rooftop, which I climbed knowing that the sniper could put an end to all this struggling. Perhaps he got off on watching his victims suffer. After all, he sure waited a long time to take out the goon.

I threw myself over the ventilation works, and found the sniper ready to make his leave. The weapon already placed into its protective, gentle casing, which bore a rough, metallic exterior. The older gentleman, covered from head to toe in a ghillie suit, walked away from me as if not threatened or even remotely bothered by my presence.

"Where do you think you're going," I asked, lashing at the stalker. "Cowards run around in smelly costumes."

He paused for a moment and cocked his head back a bit. "You're absolutely correct," he said, in a tone that attempted to be mutual. I wasn't in the mood for some smart comment, and these moments tend to call for it by the payload. "But they also don't intrude into other people's business. Good day to you, Michaels."

"You could've killed me just like the others," I said.

"I guess I could've, but the thought never entered my mind. And why do you suppose that is?"

"Unless you're some sort of guardian angel, I wouldn't have a clue. In these times everyone is looking over their shoulder, trying hard to keep alive, and even harder to keep their wits," I said, lowering my gun, relaxing my stance and pocketing my hands into my duster.

"You approach me as if I should fear you, but it's you that fears me; I suppose the latter would suit me if I were. But, I'm not. I'm just a man, same as you," he said, returning to his calm, casual escape.

"That's it," I asked, following his example, while glancing at the buzzing activity at the grounds of the warehouse. "If you are saving me from danger, you sure have an odd way about it. McKenston is no threat."

"Since when is the underdog any real threat," he asked, immediately. "Let the man rise to power and he'll begin to mimic his enemies. He might be weak and grateful for your help now, but don't you forget one valuable thing. That people don't change. He's just as evil now as he was then. Just because you saved his niece doesn't mean he'll be on good behavior. Besides, how do you think Chivo captured his niece in the first place?"

As much as I wanted to, I couldn't find a conceivable answer. It couldn't possibly be that Chivo and his men walked through McKenston's stomping grounds for just a mere kidnapping. If Chivo and McKenston were to meet, then one of them should be dead as a result from it. I followed the strange man through the rooftops, climbing over walls of blasted metal and stone to rest at a sloping height.

"The answer is right in front of you," he said, placing the gun case on the ground, reassembling the rifle. All the pieces glistened in the sun light, beaming with a polish normally reserved for ritualistic items. He lived this profession of his, breathing as if always on the hunt, observing as if always on the lookout for a target, while staying in tune with a sort of sixth sense about what's around him.

"Look beyond what you think you know of McKenston. He sold her, clear and simple," he said, while raising his rifle into position. I glanced in the direction and wasn't too clear as to the whereabouts of his target, other than another one of someone at the warehouse. Though I wanted to assist McKenston's men in their efforts as an attempt to neutralize Chivo, I didn't concern myself with the overall well being of the little cogs that allowed his crime machine to run.

"Is that a fact," I said, reflecting on that troublesome thought. McKenston has done some bastardly things, but selling out Beatrice would cross the line of no return.

"Just as if it was written in stone. We know about this and knew it would fuel a war that could single handedly take care of the two most powerful crime organizations in town," he said. He pulled the trigger, setting release to a bullet that would certainly hit its mark without so much as a sound.

"You got in the way," he said, wiping some moisture off the barrel. "You just had to save Beatrice, which is all well and good. It would be a terrible thought to have her live the way Chivo intended. However, with Chivo's lair absorbed into chaos and McKenston killed, the blood bath should begin soon enough."

"What did you just say," I said, tugging for another name besides his. Despite the sudden news, I felt a connection with the guy. I lived to serve the people, prevent as much bloodshed as possible, all for what. "There's another way. I could play both sides some more, get them to eventually ally and put an end to this madness."

