An Outerlords Chronicles Story

Few sounds are a visceral as gunfire. Your ears hurt from the intense pressure of it, and it’s one of those sounds that can strike fear into anyone’s heart. Everyone knows what the sound means. You can’t outrun what’s coming for you, it doesn’t matter if you’re as fast as Usain Bolt. Most people are smart. They try to hide, and then there’s me. I don’t hide, not anymore.

Let’s back up a bit first. My name is Sebastian Rooks. If anyone were to describe me physically, it would be angular. I’m a little taller than average with dark hair cut short. The Nevada sun keeps me tan, and my job keeps me in shape. There isn’t a whole lot special about my features other than my eyes which are a shade of blue that I guarantee you’ve never seen before.

Not too long ago I was a photographer. Well I’m still a photographer, but now things are a little different. I run my business out of a little strip mall just outside of good ol’ Sin City, and it keeps the bills paid. If you see my Open to Enter-pretation sign lit up, stop on in, I could use the business.

I don’t see myself as just a photographer anymore. I still do it for a living, but now I do something more. You see, I’m a Knight. I know, I know, it sounds like I should be put away somewhere, but hear me out.

The Knights have been around since…forever…in one form or another. However, it wasn’t until the legend of Saint George that the Knights finally became a true force in the world. Knights are important…I mean really important, the fate of the world on our shoulders kind of important.

The Knight’s purpose is to stand the front lines against the Outers. You’ve doubtless heard stories of knights in shining armor slaying some evil thing or another to save the damsel, or the country, or what-have-you. People love those kinds of stories. They fit into our lives, and they make us feel safe when the hero defeats the rampaging beast.

All kinds of stories and legends will lead you back to a Knight. Jack the Ripper, werewolves, dragons, shapeshifters, the chuppacabra, crop circles, possession, ancient deities. The list goes on and on. Most of those stories are real, they happened, and they are full of information about real world Outer activity on Earth. You need to get used to that if you want to understand how the world really is. Once you have come to terms with that, you’re ready to learn about the Outers.

Nobody really knows what the Outers are, or where they come from. One certainty about the Outers though is that they want to destroy this world and everything in it. That is a fact, and it goes back to the birth of the world.

However, we’ve managed to learn some few things over the millennia. From what we can tell, they have a society, or maybe it’s more appropriate to call it a hierarchy. There are the lowest level of Outers that could be characterized as animals. Low intelligence, but serving their roles. Those higher up use them for whatever purpose they need. Whether it’s to scare some locals, or slaughter entire countries, you’ll find these Outer Beasts in willing servitude to their masters.

As you move up the hierarchy, you encounter Outers with increasing levels of intelligence. With increased intelligence comes greater levels of power, influence, and sadistic intent. The upper most levels of the hierarchy are populated by the Outer Lords, and they are beings of unimaginable power.

If you have heard of the birth of England and the legend of Saint George the dragon slayer, then you have heard the story of the one Outer Lord that was ever slain. Saint George is the only known Knight to have faced an Outer Lord and survived the encounter. The Lords are the major players, they are god-like in their power, and their legends are the most awe inspiring in the world. If the birth of a nation was the legendary result of one Lord dying, it can only be speculated as to what roles these beings have played in the history of our world.

That’s the easy part of describing the Outers to you. The hard part is trying to describe them physically. What they look like, what they sound like, even what they smell like. One of the reasons why it can be so hard is because they’re all different. From what the histories of the Knights show, there has never been a report of one Outer physically looking the same as another. There are similarities to be sure, but nothing exact.

The ancient histories are full of descriptions that try to make sense of something that the human mind can barely comprehend. When a person tries to describe an Outer, they usually equate appearances to something that they can make sense of. A great example of this is actually the classic dragon figure that was made famous by the Outer Lord that Saint George slew.

The description of shield-like scales, claws like swords, a scourge for a tail, and rows of teeth deadlier than spears was easier for historians to describe when in reality a more fitting description would be much different.

Flesh that appeared slimy with rivulets of blood visible beneath the surface. When touched, it did not yield to any pressure and had the texture of stone. The beast’s five limbs were of varying lengths and shape. Most were tipped in what appeared to be sharpened bone, not horn or talons…but bone. The last, and largest limb, was laden with hard muscle and lined with small open mouths of gnashing teeth, which continued their eternal chewing long after the creature was slain. Where the head of an animal would normally rest, this monstrous creature possessed only a lump of writhing tentacles varying in length and tipped with a serrated, clear material harder and sharper than steel. No eyes were ever found and the only orifices that the being possessed where those on its longest limb.

