Since this is the prologue to my coming novel (The 9%), I’m somewhat regretting releasing it over the course of two weeks but hey, what are you gonna do? It’s more than double the length of what I usually post so it felt right to split it up. I’m linking part I below. Anyway! Below is my tip jar. If you are enjoying my content and can afford a modest donation, I would greatly appreciate it. Anything helps. But if not no worries! I still want you to enjoy my content just the same. With no further ado, please enjoy!

Buy me a cinnamon roll

Here’s the link to part I if you haven’t read it yet.

Part I

“They just left that day and never came back,”

he’d told the sheriff without blinking. “She never told me nothin’.” And the sheriff believed him. Even as the dismembered, burned bodies of his mother and her lover lay buried not 50 feet from where they stood.

That’s who he thought the owner of this Tahoe was — the sheriff. At least initially. Why he was parked in the back yard? Killian didn’t know. No one ever came that far out into the country unless there was serious business. And why was the car unmarked? As thoughts played out things became more and more odd. The situation left Killian with enough unease that, with wary senses, he moved briskly to the passenger’s side of his truck to retrieve the handgun that sat underneath the seat. If it was the sheriff, he’d put the hand cannon away.

After he retrieved the weapon, Killian walked over to the kennel to loose his hounds — even more personal protection. Their general feelings, very broad and simple (though heavy) thoughts were something he had grown used to. Clashing of the differing mentalities of beast and animal had formed calluses on his mind. A thick barrier to shield him. But today there was something odd and penetrative about their energy. The closer he got, the stronger they became. He winced as he rounded the corner of the garage and their collective strife overcame the noise of their barks.

The pain made him snap. At once the three pit bull mixes sat. Not as if coerced, but as if they were programmed to do so at the flip of a switch. Blood trickled from his right nostril and onto his lips. He had learned to like the taste of its iron. It served as evidence of his power. But as the dogs were silenced, something else tickled his mind. Killian could feel, as he strode adjacent to forest wilderness to his left, the eyes of another human. And that — he was not accustomed to at all.

His pace quickened in response to this foreign feeling, but before Killian could make it to the kennel, a sharp prick in the back of his neck radiated searing pain through his spine — and his consciousness dropped into emptiness just before his body struck the concrete path.

Subscribe now

———

When Killian James awoke, it took a moment to remember who he was. The darkness he laid in was sullied only by what looked like the fading light of a late day through trees. And bars. There were bars. Damp, cool earth beneath him was well compacted. It was apparent that he was not the first to lie here. As he felt around, he discovered that the space was not cramped. He could stand, so he did. Too quickly. Only then did he notice the collar around his neck.

After vertigo brought him back to his knees, Killian studied the collar with his fingers. Made of hard rubber and metal, it withstood a barrage of pulls and squeezes with no give. Frustrated, Killian stood and felt the ceiling over him. Metal. A metal box wider than his arms could reach and a couple of feet shorter than the height of a normal room. Squinting allowed him to see that the box reached another few meters back. He walked the length of his room, dragging his dirt-caked hands along the confine above his head. Not far back from where he woke was an iron dome shape in the box protruding away from him. A latch. He pushed, hard — nothing. One more time, even less.

Killian was weak. Even though he was pushing an immovable object, he could feel it. And it made him wonder how long he had been unconscious

Rising from a chemically-induced slumber rendered Killian’s senses dull, but they were sharpening by the second. A spike of adrenaline hit his brain after he registered the sound of creaking metal and he whipped around so fast that his stiff neck cracked as a middle-aged man’s might. He might have been concerned if it weren’t for the bars at the end of his tunnel folding outward.

Whistling. Loud whistling. Hooting and hollering. Through the jeering, Killian made out a few things:

“Wake up, sunshine!”

“We got us an animal killer boys!”

“Sure hope you brought your adult diapers, buddy!”

“Come on out! We won’t bite!”

“We shoulda fed him to his dogs!”

There were a lot of feelings Killian could have felt. Fear, panic, anguish, confusion. They were banging on the box he had locked them in when he was younger. But this time he chose curiosity, plucked it from within, and allowed it to take him. Killian had never felt such attention. All of these people were here for him, whether they hated or loved him didn’t matter. The countless times he was shunned by peers was a magnetic north, the jeering was its south. Killian allowed his feet to yield to the mighty compulsion pulling him toward the opening, and toward it he floated.

The box he emerged from was built into a hillside, facing toward pine-laden wilderness. On top of this pine straw covered hill, stood about a dozen of his biggest fans. They applauded and cheered for him behind odd looking helmets.

Share

No — masks. They were masks unlike anything Killian had seen. They contoured over their wearer’s face but gave no indentations for eyes or mouths, only a protrusion for a nose. A silvery, reflective material covering the top half of the mask threatened to blind anyone who looked directly at it. The bottom was almost like a mesh, but appeared to be hard and inflexible. Opaque and black, it blocked any sort of visibility to the wearer’s mouth. The wearers all wore matching olive colored jumpsuits made of some kind of robust textile.

All the men (Killian thought they were men, but wouldn’t be able to tell if one was a woman) carried weapons. Some slung bows or crossbows across their backs. There were a few with rifles and all had knives on their hilts. Through the hoopla, he scanned them with a child-like fascination and curiosity. He felt outward, with his mental tendrils, for canines they may have brought along. There were none.

One of them, the only one with a bright orange patch on the right side of his chest, stepped forward. The man was larger than most behind him. The heel of a mahogany spear nearly as tall as him pressed into the forest floor, its polished steel point stretched to the sky. The man’s raised ebony hand triggered a silence broken only by a nearby hawk, screeching into the warm afternoon sky.

“Prisoner 4-8-5-1, Killian James. Five miles south, there is a break in the forest. If you reach that field, your collar will release and you will be free to go. You have a three minute head start.”

Though he heard what the man said, Killian didn’t move. He was distracted by another odd thing. In highlighter-orange paint, on several trees behind them—

9%

Then he noticed it carved into the trunks of several trees closer to him.

“Your time started ten seconds ago.”

Share

This is actually the prologue to my coming novel — The 9%. I just finished the first draft, and what better way to commemorate that than by teasing the mood and ideas contained inside it. I’ll keep everyone posted here, but it WILL be my debut novel. There was another debut (Copenhagen’s Recoil) I’d been teasing for a while but I had to pivot. I learned a lot of lessons writing that first book that I’ve applied to The 9% and I couldn’t be more excited to share it with you.

As always, below is my tip jar — if you can afford a modest donation, anything helps. I fully understand if you can’t. No worries at all. I want you to experience my writing no matter what. If you enjoy it please share with you friends and family. Honestly that’s the best form of payment. Thanks again. Enjoy the prologue to “The 9%”!!

Buy me a cinnamon roll

Of all the people who could’ve been endowed with animal mentalism, Killian James was without a doubt one of the worst.

Share

An abusive, absent father and an over coddling mother turned a talented sponge into a hardened sociopath whose feelings were locked in a steel box and drowned in a sea of cruelty. Cruelty and violence that were poured on early by his stepfather through his complaisant, dope-addicted mother. As a skinny young teenager, Killian had no friends and liked to shoot squirrels with the .22 one of his mom’s boyfriends left at their house when he was seven. If his mother knew he had it she have beaten him with his grandfather’s old leather belt, so he kept it hidden. After he downed a squirrel, he hoped it was still alive so he could toy with it.

I wonder if they can feel despair. — he thought as he looked into their dying eyes, prodding them with whatever stick or implement happened to be near him during the torture.

Killian learned, quickly, that manipulating animals was easy. In most cases, dogs. They were the perfect creatures for him. Pack animals that weren’t intelligent enough to shield themselves from his control. One single step away from a hive mind, all dogs needed was a brain. Him.

Skinny, caged dogs his mother kept around their house for protection provided perfect training material. They were easy to control with food and eventually, with his mind. There was never one moment it happened. The gift was merely there, always. Like being funny or a talented athlete. The food it began with was akin to a tee for young baseball players. Soon, Killian would become a professional…of sorts.

When he was 17, Killian saw his mother injecting herself with a stranger on their splintery back porch and something snapped. It may have been the way the man was eying her. Egging her on as a predator would an unknowing woman with a spiked drink. There was no anger toward her. It was more of an exhaustion, really. His mother simply needed to be ended. The man, however, deserved pain.

The outdoor kennel could barely contain their three famished pit bulls by the time he made it over to him. Maybe they could feel what he had buried long ago. Maybe they were just so hungry and the sight of a human was Pavlov’s bell. But he knew what he wanted them to do and by the time he released the latch on their kennel, so did they. An explosion of animalistic ferocity nearly blew him back when they breached the exit. They ran, uncontrollably, around the back of the house toward the porch. But Killian wanted to watch.

When he rounded the corner, there they were. Itching. Waiting to burst around the last corner before the porch. Their muscles shook in spasms, waiting for permission. He crested the corner first and released his hold. Surprise on the strange, lean, gray-skinned man’s face was pleasing. Without regard for his mother, the man sprang up for the door. Killian wished he had seen the man’s face when he realized the door was locked.

They went for him first. Killian made sure they went for the extremities and worked their way inward to the torso. Pain. As much as possible for him. Fight to duress, duress to panic, panic to fear. They faded into each other as an oil slick fades color to color. His dogs ripped the stranger apart while his mother watched, barely coherent enough to comprehend what was happening. Killian watched her succumb to opioid-induced ecstasy as someone was eaten alive in front of her. They’d come for her next, but a heart attack might take her by the time they did.

Killian watched adrenaline keep his mother awake and shock keep her from moving as the man’s screams turned to gurgles after his favorite dog, Tank, latched to the man’s throat. Finally one of the canines tore itself away from its original victim and lunged straight for her jugular. He made sure of that. Less pain for her. She did birth him, after all. The dogs would eat well that day. And the last bit of love he was capable of faded away with the life in his mother’s eyes.

“A hungry dog hunts best.” Killian heard someone say once. He remembered it then.

Subscribe now

It wasn’t long after that before Killian stopped going to school completely and founded a dog fighting ring. It turned out, there were a lot of sadistic people in his town - but he didn’t see it that way. Killian would examine the bets, and manipulate the fights to win as much money as he could. Through the next five years, he got rich on his town’s thirst for bloody betting. People with fat pockets even started coming from the city to see his modern day gladiatorial events. He remarked the women with real fur coats and men with half-chewed cigars like it was still the 1940s. Even scrawny techies and professional athletes dropped large sums on his fights. Enough money came through there that he built a new arena on his grandfather’s land.

Business was good.

When Killian was 23, he made his usual round through the local pound. A mostly run-down building housing only a single window-unit air conditioner. The original white-cement bricks had turned mostly brown from the ground up. Its oddly light front door swung open and into a door stop 180 degrees on the wall to Killian’s left. The wretchedly hot southern summer day rendered even coolest natural places a hellscape.

“Kill! How ya doin’, son?” The fattening old owner jawed when he walked in. “You lookin’ big!”

It was well earned nickname — Kill. He’d been lifting weights for nothing else but the rush. Soreness was one of the only two things he felt anymore. The other, which had crept on him through the years, was a sort of fondness for the animals he pitted against each other. He appreciated and respected them in a way. His own, detached, way.

“Thanks, Rick.” Killian wasn’t dumb. Rick was the main person who had the ammunition to bring him down, so he had to act friendly. Even if he hated Rick as much or more than he hated everyone else. The man had been working that pound since Killian was a kid.

“Here for bait?” Rick asked as he fixed his fading, unmarked baseball cap.

“Somethin’ like that. Got any old boys?”

“Somethin’ easy fer the mutts today, eh? Sure do. Found one wandering around the old K-Mart building yesterday.” Rick said as he stood, achily, from his chair and walked to the back.

An ‘Employees Only’ sign would have stopped anyone other than Killian from following, but he didn’t notice it. Dogs whined and barked incessantly at the pair as they made their way to the last occupied kennel in the hallway. A speckled-gray brown lab raised only his eyes from the floor as Rick and Killian looked down at him.

“Rusty. That was the name on his collar. He just followed me and jumped in my truck. Barely made it in.”

“He’ll do.” Killian muttered before walking out of the spring-loaded back door and heading to his truck.

Before long, Killian heard the back door creak open and shut harshly once again. Rick walked around the side of the building, Rusty on leash and in tow. He wasn’t being dragged along, but Rick was leading the way.

These two are a pair. Killian thought as he imagined taking Rick for bait and letting Rusty go or keeping him around the house for company. It’s what he wanted to do, but he couldn’t. Rusty was surprisingly springy for an old dog, as he made it into the bed of Killian’s Ford without too much issue. The truck had a kennel built into the bed, so they led him to it and he laid down inside without a fuss.

Maybe he wouldn’t be a good bait dog. He wouldn’t run far if at all. But all dogs fight when they have to and thats what mattered. It was only a couple of days before the next event and Killian needed his prized fighters to stay blood-lusted without getting hurt.

“Money’s on the counter,” said Killian with his back turned to Rick as he walked around the front bumper and to the driver’s door.

“Pleasure doin’ business, Kill.” The man tipped his bill only to receive a silent nod and a distant gaze in return.

Share

The ride home was quiet. He decided against the radio. There were no thoughts in Killian James’ head that regarded the poor soul of a dog who was about to be fed to one of his own, younger, far more vicious hounds. In fact, there were no thoughts at all. His truck clung to the bumpy, dirt road only by the weight of its bulk.

When he reached his grandfather’s land, Killian pulled down the driveway and into the line of sight of his three dogs, who were already going berserk. There had always been three dogs in that kennel and he liked it that way, he wasn’t sure why and never gave it a second consideration.

“You boys hungry?” He yelled out as he opened the truck’s door.

His boots had hit the turf before he noticed a black Chevy Tahoe parked in his back yard just beyond the porch.

The same splintery porch where he killed his mother and some poor bastard without a name. Nobody had missed them. It took a long time for anyone to come looking at all.

Share

Hello! So glad you’re here. You might have noticed that I didn’t post last week (or maybe you didn’t) and I’m sorry about that. Been doing lots of traveling and stuff! But I’m getting back on track. If you enjoy my content and can make a modest contribution, my tip jar is below. Anything helps. And if you can’t give, that’s also totally cool. I still want you to read and enjoy as always :)

Buy me a cinnamon roll

The smell of salt had always pleased her. On a beach, alone — her brunette hair swaying on the whims of a dull breeze — is where Jerrin Paulson found peace. Goose bumps be damned. She wasn’t exactly alone here, on this desolate run of Oregon coast line. There was one person with their dog playing hundreds of yards away, so far out that Jerrin couldn’t hear the its barking over the mild waves.

As pleasing as the setting was, complete placidity eluded Jerrin. As sure as she was of fate and the vision that brought her here, a history of psychosis checkered her resolve. It ran in her family and she’d been experiencing symptoms since her early twenties. A stint in Oregon State Hospital stained her with an aura of incredulity in the eyes of her family and friends but fortunately, a few friends had agreed to meet her in the shallows of a frigid Oregon tide pool.

If she’d told them exactly why she wanted to meet, they wouldn’t have obliged. They’d have run as far as they could to try and survive. But it would have been completely futile…if Jerrin was right.

It was a dream that brought them there — Ryan, Fatima, and Pedro. But it wasn’t an ordinary dream. It felt different. Real. Physical. It had been seven days since Jerrin’s premonition. And as she watched the sun set in the distance, she felt a tingle in the back of her neck.

When she turned, all three of her friends were walking toward her in a line. Fatima was a tall girl. Taller than both her male friends but skinnier. And so pretty. She could have been a model but felt awkward in front of cameras.

Ryan was the youngest of them. He looked it too. Even at twenty two years old he struggled to grow facial hair. He was a high school track star — won state in the pentathlon. He had scholarships but his father’s electrician business drew Ryan’s attention more than college athletics.

Then there was Pedro. Jerrin had known Pedro almost since they could walk. Grew up in the same town. Went to the same daycare. And generally took care of each other. Being some of the few people of color in a former sun-down town, they had no choice.

Subscribe now

The fact they were walking together told Jerrin they met in the parking lot and discussed the reason for their meeting.

All three were supportive but clearly concerned for her well being. She knew they would be.

With the beach being as large as it was, it took a few minutes for them to reach Jerrin, who stepped her numbing feet out of the water and turned back around to the ocean. Goose bumps plagued her entire body but she paid them no mind.

Pedro, Fatima, and Ryan approached silently and stood beside her. They were all very different people but one thing they all shared was a love of the beach and its theater. Jerrin thought she heard a seal or two barking in the distance. A log lapped against short white caps in the shallows — a trunk for the tree of gold plasma dancing over the Pacific.

Ryan broke the silence. “So are you gonna tell us why we’re here?”

“Guess I should do that, huh?”, Jerrin said through a grin. She backed up and faced their expectant gazes. “I haven’t been myself for a while. And you guys have been there for me every step of the way. Even more than my actual family. You guys are my family. And that’s why I asked you to meet me out here. I’ve spent my entire adult life wondering if I was going crazy. Battling my own brain. It’s fucking sucked.”

Jerrin paused and looked at the sand beneath them.

“We love you, J,” said Fatima gently. “But we’re worried about you. You get out of Oregon State, then immediately text and say you’ve never felt better and that you’re not even on meds. Then I get a weird cryptic text asking to meet on this random beach at sunset. We wanna help.”

Tears came before words. She somehow hadn’t considered that this might be an emotional event. It was an ugly cry. Jerrin hadn’t seen Pedro or Ryan since she got out of the hospital and the obvious loving concern on their faces broke her.

After a minute or two both Fatima and Pedro had wet stains on their shoulders. Jerrin lifted her head after a moment of losing herself and checked the horizon for anything abnormal.

Nothing had changed.

Except for her resolve.

“I love you guys, too. And that’s why I brought you here.” She paused and took a long draw of air. “I had a dream the other day about a reckoning. A series of cataclysms that decimated the human race and kill almost everyone. None of us escaped it. It felt so real, you guys, and it scared me to death. I woke up sweating and couldn’t go back to sleep again. It was like…like it infected me, you know?”

“It was just a dream, J,” pacified Pedro. Fatima and Ryan both looked concerned but Pedro was always so grounded. It was part of why Jerrin loved him so much.

“I don’t think so, Pedro. I’ve never had another dream like it. I haven’t been able to shake it all week. It’s like a physical weight added to my bones.”

“You brought us out here for a dream?”, Ryan blurted. “Obviously I love you, J, but I had to drive an hour to get here. We coulda met somewhere in the middle of all of us.”

Fatima smacked Ryan hard. “Ryan are you fucking serious? Shut up, dude. Jesus Christ.” She looked back to Jerrin. “Don’t worry about him. He and his girlfriend have been fighting lately. But really J, it was just a dream, baby.”