"Detective Michaels, stop talking for a moment and think about it. Seriously think about all of it. You are beginning to sound like them. You know what would happen if the two sides came to an agreement? It wouldn't get rid of the issues, it would simply cover them. It would provide a utopia for crime lords and other fiends," he said, carefully placing the rifle parts back into the case.

"But the execution of one leader, and the total chaos of another! Rivers of blood will wash over the rubble, the cradle of ruin would never be the same," I said.

"It would be better. The end result of the blasts gave us a chance to start anew. So far, every effort to establish order has failed. This is the only way," he said, simply.

"That sounds like Captain Williams," I said, hoping for him to unmask himself.

"Captain Williams, huh? I haven't heard that name in quite sometime. I doubt he made it. I doubt a lot of people have made it," he said with hesitance. He gave me one last look and waived as if the job was done. "Now that it's over, you might not want to head home; perhaps you should take this time to move on. This isn't a place for an old fossil like you anymore."

I tried to follow, but each step took me further away from where I felt a sense of belonging. "You might wanna pick up the pace just a little more," I said, empty of any real thought regarding the mater, stricken with a strong, overpowering sensation for protecting those everyone else had forsaken.

"You are one stubborn fool, you know that," he asked, leaning against the shattered remains of a brick wall. "I can't say I didn't try. Not like I owe the Captain anymore than an honest solid. If you want to stay, then suit yourself."

Looking back, I saw nothing less but chaos slowly devouring all that remained into a collective ball of tension, while giving rise to a new wave of mindless bloodshed. The city was geared to become a battleground drenched in rivers of blood that may actually cleanse the world of the hate. But in all of that, where do I belong. Where should I go? If my ideals were impossible before, then they should be completely inaccessible now, leaving me torn inside.

"How can I make myself anymore clearer," I said, throwing down the chard bud, chuckling at a thought that surfaced like that of a ghost, a possible foolishness that I secretly wanted the sniper to exhibit, but he could read me without irritation.

"Whatever," he said, turning his back towards me.

A shallow soul I would become if I stayed, but the repeated viewpoint of absurd selfishness became increasingly mundane the more I thought about it. All those that question my way of life, my unrelenting respect for the principles for which the badge stood for, placed bets on an event that to them seem promising. I couldn't bear the thought. Even if it meant sacrificing all of the will I could muster, bleeding till the last drop of blood, I owed it to this city, to myself, to keep it from crumbling.

"Don't you ever come back," I said, firing a round lazily in his direction. The man didn't flinch and the roar of a .45 was one that could pierce into the deafest of ears; however, it was clear as a day that any mutuality between us had been thrown away.

The Bleeder Resurrection

Jesse Dedman

Blades of pale light pierced through the gray hazy sky that loomed with a deep saturation over the desperate city. The cries of many washed under the sounds of traffic and the occasional roar of thunder. The light splashed against the glass of the Richard Keller building--a towering scraper that rose towards the heavens in narrowing stacks of steel and glass—shielding those inside from the toxicity of the air, the cacophony that plagued the inner city, and the scorching heat of an afternoon sun.

Nava sat in a cushioned chair with no intention to stay longer than needed, and delivered Mr. Keller a steady gaze that sought for truth behind the lies. Keller, with legs crossed as if talking business, tapped the end of a metallic pen against the mahogany desk.

"So are you going to tell me or not," asked Nava, agitated.

"I already told you," said Keller, glancing away for a moment with a heavy sigh. "I don't know a damn thing about that property."

"But you own it and must have some sort of record of who leased it last," asked Nava, more of a statement than a question.

"That piece of trash property," said Keller, foolishness stretching across his wide wrinkled mug. "The last company to lease that dump went out of business years ago. With the economy decaying around us, there isn't any use for my organization to inspect it anymore."

"I don't buy that for a minute," said Nava, the tips of his fingers pressed together, and his elbows dug into the padded arms of the chair. "You know more."