You can see the problem.

Outer’s also possess a complete lack of symmetry, without fail. It’s one of the few constants that they all share between them. Even the ones that can pass in appearance as human have something about them that gives it away.

Most anything from Earth possesses, and obsessed with, physical symmetry. If you don’t believe me, try this. Think of the last bad haircut you had. I guarantee the feeling of it being wrong had something to do with a lack of symmetry. Now try to imagine an entire being that would give you that feeling just by looking at it.

There is one more important fact that you need to know about Outers. All of them, from the lowliest Beast to the Outer Lords themselves, possess a power that most people would consider Magic. Whether or not it is actually magic, doesn’t matter. What matters is that they can do things that defy natural laws and physics. It is this defiance of natural law that requires the most powerful of Outers, the Barons and Lords, to need help from our side to summon them into our world. Our reality prefers balance, the Outers don’t, so the Knights receive the most help from the world itself fighting back. Almost like a body fighting off an illness or infection. Like most bodies, if the things that keep it in balance are off, infections can spread.

Chaos is what the Outers need to have in the world to allow them to cross over, and the greatest forms of chaos tend to stem from human suffering. Humans themselves are, in many ways, the Outers greatest allies in our world.

This magical power gives the Outers an advantage in every conflict they are a part of. In ancient times, we used to have no way of countering this advantage until, as fate would have it, Saint George discovered something miraculous in his fight with the Outer Lord Gyp’darett.

In most of the stories you’ve heard, especially the oldest ones, the evil what’s-it dies when the valiant hero strikes a mortal blow with a special weapon. Silver bullet, stakes to the heart, cut off its head, whatever the case may be. In reality, these things still work just fine, but it’s in the details where you can find the truth.

The silver bullets are obvious, the stakes tend to be ornately crafted with special metals, and the sword is often referred to as magical. It turns out that there are two things in our world that give us an edge against them, and both have their own way of helping us defeat the Outers.

One is silver, like I said that one is kind of obvious from the stories. Silver acts like a poison to the Outers. It has an effect that breaks down the physical make-up of any Outer, causing it great harm. Close proximity to silver can even cause discomfort to Outers, and they tend to stay away from areas with large amounts of silver nearby. This is where a lot of the “shining armor” stories come from.

You can tell when silver is affecting an Outer when it starts to tarnish. Science explains this as oxidation of silver’s component molecules, but it’s actually the stain from an Outer’s energy that causes it to darken. This is the reason why the Knights have spent a long time integrating an appreciation for silver among the cultures of the world.

The second substance that has been found to give humanity an edge against the Outers is one that was only discovered by Saint George himself. Our historians were able to determine that when Saint George slew the Outer Lord, he wielded a sword that was made of silver, but it was also decorated with intricate inlays of cobalt. His armor as well was made more ornate with the addition of this strange metal.

When the battle was over, it was discovered that the additional material in his sword and armor seemed to pulse with a vast quantity of absorbed energy from the Outer Lord, likely saving Saint George’s life in the process. After a great deal of observation and experimentation, it was found that this material not only had the ability to absorb an Outer’s energy, but it could be repurposed and used to do amazing things.

Modern Knights refer to this repurposing as Appropriated Mystical Phenomena, or Amp for short. Knights are now equipped with Amped weapons and armor to help in their fight against the growing Outer threat. Every Knight trains in the ways of using Amped items to get a specific result, and Amped items are painstakingly crafted to elicit one type of effect or another.

Centuries of study and learning have gone into discovering how to utilize this energy, and though we have come a long way, we still don’t know everything. A Knight armed with silver is dangerous to an Outer, but a Knight armed and trained in the use of Amp is the most dangerous force we have to use against them. No Knight would be caught without some type of Amped item on their person at all times. Well…all of them, except for me. I can somehow do it naturally within myself. Just like an Outer.

That starts to lead us back to the bullets.

***

Don and I have gone up against groups of Outer worshippers a couple of times since I’ve joined the Knights. We’ve usually been able to stop these cults before they could fully assist an Outer to enter our world. Last time, however, they were able to complete what they were doing and summoned a Baron into our world. Barons are powerful Outers with only one goal so far as we can tell, and that is to spread chaos and death in service to their Lord. I was able to stop the Baron and destroy it, but it hadn’t come easily and the price for doing so was high.