Subscribe now

“I’ve never believed in premonitions, Fatima. But this is just…I don’t know. Maybe you’re right.” Jerrin sat down in the sand just outside the tide pool. “I shoulda worn a jacket.”

Her friends sat with her and crowded her to stave off the breath of the Pacific. She felt warmer, but the goose bumps wouldn’t leave.

“I’m sorry, J. I didn’t mean it,” Ryan sighed. “If you ever need me I’ll always be there.”

“I know.” Jerrin touched Ryan’s hand.

They all just watched the sun descend beyond the waves. The birds and seals in the distance chilled their bellowing in real time. Then the lapping of the waves stopped. And as dusk turned to a shark-skin gray, Ryan lifted his head, catching the attention of everyone else.

What Ryan thought he saw, was that water had disappeared from just beyond the tide pool.

He blinked to calibrate his vision. “Holy shit.”

Fatima tensed and withdrew.

The tide line was rushing from them faster than they could sprint.

They all looked at Jerrin with disbelief as her eyes widened. Her chest felt hollow. Like a glacier was growing behind her sternum.

The dream came back to her in vivid detail.

Tsunamis. Volcanic eruptions. Devastating earthquakes. Massive anti-gravity ships emerging from underground cities.

Ryan ran.

Fatima and Pedro stood.

“What are you doing?”, Ryan came back in a panic and gripped Fatima’s elbow. “Run!”

Fatima followed without a word.

“We gotta go, J. Come on. Come on!”, Pedro pled as he tried to pull Jerrin off the beach. She was frozen.

“There’s no point.”

“What are you talking about? We have to go, now!”, he jerked her again. Jerrin was no more responsive than the last time.

“Stay with me,” she entreated.

Pedro shook his head. “I can’t, J — I…”

Night’s encroachment accelerated. But not because the sun sped up.

A wall of water in the distance blotted out dusk’s final peek.

Pedro sat and put his arms around her.

The goose bumps on her skin finally disappeared before they were both swept away.

Share

This one’s a little different than usual. It’s…existentially heavier. A little less fictitious feeling and a little more on the nose. But still, in my opinion, enjoyable. And if you go into this with an open mind it might even shift your perspective a little bit. Just a little. Anyway! Below is my tip jar. If you’ve been enjoying what I write and can afford a modest donation, please do so there. Anything helps. If not, no worries! I hope you continue to enjoy my content just the same.

Buy me a cinnamon roll

This is the story of the first night God found me.

It wasn’t at a sermon or service. Nor at a communion or a baptism or a coronation. Not in a church or mosque or synagogue.

It happened in nature, within the quiet sinews of an orange moonlit night. Stars pecked into half the sky as dark clouds insulated the other. There was no thunder, only a cool breeze which made 68 degrees fahrenheit feel like 65. Fireglow warmed a section of woods just big enough to house crickets and squirrels inside an open field.

We’d made camp there just to get away, my friend and I. To be alone with our thoughts. To boil the cauldron of ideas that lived inside us, capture the steam, and reduce the substance under a dome of wilderness.

To take psilocybin mushrooms.

Subscribe now

I know what you’re thinking — oh so it wasn’t real? It was a hallucination. Substance-produced enlightenment.

It was no less real than anything else. Experience is just an infinitesimal piece of objective reality siphoned from beyond senses and reduced into something manageable by our bodies.

If our senses are a microphone, our nervous system is a mixer, and what comes out of the speaker on the other end is our experience — I just added some distortion.

Altered? Definitely. Fake? Not in the slightest.

Hallucinogens like mushrooms reignite an innate curiosity that many lose as they transition into adulthood. As we learn our world, things tend to become less magical and over time our brains harden against change.

Altered states like that of psilocybin mushroom trips fan the flame of wanderlust for many, as it did for me that night.

After ingesting a standard dose, I got the urge to sit in the grass and meditate away from the fire we’d built. I gazed off into a partly visible city skyline who’s light polluted the air around it. A wall of insect chirps behind me behaved as a back rest into which I could lean.

So I did.

The chirping back rest reclined, lowering me into a bed of grass that accepted me as if I was just some more sod.

I laid with my eyes closed, allowing my mind to do what it wished. Experience is a boat on an endless, unmapped river being guided by a gondolier — and the gondolier took a break.

River current steered me toward something we’ve all seen ceaselessly in our lives, but have never experienced. Toward something we don’t even allow our dead to experience naturally because it terrifies humanity so.

Decay.

You can probably even smell the word. In the west, we’ve come to associate it primarily with horror and putrefaction but it’s so much more than that. Decay is the one way bridge between death and life.

After being in the grass for a few moments, bugs crawled on me. On my clothes, my skin.

Hello, friend. — I thought.

Ants took nibbles.

Please, have some more.

Flies came, and maggots.

It’s okay. You need this. And nature needs you.

Beetles took bits.

Plenty to go around!

A vulture landed next to me and pecked my arm. A wave of euphoria swept me.

Wow, you’re a big guy. It’s okay. There are 200 pounds of me!

A coyote came and scared the vulture off. It took a chunk from my arm.

I am where I am supposed to be.

Before long I saw myself from above, beside, and beneath. Holes ran through my body. My environment had incorporated me. I was one with it, and it with me. Though I was being literally consumed, I couldn’t help but smile. My purpose was actualized and I found peace within the confusing mess of artifice erected by humanity to separate us from our source.

The source of everything.

Earth.

Without it there would be no sustenance, no clothes, no shelter. No restaurants, stores, or skyscrapers. No love, no art, no adrenaline. No belly laughs or passionate sex or victory despite insurmountable odds. No candlelight dinners with the love of your life, watching your little girl learn to swim, or skydiving for the first time. No sunrise or sunset. No full moons.

And no body at all in which to experience any of it.

The unbearable weight of existence hit me all at once and took my breath away so thoroughly I was afraid I’d never get it back.

Subscribe now

I opened my eyes, saw the stars floating placidly over me, and cried.

Not for my own sadness, but for the summation of unexplained human longing that so clearly plagues us all like a wretch in want for our souls.

I knew, in an instant, what billions of us were missing and most of us would never find. We’ve been baited and switched. Our connection to, and knowledge of, what is so very tangible and real has been taken and replaced with rugged individualism and the myth of human exaltation. We’re not prostrated above the Earth and our environment like so many would have us believe — we are it.

Not just equals with hornets and birds and white tail deer and cougars. We are them. They are us. Different leaves on the same tree.

After sitting with my racing thoughts for innumerable minutes, it became too much to bottle and I went back in search of my friend — back toward our fire who’s glow was so inviting. Somehow I felt lighter. What I’d seen as a weight pressed onto me wasn’t a weight at all, but a buttress. All of a sudden I was supported by everything around me, not just by my own legs.

I heard it all more clearly. Moths fluttering, grasshoppers jumping and landing, squirrels hopping and bats squeaking. The world around me had transformed from a navigable obstacle to a living map of experience guiding me toward my friend so I could attempt to put my experience into words.

With a quick look around, I saw him about forty feet off from the fire with a headlamp on. He sat cross-legged while inspecting a small thorn bush that had decided, defiantly, to grow through the middle of a walking path.

“What are you doing?”, I asked as I walked over and stood beside him.

His eyes were wide with fascination. Without looking up he said, “I’m just watching an ant.”

Share

Subterranean pt. I

Hello! I decided to do a follow up episode for episode 16, since it was so popular! The link is above. This one could easily be a novel, but a couple of short stories will have to suffice for now. Below is my tip jar. If you’ve been enjoying my material and can afford a modest gift, any little bit helps. If not, no worries! Thanks for reading :)

Buy me a cinnamon roll

As Wade Mullin sprinted, jumped, ducked, and slid as the crow flies, through the woods he thought of nothing but his own foolishness. Still, he wouldn’t stop. There was something inexorable pressing him onward — gripping him like the will to survive.

The manned drill he’d found back there intrigued him beyond words. Its pilot — a large, dense man with unexplained bruises all over his body who showed up on his front doorstep at 2AM. He’d died right there on Wade’s living room floor, leaving him with a collapsible suit as if to designate him the drill’s new pilot.

As many times as he’d traversed the terrain behind his house, he’d never done so this fast. He didn’t know if the men who burned his house down saw him or not, but something told him they were tracking that drill. They had to be, why else would they have shown up to his house in the first place?

It blended effortlessly into the night, betrayed only by its radiant heat. Its door was still open, and Wade’s instinct was to jump directly in and start trying to decipher the controls. He stopped himself, took the suit-ball out of his pocket, and pressed the single obvious button on it allowing the thing to explode and splay outward like a paint grenade. He stripped all the way down, including out of his shoes, jumped into it like a sleeping bag, and pressed the button again so it squeezed him like a glove.

It took his breath away at first, like jumping into cold water. But it was flexible and breathable while bolstering him like a full body brace.

Wade jumped into the drill and closed the hatch, leaving his clothes outside.

The cabin sprung to life when the door clicked shut.

White lights nearly blinded him, as his pupils were used to beneath-canopy darkness. There was only a large screen, no buttons. He’d been inside an electric vehicle before, but this was more…alive.

While he was trying to make sense of the interior, it was making sense of him. There were clicks and hums whirling around Wade. The seat actively contoured around his torso and raised two joysticks into his hands.

“To initiate subterranean travel, please pull directly up on both controls,” a soothing female voice bathed him.

Share

“Wha— where would I go?”, he asked the vessel.

“There is one destination logged by Erwe Polonav at 0157 hours, eastern time. Would you like to go there?”

“The other pilot?”

“Yes. Would you like me to take you there?”

There wasn’t much other choice. “Yeah. Just go. Hurry.”

The drill didn’t say another word. The joysticks lowered away from his hands and Wade felt it lifting up and tilting the cone toward the ground — but he didn’t tilt with it. Instead, Wade realized, the cockpit was gyroscopic. The drill started whining and whirring. There was also a bass sound that crescendoed just as he felt the drill move into the ground for the first time.

It was an effortless thing. A hot spoon driving into ice cream. He wouldn’t have even known that’s what was happening from the feeling alone. The screen in front of him displayed a map of their journey. A small avatar that was his subterranean drill following a red dotted line that looked to wind around less dense areas of crust on its way toward a massive opening at the end of the journey.

“How far are we going?”

Almost before he finished speaking, the voice answered. “The suggested route is a total of twenty seven point three miles. Would you like to plot an alternate route?”

“No that’s fine…how far below the surface?”, Wade asked.

“Your destination, Sada Sagra’s highest access point, is nineteen point one miles beneath the crust’s surface.”

“Sada Sagra?”

“Sada Sagra is the Earth’s third oldest surviving underground city.”

“Underground city?”

“There are twenty two underground cities on Earth.”

Wade chuckled. “Why don’t I know about them? Seems like a pretty damn big thing to keep a secret.”

“They are self sustaining, Wade. Any contact with the surface is done through highly classified channels.”

“What does—“, he caught himself. “I didn’t tell you my name.”

“Wade Mullin is the sole proprietor of the house in the location and you match his description. Are you not Wade Mullin?”

“Why did that guy come here? To me?”

“I’m sorry, Wade. I’m unable to answer that question.”

He felt his patience leaving. “Why am I here?!”

“You came to me, Wade.”

“Because my house was burning down!” Wade caught himself. Why am I getting mad at a computer?

He sat back to collect himself while watching the massive screen in front of him. They were about a third of their way to the destination. It reminded him of old arcade games like Galaga and Space Invaders. The avatar’s movement was mesmerizing. He’d almost forgotten they were moving.

Something illuminated on the surface above him. Then the whole screen started blinking.

“Sonic weapon deployed. Taking evasive action,” said the computer.

Wade braced himself to be thrown around.

Nothing happened.

“I thought you were taking evasive action?”, Wade asked as he looked around the cockpit.

“I have.”

“What did you do?”

“I scrambled their sonic pulse weapon, Wade. That should give us enough time to get to Sada Sagra.”

Wade recalled all the bruises on the man’s body and imagined what it might be like to be punched by something invisible.

Subscribe now

——————

Twenty minutes later, the computer came back to life. “We are arriving in Sada Sagra in two minutes.”

“You said Sada Sagra is the third oldest underground city. How old is it?”

“Sada Sagra is sixty one point seven million years old.”

Wade laughed. Even computers can make mistakes, I guess. “That doesn’t make sense.”

“It’s no mistake,” the soothing voice said. “Sada Sagra was established nearly sixty two million years ago.”

“That’s impossible, computer. Humans have only been around for two million years. You have to be making a mistake.”

“Humans are not the only creatures who build, Wade.”

“Who else is capable of building underground cities then?” Wade paused and smiled to himself. “Are you telling me that aliens exist?”

The drill decelerated and Wade gripped the seat’s arms. The whirring died down. “Is that a yes?”, he asked the screen.

“Perhaps it’s best you don’t hear it from me.”

The vessel fully stopped and the cockpit door clicked open.

When Wade stepped out he was in what felt like the corner of a large cave. The drill had come in through a wall twelve feet above and behind him and settled onto a level, rocky floor. When he looked out, the rest of the cave was well lit with blue light and he could see other holes like the one he’d entered through. Some smaller and some larger. Wade stepped out beyond the radiant cone and saw other drills similar to his, sitting flat on the ground.

But no one else was around.

Then he heard footsteps coming around the corner to his right. He readied himself for a fight.

His mind told him he was safe, but instinct overwhelmed him. His muscles were tensed and ready to fire when a silhouette…five silhouettes rounded the corner.

They looked like humans with feathered hats on. At first.

When Wade’s pupils adjusted, his brain couldn’t make sense of what he was seeing.

Beaks.

Feathered ears extending above skulls.

Large eyes with vertical slits blinking and looking up at him.

Colorful clothes in unique configurations mostly covering smooth yet scaly skin. They were small. No more than five feet tall. Wade towered over them.

The one in front held its arms out and spoke.

“We mean no harm,” it said, though it had trouble with the ‘m’ sound.

“What are you? I —”, Wade asked as his heart rate spiked.

“It’s ok, we’ll explain everything,” it said. “Please, follow us.”

As the bipedal reptilian creatures turned and went back around the corner, Wade stood frozen. For the first time in a long time, he was scared. Not of death or harm, but of the abyss into which he stared. Thelassophobia of knowledge.

He thought about how boring his life had been since he got out of the military. He spent countless lonely, waking nights in wait for something to happen. Anything. Action. A time when he’d be needed. He remembered something his grandfather told him a long time ago — it was with him when he joined the military and again it rattled around his brain.

“If you look hard enough, you’ll always find something. Just won’t be what you imagined.”

His left foot stepped in front of the right.

Subscribe now

This is my tip jar. If you’ve been enjoying these and can afford to donate modestly, please use the button below. Anything helps. If not, no worries of course. Enjoy the story!

Buy me a cinnamon roll

When Marina woke, she was on a twin-sized cot in a room she’d never seen before. The bedding was warm but extremely minimal and itchy. She rubbed her eyes to make sure it wasn’t a dream she could shake before heading for the metal door.

There were no windows at all and the fifteen by fifteen foot space was lit only by a single light bulb in a cheap, minimalist lamp.

She turned the door knob only to realize it was locked.

Then the panic set in.

She remembered how she got there. What she heard her husband and his brother talking about through the office door. Marina had known for a long time that something was off about her husband, Geoff, and his family but she chose not to look into it. When she noticed he and his brother, Wade, had retreated into the office, her curiosity won and had her press an ear to the thick office door.

It was difficult to hear through but not soundproof. She made out enough that it felt like a “gotcha” moment at the time, but clearly she hadn’t thought it through. Her emotions had gotten the better of her after a long day and here she was, locked in a room after being choked unconscious by her own husband.

Marina’s neck was sore, but not as bad as she thought. As she massaged it, she noticed the white camera in the corner above the door.

After staring at it for some seconds, wondering if someone was looking back at her, the door opened. Geoff stepped through in his usual work clothes — a red polo shirt with “DeLonge” etched on it, khaki pants, and tennis shoes. He closed the door quickly behind him and looked at Marina with regret in his eyes.

The moment the door closed behind him, she regretted not trying to run out immediately.

“Mare, I —“

“What the fuck is this, Geoff? Let me out of here!”

“Can’t do that,” he shook his head.

“Why? Because I know about that stupid book?”

“Why’d you have to walk in there? Huh? You know not to come into my office when the doors closed!”, he yelled. “You could have just turned around and pretended like you didn’t hear shit. I wouldn’t have known anything about what you heard and we wouldn’t fucking be here right now!”

“You’re really blaming this on me right now? You choked me unconscious, Geoff!”, Marina pushed his chest as hard as she could.

“You’re lucky I didn’t kill you, Marina,” he said so calmly that it chilled her to the bone.

She backed away toward the wall behind her. “Who the fuck are you? Who did I marry? Oh my god…”

Marina sat on the bed with her head in her hands, mumbling to herself while Geoff watched in silence. “I’ve been sworn to secrecy my entire life. By something bigger than all of us.”

There was more to say, but Geoff choked when he heard sobs leaving his wife. They softened him like a mallet to a tough cut of meat. The bed squeaked as he sunk into the bed next to her. The muscles in his shoulder twitched as he started to put his arm around her and stopped himself.

He recalled the time that he watched with cold eyes as his youngest brother, Henrik, forced a 13 year old girl to undress and examine her shivering, naked body to make sure she still had her hymen in tact. That morning he’d settled on forcing himself to watch something his brother did because it felt weak to handle the criminal business dealings without knowing their true effect. He couldn’t be like the CEO of a construction company who didn’t know shit about laying foundation.

Ever since that day, Geoff could never see his brother for anything other than the monster he was.

Share

Geoff had dealt with the worst of criminals time and time again, knowing full well the horrors that went on in the shadows while taking solace in the idea that someone else would be doing it if they weren’t. He’d never fully considered himself a bad person. He was just a cog in the machine.

But now, as he sat in front of his wife, tilting inevitably toward revelation, he knew he was just as much a monster as Henrik was.

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” he said simply.

“Just kill me and get it over with,” Marina responded without looking up.

“Look at me.”

She didn’t.

“Marina, fucking look at me,” he turned her face physically toward him. Her olive cheeks glistened in the dim incandescent light. It looked like she wanted to kill him and he didn’t blame her. “No one in the Dirick family has ever told their wife about our family curse. You have to promise me you’ll keep this quiet…shit who am I kidding. No one would believe you anyway.”

Marina turned toward Geoff expectantly. He took a long breath.

“Every generation of our family has three kids. The first born is always a boy and that boy is the only one who can have kids. The others are infertile. Always. The second born is always a gifted businessman. An extrovert with good social skills and a cut throat attitude. And the third born…the third born is always a psychopath. It’s been this way for 53 generations. And for the last 300 years or so we’ve been using this curse to our advantage.”