"God lord. The moment the police decide to get balls and do something about this slum of a city the moment you would stop sniffing around in useless bullshit," said Keller, holding the pen loosely between his clinched fingers, pointing the tip at Nava. "You have some nerve coming in here and expecting something close to respect. The police don't run this joint any more than the drug dealers and the pimps. You represent trash overdue for throwing out."

"Times are tough, very tough indeed, but without our help it would be much worse," said Nava, holding back. "What do you know about the operation that took place on your property?"

"I don't know a damn thing," said Keller, leaning back in his chair.

"Stop with the lies. We know it was a military operation, and we know that you keep watch over your possessions. A man like you would demand some sort of compensation for the time spent on your land."

"If that were true," said Keller, raising an eyebrow. "You wouldn't find a damn thing. Nothing in the books, nothing close to the type of evidence you would need to tie this to me."

"Time will tell," said Nava, smugly. "Once we get the information we need, we'll meet again."

"You mean from the engineer gone rogue? You won't have the time. He'll be dead before he reveals anything more than he already has," said Mr. Keller.

"Is that a threat," asked Nava, leaning forward.

"No," said Keller, clicking the pin. "It's a matter of fact."

"Enjoy your remaining moments of freedom, because when this is through, your ass will be in jail," said Nava. He rose from the chair and stepped out from Mr. Keller's office without another word.

The lieutenant walked with anger seething between his teeth. He thought, for a moment anyway, that something useful would come from the lead, but instead he found another dead end. A man dressed in a dark suit walked by, brushing against Nava's shoulder. Instantly the two stared at each other. Nava, distracted by the case, thought little of paying any respect to the gentleman, whereas the suit gazed with narrowing green eyes, piercing, scanning, and judging. Before Nava could say a word the suit entered the elevator. Nava dusted off the sleeve of his gray short sleeve shirt, and the motion caused his the thin chain that held his badge to wiggle slightly.

Nava exited the front and felt the humidity almost immediately. Standing at the steps, he could feel his pits gushing with sweat. He wiped his forehead, and swallowed through a dry mouth. Herds of people walked along the sidewalks in various clusters, making it difficult to enter, and much more rewarding to leave. Nava bid his time for a quick phone call before daring to cross the consistent current.

"Pick up you old bastard," said Nava, softly as he eyed the women walking by. "Hey Roberts, it's me, Nava. I tried the lead you gave me and got nothing. I hope you start rethinking your plans for retirement." Nava ended the voicemail and closed his cellular phone. After taking a moment to clear his head, the lieutenant stepped into the moving crowd and followed suit. Like the rest, he stayed clear of the darker areas of the street, avoiding the alleyways with pretentious ignorance to the muffled sounds of fighting. Crime infested his poverty-stricken city, slowly but surely causing the once beautiful city he grew up in to plummet into a chaotic nightmare that no amount of arrests could prevent. It soured on his tongue, generating memories pregnant with regret, but Mr. Keller was right; the power of the badge faded into shadows as the change in times released a tormenting sense of desperation. An economic meltdown like the world had never seen brought this powerful nation on its knees, and those willing to threat with nuclear attacks and other disasters didn't hesitate. The further the depression hit, the more increasing the stakes for a better life became. Thus, hundreds of people were tossed out of the corporate sector to test their wits against the bleak, desolate streets that rendered the more desperate individuals into prostitutes, drug dealers, and worse.

Nava strolled along the crosswalk with his fists deep into the pockets of his khaki cargo pants, while reliving the awkward moment when Captain Roberts decided to retire. Nava stopped to the abrupt squeal of a military truck and stepped towards the building. Rows of men and women branded with the patriot duty to serve in the world's finest military force lined the cab of the truck. How defeated they looked, as if turned undead only to rot and fester within as they march out onto the frontlines of another war fought overseas. No longer did they need to trouble themselves about their fruitless dreams.

The National Guard stormed to the sidewalk, grabbing anyone that looked of age, and carried them into the truck. One by one they're loaded into their harvester of sorrow like candy in a Pez dispenser.