Since then things in Las Vegas had been quiet where the Outer are concerned. I’d started to relax when I’d had one of my dreams, or visions, and I knew that something big was coming again if we didn’t find a way to stop it.

When I have one of my dreams, I see strange glimpses of what the Outers are doing. We don’t know yet if they are limited by how close the Outer activity is to me. So far as I can tell, they are always about some sort of activity that I can have an effect on. I’d been having these dreams my whole life before I had realized exactly what it was that I was seeing in my dreams. Now I take them very seriously, I know what happens when I ignore them.

They are different than most people’s dreams. I don’t forget them when I wake up, I can’t. They stay with me, sometimes changing in little ways, until whatever it is that the Outers were planning, or doing, is finished one way or another. Then they fade just like any other dream. I’d been awake for nearly an hour, but I could still remember the newest dream in perfect detail.

I can see nothing but darkness, and I feel that I am surrounded by dirt, stones, and various plant roots. It’s not a tunnel, but rather it pushes down on me as though I am buried. I don’t feel of fear or panic, it is more a sense of excited urgency to escape. I can tell that I am naked. I can feel things crawling across my naked flesh. Long, thin, slime coated bodies leave lingering sensations of cold wetness behind in their wake. This too doesn’t cause me any concern. I can’t move, I can’t breathe, and I can’t hear anything. It doesn’t matter, maybe it should?

I’m looking down at a hole in the concrete floor illuminated by long Florissant overhead lights. It is filled with freshly turned soil, and I feel accomplished as I take in the sights around me. There are others in the room I stand in, but their faces are covered in crimson mud. They speak words to me that sound hollow and far away. A low hum or rumble in the background further distorts their words into senseless noise. I feel something warm and wet ooze down the side of my head and over my left ear. I pull my hand through my hair and find it stained with a red so deep it looks nearly black in the harsh lighting. Stained all the way to my elbow, to my shoulder, and further. I scream in exaltation.

I’m back in the ground again, with the wriggling things, and I feel something tugging at my toes…my fingers. It doesn’t hurt, but I can feel pieces of me disappear, like the lights being turned out in a building. The wriggling things are everywhere now, they cover me, and I can feel them growing as I shrink away. I am nothing but food, and I revel in it.

I had woken up alone in my apartment, lying on the floor of my bedroom next to my bed. I must have rolled off the mattress and not woken up when I hit the ground. It had been an awful nightmare, and I knew something was happening so I quickly gave Don a call.

Donald Shooter was once my handler when I had first joined the Knights. He’d been the one to make me a Knight’s Bachelor, or squire, and had taken responsibility for my training and my life during those early years. He’d also been the one to keep the rest of the order from killing me when they finally learned what I could do. Don is a friend, the greatest kind of friend you can have. When he answered the phone, I told him that I’d had a dream and he had me drive to his place to meet him.

Don lives above the bar he owns called The Shooting Gallery, and he was waiting behind the bar with an empty shot glass and a cold bottle of beer when I arrived. It was still early in the morning, so I’d grabbed the beer and he put the glass back on its shelf. He made me tell him everything while he wrote it all in a journal he’s been keeping since the first time he found out about my dreams. I’ve kept my own journal too, a dream journal I mostly keep out of habit from when I’d been seeing a therapist as a child.

We’ve been finding patterns in my dreams. Information that would help us figure out what to do, but it usually only came through in the way of most dreams…fucking weird.

After that, we’d both hit different sources for information to try and figure out what it all meant. Don hit the underground scene mainly. Owning a bar that caters, mostly, to societies ‘undesirables’ can make you some interesting friends.

I spent my time reaching out to some of my friends and contacts for anything strange happening around the city. As a photographer I had some connections with a local paper and the police department have me on file as an information source. My street photography has something to do with that, but mostly it’s my past that keeps the police interested.

I haven’t always been the most upstanding of citizen. The word terrorist has been thrown my way a few times, not really like you hear about now though. After I left that life, I became a freelance war photographer for a while, and I’ve seen my share of atrocities.

None of my sources panned out, nothing weirder than normal had been reported to the police, it is Vegas after all. My contacts in the news didn’t have anything for me either, and I had been contemplating reaching out to some contacts from my old life, when Don got in touch with me.

Don had eventually learned from a local dealer, who specialized in high end pharmaceuticals, that some people had been buying up a lot of his product lately. They weren’t regulars, and he had initially been worried about them being cops. He’d eventually learned that they weren’t, they were mostly business men, or people in the local gambling scene, and he hadn’t thought anything more about it. But the amount of product they’d bought wasn’t something that he was going to forget any time soon.