He paused there and hoped she would ask questions about what he’d already said so he could potentially derail. She did not.

“Using it to your advantage how?”

Damn. — he thought, though he wasn’t surprised. Marina had always been an astute woman. It’s part of why Geoff chose her. Loved her. Trusted her. Then and now.

“Keep in mind that what I’m telling you is something that’s been going on for a long time.” He took a deep breath and looked up at her. Marina’s face was dried but still red. Her eyes agape like an orca who’s ready to eat a seal. “We run a wing of the global human trafficking economy.”

There was a silent moment for it to marinade. At first she laughed. Then stopped when Geoff didn’t chuckle with her.

“So what do you mean, exactly?”, Marina asked despite knowing exactly what he meant.

“All of it Marina. We find people. Take them. Sell them.” He tried to stop it, but tears collected in Geoff’s eyes as a crack in the dam holding back all his atrocities formed.

Hundreds of helpless children. Orphans. Drug addled homeless people. They all beat at the door of his calloused facade harder than ever.

“No…you run an architecture firm. And do business with your brother —“

“No,” he cut Marina off as she settled into realization. “Everything we have — our house, our business, our contacts in government, our house, the trust fund — all built off this business and Henrik…Henrik ran things on the ground and now that he’s gone, there’s no one to do it. No one to take his place. No one but blood. And no one from our family can do what he did.”

“So what will you do?”, Marina asked. Geoff looked sharply to her. “To replace him, what will you do?”

Geoff was on the verge of tears before she spoke. And now he wondered if he’d ever truly known his wife. He expected disgust and putrifying disdain, yet here she was showing curiosity.

She could see on his face that Geoff was shocked. “I’ll do anything to protect our children and keep our family together, Geoff. If it’s secrets I have to keep, I’ll keep them. If its helping with business, I’ll help. If it’s killing someone, I’ll do it. I don’t care. There’s nothing more important to me than those boys. Nothing.” She grabbed his face. “I don’t care what you’ve done. We’ll deal with it later. Let me out of here so I can go to them.”

Subscribe now

“But I’ve lied to you for so long…”

“I cheated on you once.”

“What?”

“I cheated on you with Tran Palaver.”

“Seriously?”

“It was stupid. It was a long time ago. I was drunk. We got in a fight that day. And it just happened. Tran and I both regretted it and never talked about it again.”

“Holy shit, Marina,” Geoff laughed and Marina joined him. “Fine. That’s fair I guess.”

“We’re not even. Not yet,” she said with an ambivalent smile. “But really…what are you gonna do now that Henrik’s dead?”

“The business always shuts down after the first brother dies and waits on the next generation to come of age. Wade and I are going to clean Wade’s house today, and —“

He was interrupted by his brother walking in the door.

Wade looked at them like he’d walked in on two people cheating. They glared back, loaded with guilt.

“Shit…you told her didn’t you?”

Geoff said nothing.

“Fuck, Geoff! What are we even doing here?”

“I couldn’t help it, Wade.”

“We can’t let her out of here,” he said.

“Yes we can. We have to.”

“But you said—“

“I know what I said. She’s not gonna say anything, right?”, Geoff asked his wife.

“I won’t. If it means protecting my kids, I’ll stay quiet.”

“So I get to tell Victoria, then?”

“There’s nothing to keep her from blabbing, Wade. You can’t tell her,” Geoff responded urgently.

“If this blows up it’s on you, Geoff,” Wade said angrily.

Geoff stood and walked toward his brother, patting him on the shoulder. “Hey, lighten up. At least we have someone to help us clean Henrik’s house today. And that means you don’t have to go in the basement.”

Together, the two brothers raised their eyebrows at Marina, still sitting cluelessly on the bed. “What’s in the basement?”

Share

This is my tip jar, if you’ve been enjoying my content and can afford a modest donation, please click the link below. Any little bit helps me bring this content to you every week. If not, no worries. Thanks for reading! Enjoy “No One But Blood!”

Buy me a cinnamon roll

“Henrik was a fine man. I’m so sorry for your loss,” a man with a firm handshake told Geoff Dirick. If you knew him, you could tell Geoff was unmoved. But no one else in the visitation line knew him well enough to notice.

The day outside was clear and sunny on a fall day. The humidity was palpable as usual, but St. Augustine was well known for that. They chose a funeral home in the middle of the city near one of the oldest chapels around. It was a beautiful service.

The Dirick family was surprised that as many people showed up to Henrik’s funeral. There were a few speakers Geoff and his only remaining brother, Wade, recognized. And a few they didn’t. There were some fantastical stories that couldn’t be corroborated but who knows what Henrik had gotten up to in his life. They’d learned not to assume he was predictable, despite his calculated nature.

Their youngest brother died earlier than anyone expected. He was a healthy man, but due to an untimely stroke at the age of 49, he passed away alone in his home. It took days to find him there. He was unmarried, had few friends, and worked alone.

After Henrik’s visitation, there was a small get together at Geoff’s house. He lived in an elegant, tightly knit neighborhood of old money. His three kids played with other children in the neighborhood and they lived a mostly charmed life. All the neighbors were invited to stop in and many of them did. After everyone left and their fridge was stocked with more food than they’d be able to eat in the next week, Geoff and his wife, Marina instructed their kids to go to bed. After they all marched up the stairs and retired into their separate rooms, Marina, Geoff, and Wade stayed in the living room for a night cap.

Not long after she finished her drink, Marina excused herself and went to bed as well. Geoff poured himself and his brother another two fingers of Russian vodka, then the two men took the bottle and stepped into Geoff’s office. Wade closed the door behind him and settled into one of two seats on the other side of the desk.

Low yellow light from a single lamp illuminated teak and mahogany. The desk between them was nearly 100 years old and weighed 300 pounds. Geoff was a well organized, well read man and his office proved it. He lit a coal of frankincense and allowed it to smolder between them as they nursed their drinks in silence.

Subscribe now

Wade was the first to break it. “So what do we do now?”

“I’m the only one with a key to the house. We go there tomorrow and make sure it’s clear.”

“Why would anyone else go in there?”

“Henrik was young. May have left…loose ends.”

“Shit,” Wade gasped as he tossed most of his vodka back. “So you really believe in all this shit, huh?”

Geoff’s eyes widened at his brother, wondering if the gall was a joke or not. Even after a few seconds of looking at one another, he couldn’t tell. “You’re fucking kidding me, right?”

“I mean, it’s superstition, right? Coincidence that Henrik fit the profile they were looking for in an heir.”

“It’s been coincidence for 1500 years then? Coincidence that Joel fits the profile, too?”

“Maybe they’ve been forcing people into that role. Joel will grow out of this phase.”

Geoff started to anger. “When’s the last time you looked at the family records, Wade?”

“Never. It’s like reading spreadsheets, why would I do that?”

“If you had, you wouldn’t be saying such dumb shit. Dad made me read them start to finish when I turned eighteen,” Geoff said as his eyebrows softened. “All ten thousand. Should have made you do it too.”

Geoff returned from dissociation and chugged the last of his vodka.

“You never told me that.”

“It wasn’t anyone else’s business. But now it’s both of ours. You don’t have to go through the records, but you will help me set this up,” Geoff commanded as he opened a drawer to his right. He used his fingers to comb through a few things and placed a polished wood box on the table between them. It was a lockbox, which opened with a key from Geoff’s small key ring.

Share

He produced a small, brown leather book the size of a journal and slid it over to Wade.

“What’s this?”, Wade said as he flipped it open.

“Jesus, Wade, be careful. That book’s 100 years old. ”

“Sorry.”

“It’s a record of all our families for the last one and a half millennia. Roles they’ve been given. Businesses. Fronts. Properties. All of it. Oldest child always has three kids and runs the actual business. Second runs the front. Third is boots on the ground. Grandad’s father wrote it all by hand before he died. I’m gonna have to rewrite it all soon, myself.”

“So what are we gonna do about the business?”. Wade wondered as his eyes perused the old pages.

“Guess I’ll have to shut it down until Joel’s ready.”

Wade looked up. “What will you do?”

“Haven’t thought about it. But I’ll have to keep going somewhere to keep up appearances.”

“What do you mean?”, Wade and Geoff locked eyes for just long enough. “Oh shit. Marina doesn’t know does she?”

“No one but blood, remember? It’s for her own good. Wait, you haven’t told Victoria anything have you?”

“Hell no! She’d leave me if she knew.”

The office door cracked open. “If she knew what?”, Marina asked as she peaked in. “Victoria would leave you if she knew what?”

“Mare, go back to bed,” Geoff demanded.

“I heard my name, too. What the hell is going on?”

Geoff stood. “Marina, what did you hear?”

“I heard you talking about our son. You know what’s wrong with Joel, don’t you?”

“Of course I don’t, I’m not a doctor,” he said as he walked toward Marina with his hands out. “Go back to bed, Marina. This is family business. You know not to come in here when I have the door closed.”

Subscribe now

“I am family, Geoff.” Marina slapped a hand away. “Now tell me what the hell’s going on. What’s in the book? It’s what was in that case isn’t it?”

“You’ve been snooping around my office…I told you, what I do is confidential.” Geoff raised his voice. “Knowing this puts your life in danger, Marina! Fuck! What do you know?”

She shied away from her husbands anger and backed toward the door.

“I need to know!”, he continued.

“I…I heard what you said about three kids. Boots on the ground. Joel. What is he, Geoff? Tell me the truth.”

Geoff continued walking Marina down and her back bumped the door. “I can’t tell you that. Please, Mare. Go to bed.”

Her eyes darted around the room as Wade stood from his chair. Her hand reached for the lever and she pressed it hard before trying to slide quickly out of the room.

Geoff grabbed her arm, pulled her back in, and shut the door behind her. “I need you to tell me you’ll go to bed and ignore what you heard.”

She struggled against his grip for a moment but settled down as she realized she wouldn’t escape. The panic in her eyes was apparent. She’d hardly heard what Geoff said and couldn’t make eye contact with him.

Wade approached them, his eyebrows high as he and his brother locked gazes.

Swiftly, Geoff ripped Marina toward him, wrapped an arm around her throat, and squeezed. Her arms flailed and scratched at Geoff’s face. Over the course of fifteen seconds, she weakened, and went limp.

“Fuck, Wade! Why the hell didn’t you lock the door?”

Share

This is a vaulted prologue from my currently unpublished novel, “Copenhagen’s Recoil”. If you’ve been enjoying these episodes, and can afford a modest donation, please see my tip jar below :) If not, no worries of course! I do this because I love it and will continue to. The best way to support me outside that is to share it with friends and family.

Buy me a cinnamon roll

A young man calmly prepared for the only journey he could take without going anywhere.

Zachariah Schilling could’ve just gone to sleep, but he’d haggled with lucid dreaming already. There was another place he could go, with practice and patience, that’s so far distant from our usual shared conscious reality that even people who know of it don’t generally believe you can get there. But Zach had always been an idealist, and that prospect tickled his mind like a fraying feather.

He learned nothing of astral projection in his college philosophy or biology courses. To him, this was suspicious. Zach spent the next couple of hours settling into a meditative state. After establishing rhythmic breathing he pulled his hair back into a pony tail, dressed himself in his most comfortable clothes, and cleared his bed of all his down pillows and comforter. He even stopped drinking water a couple of hours before to avoid bladder discomfort.

All the lights in his house were off. The main bedroom in his small, two level townhouse was a stale 75 degrees. A small fan sat on the carpet in the corner to provide just enough air flow and sound to keep him comfortable.

The 23 year old carefully placed his ear buds in, scrolled through YouTube to find an appropriate sound scape, and landed on a 432 hertz audio file with binaural beats.

Zach was intimately familiar with his home. But something had been there for weeks under his nose. A minuscule camera perched in the top right corner of his bedroom.

On the other side of the camera, a well-dressed middle aged man sipped a cup of unsweetened chamomile tea. He kept one eye on a laptop screen and the other on an Austrian economics book he found inside a small public book share near his hotel room. Thick brown hair laid naturally back onto his head from many years of conditioning. He wore elegant gold wire frame reading glasses. As Zach laid down alone, the watcher clicked a button on the stopwatch next to his computer. He sat and read his textbook as seconds fell away from the 45 minute mark.

Before the watcher could make it far into the dense concepts, the alarm went off. He checked the still, bedridden figure for anything unusual. He deftly threw his tan jacket on and exited the room. A slick black Chevy Tahoe waited for him in the parking lot. Its heavily tinted windows coupled with an otherwise stock exterior provided powerful anonymity.

The beating heart and brain of the vehicle couldn’t be further from stock.

The watcher hopped in, turned the ignition, and another laptop on a mechanical arm lit up near the passenger’s side dash. A massive screen sat where a stock head unit once lived. Upon booting, it populated a single geometric red symbol at its center.

He relaxed for a moment as his machine warmed to idle. Before long he pressed the gas and rolled away to the tune of a deep, satisfying grumble.

In minutes, brown leather dress shoes pressed into a short run of rough pavement and sidewalk. The watcher took a key out and gingerly opened the door to Zachariah’s apartment. He walked leisurely up the carpeted stairs and opened the bedroom door. Before Zachariah could come to and notice what was happening, he was shot in the leg with a concoction so powerful that he was unconscious within a second. The watcher whistled as he dislodged the metallic dart and pulled Zach’s limp body closer to the edge of the bed.

“Heavier than you look, Mr. Schilling! Bravo!” The L’s rolled effortlessly off his tongue.

The gentleman binded Zach’s extremities then threw the limp body over his shoulder as if it were a bag of soil. He descended the stairs, banked the 90 degree turn near the bottom, and accidentally knocked Zachariah’s head against the wall.

“Apologies!”

Share

Silver pieces anchoring the watcher’s suspenders flashed into the distance as he flung open the apartment’s front door. He heaved Zach’s body into the comically comfortable back seat. Once Zachariah was inside, the watcher bent Zach’s legs upward to ensure bare feet planted flat onto the seat and knees knocked against the back support.

Thirty minutes into their drive the watcher noticed a faint rustle in the back, which interrupted his internal symphony. At the press of a button a metal barrier slid from the rear of the vehicle and rolled its way down, like a garage door, to a snug fit behind the center console. Mumbles spilled from Zachariah’s mouth like gurgles from a just waking mountain spring.

“They rarely get these things wrong,” the watcher said, shaking his head. “Unfortunately for you, Mr. Schilling, this cocktail was not quite strong enough. I have a backup but I thought I might save it for myself.” He smiled as if it were a joke. It was not. The watcher seemed to purposefully emphasize his historically villainous accent.

“You know, I’ve been watching you for some time, Mr. Schilling. Truthfully, I feel as if I know you well. Something you made me realize, actually, is that — ” Throaty chuckle. “— this is funny. But you can tell a lot about people by the way they eat. Some people cover their mouths. Even when they’re not eating with others! Some people chew with their mouths completely open. I’ve always found that rude unt…frankly disgusting. But you! Mr. Schilling. You, like to control your plate in such a way that you take equal amounts of each item. Right down to the last few mouth-fulls.”

The watcher stroked his hair redundantly.

“This tells me, I think, that you have a very even view of others. Not judgmental, maybe? Perhaps you are very just? Or you just have a naive view of the world.” His teeth showed before he let out a visceral, histrionic laugh.

“Listen to me! Drawing conclusions about a person based on the way they eat. How silly. But truly, I think you’re probably a good person, Mr. Schilling. I do. If ‘good’ means anything. And I’m sorry about your predicament. As sorry as I can be as your captor. Do you like music?”

Hairy fingers twisted one of two knobs visible on the front console and landed on the song he had in mind. Strings slipped into the air followed by a calming piano. The extended prelude to what must certainly be an achievement of a crescendo and climax. The watcher’s head rolled around as if in a trance.

“Whaa…is”

The ‘s’ that barely escaped Zach’s mouth was thicker than the black tar occupying the watcher’s pipe.

“Ah, yes. Speaking will likely remain difficult for a bit. Don’t fret. We don’t have much longer on our journey.” He paused as if to let Zachariah speak but quickly perked up again. “I can’t tell you exactly where we’re going. That would be against policy. Even I only know a set of GPS coordinates. We’ll be…ohhhhh…another 15 minutes or so.”

“Wha…ss hampnee.”

“Well, Mr. Schilling, it seems your mind is highly valued by someone. You should be flattered.”

The bound young man wriggled weakly like a fish in frigid water.

Subscribe now

“There’s a bottle of water back there if you wish.”

Zachariah took advantage of the fact that his hands were bound in front of him. Over a minute or so the water made it’s way in and onto his vertically positioned face, wetting the black leather. Zachariah let go of the bottle, dropping it to the floor, and drew a breath of mild relief.

“Wha…the fuck is happening?”, Zach managed with his lips still not fully cooperating.

“Very good, Mr. Schilling. How do you feel?” The watcher turned back to glance at his captive, showing his face enough to display the widows peak formed by his full head of dark hair.

“Am I, projecting?”

A dark chortle of amusement rang from the watcher’s throat.

“Maybe, Mr. Schilling. Maybe.”

“Who…r you?”, Zach said as he inspected his binds.

“My name is Peter Durkhaus. And you are Zachariah Schilling. Born June 8th, 1966 to Mark and Freida Schilling. Graduate of the University of South Carolina — Columbia with a degree in Biological Sciences and a minor in Philosophy. You have taken a particular interest in… lesser known philosophies and landed on meditation-induced psychedelic experiences — which is why you’re in the back of my vehicle right now, Mr. Schilling. You see, my employer retains a certain affinity for people like yourself. So much so that they’ve paid me handsomely to procure you.”

Peter turned onto a rocky dirt road with both hands on the wheel while keeping his gaze dead ahead - allowing the revelation to settle in.

“People like me?”, Zachariah inquired.

“So calm for your predicament. No wonder they like you. Or maybe you’re still very sleepy. If it makes you feel any better - you’re special, Mr. Schilling. Very few people are capable of doing what you were about to do. And my employer wants to know what makes you tick.” He lifted his right palm to the sky and slapped it back onto the top of the steering wheel.

“What…wha - “

“What’s going to happen to you? What’re they going to do? Ohhhh I don’t know, my friend. You clearly have a better imagination than I.”

Zach’s struggle against his restraints increased in desperation.

“Struggling is a waste of time, Mr. Schilling. We’re almost there.”

Zach began kicking the cage. It didn’t budge, or even rattle. Grunts and saliva escaped his throat as he nearly pulled his shoulders out of their sockets in a final attempt to break the zip ties that held him. Zach’s eyes darted around. He lied down quickly, pulled both knees up to his chest, and kicked the window as hard as he could. Nothing happened. Zach kicked again and again, exerting less force with each effort as his muscles fatigued.