"At this rate you would think our way of life would be a little better," said an African American. "Give you cops a little less work."

"If they had any sense, they would clean out the alleyways," said Nava. He watched as the armed forces proceeded to board the truck. A crack of lightning smeared from the sky and released a downpour onto the city.

**

Scampering over a pile of shattered stone and metal that gleamed in the light of a full moon, Abigail reached for the top with only minor cuts. She clasped the rusted rebar in her small, dirty hand and pulled herself over a rough slab of metal. She dusted her hands, wiping the residue against the denim of her jeans. She peered through the darkness of the opening--a gapping wound of in what used to be solid floor—for any signs of movement. With the exception of the settling dust, there was nothing. Her gut fell deeper, pitting lower than before in hopelessness, but she leaped down anyway. The sound of her red converse hitting the floor was followed by a slight girlish groan.

Except with the occasional stress of the crumbling structure, the air was snuffed of any sound. A cool breeze emerged from the pit below, penetrating her soft exposed skin with a dryness she felt before. With her hands clinched around her arms, Abigail walked slowly towards the grave of her guardian. Buried under layers of clutter that weighed more than he did, Abigail could only rely on her gut feeling that he would some day return. She dropped to one knee and felt her smooth fingertips along the thorn of the rose she brought with her. She could feel the sharp natural instrument slicing through the layers of flesh, and though she connected with the tease of pain, she dared not to press deep enough to draw blood. With a moment of wishful thinking distracting her, Abigail placed the rose along with the others.

Though distant, the sound of men approaching sent her scurrying away for cover. She dove under a metallic table that sat against the wall and waited with a curious eye. Obeying shouting commands, a group of men climbed over the ruins opposite of her entry. They struggled with reaching hands that scraped across the folds of sheet metal and steel. Profanity flowed from their mouths in thick waves, growing more potent on each attempt, while the sound of a starting engine roared behind. Only two of them made it over the scrap pile, and they watched as a bulldozer scooped what it could, leaving a small opening for the others to use.

All of them wore ragged clothing in desperate need of washing, and they approached as if haunted by some heavy burden. Some of them held knives, some grasped tightly onto lead pipes, but they all carried the intent to kill without the slightest sense of reason. Abigail crawled deeper into her cover upon glimpse of the one in front. A cryptic symbol burned into the flesh of his forehead, searing the brand with a bold dark scar that represented, in one glance, an ever-moving entity of soullessness. The man, Malkovak, had haunted her before, rendering her frightened beyond imagination, all the while hoping that someone would help her.

"I can't believe it took this long," said Malkovak, the voice resounding deeply.

"She's clever," said the other, a ruff tone produced by years of smoking.

"That she most definitely is," said Malkovak, stepping towards the cluster of roses.

"Do you think he'll still work," asked the other.

"If our Lord deems it so," said Malkovak, his voice lifted with a hint of pleasure. "And I believe he does. First we should bring in our sacrifice."

Two cloaked individuals pushed a woman dressed in torn rags and bound in chains towards the rim of the pit. She squirmed and cried out for forgiveness, offering them her body as a compromise, but they were only mildly amused.

"Nzulmbi," muttered Malkovak, kneeling down, inspecting the recently added rose.

"Nzulmbi," said the others in complete unison.

"As children to your blessing, we call to you so that we shall not be forsaken," said Malkovak, pulling out a curved dagger from under his coat. "For an ounce of sympathy and protection, we offer rivers of blood." The others repeated the phrase, their voices collecting into a morbid choir.

Malkovak rose with the dagger slicing through the woman's chest vertically. Blood splashed along the blade, staining the sleeves of his wool suit. A crimson tear gushed as if it were an open faucet, saturating her little rags. Malkovak pressed the blade against her neck, teasing her with a slow slicing motion that ate more and more of her flesh with growing hunger. A thin line of blood emerged from the wound, and Malkovak emitted a little smirk. He pushed the screaming woman into the pit, watching as her body fell helplessly into piercing rebar.