They’d had him deliver it to a small storage unit outside of the city on the way towards Hoover Dam. That night, Don and I had gone to check the place out and after a quick look around, Don had found records of the renters for each unit.

Don made it very clear that he did not break into the businesses filing cabinets to find the records. They had, in fact, been lying out in plain sight when he’d opened the, miraculously, unlocked door to the manager’s office.

There had been one renter who was currently taking up several of the available storage units and after we’d poked around those units we’d found several empty dirt stained barrels, and some water damaged cardboard boxes. Whatever had been in the boxes had stained them red when they had gotten wet. We knew we were in the right place. The dreams are like that.

After that we had gotten lucky. While we were still there, someone had pulled into the unit’s parking lot. We’d watched as the man went into another of the units that was owned under the same renter’s name, and pulled out another of the cardboard boxes.

When the guy left, we raced back to Don’s SUV and pulled out after him. A little tailing and several minutes later the man’s truck veered off the road takin a service road toward the Hoover Dam. We’d followed, lights off and a good distance back, until we came to the end of the road and found the man’s truck along with several other vehicles.

Don and I armed up, and snuck into the service entrance closest to the vehicles. The door latch had duct tape over the frame to prevent the automatic locking system from engaging. The normal grey surface of the tape had worn down from heavy use, and looking at it more closely I could see several older pieces of tape underneath the outer most layer.

When we’d entered the building, we were immediately forced to choose which way to go as the door opened into a hallway that led in both directions. We had been about to split up when Don noticed a trail of red drop stains on the concrete floor leading to the right.

As we made our way down the hallway, we did very little to hide any noise we made. The place was loud. A constant heavy droning sound filled the space, killing any small sounds we made before they traveled very far from us. Due to this, we’d moved quickly down the hallway. There was very little in the way of cover to block anyone from seeing our approach if they were looking. Any the doors that dotted the hall were rare and all were locked when we tested them. Working on the assumption that the exterior door’s lock prevention would be the same for interior doors as well, we quickly moved past each of these doors.

Eventually, the hall widened from a basic concrete hallway into a more open area. Over the noise around us, we were just barely able to make out the sound of voices. The area where the voices were coming from was directly in front of us in a large open space filled with huge concrete pillars and with a floor sloping slightly downward.

Don and I had been able to creep close enough to see what the group was doing and found them surrounding a large hole that had been smashed out of the concrete floor. We watched as the man we’d followed from the storage units handed the small box over to another man very carefully, and then quickly backed away.

We had been about to draw our weapons and ambush the group when I heard something slap down to the floor behind us. Whatever it was must have been hiding among the pipes overhead and out of sight.

I’d turned to look at the source of the noice, and found myself looking at something that I can only describe as an eyeless, fur covered leach, with legs…a lot of legs. It was easily the size of a Great Dane and was covered in stiff bristled fur the color of the grey concrete around us. In the moment it took me to come out of my shock at seeing, whatever it was, the thing let out a whistling scream that seemed to come from two places at once. Then with a weird undulating motion, it threw itself right at my face. Its sucker like mouth seemed to swell to twice its previous size and fold back on itself as it flew through the air. Hundreds of worm thin tendrils, each about a foot long, shot out ahead of its lurching body.

As it flew through the air, I got my left hand up in time to grab hold of a fist full of the wriggling tendrils and pulled straight down…hard. Whatever kind of Outer it was, weighed far less than its size would suggest, and I overbalanced as I easily turned the creature’s forward momentum into bone crushing force as I smashed its sucker face into the concrete floor. Its back end snapped forward over my nearly supine body and I noticed that the end that had been facing me was almost exactly mirrored on the other back end. The difference between them was that the sucker mouth on the back end was lined with what looked like serrated shark teeth instead of writhing tendrils. Really big, serrated shark teeth.

I was still holding onto my fistful of wriggling tendrils when the back end whipped over me, and both mouths elicited a gurgling cry of pain as I began to drain power from it. That’s my gift, or curse, however you want to see it. Just by touching an Outer, I can drain the power from it the same way that cobalt can.

I twisted the fingers of my left hand to tangle in the mass of tendrils, and jerked up with my right to grab the other end of the thing just behind its other mouth. The coarse fur of its body felt as hard as iron, and dozens of the hair fine needles pierced my skin. I held on despite the pain, and gripping tightly with both hands I stood up and lifted the thing above my head.