Peter didn’t react. It was best to let Zach tire himself out. The Tahoe was built to withstand far more punishment than his current captive was capable of doling out.

Confused, defeated breaths filled the back seat. Zach remained prone on the upholstery with his eyes closed, trying to imagine that he was elsewhere. That it was all just a bad dream. Unintelligible, blurred utterances mixed themselves with Zach’s erratic breathing. He opened his eyes to an unchanged predicament.

“Please don’t,” he pled.

Peter remained unresponsive.

Share

Zach’s cheeks swelled with blood, pushing water from his eyes.

“Nonononono,” Zachariah whispered to his reality. The object of his frustration shifted. “No! Please! You cant do this to me!”

“I’m not the one to plead with, Mr. Schilling,” Peter said as he perked up to the sight of incandescence emanating from a patch of woods a few hundred feet ahead. He pulled within 20 feet of the other vehicle’s headlights, stopped, and grabbed a small leather bag from the door’s pocket.

Peter stepped out onto the gravel, closed the door, and opened the bag to fish out a well worn wooden pipe and a wax paper bag filled with loose-leaf tobacco. His vehicle nodded slightly back and forth as Zachariah struggled within it. The packed his pipe, searched the bag once again to retrieve a box of matches, and lit a smoldering cherry.

“You were supposed to sedate him,” a muffled voice said in the dark.

“I did. It wore off.” He pulled against the smooth mahogany pipe as crunching gravel preceded a trio of black mesh masks.

“Hm.” The bass-heavy sound seemed to reverberate directly from the tallest man’s chest.

The other two men, of very similar height, walked around Peter without interaction. All three masked men were several inches shorter than the watcher. One of the two grunts opened the Tahoe’s back left door and violently stabbed Zachariah with another vile of sedative. They dragged Zach’s body out by shoulders and legs and staggered back past the taller man. All the doors closed on the black Ford SUV across from Peter. It reversed away, turned 180 degrees, and within seconds he was alone in the night.

Moonlight crept through the edge of pine wood. The opening behind him revealed a glowing field of native fauna punctuated by a long metal fence. After another lung full of cured tobacco Peter emptied the pipe, returned to the drivers seat, turned the vehicle around, and drove whistling into the night.

Share

If you've been enjoying my content and can afford a modest donation, my tip jar is below. I’ll continue doing this no matter what but anything helps. If not, no worries of course. Enjoy Octahedrons, Episode 32!

Buy me a cinnamon roll

“Why is she always talking to the tree like that?”, Wanda Barriston had asked her husband as they watched their five year old daughter, Leila, hug the only oak tree in their back yard.

“She’s just being a kid, honey. She’ll grow out of it.”

Wanda’s husband, Luke, said that until Leila was seven. The day after their birthday, they were alone at the house while Wanda paid a visit to the grocery store to get some raw ingredients for Leila’s favorite meal — spaghetti pesto with pan fried chicken.

Luke had, lately, been more distracted than ever while performing simple tasks. The result was chronic aggravation. And when he was outside trying to read and he heard Leila talking to the tree, something in him popped.

Without marking his place in the book, he slapped it down on the arm of his wood chair, and marched over toward an oblivious Leila, who was just talking to her friend like any other day.

He grabbed her by the shoulders and whipped her around. “The tree isn’t alive, Leila! You have to grow out of this!” He shook her harder than he should have but she was unresponsive. Only the whites of Leila’s eyes revealed themselves and Luke was horrified, thinking that he’d caused it. “Oh my god, Leila. Honey are you okay?” He touched her face. “Talk to me baby, what’s going on?”

“They didn’t mean to hurt me. It was just their instinct,” she said monotonously.

“What?”

“But the man who corrupted them will pay. The offspring of Michael Barriston the third will be destroyed.”

“Why are you talking about your grandpa that way? Leila, wake up!” He tapped her face with open fingers.

“The sons of Michael Barriston will pay. The sons of Michael Barriston will pay.” Leila was screaming now. “The sons of Michael Barriston will pay!”

Subscribe now

Then he slapped Leila, Hard. She woke in a state of confusion with a red mark on the side of her face and a mild concussion. “Daddy?”, she asked before immediately passing out.

Luke was deeply confused as to how Leila knew her grandfather was the third of his name. He’d died when she was very young under mysterious circumstances.

Weeks went by and she didn’t talk to the tree. After a couple of months, Luke had nearly forgotten about the interaction. He had made the decision not to tell Wanda what had happened and kept it to himself. It was better that way. Better that Wanda, a woman with a family history of schizophrenia, didn’t know her only daughter had some sort of manic episode at such a young age. She had heard once that things tend to skip generations and since there was no indication that she had schizophrenia, Wanda had been concerned for Leila since the day she found she was pregnant.

And one night alone with Leila would make her rethink her entire family history.

Luke had to leave town for an emergency work trip. It was strange that he didn’t even come home to gather his things, but in his line of work it wasn’t unusual for a client to need him across the country without a minute to lose. She didn’t mind at all, alone time was something to be cherished. Three days after Luke left, Wanda was late picking up Leila from school and to make up for it, Wanda took Leila to get her favorite fast food chicken nuggets. Everything was pleasant but after dinner, as daylight waned, Leila asked to play outside.

Without thinking, Wanda agreed that she could as long as she was inside before sundown.

“When you get back inside get ready for bed and Ill come read with you.”

Leila gave Wanda the same excited look that had always made her soul happy, and burst outside with all the energy of a sugared up toddler.

Wanda needed a shower anyhow, and long showers were as valuable to her as anything. She blasted hot water and hid behind the steam for 45 minutes at a time until she sweated enough that she felt new again.

When Wanda got out, dried off, and dressed in her most comfortable clothes. The windows of her bedroom were black and she turned on the TV before flopping on the bed. Wanda stretched out and relaxed into her down comforter. The only thing that could have made the situation better was a foot rub from Luke. But he was gone. Her own hands would have to do.

Though she liked sleeping by herself in a king sized bed, Wanda missed her husband sorely. She had the urge to call him but they rarely spoke on the phone. If he was gone much longer, she would be sure to call. But he was probably busy, so she texted him.

I miss you, baby. Hope work is going well. Love you. <3

Love you too. I’ll see you sooner than you think.

Share

He texted back oddly quick, but she smiled and sat up to rub the balls of her feet. The soap opera on the TV descended into a quiet moment and she noticed something odd.

Complete silence.

About a year ago, their family had established a signal Leila would give to show that she was ready to be put down for bed. They kept a stereo in her room that would play whatever music was her favorite at the time. Lately, she’d been favoring music from the movie, Moana. She knew every song by heart and sung everything so loud the neighbors could hear. Wanda had expected to hear it by now. Or at least hear Leila stomping around up stairs.

But there was nothing.

Wanda crept out of her bedroom in a loose tank top and cotton shorts.

“Leila, honey?”

No answer.

As she tip toed through the kitchen, she didn’t see the reflection of any light coming from upstairs.

Out of instinct, Wanda looked out into the night. There was just enough dayglow to see, and it would be completely dark in just minutes. But the sun wasn’t needed. There was another glow — a blue glow illuminating Leila’s silhouette from in front of the family oak.

Wanda strutted over to the door and cracked it.

“Leila, honey, it’s past dark! Time to come in!”

No response.

“Leila! Come inside!”

Nothing.

“I’m gonna count to three!”

Crickets.

“Shit,” Wanda muttered to herself as she put bare feet on the fraying wooden porch.

Careful to avoid splinters, Wanda walked out into her yard. Cool grass refreshed her feet that were still hot from the shower. Luke’s gonna mow this lawn the instant he gets back — she thought.

“Leila, that’s two!”, still nothing. God, she’s been so good lately what the hell is going on? “If I get to three, no TV this weekend! …Okay, that’s three,” Wanda said as she got within a few steps of her daughter. “Let’s go, time to go in.”

Wanda reached down and saw something confusing. The glow illuminating Leila’s silhouette wasn’t one of her hand held games like she’d expected, it was a smart phone.

She looked closer. It wasn’t just any smart phone. It was Luke’s.

Subscribe now

“Where did you get that?”, Wanda hardly tried to hold back her fury as she whipped her daughter around. “Is daddy home—“, the inflection her question was cut short by the whites of Leila’s eyes.

And she was grinning.

“Honey, how did you get daddy’s phone?” Wanda sat her on the ground and crouched in front, waiting for an answer. “Leila, answer me!”, she shook her daughter lightly.

“The sons of Michael Barriston the third will pay,” Leila said, unfeeling.

“How do you know your grandpa’s name? Talk to me sweetheart, what’s going on? Why do you have this?”, Wanda snatched the phone from Leila’s hand.

“Look up,” said the child.

So Wanda did, but couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. “I don’t see anything. Leila, you’re scaring me. Why are your eyes like this?”

“Use the flashlight.”

Wanda turned on the phone’s flashlight and aimed it upward. She couldn’t see far up the 100 foot tree. But what she thought she saw, threw her into a state of adrenaline fueled denial that had her drop the phone and run to the garage for Luke’s spotlight.

Once she retrieved it, out of breath, she aimed the powerful lamp up into the mostly barren tree. Few orange and brown leaves obscured the smooth gray trunk. As the light scanned upward, bark turned from gray to brown, to garnet.

Then she saw his shoes.

Khaki pants.

Luke’s blue collared work shirt stained to a deep purple at the center, radiating from a sharpened tree branch protruding from his sternum. His pale face permanently deformed into a writhing howl. Dried blood spreading from his eyes in the form of Lichtenburg figures.

Breath and thought escaped her.

The only thing Wanda was capable of thinking was: 911

She sprinted inside to her own phone, dialed the number, and screamed so incoherently that the operator could hardly understand. Without hanging up, she dropped it on the floor of her bed room and ran outside to find her daughter.

Luke’s phone was still glowing on the ground, but Leila was not next to it. Frantically, she gripped the spotlight and scanned the yard. There was no one in the yard either.

“Leila! Baby! Where are you?”, Wanda yelled as she ran around the house. The yellow spotlight bounded up and down between her neighbor’s fences and the zoysia grass planted around the acre of property.

There was no one there.

Police and a few neighbors searched her house and the woods around the neighborhood for Leila. They found nothing.

Two days after she found Luke’s body in the tree, Wanda was arrested and charged with double murder. Though they found no second body, it was assumed that Wanda killed and buried her daughter somewhere nearby without remembering where. They stopped looking for the body of Leila Barriston after two weeks.

The family history of schizophrenia, according to two psychologists, had manifested in her despite showing few if any symptoms to those she knew. In both of their opinions, she should have been taking antipsychotics for years.

However, there was one thing admitted into evidence that gave anyone who saw it pause. It was reviewed behind closed doors and a deal was struck under the table to exclude it from the pool of evidence.

A short video of Leila Barriston taken on Luke’s phone the night his body was discovered, after Wanda called the police.

It was 7.4 seconds long.

Leila’s face. No irises to see. The words “It’s time” — in a voice that sounded like a woman, but not Wanda. Leila looked up and smiled, dropping the phone. But in the last second, there was a glimpse of Leila’s body being dragged. You could see something gripping her and no one would say what they thought. It was difficult to tell exactly what it was, the only apparent feature was the color gray. But you could certainly tell what it was not.

It wasn’t a human hand.

Subscribe now

Hey reader! Happy to have you and I hope you enjoy what follows. If you’re a regular consumer of my imagination, are enjoying it, and have some extra dough to chip in — you can show your support via my tip jar. No pressure, obviously. But its there if it calls you :) Enjoy Octahedrons, Episode 31!

Buy me a cinnamon roll

Being a graveyard connoisseur is an interesting thing.

Samantha Williams had been calling herself that for over a decade. It started in middle school when she did it just to make people think she was weird. Back then she didn’t even really like them. She thought they were creepy. But it had blossomed into the most interesting hobby Sam had.

Something about them soothed her. Graveyards told Sam that death was finite. And because it was measurable, there was nothing to be scared of. Lately, too, she’d been getting into astrology, much to the chagrin of her partner — Devin. He might’ve been cynical about that stuff, but he was a good guy. An old soul. She’d fallen into far too many relationships with shitty men and now she’d found a lovely one, freeing her to explore herself. When she met him, he was frightened of cemeteries, but he was warming to it.

Now, as they drove to the oldest cemetery in Mississippi, he was entertaining her whimsy again. It wasn’t something he readily admitted, but her adventurous side was the most interesting thing he’d ever had in a relationship. The more he experienced it the more he embraced that side of himself. He played the part of the partially exasperated boyfriend, but just beneath the surface he was fizzing.

The sun had almost completely waned. It played peekaboo with deep south pines while its warmth lifted sap into the dense humidity.

Sprites were stretching, as they do in the twilight. Preparing for a night of embracing the full moon and tiptoeing in its glow.

The couple exited their Honda sedan in high spirits, ready to read the name plates and imagine the living years of old corpses beneath their feet. No one else was there. They crunched across 15 feet of gravel, opened the metal gate, and stepped onto hallowed grass.

“For an old graveyard, this sure looks nice,” Devin said as he scanned.

The graveyard was well manicured. Even as old as some of the headstones looked, very few of them were lopsided or falling apart like they had expected.

Sam looked at him and smiled fondly. “It does, doesn’t it? I’ve been to some old ones and this…nice. The church must maintain it well. Honestly it looks almost nicer than the church itself.”

Subscribe now

“Yeah,” Devin said, distracted by a large headstones toward the back of the fenced area about 50 feet from him. There was a row of 8 monoliths that looked as if they marked burials of the ultra-wealthy. One in particular fascinated him. A vine rising 10 feet from the earth and terminating at a taper.

When Sam saw where he was heading, she followed. As many cemeteries as she’d been to, she’d never seen something like that. But as she walked, a gravity that pulled her left. She wanted to follow her lover, Devin, on her right who approached the intriguing monolith with wide eyes. But there was no choice for her to make. Gravity pulls everything no matter how much it wishes to float.

Sam’s eyes were the last thing to lock onto where she was going. It was a small stone. A cross. Discolored to a rusty hue and tilted. The approach yielded a voice. One that vibrated her brain stem rather than her eardrums and spoke only in feelings. It was warm. Welcoming. Like her mother’s lemon chicken casserole.

While what was left of the sun receded behind the trees, Sam closed her eyes and bathed in unexplained fervor over the grave of a 300 year old stranger. She was staked to a palace of meandering zeal.

Then it ceased.

Suddenly.

Like a heated blanket ripped from cold feet.

When she turned, Devin was on the other side of the massive marker he’d gone to inspect. A bit disheveled from the encounter with something she couldn’t quite explain, Sam walked over, intent on wrapping her arms around his torso and squeezing more of that same feeling out of him.

“Devin,” she called.

No answer.

A little louder now. “Devin!”

Nothing.

Her walk turned into a jog. When she could see around the other side of the monolith, he was gone.

It wasn’t until that moment that she noticed the color of the aether around her. The air was supposed to be the color of dusk but its palette reminded her more of a combusted Borealis. Some flavor of flickering hot red, purple, and a suggestion of green. The air didn’t smell of pine anymore and as she whipped around, it was all disintegrating.

The church. The trees. All of it ashing into the earth like dry rotted rubber.

Her mouth fell open and like the rest of her surroundings, dried in real time. But there was a howling in the distance. Something calling her. Muffled at first, the low pass filter lifted from it and became clear, and very near.

“Excuse me miss,” said a man standing right in front of her, searching her body and face for some sign of presence.

It was difficult to conjure a coherent response. “Hi, I’m…”

“Are you alright?”, the ebony man said.

A gray mustache and head of hair thicker than she’d expect on such a seasoned face gave her enough solace that she grabbed an arm and lent him some of her weight. The man was strong to catch her.

Share

“Woahhhh woah now, hold on. Let’s sit you down.” He eased her onto a couple of steps serving as the base of one of the large granite headstones. “I’m gonna get you some water.”

The stranger left with enough haste that it surprised her, but not enough to keep her from slipping back into the other place. Everything had fully disintegrated into piles of powder. Even the large vine monolith that Devin had gone initially to inspect. Everything was gone except the small headstone she’d walked away from.

In the absence of the gravity that had once taken her there, she found enough strength to will herself toward it. What was once a soothing warm radiance had become a searing heat. Its rusty red was now a molten orange glow that stood in contrast to deep black lettering that she didn’t notice before.

HERE LAY A WITCH

A thought rose to the front of her mind while the stranger called her back from the banal realm in which she was rooted — What did they do to you?

“Miss…miss!”, he shook her awake. “You need to sit back down, here —“ he uttered softly as he handed her an open bottle of water.

She sat down right where she stood in the centipede grass and he crouched with her. “Where is my boyfriend?”, Sam wearily asked.

“Your boyfriend?”, the man wondered as he scanned the area. “I didn’t see anyone with you when I came over. I live right over there.” He pointed at a house she hadn’t noticed before, just beyond a wire fence behind the church. “People don’t usually come out here any time other than Sunday. What ya doin’ out here, young lady?”

“I just need to find my boyfriend. His name is Devin. Please help me.”

“Okay miss, I’ll help ya. But you shouldn’t be here after dark. This ain’t no ordinary cemetery. They don’t even bury people here no more. My momma was the last one.”

She wanted to listen, but all she cared about was — “Devin!!!” she yelled. There was still no response.

“Devin!”, he assisted with some baritone. There was nothing.

At first.

Subscribe now

They both heard it.

Again, it began as a mumble, but quickly it crescendoed as they fell into the other realm together. Devin stood where the large stone once was.

“Help! Oh my god help me, please!” Devin’s voice cracked in agony. “Make it stop ahhh!”

A flaming vine had merged with his left tibia and became it, rising from the ground and into the Mississippi air through his torso. His nostrils flared with white hot plasma, muffling his cries for help while Sam remained frozen in shock. The hellacious vine ripped through and transmuted Devin’s body into a molten tree, rising from the earth to collect souls as if they were sunlight.

Suddenly the screaming was gone. Replaced by a humming vibration of bass that emanated from the tree as its morphing slowed to a crawl.

“I was beginning to think this wasn’t real,” the man said from beside her.

It took a moment but Sam peeled her eyes from the glowing branches to look at the man who, instead of horror, radiated a sense of awe and pride.

“Wha—“

“Beyond life we wait for light to see,

A pair of souls, cold and fair.

Palace mired in pain and longing will

Release its wrath — a molten mare.”

“What?”, Sam cried as exasperated mascara ran over her cheeks.