"Bring the equipment," said Malkovak. "It's going to take more than a bleeding bitch to get him out of this." He walked towards the table.

"You should think her," said the other.

"Then allow me," said Malkovak. He reached under the table with fast hands and clinched firmly onto Abigail's arm, pulling her out with complete ease despite her attempt to fight. "How easy this is," he said. "We've got both of you, together. This will be a glorious day, indeed."

**

His cell phone buzzed. "You got anything," said Nava.

"No," said Vivian, disappointed. "My source gave me nothing. A bunch of bullshit."

"Well, it turns out Keller isn't going to talk about it. This has to be the longest light ever," said Nava as he slammed his palm against the steering wheel.

"If you're on Main Street then you'll be there for a few minutes. I suggest you get comfortable," she said, stopping with an air of silence. "Wait, you already talked to Keller."

"Yeah," said Keller, heavily. "He wasn't much help. But I swear we will get him for something. I know it."

"Well, your intuition is right," said Vivian.

"Why is that," asked Nava, releasing off the break, slowly coasting behind the other slow responsive driver.

"He's dead," said Vivian. "I just heard that someone called in a body in the Keller building, and it was him. Do you know anything about it?"

"I don't know shit," said Nava. The light changed to red, catching him just before crossing the intersection. He slammed the steering wheel. "Wait. Before I left his office he gave an obscure threat. He pretty much warned that anyone that talks would die."

"Nava, You should wait for me before you do anything," she said.

"Sorry Viv, that isn't going to happen," said Nava. He floored the pedal and crossed the intersection, swerving between the vehicles for narrow openings that were closing by the second. He closed his cell and tossed it to the passenger seat. He grabbed the steering wheel with strong grasps that bleached his knuckles, and drove aggressively through the busy streets, turning down side streets whenever traffic became too dense.

He drifted into the parking lot of a grungy apartment complex where roaches and rats were regulars, infesting the floors, crawling behind the walls, and thriving off the filth of the junkies, bottom feeders, and other slugs of life. Nava kicked in the flimsy chain linked postern and ran up the gravel steps. He stormed up the stairwell and stopped with heavy breathing by Levon's door. He knocked and waited, and knocked again, but the stall of time played on his nerves. Nava pulled out his USP .45 and knocked one more time before trying the knob. Stubborn, but a good solid push forced the rotting particleboard to swing open. Nava stood on the threshold with gun raised, while the door pivoted to tap against the wall.

"Levon," said Nava, cautiously. "It's Nava. Please tell me you're in here." Nava stepped deeper into the studio apartment, navigating a narrow trial that dug through the piles of junk and garbage composed of computer parts, fast-food wrappers, magazines and things collected over years of living. The bed, cluttered with paper plates stained with food residue, was empty. The computer chair, marked with white streaks going down the rim of it, was empty. The room, with the disgusting filth that hid in the closet, was empty of anything other than a few insects. A foul stench wafted into the air, and it wasn't the product the scattered mounds of trash, it lingered in from under a closed door. Nava neared and tapped lightly against the door.

"Levon, are you in there," said Nava. He opened the door with gun pointed and ready.

"Jesus Christ," said Nava, covering his eyes as he walked away.

"What's the deal? Can't a man take a shit in peace," asked Levon. "Fuck, man."

Nava leaned his back against the wall parallel with the opened door. "You have two minutes to finish up before I pull your ass off that seat. Don't make me do it. Don't you dare make me fucking do it."

"You invaded my home," said Levon, hollering from the bathroom. "I should be asking you to leave."

"You have two minutes," said Nava.

"What's the deal," asked Levon, closing the magazine.

"I have reason to believe that someone is gonna try to kill you, and you and I don't need that," said Nava. "Just hurry the fuck up. I would think a gun in your face would finish the job."

"Hold on," said Levon. "Almost done."