“Don!” I cried out “Help!”

Don had taken cover behind a pillar, drawn a 9mm, and had begun firing into the group of worshippers as soon as he had seen me grab the Outer. At my call, he made a quick spinning sidestep toward me drawing a long, silver knife from a sheath at his lower back.

His spin took him away from his cover position and just close enough to me to reach out and glide the razor edge of that knife along the length of the Outer’s body. With one more rotation, he was back behind his cover position, knife back in its sheath, and sending silver flashes streaking from his gun towards the remaining cult members again.

As his knife passed through the creature, it split open like an uncooked sausage and brownish red fluid began to ooze from it. While it did, the creature convulsed in my hands like an eel, my right hand screamed in agony as more, and more of the fur needles pierced my flesh.

I let go with my right hand and, with a cry of pain-fueled rage, swung the thing out with my left hand as hard and I could, smashing it into another nearby concrete column. The force of the impact was so great that the mass of tendrils I had been holding on to ripped free from the creature with a little pop and the creature actually stuck to the wall. More gore exploded from the thing, covering the pillar in the Outer’s stinking fluids.

***

The death of the beast fills me with power. The savage energy that courses through my guts tears me out of my reverie over the last few days, and I turn to face the remaining cultists. Several of them are down already, bullet holes leaking blood onto the grey concrete floor. The remaining men and women take various positions of cover around the room, and they are armed and returning fire, which I’d hardly registered during my battle with the Outer Beast.

“Get behind me,” I yell to Don as I lunge past him.

As I do so, I stretch out my hand, and feel the terrible energy that has pooled in my midsection twist and writhe within me like a living thing. The pile of broken concrete shards that were left over from the hole the cultists had dug fly through the air and hang suspended off the ground creating a fractured wall barely two feet in front of me. As I stride forward, Don right on my heels, bullets from the cultists begin pounding into my improvised shield. Bits of concrete chips and puffs of dust fly every which way as the cultists unload in our direction. As pieces of the concrete break down, I use more power to fill the gaps with new pieces.

The energy I had collected from the Outer twists and turns inside me like a scared animal as it slowly drains away while I hold the shield in place.

The gunfire sputters to a stop. Men and women begin cursing while they fumble to reload. I look to my right as a man cries in a high-pitched wail, “Lord Iiderios” before charging out from behind cover. He holds his handgun by the barrel making it into a rude club, and fanatic devotion replaces the fear he should be feeling.

A shot tears its way out of Don’s gun bare inches from my ear, and a crimson mist of blood fills the air as the back of the man’s head explodes under the force of the killing blow. The initial shot is quickly followed by two more to the chest as Don ends the man’s life in the perfect rhythm of a trained killer. Mozart couldn’t have played a better cadence.

As members of the cult begin reloading their weapons, I send the remaining shards of my improvised shield shrieking out from me in a semi-circle. The power within me tears at my insides with jagged claws as I use yet more of the stolen energy.

Thuds of painful impact are followed by grunts and cries as hundreds of pounds of shattered concrete smash into the cultists with the speed of major league fastballs. After the barrage, few of the cultists remain conscious and none are willing to put up any sort of fight.

As the remaining cult members surrender, Don pulls out a bundle of zip ties and begins to secure the survivors. I pull out my phone and call our commander.

“Yes,” a woman’s voice slides through the phone. Her polished Oxford accent clearly recognizable even over the drone of the magnificent Dam around us.

“Natalia,” I say with exaggerated care, “it’s Sebastian.”

“I know.” She replies.

“Don and I are down at the Hoover Dam. We’ve just cleared a group of Iiderios’ cultists and we need them rounded up.”

There’s a moment of stunned silence before she replies that a team will arrive in less than an hour.

I give her the directions to the small service road before hanging up the phone.

As Don continues to secure the survivors with no resistance, I look down into the pit.

It’s deeper than I would have imagined, and I can see rich soil inside. The hole is wide enough for a man to lie down in it, and as I lean in closer, I can see that something is making the dirt move. As I watch, hundreds of similar, tiny, versions of the Outer we had killed boil to the surface only to sink back down again. The roiling motion of the dirt reveals the mostly consumed corpse of a man before the dirt flows over him again. The damage to the corpse is so severe, that I am unable to determine even what age the man had been, though the body is too large to be that of a child. Thank God.