“I’m sorry, miss. But I’ve been waiting my whole life for this — two virgins, destined to be mated by their souls, to willingly set foot in this graveyard. Your boyfriend opened the portal. You’re to spread its seeds,” he said as he watched a human-sized bulb, formed on the end of one of the tree’s branches, thud to the ground and pop open. “You’ll give birth to a new world. And it’ll be so beautiful.”

This is my tip jar. If you’re enjoying what you’re writing, don’t be shy. I love cinnamon rolls :)

Buy me a cinnamon roll

“I shot a police officer. I’m so sorry,” Jackson Trumbo managed through tears. “Is he okay?”

“Sir, I need you to calm down. We’re going to get an officer out here right away, okay? Take some deep breaths. Can you tell me the name of the officer you shot?”

“I…I don’t remember. Ummmm Fulton! His name was Fulton.”

“Okay we’re going to check on officer Fulton and make sure everything is alright. Just keep taking deep breaths and someone will be out here shortly,” the intake officer said from behind bulletproof glass.

Soon after her assurance, a large man built like an igloo walked out of a door beside her. “Put your hands behind your back, please. These are just for your safety.” The massive man’s voice sounded like it came through a barrel. “We’re gonna take you to a back room, okay? You’re not under arrest, you’re just being detained until we get this sorted out.”

The back room where they took Jackson smelled like mothballs despite it being composed entirely of cement aside from the wood table. Once inside they’d taken the handcuffs off him because he wasn’t fighting, so he just paced around and imagined what prison would be like for the first time since he got caught with heroin.

After he’d done enough imagining to sink his own stomach, the door cracked.

Jackson turned to greet a tall woman — about 6’1’’ — with the aura of a lifetime military veteran. There was no insignia which suggested as much, but her posture, demeanor, and robotic movements told him that she was as no-nonsense as they came.

A firm handshake all but confirmed his impression. “Mr. Trumbo, my name is Dakota Ritter. Please have a seat.”

Her assured demeanor calmed him, so he did as requested without response.

“I heard what you said from my colleagues but for my own sake Mr. Trumbo please, tell me exactly why you’re here.”

Share

“Sure — I…I was on the way home from work when I got pulled over. I wasn’t speeding so I’m not sure why, but I just gave him my license and registration when he asked for it. When the officer came back He pulled a gun on me and I just reacted. We struggled and I ended up shooting him in the leg. Then I tossed the gun and took off.”

“And did the officer identify himself during the first interaction?”

“Yes. Officer Fulton I think he said. Placid City PD.”

Dakota pecked something brief into the tablet in her hand. “Thank you, Mr. Trumbo. Is there anything else you wanted to share? Did anything happen before you were pulled over?”

“No, I told you I didn’t do anything to get pulled over.”

“You said you were coming home from work. Was there any reason he would have followed you from there?”

Jackson remembered the man who appeared and threw up a strange substance. “I’m just a janitor.”

“Oh, Jackson. You and I both know that isn’t quite true.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I don’t like liars, Jackson. I know you.”

Jackson looked up at Dakota, who glared back at him with a sinister tinge. “I’m not lying.”

“You graduated top of your class at Brown for your bachelors and got your masters at Yale. Sometime during the masters program you started doing hard drugs, then you did too much acid and had a psychotic episode. Got arrested at a shopping mall for assaulting a man in a wheel chair because he was, quote ‘a traitor who sold out humanity to the robots.’”

Embarrassment swept him. Jackson hadn’t heard that quote since the court date. “Okay I get it.”

“Now, Jackson. Is there anything else you wish to tell me?”

At that point, Jackson realized that when Dakota introduced herself, it wasn’t as an agent or a detective…she’d given no title. “What did you say your job was again?”

The corners of her mouth turned up in an unsettling way. “I didn’t. I suppose it’s rude that I know so much about you and you know so little about me. If you’ll just tell me what you saw, we can move forward.”

“Is the officer okay?”, he asked to continue his deflection.

“Answer my question, Mr. Trumbo.”

With that, Jackson knew he was cornered. Though he was still hesitant to tell the truth, he had no other choice. He remembered when he was a teenager and his mom found his pot — she didn’t say so but she’d found it. She was testing him then…and he passed. He didn’t plan on failing this time either.

Subscribe now

“I was cleaning up something on a floor I’d never been to. They needed me down there to clean something up,” then he remembered that it might be radioactive or something. He’d taken a deep shower, but wasn’t sure it was enough. “I’m not sure we should be in the same room.”

“It’s fine. It’s not dangerous.”

“What’s not dangerous?”

“The puke. That spinach baby shit you had to clean.”

“How do you know?”

“This town is…cohesive, Jackson. A single unit. I just want to hear what you saw. Please continue.”

“I was cleaning. Trying to keep my head down but I saw a man. In the middle of the hanger on 9U. He was there and then he just…wasn’t.”

“Hmmm. Thank you for being honest.” Dakota nodded as if impressed. “I told you my name earlier but I didn’t tell you my title for a reason. I don’t appreciate liars or lying. You almost pushed my buttons earlier. If I had told you who I am, I wouldn’t have been able to figure out if you were a truthful man or not.

Dakota inhaled. “Officer Fulton has been relieved of duty. He’d been asked to dispense of you and he failed. We don’t tolerate failure when it comes to security at Draco Labs.” Dakota could see the shock on Jackon’s face. “Don’t feel bad for him. He had his chance. Jared Fulton was a career criminal who was serving a life sentence for double murder before we got to him.”

Fear ran down Jackson’s spine.

“I’m going to be honest with you, Jackson. You shouldn’t have been given the clearance you were. Many of those men were new and afraid of what they saw and you were given clearance outside standard procedure. We’re used to seeing what you did, but tonight there was some kind of error. The people responsible are being dealt with accordingly. But unfortunately janitors are hard to come by,” she said with a shrug. “Cops. Security. People who don’t need security clearance — easy. We just get prisoners with no family. But janitors…those are far more difficult to find than you’d think. Low income people with no family or one who’s willing to fake their death? Virtually impossible.”

“What I’m saying is, I’d rather not lose you,” Dakota said while straightening her jacket. She lowered herself into the seat for the first time. “But if you try and skip town or run your mouth even a little bit…we won’t have a choice. If I’m being completely honest, you were a dead man until you walked in here.”

Jackson’s thought’s were a puddle of melted gratitude and regret.

Dakota continued. “You know, Excalibur was built on a mass grave.”

“Really?” Jackson didn’t know what to expect from this conversation was going, but this wasn’t it.

“It was. They never knew exactly how many bodies were uncovered. Many of them were fused together so it was difficult to say. Eventually the grave was cleared and the building was constructed with haste on a 50 billion dollar dark money contract.”

“Why the hell was it built on a mass grave?”

“Well, it wasn’t exactly a mass grave, Jackson. It’s what we call site number four. You see…Excalibur wasn’t built to send people through time. It was built to catch them.”

He’d gone his whole life thinking that time travel was impossible. It defied the laws of physics and yet — here someone was confirming the impossible. What he’d secretly hoped was just a hallucination from some kind of anti-depressant withdrawal. Unless this woman, Dakota, was lying.

“You still haven’t told me who you are. Are you military? CIA?”, Jackson asked as his mind raced.

“The reason I know that what you cleaned up tonight isn’t deadly is because I’ve thrown it up before.”

Share

All of a sudden, Jackson’s eyes focused onto Dakota since she revealed that officer Fulton had been killed. She wasn’t smiling anymore.

“Five months after the building went up, I was the first. I was five months from being buried alive, Jackson. We’d been sending people back every six months for more than a decade, not knowing whether they were being received or not. I’d accepted that I was going to die and…here I am.”

There were so many questions he could ask, one rose above the rest. “So why were you sending people back? If you weren’t sure if they lived or died?”

“The earth is in bad shape in the future, Jackson. There wasn’t a lot to lose.”

“It’s really too late to fix it? It can’t be too late, right?”, he said, feeling like a bewildered child. Jackson didn’t even know what he was asking.

Dakota let into her angular grin and released a pained chuckle. “You don’t understand, Mr. Trumbo. We were sending people back from Mars.”

Share

I’m just seeing things. — thought Jackson Trumbo. I knew I shouldn’t have stopped taking my anti-depressants.

The middle-aged janitor, who was well overqualified for his job, drove along a 3AM suburban street lit only by sparse lamps. In this company-run town there were no other cars out past 10PM on a week night. It was only ever him. Any other car he saw on the way home was going to the facility on some kind of emergency he wasn’t privy to.

Tonight, though, he’d seen something. A frantic cleaning request from a high-level operations manager lured Jackson beyond his usual rounds. Someone had been sick and vomited all over a small conference room on floor 9U. The furthest below ground he’d ever gone to clean was 7U and his general understanding was that the lower you go — the higher your security clearance had to be.

Not many worked as late as Jackson did, so that he could clean without interrupting any workflow. This night, there had been more people scurrying around than usual and when Jackson got the call, his clearance had to be increased with haste before he could be ushered down to 9U.

He walked, escorted by two guards, out of the elevator to a cat walk situated against a wall. It overlooked the most well-lit hangar Jackson had ever imagined. There was one additional room in the open air — a glass box of an all white meeting room. As Jackson approached, the stain he was there to clean was apparent.

When neither of the guards would go inside with him, it concerned him deeply. But there wasn’t much choice. He was lucky to even be working there as a janitor despite his Master’s degree in Thermodynamics. See, two and a half years ago in his pursuit to work at this very facility, what the employees of Draco Labs called “Excalibur”, Jackson Trumbo had a psychotic break. If one of his old professors hadn’t put their reputation on the line for him, he’d have been relegated elsewhere or fired. Instead, he was promised a Lab Tech job after three years of janitorial service.

The soccer field sized concrete floor below them was well-used with what looked like decades of chemical spills. When Jackson walked warily inside the room overlooking it, the smell was rancid like nothing else. He’d smelled some things in his life, but this was different. Singed leather and dry rotted sandalwood mixed with overripe plantains and sour milk. What was reported as vomit was a curdled, dark green plasma that looked like baby shit.

Despite the strangeness of the substance, Jackson got to work immediately and carefully avoided skin contact.

Then he saw it. The thing he’d been blaming on a lack of medication.

Subscribe now

He could be forgiven because it was only out of the corner of his eye, but that did little to blunt the strangeness. Because Jackson didn’t really believe it was withdrawal from antidepressants.

The once barren hangar floor now held a naked man, who was stumbling through the openness like an injured polar bear on an ice shelf. The ebony-skinned, bony man fell to his knees and expelled a substance that looked identical to what Jackson was cleaning.

Jackson pretended not to see what was happening but his eyes continued wandering back. He could hear nothing, as the conference room was soundproof and quiet as a coffin. But then, as a golf cart rode up to him, the man disappeared. This time, he saw it clearly.

Though his heart rate spiked, he finished cleaning and left the room amidst several pairs of wide, distant eyes.

When he finished showering off, his shift was almost over, and through the rest of his shift he felt those same eyes following him. The more he tried to convince himself that what he saw wasn’t real, the less he believed it. Jackson was more relieved to get out of Excalibur than he’d ever been.

And as he rode alone down the street, a pair of headlights appeared behind him, approaching steadily like the eyes of a Nile crocodile.

Flashing blue lights stole his logical mind.

He’d expected a hit man. This was worse.

Reluctantly, Jackson pulled over at the nearest safe spot.

Cool moisture rode the evening air into Jackson’s car when he rolled the window down. Crickets filled the silence after the siren cut.

Share

The police officer approached silently. He was a slender man with sharp features and a wide-brimmed hat that made him look like a state trooper. Jackson could smell the cinnamon gum on his breath before the man spoke.

“Evenin’ sir. I’m officer Fulton with the Placid City PD. Can I see your license and registration, please?” There was no expression to speak of. Only robotic machinations. Jackson had to assume the whole town was in on it. Especially the cops. He’d decided, before pulling off, to fully comply with no resistance. The officer certainly didn’t know he had a Master’s degree. To him, Jackson was a simple janitor with mental health issues. Aloof of broad schemes and expendable, but obligatorily limp and compliant. This could go in a lot of directions.

“I’ll be back momentarily,” he said after Jackson produced the requested documentation.

The longer the officer stayed in his car, the more hollow Jackson’s chest became. In the rear view mirror, it was plain to see that the officer was arguing with someone. Head was shaking, hand thrown up into the air multiple times. Minutes felt like hours but eventually the man returned.

Except this time, Jackson felt something. A tingle as the man approached the vehicle. He unbuckled the seatbelt.

Officer Fulton’s approach wasn’t silent and steady. It was quick and angry. The pavement cracked under his shoes.

When Jackson saw the man unholster his 9MM sidearm, he simply reacted.

He pushed the door open as hard as he could, the door’s window frame cracked against the officer’s forearm as a shot rang through the dash. Jackson jumped on him, both hands on the shooting wrist as they wrestled toward the ground. Two more shots flew into the woods before Jackson knocked the gun out of his hand, sending it seven feet to his right.

He dove for it. The officer, grabbed Trumbo and followed but was significantly further away. Jackson came up short by a couple of feet, being dragged down by the weight of the officer.

While Trumbo was lying sideways grappling for the gun, Fulton took a hold of his neck and squeezed whatever he could. The grip missed Trumbo’s trachea and hooked some vertical muscle just above the clavicle. Adrenaline had Jackson ignore the pain and continue vying for the gun. He scraped palms over gravel, nabbed it, and messily shot the officer in the left shoulder.

“Ahh what the fuck!! You just shot a cop!”, Fulton yelled as Jackson jumped up and aimed the gun. “They’re gonna fucking get you, buddy. Whether it’s me or someone else, they’re gonna get you! You’re so fucked! AHHHH!”

“I…I don’t understand,” Jackson managed as his ears rang. He’d only shot one gun before and had earplugs on when he did it.

As the cop lay on the tarmac laughing like a maniac, Jackson dropped the the fire arm well away from the man, jumped back into his car, and fled.

Subscribe now

While driving back to his apartment, he couldn’t stop staring at the rear-view mirror and wondering who would come for him next. Would it be a whole squad? A S.W.A.T. team?

I should have killed him and drove the car into the ditch.

No I’m not that person.

“FUCK!!! FUUUCK!!!”, he screamed loud enough to re-deafen his ears after they had recovered a bit from the gunshot. “I have to leave town.”

You have to turn yourself in. There’s no other way. There’s no other way. — he thought as he panicked.

Fifteen minutes later he was at the police station.

Share

Here’s my tip jar. If you enjoy these please express your appreciation with a modest donation or by sharing my work. Anything helps :)

Buy me a cinnamon roll

A familiar shape trudged through billowing steam in front of him. It wasn’t from Isaac’s vape. Recent rains over the New York City concrete exorcised steam from its pores and a flickering streetlight had changed the setting to a haunted house.

He’s the last one. — Isaac thought as Ulrich Hoffman’s thin, scarred face revealed itself in dim alley light.

“Hello Rick. To what do I owe the pleasure?” Isaac snarked, looking beyond the wiry man and expecting guards. There were none.

You stupid fucker.

“Don’t play this game with me, Byrne.” His thick, German accent shone brightest through anger. “You sent for me, what is it you want?”

“I need a friend.” The crackle of his vape filled expectant silence.

“A friend? You waste my time. When you told me to come alone I thought you had a head for me.” He strolled forward, pulled a cigarette from his suit pocket, stopped in front of his personal assassin, and lit it.

God that smells good. — Isaac thought.

“You want girl? Boy? Next time talk to my assistant.”

“Nono. I have a new head.” Isaac put his vape into his back pocket. “One I haven’t taken yet. Been waiting for just the right time.”

“Oh? Der Irish schwein?”

“Close!” Isaac’s hands remained behind his back. “He’s tall, skinny, built an empire by kidnapping people and selling them into slavery. Walks around with bodyguards. Hates gays and anomalies.”

Ulrich’s head tilted slightly before his eyes widened in realization.

Isaac drove a 4-inch KA-BAR into his diaphragm with such force that it nearly went through him and impaled the brick he shoved Ulrich against. Isaac smothered his mouth with a thick, leathered mitt of a hand.

Share

“This hurts, doesn’t it? Oh shhhhhh, I know it does. But it can get worse. Let’s explore that shall we?”

Ulrich convulsed against Isaac’s substantial frame as if he had been electrocuted by a heavy current. Eyes rolled into the back of his head and all his phalanges curled as agony swept through him. The assassin was strong and large enough to hold Ulrich in place without much issue, outweighing him by more than 100 pounds. The German mobster was physically weak and it made Isaac enjoy this moment even more.

The convulsions ceased and Ulrich became somewhat lucid again. His hands groped with futility at Isaac’s torso and up to his face.

“I know it’s difficult to reason through the pain but maybe you’ve figured out by now that I’m an anomaly.” The captive’s eyes widened as Isaac worked through the defensive pushes like they were heavy rain. “One of the reasons I’m such an effective interrogator is that my ability involves the amplification of brainwaves. Pain in particular. I can manage other sensations but pain is the easiest. It’s the most…coarse. Doesn’t take much finesse. I can’t produce sensations, but I can magnify what already exists. Like this.”

Once again, Ulrich Hoffman’s eyes jolted into the back of his head as it pressed into the red brick of the alleyway. Isaac let go of his magnification for a moment.

“Man, that must really hurt. Sorry about that,” Isaac said before a tooth-sucking chuckle. “You know, it didn’t take me as long as I thought to gain your trust. Usually you never let anyone but your body guards and family get within 20 feet of you. But I kill two important men and protect your son once and you meet me alone in an alley at night. Big mistake, friend.”

At the sight of Ulrich’s inflamed eyes, Isaac remembered why he loved killing people so much. Bad people in particular. He would miss it. But Isaac got so lost in the blood lust that he nearly neglected his time limit. Ulrich’s goons would be out looking for him shortly. The job was becoming more dangerous by the second.

Subscribe now

“As much as I’m enjoying this, asshole, our time is up. Enjoy hell.”

With a swift motion, Isaac ripped the knife from Ulrich’s diaphragm and slashed a valley into the front of his neck. Hands that were just trying to push Isaac away quickly shot up to the nape, and Ulrich fell to the ground coughing and sputtering.

Isaac sat for a brief moment in admiration of his own work and before he could leave the alley, the lone metal door shot open.

Shit.

Two men opened fire before Isaac could react. The first bullet clipped him in the shoulder but he hardly felt it. Swift feet carried Isaac beneath the mesh-metal platform as bullets ricocheted around them. The two men ran down the stairs and Isaac met the first at the bottom and grabbed his shooting wrist.

A shot rang next to Isaac’s head and deafened his left ear. The man’s partner held fire while Isaac slammed him into the brick. Once the gun was immobilized, Isaac drove the K-BAR between the man’s ribs and into a lung.