A muffled release of air went almost undetected, but the shattering of a computer monitor brought Nava down with his hands wrapped around his weapon, aimed at the doorway.

"Don't be breaking stuff," muttered Levon.

A dark suit walked by with only a second of exposure. Nava shifted to the other wall, pressing his back against the strained surfaced. His gun aimed at the small stretch of wall aside of the doorway. A hole punched through the wall, sending a bullet down where Nava once was. The lieutenant returned fire, projecting an acute burst of thunder that startled Levon.

"Alright, alright," said Levon. "I'm fucking done."

"Hurry," said Nava, trying hard to maintain focus on the target.

Levon stepped out of the bathroom dressed in a dirty, black guayabera and very relaxed cargo pants. Nava grabbed him and pulled as he walked closer to the doorway. With an itchy trigger finger, he peered around for an angle that would answer his lurking, nagging curiosity, but after several attempts all he could do was brave the confrontation.

Nava's Gun pointed straight down the hall, waning slightly. The suit stared, his eyes dull like the approaching reaper with weapon for execution. Rounds were fired from both directions. Nava landed with his shoulder bashing against the floorboard, he checked himself, unsure of any inflicted damage. Not a drop of blood from him, but the stalker had a different fate. A splatter of blood marked where he stood, but a kicked in door pointed in the direction to follow. Nava pushed himself off the ground and pointed the gun as if their executioner would jump out for another attempt.

"Levon," said Nava. "We're leaving this dump."

"Fuck," said Levon. "What the fuck is going on, man?"

Nava paced backwards with Levon nearby and didn't shift from his position until a quick escape was within a few steps reach. The two raced out from the contaminated complex, and Levon followed Nava to his ride.

**

"I'm glad you decided not to finish him off," said Vivian, accusingly. She leaned against the interrogation room wall. A hand wrapped around a relaxed arm as she bit her lower lip. Her dark short hair was slightly long at the front, a few strands settled with sharp tips right above her left eye. A tight forming police uniform hugged her petite frame, bending over her small bust with parted collars that exposed the pale skin and beginnings of a plain white shirt.

"Believe me," said Nava, unfolding a chair. "I wanted to."

"Why is that not a surprise," she said, looking away from him. "You should've waited for my help. Perhaps you wouldn't have had such a close call."

"No thanks Viv," he said, cupping his hands with elbows placed on top of the metallic table. "If I waited a minute longer then Levon here wouldn't have made it."

Levon didn't look at any of them. He stared at the tiled floor, lost in his own thoughts.

"He seems broken," she said. "You really think you can get anything from him."

Nava glanced at her with a slight smile, and tapped the middle of the table, pulling for Levon's attention. "Levon, since I saved your life, I feel that it's only fair to ask you a few questions."

"If that guy is after me then it would have to be because of what I know," said Levon, leaning forward with brilliant beady eyes that shown through his dirty mug. He placed fingertips against his weathered, tainted lips and seemed a hostage of his own delusions. "They know," said Levon. "Despite your efforts to silence the story, they know. Don't they?"

"That's what makes it so important that you tell me everything you know about the operation that took place at the old piping yard," said Nava, gently.

Levon stiffened and pressed a finger against this temple. "I know you want what's in here, but at the cost of my own life, at the cost of yours? I don't think you understand that some things are better off left alone. Don't tamper with something you have no business with."

"Levon," said Nava. "If you don't help us then another one of those things could happen again."

"Besides we already have the whole department wanting to snuff us," said Vivian, disregarding their only witness. She walked to the table, pressed her palms against the surface, and leaned forward. "I don't want to work narcotics again," she said, shaking her head. "So just spit out the fucking information."

Nava glared at her, but redirected his focus to drilling the confused, smelly, disgusting man. "We'll protect you," said Nava, laying on genuine comfort. "We know you were involved with creating him."