With an effort of will, I tear the last writhing bit of energy from within me and sacrifice it to light the air on fire. A flash of intense heat scorches my face as a boom of blue flames fills the hole. Sudden thick wet smoke chokes the air with a putrid smell so foul that I vomit into the pit. When the smoke clears enough for me to see again, the hole opens before me and it is nearly emptied of dirt from the resulting explosion. The charred remains of the tiny Outers can be seen littering the floor.

“Looks like cleanup will take a little longer for the crew today” Don says.

“Yeah” I reply dryly, “it feels like the cleanup never ends.”

An Outerlords Chronicle story

(click)

Project Notes. Notes and interviews will be taken via voice recorder for future editing. All raw information will be turned in along with the finished project for grading. Any breaks in the recording will be done only upon request by the interviewee or at the conclusion of each night.

(click)

Start date 2/16/2012. Recorded interviews will be with local pub owner Don Schuter. The recordings are to be edited and used for my senior journalism project. Don was suggested to me by an acquaintance. He is supposed to have quite the story to tell.

(click)

Personal note, dated 4/2/2012. Don has been reluctant to talk about his past, and several nights have been spent recording conversations and buying cheap booze. The recordings taken on these nights were useless and, subsequently, will not be included in the final draft. Though Don has never expressed any wish to keep what he tells me private, he has been very good at avoiding my questions. I think he’s done this before.

(click)

Personal note, dated 4/3/2012. I didn’t come home last night. Don finally told me his story. I guess I was persistent enough. All I asked him was, “Can you tell me your story?” Holy shit did he tell me a story. I don’t even know what to think. What if he’s telling the truth? God, I hope he’s lying.

(click)

Personal note, dated 4/14/2012. It’s true…all of it… This will be my last notation regarding my interview with Don Schuter. I dropped out of school yesterday. My professors don’t understand, how could they? They’re just like I was, ignorant. They aren’t ready for it, they might never be. I’ve attached the recording of that night’s interview. It hasn’t been edited. If you want to know the truth, this is a good place to start. If you choose to go down this path, be ready for it. Be more careful than I was.

(click)

It’s the morning of Monday, April second 2012, and tonight I will be interviewing the owner of the Schuting Gallery, a local pub that lies just off North 6th street right next to the on ramp to interstate 515. It’s located on a small turn around that had once been used for nothing but bad parking until Don purchased a piece of the lot from the city to build his pub on. The pub is everything you would expect to find in any city in the Midwest, but seems out of place in Vegas. Beer signs and local band posters cover the faded paint on the walls and an old jukebox fills the small place with tunes from most of those same bands. The place looks and feels faded, except for the old oak bar, which Don keeps clean, clear, and polished to shine in the dim lights of the room.

When you enter the Schuting Gallery, you’ll probably see Don behind the bar most nights in the low hanging haze of not-just cigarette smoke. He’s a good looking guy. A white male in his mid-thirty’s, Don is a bit rough around the edges. His blond hair and beard are kept short, which makes him look military, and the way he keeps his patrons in line shows that it’s likely true. The place is filled most nights with locals, and the ones that frequent the Schuting Gallery are the ones that keep tourists away.

Don Schuter has lived in Las Vegas since 2003. From what I’ve been able to learn from other sources, he’s single and has no kids. Maybe I can confirm that with him tonight. He doesn’t talk about himself much, mostly he talks to regulars about their days or is filling drinks. It’s been difficult to get a chance to sit with Don for any length of time. When we do, he often needs to get up to grab a drink for someone. I’ve noticed that he’s also good at distracting me with questions about myself before I can even begin to ask him anything. Tonight is a Monday though, so maybe it will be slow enough to get some good answers out of him.

(click)

Today I am with Don Schuter in his pub the Schuting Gallery, and he has graciously closed his pub for the night to allow me to interview him un-interrupted.

So Don, can you tell me your story?

Sure kid, no problem. I wasn’t expecting much for business tonight anyway. Do you want a drink or anything? I’m gonna grab one if you don’t mind.

Yeah, Bud light if you have it.

I asked if you wanted a drink kid. If you wanted water you could have just said so.

***

I’ll get one thing straight right away, you don’t know me. You might think you do by how I look or how I talk, but trust me kid when I tell you, you don’t know shit.

My father gave me three things before he left. A first, middle and last name. I kept two of them. The IRS and DMV know what my middle name is, but I’m not going to tell you. Let’s just say the old man had an asshole’s sense of humor when I was born.