“Shoot him!”, the man sputtered with a single working lung, but Isaac had anticipated it and already moved to use him as a shield.

As Isaac peered over his captive’s shoulder, the would-be shooter’s eyes were hardened — the man was familiar with violence.

Respectable.

Isaac walked the half-dead man up the stairs toward shooter number two as the 9MM barrel prodded for an opening. There wasn’t one, and when Isaac got too close, the man shot his own partner twice in the back.

Isaac’s shield fell away and the second man shot him twice in the chest.

It hurt. A lot. But adrenaline carried Isaac the rest of the way toward the shooter. But his strength was waning already. Isaac’s knees started to give way as he took hold of both the man’s wrists. He’d pressed the second German body guard against the brick facade and dragged him down as he collapsed.

Isaac had been shot before — a long time ago. It hurt less than he remembered but his body was betraying him.

In the moment, Isaac could feel the pain emanating from his torso as if it was magma singeing his nerve endings and smothering as it went.

Except there was something there. Something he hadn’t expected and couldn’t describe.

A pliability.

The magma in him felt movable. He pressed on it. Agony grew but it moved. He shoved it back toward the wound with a heave. Then another.

He heard himself screaming with each push. The second gunman was squirming away. Hbelp was probably on the way.

Desperation.

With everything he had, Isaac pressed the pain toward his hands. He felt them grip harder than ever.

Another scream.

He pressed again. Squeezed until his knuckles were white. Isaac’s fingertips burned as the pain ran away.

Then it was gone.

Fog receded. Pain evaporated.

Screaming remained.

But it wasn’t his.

If you’re enjoying this every week, my tip jar is below :) I’m an e-busker now. Feed me cinnamon rolls.

Buy me a cinnamon roll

I’ve been doing this long enough to know that things always happen faster than you think.

Or maybe it’s just that you act slower than you believe you will in the moment. Either way I know, as I sprint to my vehicle, that I lingered too long in Draco’s office. I couldn’t stop myself from staring incessantly at his corpse.

I’ve never seen anything like it…

Someone I was so familiar with, the life having been drained from their body. I didn’t recognize him. Energy is part of what makes a person and when the energy isn’t there, no matter how much their body looks like them, it isn’t.

After 20 minutes of silent car ride adrenaline I hop the first curb, prompting Stella to speak up.“You gonna tell me what the fuck we’re doing?”

“You could have run a little faster you know.”

“I was doing what you asked me, dick head. See if I help you out next time. Now what the hell are we doing?”

“What? You didn’t read the letter?”

“You had it the whole time, Sterling,” she chastises.

Good. She’s always at her best when aggravated.

“Right, okay. He said he was gonna shoot Troy Draper any time between 0900 and the time it takes him to walk to Eddie’s Bagels. So between 0900 and 0920ish. And then after Draper is shot in the head and his security detail is focused on him, Fate will appear somewhere near the scene.”

After a few seconds of silence she comments. “That’s it? That’s the hint? ‘Somewhere near the scene’? Are you fucking kidding me?”

“Nope. That was it. But lucky for us I grew up in Brooklyn and I know that route. Really well actually.”

“How did I not know you grew up in Brooklyn? You have no accent.”

“That’s because we never just sit down and shoot the shit, Rodrigo.”

“Fair enough. Whoa!”, she exclaims as I nearly clip a pedestrian who has headphones on.

“Close one!” I say through a maniacal cackle.

“You’re insane.”

Subscribe now

“Don’t I know it. But we’re almost there so listen up.” I check the clock. It’s 0834. “There aren’t many buildings on that route with good vantage points for a sniper. And I happen to know that there’s only one that’s fully abandoned and is a perfect birds nest. I’m assuming that’s how it’s gonna happen but I get the feeling he knows how familiar I am with Brooklyn. So he also probably knows that I’m aware of that building. But what he might not know is that I’m pretty familiar with him as well. Guy likes to taunt people. So I’m gonna try and find Draper, and I need you to clear that building. He’ll probably be expecting me.”

“Keith, I can’t clear a building in 20 minutes. That’s insane,” she says just before I hand her a pair of binoculars. “Are you fucking kidding me? Binoculars? Where is S.W.A.T? We need to get snipers out here.”

“No time.”

“We had time,” she harps.

“Maybe. But I was too busy staring at the lifeless body of my friend, who was the best forensics guy in New York and probably America. And coincidentally, also probably our best shot at catching this mother fucker so, excuse me.”

After she takes the binoculars, silence returns for the few minutes before I park the unmarked SUV just off the Senator’s route.

“Use those, just scan the building as best you can. Then just stay there until officers meet you, then come find me. You have my location.”

“You called for backup?” Stella is surprised.

“Course I did. What do you think I was doing while waiting on you at the station?”

I see her smirk as I close the door and jog toward the condos where the Senator stays. I get there in 3 minutes.

God I’m out of shape. — I think as I open the door and make sure he hasn’t already left the building.

The front desk person confirms, so I wait in the lobby while I check my watch every 30 seconds or so. Even the lobby is nicer than any place I’ve ever lived. Clearly the Senate has treated Mr. Draper well. Everything is shiny, the air smells like lavender, there are free mints and Jolly Ranchers…it makes me sick.

Finally I hear the elevator ding and walk around the corner to see a large bald man who looks exactly like a trademarked body guard walk out. He’s followed by one other like him, then the senator, then two more body guards. All of them are in suits, looking as unapproachable as possible. Except for Draper of course. He’d put on his politician mask before entering the lobby. The gray hair on his head is slicked back perfectly. His manicured appearance is so obviously phony.

I dislike him immediately.

Share

He waves at me as they walk by, clearly intending to pass me by.

“Senator Draper, my name is Detective Keith Sterling, I’m with the NYPD. I have a reason to believe your life is in danger, sir.”

“What’s that? In danger, you say?”, he asks as he keeps walking. “Detective, I’ve taken this walk hundreds of times and no one has tried anything yet. I know it’s not the first time someone has wanted to kill me and it won’t be the last,” he dismisses as he continues walking out the front door.

I can’t say I’m surprised at the dismissal, but I’m frustrated. “Sir, I got a letter this morning from a well known assassin and he told me that he’d kill you today. On this walk you’re taking right now.”

“Really?”, he asks through a smiling facade as he waves at strangers who begin to take an interest. “Who’s this assassin?”

“He calls himself ‘Fate’.” I regret saying the name as soon as it leave my mouth. Sounds gimmicky.

Senator Draper laughs. “Sounds fake. Where’s the rest of your unit?”

“On the way, sir. I have to stop you from going to this bagel shop.”

He looks at me sideways, as do the two guards closest to me. “Stop me? Please. Son, I’ve been stuck inside all damn winter, and I want an Eddie’s bagel. Best in New York. If I’m not eating a bacon egg and cheese within the next 20 minutes or so I’ll be sure your job at the precinct is…compromised,” he threatens through another fake grin.

I expected push back, but not a threat on my job. The letter rings in my head.

Don’t feel bad for the senator. He’s heavily implicated in a Russian human trafficking ring.

Fuck this guy. He probably deserves to die. But I can’t let him.

“Sir, you can take my job at the precinct but it’s my job to protect you. The assassin wrote me that letter, and up until this point I’m the only person who’s seen it. I have to protect you.”

“How do I know you’re not in on it? I didn’t even get a good look at your badge,” he responds as he continues walking without prompting me to produce my badge once again.

I continue entertaining the thought of letting him get taken out when my ears perk up to a familiar sound.

Stella.

“Keith!”, she yells from 100 feet away as she runs toward us from the way we’re headed. “I didn’t see him there! The other officers are watching the building.” She slows to an exhausted walk. “Mr. Draper, why are you still out here on the street?”

“Sorry, who are you?”, he asks as his snake-like grin disappears.

“Detective Stella Rodrigo, NYPD. Detective Sterling’s partner. We need to get you off the street, sir. Right now.”

“I’ll tell you the same thing I told your partner.” He stops walking and turns toward her and away from the main pedestrians that have noticed him across the street. “No one is interrupting this for me, you hear me? This is important for me as a person and as a politician. I’ve been walking this route for many years and no one has killed me yet, despite countless threats. So apologies if I don’t take this seriously.”

“Fuck,” Stella mouths to me as Senator Draper walks off. “What the hell are we supposed to do?”, she says more audibly.

“I don’t know…I didn’t think this would be so difficult,” I say when I hear a muffled gun shot from around the corner. Maybe three blocks away, from the direction in which the senator is walking.

Distraction? Coincidence? — I think as I notice Troy Draper fall out of sight in front of the two rear body guards. No.

I run over to the huddle of burly men and peer over them. There’s a red, dime-sized crater just over his right eyebrow near the center of his face. I don’t have to look any longer to know he’s dead. Immediately I begin to look around us. Rooftops and buildings. I see nothing suspicious as two bodyguards, who had drawn their sidearms, were doing the same thing.

“Keith,” I hear Stella say, just now wondering why she wasn’t next to me.

When I turn, she’s holding the left side of her stomach, just beneath the last rib.

Oh, shit.

The palm of her hand is dripping deep red. I lie her down on the pavement and call for help before remembering to use the radio.

Subscribe now

“Officer down,” I think I say, “officer fucking down. Detective Stella Rodrigo. We need an ambulance immediately.”

I recall, through the madness, that Fate said he’d appear after the shooting. I look around but can hardly see anything as pedestrians continue to gather and obstruct my vision. I grab the closest one, a man filming us all with his phone.

“You! Asshole! Help keep pressure on this. Yes, you get the fuck over here and help her put pressure on this gunshot. I’m not leaving you, Stella I’m right here,” I say as I stand up and scan everything around. There’s too much to see and hear. A massive, bustling city is converging on me and continuing to like a reverse earthquake.

It’s all too much. I can’t focus. I catch another glimpse of Troy Draper’s corpse and look, once again, down at Stella. She’s obviously in intense pain as the stranger his helping to put enough pressure on that it hurts. Good.

She’ll be fine. — I think as I start to get a hold of myself.

Then I see him.

I know it’s him. He sticks out like a sore thumb.

A man in a reflective vest and orange helmet is climbing a ladder at the end of the block and across the street. He’s the calmest thing about this entire place. I watch, closely, allowing my detective’s conscience to assess before I leap into action. It very well could just be an aloof city worker, but I really don’t think so.

The man takes a drill to a metal plate that had been fastened to the light pole by some kind of brace. Once I see him descending, I know.

With no regard I sprint toward the man. I can’t be more than 50 yards away but I see him look at me, casually show his teeth, drop the drill, and walk around the corner out of sight. My legs carry me faster than they had in a decade as I breach the corner and struggle not to run into the street.

The beautiful weather produced unusual Brooklyn crowds and there were so many people, but it shouldn’t be difficult to see a guy with an orange helmet and reflective vest. Yet still, I see nothing.

I cross the street in a jog and see nothing out of place until I look in a dead end alley and see the orange helmet sitting on the ground.

I run out the direction the man was walking and begin frantically asking people if they saw a man take off a reflective vest or helmet. After asking several people I feel insane so I stop and scream.

“FUCK!”

Then I jog back over to the helmet to collect it in case some random person got sticky fingers in the last couple of minutes. The yellow vest was inside it along with a piece of paper. I open it carefully as my once declining heart rate speeds up.

I’m sorry about your partner. She was collateral damage. I genuinely hope she survives.

Shit, Stella.

Share

Detective Sterling,

I’m still not quite sure how I realized I was good at assassinating people.

It’s a combination of very specific skills and interests, really. I must spend months studying the target and avoid suspicion while doing so. Believe me, that alone is a tall order. And a painstaking one at that. But after meticulously plotting their behaviors, I finally get to have my fun.

You see, rarely does planning anything come with an adrenaline rush. Planning days, vacations, production lines, construction projects, or any other rudimentary tasks is as boring as anything can be. But when what you’re to plan is an assassination that will change the course of history…suddenly creating a step-by-step task list becomes riveting.

But even that starts to get a little bit old for someone like myself. I always like to push the boundaries of what is possible. Which is why I’m writing you now, Detective Sterling. I want you to know how I’m going to do this so that:

There’s some additional suspense for me as the plan unfolds

When the job is done you’ll wonder why and how, despite my detailed warning, you failed to stop the death of Senator Troy Draper.

I also, admittedly, get a sort of sick satisfaction from rubbing your nose in my work. Because I know you can’t help but read about it.

You freak, you.

So I’ll satiate your adorable little fetish.

As I mentioned before – I do a lot of documentation. So while I’m doing that, you’ll notice that I appear in the same place as the unwitting victim. Not that anyone knows what I look like. Unfortunately for you, that part of my job is already done. Good luck finding my face in the New York City crowds. You’ll find that even with the most advanced AI facial recognition software, narrowing me down will be a task.

Without further ado, I’ll tell you exactly where your precious Senator will meet his end. Theres a little bagel shop on 32nd street. It’s his favorite. Generally, he sends a secretary to fetch it for him, but on nice days, he likes to take the subway there with a small security detail. It’s good publicity. Makes it look like he’s one of you. But he isn’t.

Monday, the weather will be immaculate. And Mr. Draper will walk to his little bagel shop at around 0900 like he always does. He’s been cooped up too long by the winter weather. When he does, somewhere along his route, the Senator will be shot. In the head. His security detail will look up and around at the crowd and windows, guns drawn, and they’ll see nothing suspicious.

After they’ve called 911 and turned their attention to your precious Senator, I will appear near the scene. That will be your opportunity to nail me, Detective Sterling. After those precious moments, you’ll lose me forever.

I hope you’re up to the challenge.

Your friend,

Fate

P.S. – Don’t feel bad for the Senator. He’s heavily implicated in a Russian human trafficking ring and is lucky I’m not planning a painful death.

P.S.S – Enjoy your surprise at work today.

————————————————————————————————————

Subscribe now

Days as a detective in New York are never boring. Especially when you receive a letter like that one. I had an odd feeling about the envelope before I even opened it. My wife has been dead for some time so, I never receive mail anymore. It was obviously meticulously assembled; from the way it was folded to the heavy black ink adorning its pages. Knowing Fate, everything about the setup is a misleading clue. But I had no choice but to pursue the hint…otherwise what kind of cop would I be?

And he knows that.

After I put the paper back in its envelope I look at my watch — its 7:56.

Shit. Barely an hour before the congressman goes to get his bagel.

Better get this damn thing to Draco.

The moment I knew the envelope was from Fate I should’ve taken it to forensics. But what can I say…when a famous killer sends you a personal letter, you open it. Of course, Stella will have my ass for that.

She’s my new partner. Detective Stella Rodrigo. A by the book, show me nothin’ new and tell me everything before I see it kinda girl. I like her. She keeps loose cannons like me in line when all I want to do is fire away.

Of course she sees me as I walk down the hall (with a little bit of shame) toward Fred’s lab, lightly gripping the paper between my right index finger and thumb while walking slow to avoid unnecessary creasing in the paper.

“God damn it, Sterling. What the hell is that?”, Stella asks with gusto.

“A letter from Fate.” I keep walking by her, hoping she has something better to do.

She follows me as I pass.

Fuck.

“Oh you have got to be shitting me. Why in the hell would you open it, Keith?!”

“I just like pissing you off, Stella. You know that,” I say knowing I’m safe from a palm to the back of the head as long as I’m holding important evidence. Agent Rodrigo reminds me of my mom, but if I told her that she’d probably punch me in the stomach.

“Well you’re good as hell at it. If you corrupted any DNA evidence on this letter I swear to Christ. Do you have the envelope?”

“Shit. No.”

“You’re more braindead than Gregorius, Keith, and he can barely breathe,” she scathes as she whipped around toward my desk.

“You’re the best!”, I yell after her.

Gregorius is her English bulldog who looks like he could croak any second. It might be the ugliest dog I’ve ever seen and is stupid as hell, but she treats him like royalty. So maybe Stella has a thing for taking care of people who’d be shit without her.

Share

I continue the way toward our forensics specialist, Draco. For someone with such a badass name, Draco is kind of a lame person. I shouldn’t say that, he’s just odd. Always so quiet and tinkering away at something small but probably very important. And he says things to me I don’t understand but pretend to. He likes to speak in parables.

Things like:

“Wallow in self, be an urn on the shelf.”

“Beware the new. Revere the lasting. Eye the peculiar.”

Or my personal favorite. “Pride is a stripper.”

I’ve never known what that last one means and haven’t asked because I think its funny and don’t want it to make sense.

Upon walking into his office I’m greeted by the smell of death and quickly identify the source of the stench. It’s a severed hand sitting on Draco’s desk (not unusual), but he isn’t around.

“Yo, Draco!”, I yell into the hodgepodge that is his expansive office/lab while I blockade my nostrils.

No answer.

“Hey, Draco! I brought you a present!”

Still nothing.

I cautiously survey the space, peering in and around shelves filled with old microscopes, jars of preserved animal parts, and interesting artifacts from god-knows-where. Then Stella loudly enters the room just steps behind me, brandishing the envelope in an evidence bag as if it was OJ’s ill-fitting glove.

“Oh, god,” Stella covers her nose and mouth, offended by the odor. “Where’s Draco?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he went to lunch.”

“It’s 8 o’clock, Keith,” her words are muffled by her hand.

“Okay, then he went to the bathroom.”, I say defensively.

“Hold on a second,” Stella posits as she walks past me toward Draco’s desk.

I look at her face as Stella’s eyes lock on the source of the foul odor. She creeps toward whatever it is as if it’s an aloof white-tail deer.

“I know it’s odd but it’s normal for hi—”

“Shhh,” Stella interrupts me harshly as she approaches the hand. “Oh my fuck…”

“What?”

“This is his hand.”

“Huh?”

“THIS IS DRACO’S HAND.”

“How do you know?”, I ask, skeptically.

“This is his stupid wolf ring.” Stella turns away with her nose plugged.

As I approach, I recognize his bony fingers and well-kept fingernails. Then I see the ring. The one he told me was from the Witcher – his favorite videogame. It’s definitely Draco’s hand.

“Holy shit,” I say out loud just as I notice something else beyond the shelves. Something white. Within seconds, I eye the true source of the stench. I walk around the shelf lining the desk where the hand rests.

Draco’s body. Wrapped in a lab coat and skewered to the floor with his own replica Geralt sword.

“How the fu—LOCK THIS PLACE DOWN!”, I yell to Stella as she rushes out of the room. It’s not until after the words leave my mouth that I consider that, based on the smell, Draco was killed last night. And Fate is long gone.

I continue stepping closer to the body and the pool of blood in which it laid. Another piece of notebook paper sits on Draco’s chest.

In large, printed type.

I couldn’t allow Draco to live. Unfortunately for him, he was too competent.