"Don't go jumping to conclusions. I didn't do anything more than help design a system that could, if used correctly, function as artificial organs, secreting huge doses of serotonin, epinephrine, endorphins and other chemicals into a host, a breakthrough that would revolutionize our current concept of medical science. If someone had this in them, their body would perform ten times more efficiently. Athletes could become the perfection they dream of. Soldiers could become the soldier their country needed them to be. I didn't know what the company we shipped the technology would do with it. If we did, I wouldn't have anything to do with it. But, then again, there were rumors. There was this gossip that something big, something evolutionary on the brink of creation, and the company we worked with were the conductors of it."

"What company did you ship it to," said Nava.

"Sekume, but the name of the company won't matter. It was a front for powerful wealthy men to pool their resources together without detection. But this is really just a rumor. It probably isn't true. But there is a name, Aidan Agamat. My associates would refer to him a number of times."

"Agamat," muttered Nava. "Sounds familiar."

"He's a financial advisor for Jackson & Pearson," said Vivian. She parted her lips, thinking about the difficulty it would be to pin a man with such reputation as the one responsible for the monster's manifest.

"So you shipped the technology to him," said Nava, doubtful.

"Yes," said Levon. "I'm telling you. You should stop now and prevent a lot of unnecessary damage from happening. The more you look into this the more difficult it will be to do anything with it."

"Then we best keep this to ourselves,' said Vivian, glancing at Nava. "Hopefully we won't get pulled from the assignment."

Nava rose from his chair and left the room with Vivian following behind. She tugged on him. "Look, I know you're worried about finishing this, but we'll get something."

"Trust me. I want nothing more than to bring the asshole responsible for this to justice, but we can't do it without doubling our efforts," said Nava, rubbing his face with his hands.

"I could see what I could get out from those connected with the cult," said Vivian. "It's worth looking into."

"Sure," said Nava, narrowing his gaze. "Just don't let your guard down and take someone with you just to be safe. I wouldn't walk those alleys alone, not again anyway. You should take Darren with you."

"What makes you think you're going to be doing shit alone," said Vivian.

"Don't worry about me. I'm just gonna ask him a few questions," said Nava.

"But what about the gunman," asked Vivian, placing her hands on her hips. "You think you're going to face him alone? We should hit the streets together, double our efforts that way."

"I'll be expecting him, so I already have the advantage," said Nava, trying his best to sound convincing. "Besides, he's a pathetic shot."

"Stubborn ass," said Vivian, shuffling her feet.

**

Torches set ablaze crackled hungrily in their iron fixtures, fighting the suffocating darkness with orange hues that dominated in areas of interest, leaving the corners and various portions to practically disappear in the darkness. A cage held high above the ground by a chain that extended up into the shadows rocked to the weight of their brave hostage. With water-rimmed eyes, Abigail sat against the bars of her tiny cage with arms wrapped around her folded legs. She feared their intent, knowing that they would surely kill her and not with a kind hand. No, her captures would treat her like all their other victims, but because of history, they would increase the glorification of her sacrifice. Horrid thoughts plagued her mind, saturating it with a heavy mess. During the intense moments, when tears of dread trailed down her cheeks, she fixated her view at her only salvation. The Bleeder, like some forgotten relic, looked weathered, battered and broken. His body, the fractured, blood stained remains of it, was stretched out between overhanging boards that housed a number of cords that snaked one another into a pit of mechanisms below.

The chamber was underground, that Abigail was certain, but the exact location she wasn't sure of. The smell of rot penetrated the earthy, musky scent of water stained bricks and mortar, dried oak, and dust. Without much to do, all she did was set her eyes onto her once giant undefeatable guardian, trying to see beyond the shattered wielding mask that covered a ruined, mutilated face with metal scaring.

Three men dressed in all black entered from the side door, pacing towards the machines. Malkovak followed them. With a hand on his chin, her seemed favorable to the progress, but weary of the amount of time it would take to test it.

"Finding the parts was hard," said the taller assistant. "But you were correct with the leads."