I’m originally from Wisconsin of all places, Milwaukee to be precise, and I spent the better part of nineteen years learning how to survive against the worst that place has to offer. Crime, poverty, bad driving, and worse housing. I’d seen it all and came out the other end just fine. I even loved someone once. Until that changed too.

Now, you probably heard some rumor going around about some of the crazy shit I say when I’m drunk, and wanted to find out about it yourself. Well kid, today’s the day that I’m actually going to tell you, and we’ll see how lucky you feel afterward.

I’ll give it to you straight, you don’t know what the world is really like either. Oh, you probably think you do. You have it all figured out. You, maybe, watched ol’ Billy Nye as a kid and graduated High School so now everything makes sense.

The world has order to it. As a kid you were taught that your greatest goal in life would be fulfilled when you found that order. You have experts and “proof,” graphs of all shapes and sizes, which answer every question you’ve ever been taught to ask. If your experts say something isn’t true, well, who are you to question them…right?

Well here’s what I know. Your experts may be smart, hell, I know they’re smarter than I am. They know a lot about this world, but they haven’t got a clue about what’s really going on.

I’ll ask you this, it’s the best test I know of to gauge if you’ve got a clue as to what I’m talking about.

Have you ever heard of the Outers?

No.

I didn’t think so.

Let’s try this instead. Have you heard of vampires? Werewolves? Dragons? The Bogeyman? Of course you have, everyone has one way or another. So in a way, you know a little bit about the Outers, just not what I’m going to tell you about them.

To understand my story, you’ll need to try accepting that all of this supernatural stuff; ancient monsters, local legends, a lot of the old gods, even some fictional story characters, all have their origins as Outers.

Hey kid, I know what it sounds like, hell, I’ve been right where you are once. Even rolled my eyes just like you are now, but remember…you found me, you asked to hear this. Let me finish my story and then we’ll see what you think. Ok?

I’m getting ahead of myself though. You wanted my story. That was your question at the start of this whole thing. So, I’ll tell you some of the highlights. I’ll be completely honest with you and I’m not going to try and sugar coat it, my life’s fucked up, but there were some good parts too.

My mom and I moved to Sherman Park when in 1985 when I was about six years old. It sounds nice, but the name lies to you. It’s not a good part of Milwaukee, and as one of the few white kids in the area, I had to learn fast how to avoid getting beat up, or worse.

If you walk anywhere in the area the first thing you’re going to notice is that every house is built to be its own privately-owned fortress. Barred windows and doors keep anything larger than a squirrel from trying to get in. Constantly drawn drapes prevent others from looking to see if you have anything worth stealing. I’ve even seen places with thick wood or metal shutters built in to help keep stray bullets from flying through the windows at night.

My house was just like that. It was a tiny two-bedroom stucco place my Mom was able to afford by working three jobs. The security door and windows looked awkward on the poor little place. Like a skinny teenager wearing a tux for the first time. Acceptable, but a little pathetic. The previous owners had decided that painting it bright green was the best way to make it stand out in the neighborhood, and they were right about that. Even after the paint had faded to an oily puke color, it was hard to miss.

We were sandwiched between two monolithic old Victorians who’d watched their prime die before their metaphorical eyes. One was vacant, and would have made a wonderful place to explore as a kid if it wasn’t regularly used as a flophouse for people to sleep off their latest fix. The other housed an elderly black couple who had bought it back when Sherman Park was going to be something special. Their last name was Anderson or Jefferson…something like that. They were good people to have as neighbors, and they and my Mom got along well enough.

Our place didn’t have what people think of as a yard. The city had bought the back half of the lot before it was ours and used it to house a cluster of city dumpsters for the surrounding neighborhood. I can remember as a child thinking that nothing could be as awful as being woken up at 5:30 A.M. by the city garbage truck slamming empty dumpsters back into their concrete corral. I’ve since learned that isn’t true, there are worse things…just not many.

The lack of yard space didn’t affect me much growing up though, because we lived pretty close to the park that the neighborhood was named after.

The price of the house, and the green space of Sherman Park were the main reasons why my Mom had chosen that house when she bought it. The park itself is gorgeous, or at least it was when I lived there. A baseball diamond and basketball courts provided outlets for the kids of the area, and plenty of groomed grass and tall old trees provided relief from the hottest of summer days.

At night, however, the park transformed into something different. Something cold and terrifying. I learned early on that as soon as the streetlights started to come on, it was time to get home. Nobody had cell phones back in those days, so I’m sure I worried my Mom sick when I came home later than planned.