So this is what he meant—

Enjoy your surprise at work today.

I stand above the body, frozen with the note in my hand. Thoughts fly through me faster than I can catch them. My hands suddenly feel clammy and cold. Sweat trickles from my armpits and over my ribs.

Oh shit — I check my phone again.

8:07

Time to go.

Read Pt. II (of II)

Buy me a cinnamon roll

A quick word before the story:

I work hard to bring these stories and artwork to you every week and make no mistake — I do it because I love it and feel called to. But if you find value in these and can afford to support me monetarily, please click the button below. Every little bit matters. I do love a good cinnamon roll. If you can’t afford it, no worries. I will continue posting these all the same. Please enjoy Octahedrons, Ep. 25: The Raconteur.

Buy me a cinnamon roll

The moment I approached Rafe McConnough for the first time, I experienced an intense feeling of destination. He was just sitting there reading a ragged old copy of Foundation by Isaac Asimov. Something about the moment rendered me lucid, snapping me out of a lifetime of droning about with no purpose.

When he asked for change, I wanted nothing more than to give him the world. I didn’t know why or how, but the discovery that I had no loose change broke my heart. He refused to follow me to a nearby store to grab some food and I swore to him that if he was in the same place, at the same time tomorrow that I would bring him change.

“I’ve been in the same spot for 10 years. It’s a safe bet I’ll be here in the morning,” he said with a smile.

Though my law firm was very nearby, I always drove to work. I’d never noticed him — a homeless man on the corner of Mason and Witherspoon. That morning I decided, on a whim, to walk. The beautiful weather warranted it. Until that day, I didn’t believe in divine intervention. There isn’t even anything particular Rafe said that changed that in me. Something inexplicable had entangled us and even without words I felt the gravity of our encounter.

My wife spoke to me when I got home that night and she told me that I seemed different.

That’s because I was.

Subscribe now

I saw Rafe the next morning at the same time as the previous, and approached him with a 100 dollar bill. I had no other bills at home and didn’t have time to exchange anything before I met him. Surprise in his eyes gave me great satisfaction.

“I can’t take this,” he said with soft defiance.

“You can. And you will,” I returned with a smile.

“No, I mean, if I try to exchange this anywhere they’ll think I stole it.”

Though he said it with a straight face, I couldn’t prevent myself from cackling like a hyena. The radiant smile he donned after his joke landed reminded me of the first time I heard my son laugh.

“I’ll go and get you some change,” I managed. I knew it would make me late for work, but I didn’t care.

When I returned, he meagerly took the money and nodded. “Thank you so much, sir. This will feed me for a long time.”

“Would you like to come have dinner at my house this evening?” The words spilled out of me like pasta water bubbles when the boil is rolling too hard. I knew my wife would not approve of this.

Rafe gazed up at me from his seat on the pavement. “I would be honored, sir.”

“Darius.” I shook his hand.

“Rafe.”

“I live right up the street over there. 5 Yosemite Lane. Just knock on the door around 6:30 and I’ll have dinner ready.”

Without speaking, Rafe nodded. I wanted to stay and talk with him. Ask him where he was born. How he ended up there. What was his favorite color. But the mundane responsibilities of the firm tugged me away. I still feel shame for allowing it to do so. But it didn’t matter. I got to speak with him later that night.

A call with my wife revealed, luckily, that she would be going out with friends that evening. It would have been…awkward…to tell her that I invited a homeless man over for dinner on a whim. And since my son graduated last year and moved to college, it would just be Rafe and I.

I’m no cook, so I just ordered us a pizza.

It felt wrong to serve this person take out pizza when they deserved a 3 Michelin starred meal. But at the same time I knew that it wouldn’t matter in the least to him. So we sat and ate and spoke over glasses of red wine.

“Rafe, has anyone else ever…taken a keen interest in you?”

“This is the first time,” he took the glass by the stem and took a small sip of cabernet. “The universe has a funny way, doesn’t it?”

“It does. So, if you don’t mind me asking…why are you choosing to be homeless? That is what you’re doing? Clearly you’re capable of making a living and purchasing a home for yourself so, why not?”

“Darius, have you ever heard the saying “missing the forest through the trees”?”

Subscribe now

I understood him perfectly. It’s impossible to properly observe something when embedded in it. And that’s exactly what I am. What most of us are. I nodded.

He continued as I digested the metaphor. “I have known since I became conscious that I was here only to observe. My mother died giving birth to me. I never met my father. The foster care system raised me and spit me out when I was 18. And because of my purpose, I did not fight it. Was meant to be.”

“That system has always needed reform, I —“

“I am not upset with the system. It does need reform, but that will come as a result of what I have been waiting for.” His appearance was a complete mismatch with the refined way he composed sentences. Missing teeth and a ripe smell did nothing to dampen the deep reverence I felt in his presence.

“What have you been waiting for, Rafe?”

“I am an enigma even to myself at times, Darius. And I know very little. But I do know that I am a man who creates ripples and somehow jumps to the destination of those very same ripples to ensure sure they make it there without obstruction. It’s all just…a feeling. I know, with no doubt in my mind, that I have lived countless lives. Sometimes I see bits of them in my dreams. Clues that herd me from beyond, as I attempt to herd humanity.”

When I heard him say these things I knew that people had spoken to him and considered him clinically insane. To be fair, the things he was saying absolutely sounded like they came from someone who’s mind was long gone. But I knew better. Like he said, it was a feeling.

“What do you mean by ‘ripples’?”, I wondered, though I had a vague idea.

“In my dreams I’m pecking vigorously at a typewriter. Or writing endlessly with a quill or pen. I don’t always remember the things I’m writing but I know that they’re stories. Sometimes fiction, sometimes not.” He could see the slight confusion on my face and elaborated further. “Humans are storytelling creatures, Darius. We learn from them, consciously or not, as a society. Their effect on the world goes largely unnoticed, but they are powerful vessels of meaning and character.”

“Like the bible?”

Rafe’s eyes light up. “Yes, like the bible. People get caught up in the argument of whether or not the events contained in it are literally true, when really it doesn’t matter. Its effect on the world has been profound.”

“But it’s been used to justify so much violence…”

“It has, yes.”

“So how can do you justify it as a good book?”, I knew he wasn’t but I wanted to hear his explanation.

He smiled at me, seemingly aware of my intentions. “I haven’t. And I won’t. I’m simply saying that its power is sourced from the story, and the stories within stories contained in it. Power so widespread will always be wielded and manipulated by wicked men.”

“Did you help write it?”

“I don’t know.” Rafe tossed back the final puddle of red in his glass and I poured the final 6 oz of the bottle for him. “Thank you,” he said. “To answer your original question, I have never known exactly what I was looking for. But I was sure I would know it when I saw it. And I have seen it.”

“Seen what, Rafe?”, I asked with a curiosity that had me forget that we were drinking a very expensive cabernet that I was supposed to be saving for a ‘special occasion’.

“You, Darius. I’ve seen you.”

I panicked a bit. “I don’t understand. What do you mean you’ve seen me? All I’ve done is feed you and given you some money. Other people have done that, I’m sure.” I feel my heart trying to escape through my throat.

“That’s not all you did, Darius. You saw me. To every other human I’ve encountered, my existence has been a burden. Whether they were kind or not, I’ve always been a burden on their moment. Their existence. But not you. You saw me. You, Darius, are my signal.”

I paused. Frozen. Like a rookie comedian who just bombed a set for the first time. “What do you mean ‘signal’?”

“Our connection is not an accident. You are another cosmic hand dealt to tell me that the ripples made it safely to their destination. And now, it’s time for me to go,” Rafe said as he stood without touching his fresh wine.

“You don’t want to finish your drink?”, I asked desperately. I needed him to stay, but I knew he could not.

“We’ll meet again, Darius. Thank you for everything.”

Share

I searched for words but none escaped my lips as Rafe exited my house with a fond grin. I finished both our glasses in silence as I carefully considered everything he said. I had no tolerance for alcohol, so the wine took me more than it should have and I went to bed before my wife got home.

I woke the next morning, anxious to see my friend. My Friday suit and tie were waiting for me in the closet and I felt a pep in my step as I threw it on, despite the headache. I had a good hair day. The morning’s air was fresh and crisp and my feet wanted to skip across the sidewalk. I didn’t even look at my car.

But as I approached the corner where Rafe stayed, I saw police.

An ambulance.

A firetruck.

My legs ran on their own, carrying my body in a sprint toward the corner. Medics were loading a body onto a stretcher and I didn’t have to see his face to know it was him.

“What happened?!” I heard myself screaming. “What happened to Rafe?!”

“You knew him? The homeless guy?”, a policeman asked, skeptically.

“He was my friend. What happened to him?”, my throat was dry.

“Paramedics said he had a heart attack during the night.”

The day suddenly felt hollow and I walked away with my mouth open. The once refreshing morning air tasted sour. I remembered nothing from work and by the time I walked home, the corner where Rafe stayed had been cleaned. All his belongings swept away like a pile of garbage.

The world had moved on.

But not me. I couldn’t. And now I know that I never will.

When I got home I noticed a yellow sticky note that had been folded once and stuck between my townhouse’s metal railing and its brick facade. I unfolded it and sank to the stoop as I read —

You are a beacon, Darius.

Shine without apology.

Empathy is divinity.

Share

I still don’t understand how or why he did it, but when Decker Flyseat turned the world upside down he facilitated the single most devastating event in the history of Earth.

Full disclosure here — I say he “turned it upside down” — but what he really did is give lateral momentum to Earth’s primary rotational axis, causing it to change drastically over the course of 10 years. In that time, the planet moved 45 degrees off its usual rotation, and the ice caps melted in the time it takes a rose to grow from seed to first blossom.

The result was worse than you’d imagine.

And I’m sure what you’re imagining isn’t great. Not only was all permafrost, tundra, and arctic habitat completely decimated — 98% of humanity’s lower class was killed in a matter of months.

Not that I care. In fact, I’m tickled by it. The only reason I’m writing about this now is to tell you how the fallout made my position as president of the Lunar Association of Humanity the most coveted chair in the EMM (Earth-Moon-Mars) Complex, why my brother betrayed me, and why I’m sheltered in a bunker deep beneath the lunar surface as the combined forces of Earth and Mars cut down the last line of android defenses we have.

One of the craziest things about this is that no one even knew what Decker had done until a year later when people noticed that the world was tilting further than usual. Then, inexplicably, Flyseat took credit for what had happened as he flew his own massive space station out into the further reaches of our solar system. He’d clearly been preparing for many years and was long gone when people began to realize what was happening.

I couldn’t have been luckier to be on the moon at the time, because even the trillionaires on Earth had trouble getting off-world when everything went awry. Many of them were shot down by corporations or world governments because of IP and resources they were attempting to flee with. But most of the death was not actually caused by the flipping of the world — it was, as per usual, humans killing other humans.

Even nukes.

Subscribe now

No one had dropped a nuke since Hiroshima and Nagasaki…but there was a short window of time where several smaller scale fission bombs went off at once. Surprisingly, everyone called it off almost as quickly as it started. So a cataclysmic nuclear winter was averted. But most of the damage had been done. Eight different megacities and their metro areas were wiped off the face of the earth in just three hours, vaporizing nearly 100 million people. It was the most human life ever lost in a short period of time by a very long way.

Just because nukes stopped flying, though, doesn’t mean the killing ceased. As rebellions rose, a loose alliance of wealthy private interests, corporations, and governments cut them down with ease. It was a slaughter. In the not so distant past, they would have been wary of killing their main worker class. But robot tech had come so far that most of the difficult work was done by them anyway. Ramping up their development was all they felt was needed in order to make up for the skilled labor lost as a result of the “Great Genocide”.

That’s what people are calling this event, less the nukes. If you include the nukes, this has been the exact self-induced mass extinction humanity has expected for hundreds of years. In a decade, the total population of Homo sapiens was reduced by 27%. More than 3 billion people dead.

But war is good for business and for a bit of time, the supply chain between Mars and the Earth ramped up to its highest point ever. But it was the last cry of a dying gladiator and it wasn’t long before traffic all but ceased. There was nothing to trade. Nothing to support.

And that’s where I came in. Earth and Mars became desperate. The moon was the only place left in the EMM Complex which was self-sustaining and prosperous. So we opened up trade. Expansion and production of food and raw goods ramped to a level we’d never before experienced.

We, the people of the moon, were needed.

For the first time in history.

If my father and his father before him had been alive to see it…

Share

We grew comparable wealth greater than anything seen since the re-emergence of robber barons in the early 21st century. But we — my cabinet and I — became selfish. Greedy and reckless. It was this alone that led to our downfall. People always think they learn lessons from those that came before them, but intense wealth has a way of blinding even the most gifted of seers.

It was obvious that there was no choice for them but to buy from us. And we allowed the law of supply and demand to drive our prices and terms to the stars. At first, it worked. But, in secret, a coalition of powerful people from Earth and Mars plotted to overthrow our position of power and realign the EMM Complex into a balance which was more… favorable to them.

Those fucking fools. They had no idea what they were doing. Like children, they were upset they had not come out on top. And rather than using negotiation tactics and business acumen, they conducted a false flag operation and then cobbled together all their remaining military resources. Soon they launched the largest interplanetary assault in the history of mankind.

It was impressive, really. I’d have appreciated it a lot more if I wasn’t on the receiving end. And if it wasn’t led by my brother — the president of Earth.

We hadn’t talked in nearly a decade and the first time he messages me it’s to demand a renewed trade agreement or risk annihilation. That fucking asshole.

See, I knew I was in the wrong — I did. But I’d rather destroy the moon than give that mother fucker what he wants. As my older brother, all he’s cared about is keeping me from outperforming him and making him look inferior. He’s still jaded by the favor I was afforded by our father. I can’t help that I was smarter, more athletic, and more charming than he could ever hope to be. I have no idea how he became president of Earth. He must have killed a lot of people.

But still, to me, becoming president of Earth is like becoming the coach of a team that won the Super Bowl 3 years ago.

In the end that’s what this is about, though. Me and him.

He doesn’t care about Earth. Or humanity. Or anyone but himself.

And as I hear the bombs over head and watch my guards panic, I’m just sitting here smiling at my computer screen. Because I know I’ve won. I’m forcing him to destroy his only salvation. What he really wanted was to best me. And he has — with military might. But before he started his assault, I ordered the timed nuclear destruction of every single terradome generator on the lunar surface. And with the Lunar Data Consolidation Act of 2319, there’s only one place the IP and designs needed to rebuild them live — and that, too, will be obliterated.

After they stop firing and believe they’ve won — the invaluable infrastructure they’ve so surgically avoided will evaporate into nothingness. So after the dust settles and everyone in this room has died, he’ll have inherited a useless turd. A space rock that’s going to cost more to fix than it’s worth.

I just wish I could be there to see the look on his stupid face when those nukes go off.

And Tony, just in case you’re reading this —

You’ll always be the lesser brother.

Buy me a cinnamon roll

Share

Then he jumps.

Oh thank Lucifer, you think. You can’t resist shimmying into his head one last time before he gets to see you. The real you.

You feel the regret the moment you enter his head. You don’t take control. You’re only there to observe…if you can control your impulses. He barely notices you. But you find it difficult to control yourself as your long-laid plan finally pays off.

“Oh, Donny.” You say seductively.

Time slows greatly for him. He can’t panic any more than he already is, but confusion is added to the cocktail of adrenaline and fear coursing through his veins.

“Shhh. It’s okay. You don’t know me, but you’ve felt me. My name’s Shadow, and you’re here today because of me. Honestly you killed yourself faster than I expected.”

“What do---”

“I noticed you one night when you were playing guitar with a pentagram on the wall behind you. You were so enticing. But then I peered into your soul and saw that you were a fucking phony who liked to do sudoku, program AIs, and other pointless, tedious toils in his spare time. You’re no Satanist.” You say with spite.

“I’m just a musician, lady. I jumped because my life fell apart.” He interrupts.

His disrespect angers you.

“YOUR LIFE FELL APART BECAUSE OF ME!” You yell with reverberant bass. “I made you choose to kill yourself because if I’d done it you wouldn’t have gone to Hell.”

He trembles. His fear feeds you and you shiver with delight.

Subscribe now

“Oooo the water looks fine. You better enjoy the swim, Donny. Soon you’ll be swimming in fire.” You giggle. He’s too terrified to speak.

“Would you like to know why your life fell apart?” You ask rhetorically. “Lucifer doesn’t like posers. He knew what you were before I did and assigned me accordingly.” You lower your voice to near a whisper. “I only hate one thing, Donny. I LOATHE tedious tasks. Pointless little toils that amount only to a waste of life and potential. Turns out you love them, don’t you?” You pause and wait for his confirmation. None comes. “DON’T YOU?!”

“Yes…” He manages.

“Thank you. When I found out I just couldn’t resist making your life a little game for myself. You started ‘sleep-walking’ not long ago didn’t you?”

“Yeah?”

“You’ve done things you’d never imagine doing. You fucked your best friends girlfriend didn’t you?” You smile.

“How did you---”

The rate of descent accelerates with his heart rate.

“Calm down, Donny, or I won’t get to finish my story before you die.” You use a few tricks to relax him a bit. “Let me tell you what it’s like to be a demon. Most of us were humans once. We’re created when a soul cast into hell can endure the raging fires of eternal sensation. It obliterates most. But not me. And not you. Because I’m going to help you.”

Share

“I don’t understand.”

“I’d almost forgotten the difference between love and hate. When sensation’s so intense it all blends together into one overwhelming feeling. But everything is dulled for humans. Possessing you reminded me of what it was like to really feel. For that, I owe you.”

“Owe me what?”

“I’m going to torture you, Donny. I am going to stretch, compress, contort, break, burn, and freeze your concept of sensation and experience. You will not enjoy it. In fact…” You chuckle--- “you’re going to scream. And writhe. And wonder how it’s possible to feel such pain.”

Panic accelerates the water’s approach once again.

“If I let you fall directly into the pits of hell, you’d obliterate. You’d become one of the mob, feeling only fire for eternity. I need you to become a demon, like me. That, for you, requires conditioning. It’s your punishment for being a poser. When it’s all over – you’ll thank me.”

“Why?” He thinks.

He feels you smile at him. His naivety is cute.

“I’m bored, Donny. And I fucking HATE sudoku.”

Buy me a coffee :)

Share

Surviving alone is boring.

You make friends with animals who are scared of you and inanimate objects who didn’t choose you. Honestly its exhausting.

When I’d become obsessed with survivalism, I wasn’t wealthy, so I bought the cheapest land I could find out west. Arid but survivable with the right know how - southwest Utah.

Everything started happening not long after I set myself up.