"Of course, it is a rarity for our seers to mislead us," said Malkovak, voice steady and even. "Besides, the branding on the equipment inside him could only mean one thing. How is he responding?"

"His vitals are, well, not much of anything," said the shorter assistant.

"You can't measure something like him, he's a creation of our Lord," said the taller one. "We just finished patching him up."

"You hear that," said Malkovak, glancing over his shoulder at Abigail. "It sounds like it is time to feed our messiah."

The assistance pressed a few buttons and turned a few dials and blood gushed through the cords, feeding into the Bleeder's corpse. Thin streams poured out from the patchwork, but overall the carcass contained the fluid long enough for it to absorb the needed nutrients. After a slight groan, the Bleeder clinched his right fist with bleeding fingertips.

Hell's Doctor

A review by Jesse Dedman

When Lee Jordan asked me to review Hell's Doctor, I figured from the title that he kindly invited me to partake in a gauntlet of horror saturated with physical torture and emotional anguish. I remember anticipating the book with building curiosity, wondering just what sort of insanity waited for me. Then it arrived, and the opportunity for all of my questions to finally be answered came without disappointment. You see, Hell's Doctor isn't just a story with powerful horrific images of torture and chronic episodes of unrelenting anguish, it is a story about obtaining a lost possession, a lost innocence, within the bowels of Hell.

F rom the very beginning, the story surpassed my expectations by dragging me through the fiery pits to city saturated with sin and misery in a land of complete desolation. Much more, each chapter gives you a different glimpse, depicting and describing allegorical oddities such as a giant furnace, which shines light on the classic image of Hell with a dose of cynicism, the pain babies, which exemplifies judgment as both repentance and as an initiation rite. After all, you're not really another damned soul in Hell until you're inflicted with serious impairments and disfiguration. It's a shame for the pain babies that they're never be able to escape their fate, and wanting empathy from Hell's doctor is like wishing for a miracle in Hell.

While the book contains graphic content, it doesn't bank on gore alone. I would argue that even if you took out the gore and the violence, you would still have an engaging journey about a man in search for a lost treasured item: a detective that serves his time in Hell fulfilling demands and trials from tortured souls of a higher status, while desperately grasping for the remains of what man him human.

Available at Amazon:  Read more about it here.

Alice and Dorothy

Jesse Dedman

J W Schnarr's Alice and Dorothy opens with an engaging and gripping scene that not only gives instant tribute to the Alice and Wonderland, but depicts a very unfortunate and gritty low. Alice, similar to the classic, lives a life where independence and freewill are stolen from her. In this case, however, they are stomped into the contaminated, grungy cement of the alley that acted as her home. While in this story Alice has a dark and disturbing past of underage prostitution, the iconic themes and characters of the original quickly emerge with respect to their ingrained attributes. Characters such as Rabbit and the Mad Hatter are not only written with their characteristics intact, they're dialogue and events are saturated with little nuances that truly brings the Alice and Wonderland element into the story.

But JW Schnarr's book doesn't just focus on one particular American classic, but on a variation of Wizard of Oz's Dorothy. Lost and confused liked her classic counterpart, JW Schnarr's envisioned Dorothy struggles with powerful delusions of a world beyond ours, a world access through a tornado, and a world where she would be reunited with her father.

When the two distinct and memorable characters meet, it makes for an engaging journey for independence with allegorical psychedelic trips and an incredibly lively cast. This isn't the Alice in Wonderland you grew up on, and this isn't the World of Oz that Dorothy once visited. Alice and Dorothy incorporates the respected images and themes you would expect with a careful, but not delicate throttle into a gritty desolate world filled with sex, drugs, and murder.

Available at Amazon:  Read more about it here.

Next Month

Deadman's Tome will return with thrilling stories intended to make you fear, scare, think, and perhaps laugh. We will also revisit the filthy, hopeless world of The Bleeder, and explore content from talented up and coming authors.