I could feel the quakes from San Andreas and their echoes for weeks. Initially there was a diaspora of people, but my shelter was beneath the ground, so people passed by unknowingly. Eventually that slowed and people became very scarce. Now…the last person I’ve seen was a man traveling alone about 8 months ago. In this wide open landscape you can see people coming from miles away — and there’s been no one. Not even on the horizon.

See — I live at the edge of a semi-arid pine forest. I can look out over the desert toward Nevada and see people coming, but I assume most of them migrated away already and don’t really want to go through a desert unless they have to. I’ve started to suspect people coming from the east but haven’t seen anyone and kind of hope I don’t.

I take a long walk to an oasis every day to get a bit of water and potentially some meat along the way.

After a few days walking there, I noticed a pound symbol carved into the hard ground right at the end of my usual route. My initial instinct was an elevated heart rate and a frantic look around. I saw no one, got my water, and left.

I came back the following day and the pound sign was still there. Still wary but not as much, I took my water and left quickly.

The following day, I remember extraordinarily well. It was hot. Many days in the desert are, even outside of summer. But this day was brutal. I took my hike to the oasis with sights honed well on everything around me. Someone was watching me. I could feel it.

When I reached my destination, the pound sign was still there. But something was different about it. This time there was an “X” carved into the top right segment of it. Again, the whiplash of my head had me peering around like a maniac. But somehow I didn’t feel threatened. Someone was offering to play a game with me and, oddly enough, it felt innocent. So I took out my knife and carved an “O” in the bottom right segment of the tic-tac-toe board and moved along.

Subscribe now

I came back the next day, and there was another “X” carved into the dirt in the bottom left segment of the board. It was nearly identical to the one above it. Perfectly straight lines. And the dimensions looked to be exactly the same.

Someone’s a perfectionist — I thought before I carved another sloppy ovoid into the tough dirt, collected my water, and moved along.

Where before the oasis hike was just something I had to do for survival, I became excited for each trip. Seeing where the stranger had placed their “X” on the board was just about the only surprise I had during my days out there.

They beat me sometimes. I beat them others. It was about even, really. Except somehow every time they carved an “X” into the ground it was just about identical to its predecessor. My friend was either an engineer or a perfectionist. Maybe even some kind of artist. But artists value imperfections, don’t they?

For anyone who’s ever played tic-tac-toe several times in a row, you know that the game swiftly gets repetitive and predictable. So I did what any normal person would do in my situation — I cut down a ponderosa pine and an aspen in preparation to fashion large chess pieces out of it. I had to drag the aspen nearly a full damn mile back to the oasis. We had to differentiate between black and white and from my days as a carpenter, I knew that ponderosa has a much starker grain structure than aspen. And we didn’t exactly have stain at our disposal.

First I cut 32 roughly equal pieces of wood, 16 from each tree, then I moved along to the board itself. A shovel did just fine, and within a day and a half that was done. Then I started taking the pieces of wood back with me to whittle during the evening.

After the very first night of taking a piece of aspen back with me, I returned to a fully formed ponderosa pawn at the center of the pine pile.

My friend was also a handy whittler.

Their work was magnificent. It almost looked as if it had been sanded and made me want to search for their shelter. They must have significant resources in order to carve so well. But I decided to allow them privacy and continue carving. I stayed awake long hours every single evening, but eventually the chess set was complete and we could play.

Aspen was the lighter color, so I took the liberty of going first.

King’s pawn. Classic move. One I’m most used to.

I returned the next day to something that surprised me — the Caro-Kann defense. Pawn to c6.

My friend continued to surprise.

Over the next several weeks I discovered that not only was my friend familiar with chess, he was absolutely brilliant. Though I considered myself an adequate chess player, I stood no chance. We played three games over the course of three months or so (one move per day) and I was slaughtered in every one.

But I’m persistent. So after the third check mate I reset the board, picking up my king (which my friend insisted on knocking down every time he won), moved my king’s pawn, and left.

The next morning when I returned is the entire reason you’re reading this now.

As I crested the hill preluding the oasis, I noticed something odd at first. Something unfamiliar resting among the chess pieces. At first I thought it to be inanimate. A tree blown asunder by wind from the night before. It was not. Though it was the same color. A brownish overall hue with stripes of beige.

Upon cautious approach, I unholstered my weapon. Something I hadn’t done since I last saw a human. Careful of my footing, I quietly stalked. But soon I was close enough that it could hear me no matter how light my feet were on the rock and brush.

A glint of silver on its neck hit my retina as its rectangular ellipsoid head spun.

It was a small humanoid robot. Though it was sitting down, I could tell that it was no more than 4 feet tall. As I scanned its body I noticed that the panels lining the metal endoskeleton were covered in bark. Even its head was covered, the bark standing on it looked like nappy hair. Other than the nape, very little metal showed beneath the woody exterior.

A single photorecepter blinked at me.

“Ah!”

It sprang up and skittered quickly behind a tree when it noticed the gun.

It blended in so well…no wonder I hadn’t seen it. I didn’t even know what to look for and, even if I had, it would have been difficult to spot.

“Please don’t shoot,” it pled from the other side of the pine in a voice that was unmistakably human.

The voice of a child.

Share

I found myself speechless and lowered the gun. It crept back around the tree tepidly and revealed its entire body.

“I know this is weird.” It held its hand up as an appeasement. “It still freaks me out every day so I understand why you might be scared too.”

Through my inexplicable feelings I managed a single word. “How…”

“I don’t really know,” it said solemnly and hung its head. “It’s all just such a blur.”

“How have you stayed alive? I mean, powered?”

“I have solar panels in the tops of some of these trees. I got scared when you cut down of of the pines,” it chuckled a little. “I have some on me too but I covered them with bark.”

It even felt like talking to a kid. Eager to share and happy to over-explain itself.

“Where did you…where did you come from?”, I asked as I finally holstered my weapon.

“There’s a research facility underground not far from here. When everything happened, the researchers just left me. They locked up but I figured a way out!”, it said proudly

“I bet you did,” I said remembering our chess games. “So what are you?”, I asked rather rudely. Though I didn’t see it that way at the time.

“What am I? I’m a human!”, the robot said emphatically.

I looked at it, beguiled. “What do you mean, human? You look like a robot to me.”

“Oh, right.” It looked down at its bark-covered arms and steel fingers. “I’m sorry. I was a human.”

I felt terrible. “So how did this happen to you?”

“I don’t remember. I got kidnapped and the next thing I know I wake up and I’m like this.”

“How old were you?”

“I was 6 when I got kidnapped! I’m 10 now!”, it perked up again.

“What’s your name?”

“Andre. My friends called me Dre.”

“Nice to meet you, Dre,” I said kindly.

“Do you want to be my friend?”, Andre’s head popped up after I called him by his nickname.

“We’re already friends. I think 3 months of letting you kick my ass in chess — oh, sorry.”

“It’s okay. They plugged me up to the internet one time and I learned all sorts of curse words from something they called ‘the urban dictionary’.”

I laughed. “Okay, Dre. But, speaking of chess and woodworking— did you learn those on the internet, too?” I gestured toward the pieces. “Are those things you knew before you got taken?”

“Oh, no…they taught me all kinds of stuff. Well, I say they taught me, but really they just plugged me up to things and I’d learn ‘em. Not just the internet. Chess was one of the first things they tried to teach me. Said I was a ‘blithering success’!”, Dre held up air quotes.

I was skeptical. “You seem pretty special. Why would they just leave you?”

“I dunno. They took other stuff with ‘em,” he kicked rocks around.

“Like what? I can’t imagine there are many things there that are more special than you.”

“There were other experiments. I was one of the first. So, I don’t know. They just didn’t want me anymore I guess,” Dre sniffled despite a lack of nostrils and kept kicking rocks around.

“Where are your parents, Dre? Have you thought about trying to look for them?” It sounded ridiculous coming out of my mouth. He’d been missing for 4 years and was now a robot. Would his parents really accept him?

“I was an orphan,” he said with his hands behind his back, avoiding eye contact.

Then something hit me. A feeling. An idea. An epiphany. All at once. It felt crazy but right. The only thing to do in the moment.

I remembered my own kids when they were 10. They had long ago gone out into the world on their own. Even somewhat disowned me because they thought I was crazy — preparing for doomsday — but I still love them. Every day. And always will. They got married and had kids of their own, who I never got to meet. I was too busy being a crazy old crank who was good with his hands and paranoid about the apocalypse.

It was never actually boredom that plagued me these days.

I missed being needed and loved. I missed teaching people things and letting them confide in me when they needed it. I was an old man then, and I’m even older now. Beyond old enough to be the kid’s grandfather. And I knew, in that moment, that wouldn’t trade him for anything.

“Do you want me to help take care of you, Dre?”

“You…you would do that?”, his one eye lid fluttered at me as his head cocked sideways.

“Seems like we’re both pretty lonely out here, kiddo. I think we could use the company.”

Share

Going to church in the middle of the week had always been odd to Dorian. Especially on a Thursday. But he wanted to please his girlfriend’s parents so he was cordial — dressing in slacks and a button-up. He was the only one of the four who wasn’t wearing green of some kind. Everyone including his girlfriend, Jeanine, played it off to coincidence.

“It’s really fine. You don’t have to wear green,” her father said politely.

Doug was the man’s name. The impression Dorian had was that Doug was a soft man and Jeanine’s mother, Elizabeth, wore the pants in that relationship. Even still, Elizabeth was also very polite to Dorian during his trip. He’d only been there a couple of days, but they ensured he was well fed and occupied with books, tv, hikes, or whatever else he craved.

Hiking was the family’s preferred method of entertainment, being that they lived in the depths of the Oregon Cascades. There wasn’t much around, but there was always walking in the woods. It was peaceful. Dorian had never seen anything like the Douglas firs out there. They were so much larger than the pines he was accustomed to around the Atlanta area.

Church was baffling from the moment they arrived.

Despite what Jeanine’s parents said, everyone in the congregation was wearing green of some kind. Mostly dark green. He stuck out like an LED lamp under a cloudy rural sky. Once the looks of skepticism started, they never ceased.

Using all his energy to focus elsewhere, Dorian did anything but cower in the spotlight of small town eyes. He rose to the occasion and shook hands, made eye contact, and occasionally apologized for missing decorum. A tall young man with a pleasant smile and sharp tongue — Dorian was a charmer. Everyone seemed to forgive and move on after they encountered him.

“Why did y’all tell me it was fine?”, he whispered to Jeanine. “I’m the only one not wearing green. Your church is literally called ‘Evergreen’. And this shirt is light blue. I look like a homewrecker.”

“I’m sorry I should have told you to bring a shirt. We just didn’t want you feeling bad about it. Everyone here is nice. It’s fine since it’s your first time. Promise,” Jeanine hugged his arm longingly. “Just keep being you and everyone will love you.”

The family sat down together in a pew toward the back and waited for the small crowd to settle. But before it did so naturally, the presence of a man in a forest green cassock commanded calm without a word.

He introduced himself as Pastor Nick and seemed to speak directly to Dorian when he did so. Probably because he could have picked Dorian out from three kilometers away.

Pastor Nick was very old judging by the thick glasses and wrinkles on his face. But he had the charisma and humor of a much younger man, which he used to swoon the crowd for the length of service. It wasn’t quite like the baptist churches Dorian was used to, but it was mostly typical. But there were no pamphlets and only a thin green hymnal sitting in a wooden pocket in front of them.

The acoustics of the building were marvelous. Even though Dorian was no audiophile, he could feel the feng shui as Paster Nick spoke. The words glowed around the man like a halo. Dorian found himself mesmerized by it all.

The rich sound.

Crisp smell of pine and earth.

Cool wood beneath him.

The pleasing natural colors.

Then Pastor Nick began reading in what sounded like Latin.

Oh wow they have an old bible. — Dorian thought as the man read.

Everyone, including Jeanine and her family, knew how to respond to things Pastor Nick was saying. Responses were in English. But Dorian had heard Latin before, and this didn’t sound like Latin. He didn’t know how to respond, so Dorian allowed himself to be enamored by the vibrations afforded him by the building’s architecture.

After the back and forth between pastor and crowd, Pastor Nick walked to the large stained glass window behind him and took a sapling tree, by its pot, and handed it lovingly to a woman sitting in the front row.

“What’s going on?”, he asked Jeanine.

“Just wait,” she whispered back with a grin.

The sapling made its rounds through the congregation and as it reached the row in front of them, Dorian noticed something peculiar.

They were spitting in the soil.

Subscribe now

Everyone. Even the few children that were there.

The pot made it to their row and as the plant got closer, Dorian felt uncomfortable for an undiscernible reason. As he took the sapling by its housing, he felt eyes studying him. Without hesitation, Dorian mustered some moisture from beneath and around his tongue and dropped it onto a drier spot in the loam.

As the final person watered the tree with their own body fluid, the sapling was passed directly to the front pew and Pastor Nick took it to a small altar in front of the pulpit that Dorian hadn’t noticed.

The altar seemed to be at the geometric center of the large room, beneath a dome that Dorian had also just noticed.

“All rise,” Nick commanded. “Please turn to page 108 in your hymnal.”

The green book opened, and singing commenced. It was in English, but the structure of things said was off. As if translated from a language with no good English substitutes.

“Stand bark of nigh.”

“Paling Earthen fallow, of north dreams ever.”

“Merry seed waste not rho.”

It didn’t make sense to him. But no one else batted an eye, so he did not.

After song ceased, Pastor Nick took the sapling back to its window and the sermon ended on more usual notes. Though Dorian did remark that Jesus was not mentioned.

That night over dinner, Jeanine’s parents asked Dorian what he thought of the church.

“It was interesting,” he remarked genuinely as he took a bite of pot roast.

“Do you not have questions?”, wondered Elizabeth with curiosity.

“Yes and no,” Dorian muttered as he covered his mouth and chewed. “It was a form of nature worship. And I see nothing wrong with that.”

“Hmm.” Elizabeth was clearly unconvinced.

“If I’m being honest I never identified with Christianity. So it was refreshing.”

“See, mom! I told you he’d understand,” Jeanine said proudly as she shook Dorian’s leg.

“I understand that things like that can be odd for people who aren’t from Evergreen,” Doug placated. “But I’m glad you enjoyed it. We love nature around here don’t we honey?”

“Yeah we do, daddy. Maybe after I get my Master’s we’ll move back out here.”

“Sounds lovely,” agreed Dorian.

Later, in the silence of 2AM, Dorian took a flashlight and snuck out of the house.

I have to see that book. — he thought. What if it’s some kind of pagan holy book?

The journey was a short two miles on foot. At least it was short for him. But the night was so violently dark that Dorian expected its blackness to devour any light coming from his LED. Clouds smothered the moon and mist pervaded the air, sticking sweet pine to the inside of his olfactory.

The adrenaline that comes with the potential of having to duck cars as they came had Dorian moving at a blistering pace. It reminded him of being a mischievous teenager in the Atlanta suburbs. But to his surprise, there was not a single car on the road. The town was extremely small and surrounded by state parks, but he’d expected to see at least a couple of cars.

Soon, Dorian saw the sign.

As soon as he could, Dorian shot behind a tree and away from the road, heading toward the back of the church.

The first door he tried was open.

It was a door on the side of the building, leading into the sanctuary.

Dorian had never actually been into an empty church, especially not at night. Its eeriness was more profound than he was prepared for, but curiosity overwhelmed all other feelings of fear, hesitance, and the fact that he was trespassing.

Even the quietest footsteps reverberated around the hall. He tiptoed toward the pulpit where Pastor Nick resided during the sermon.

Toward the book.

Share

Its case gleamed beneath the shine of his light. Immaculate and clear, the glass revealed a thick, gray hard cover book beneath it. Pages splayed open beneath the glass revealed an obviously dated set of texts with pressed ink, imperfections, and hand drawn elements that only come from a book that is hundreds of years old.

The thing looks like it’s about to fall apart.

Dorian began lifting the glass away from the pulpit via its hinges when he heard something.

A low, rhythmic hum coming from behind him.

It wasn’t startling. Only peculiar.

The thumb an index finger of Dorian’s right hand left a oily smudge as he walked toward the source. There was only one door behind the pulpit about 20 feet to his right, so he went inside.

The small room was bare except for three large windows directly across from the door. All had small tree altars built into the sill, similar to the one Dorian saw during the church service. The last window on the left held the sapling he had spit into just hours earlier. It seemed to have grown, but he wasn’t sure.

The hum had gotten a bit louder, and something in the back of Dorian’s mind made him want to check the tree.

Trees don’t make sounds what the fuck, Dorian. He laughed at himself, but continued toward the sapling anyhow.

Illumination of the small room revealed something else as he toed toward it.

A decorative urn situated directly above the sapling; held to the wall like a glove with an ornate metal basket.

Shivers ran up Dorian’s spine when he saw it, and he shot the light back toward the sapling.

It made no sound, but the hum was certainly louder than it was even seconds ago. Except it wasn’t just a hum…it was a chant. One muffled only by the door. The beam of Dorian’s flashlight honed in on the gold knob and though tepid, his feet carried him assuredly.

Dorian’s body took over as it turned the knob for him.

And he allowed it.

The heavy door slung open as if it were made of cardboard and an explosion of deep mechanical vibrations knocked Dorian to the ground. The LED beam scanned around frantically as Dorian expected to see a large backhoe or some unholy leviathan.

There were only Douglas Firs.

But the chanting did not cease. He could feel it through his bum, in his chest.

Inside his head.

Ackh…Dee…No…Ohm

Mohn…Ya…Nee…Frohm

Fear and confusion froze Dorian’s sensibilities, but his body inexplicably continued to move.

Rising to his feet, Dorian walked into the ultra fine blanket of precipitation. It hugged him. He tried to focus on the chanting, as he could now make out syllables and sounds. It was the same language Pastor Nick had spoken earlier that day. But the familiarity did nothing but continue to disorient him. The constant hum was so loud it had numbed his ear drums. It felt like he couldn’t hear anything at all.

The chants eroded him with each syllable.

Dorian stopped walking.

When he looked up to see where his feet had taken him, he was at the base of the largest tree he’d ever seen. At least 7 meters around. The first branch was 50 feet up and scales of bark covering it were as big as his face.

Chanting ceased.

“Climb,” the monstrous tree said in plain English.

It wasn’t eerie anymore. He understood what was happening there in Evergreen.

Without thought of how, Dorian dropped the flashlight and gripped a piece of bark. There was no seeing in that obsidian vortex, but he could feel the tree molding to his touch, creating perfect foot and hand holds each time he moved. And with no conception of how high he was, Dorian climbed for nearly 10 minutes.

“Stop,” the tree’s voice shook him. “Dive.”

Without pause Dorian’s body betrayed him, and he dove head first into the expanse.

Share