I had few friends growing up. As the scrawny white kid in the neighborhood, most of the others in the area wanted nothing to do with me, and several had worse ideas in mind for me than that. There were a couple of kids, however, that I became very close with.

Aisha and Dreyvon King were twins my age. We’d met at the park when we were around seven or eight. I don’t remember it exactly, but my Mom told me that I first met the twins when another kid had tried to steal my favorite action figure. She’d heard me start yelling and rushed over to see what was happening. By the time she got there, Aisha was helping me stand and handing me back my toy while Dreyvon, his hands clenched into fists at his sides, stood between me and the boy who’d knocked me down. The other boy ran off when my Mom got there, and the twins told her what happened. After that, the three of us were nearly inseparable.

The twins were fraternal I later found out when I could understand the word, and they lived in an apartment building a few blocks from my house. It was a three-bedroom apartment in a building that had seen a lot of better days come and go, and was prepared to see more of the same treatment. The Kings did what they could though to keep their kids as comfortable as possible.

Their parent’s names were Warren and Suni, and they insisted that I never call them Mr. or Mrs. anything. They were in their mid-thirties, around my age now come to think of it, and they had one of those relationships that you could mortar walls with.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen two people as in love with each other as Warren and Suni.

Warren worked for the city, doing road construction. He was a huge man, just a few inches shy of seven feet and his job kept layers of hard-earned muscle on his frame. Suni on the other hand was just a bitty little thing, but when she walked into a room, people turned their eyes toward her rather than her husband. She worked part time at one of the local bank branches, and part time giving haircuts to people in the area. They were both well-known and respected, Warren often coached kid’s basketball at the park, while Suni was very active in the community.

The respect the Kings had earned in the neighborhood was extended to the twins as they got older. As one of their closest friends, I also enjoyed a measure of that incidental respect, and it helped see me through some particularly rough experiences. Being a friend of the Kings was almost as good as walking around with a bulletproof vest on.

I can remember a time when I was about fifteen or so, when a group of guys followed the three of us back to the twin’s apartment after a long day at the park. It was later than usual for us to be getting home. Aisha had been talking to an older boy that she liked, while Dre and I shot some more hoops.

Dre was the first to notice something was wrong, and I watched him take on a dark, hard look in his eyes I didn’t recognize. A moment later, I too noticed what he was reacting to. Dre had had seen what we had all missed, that the street lights had come on without us noticing and the lengthening shadows had begun to make the park feel sinister.

We’d quickly gathered up Dre’s ball, and our remaining full cans of Coke, and hurried over to where Aisha was still talking to that boy. As I said he was an older kid, maybe seventeen or so and his attention was completely on Aisha so he hadn’t noticed Dre and I approaching until Dre was grabbing her hand and telling her it was time to leave.

Now, you couldn’t really blame the guy for being distracted and not noticing our approach. Aisha was a very pretty girl for her age. She was tall, obviously taking after her father, but luckily that was where her resemblance to him ended. She took after her mother the most which, even then, included an incredible combination of enticing curves, full lips quick with a smile, dark walnut skin, and a bright personality that could drive clouds away.

Aisha started to protest when Dre grabbed her, but had stopped mid-way through her first word when she noticed how dark it had gotten. She then said goodbye to the boy and gave him a quick kiss, which left Dre and I staring blankly for a moment, before gathering her things.

As we left the park that night, we were immediately aware that we had picked up some un-wanted attention. Four figures had started following us the moment we left the older boy and his friends behind.

Dre set a quicker than normal pace that evening. Even so, just before we reached the twin’s apartment the four figures caught up to us. They stopped us on a section of sidewalk where the streetlights didn’t touch. Warren had been sending letters in, requesting that the city repair the lights, but as usual nothing had been done about it.

They were older than us, most likely in their early twenties, and they made sure to surround us as soon as they could. I’ll never forget what happened, and what they said to us that night.

The first one to talk was the largest of the group, which isn’t that surprising in situations like those. Even though they all had years on us, the speaker still wasn’t as tall as Dre was. Dre had hit a major growth spurt when we were thirteen or fourteen and he was nearly as tall as his Dad. His height tended to make him look gawky rather than fierce but in the dim light, and with my nerves on edge, he just looked like he was about to kick someone’s ass.

“Hey kids,” the guy had said trying to sound cool. “Where you going?”

“Home,” was all that Dre said back to him.

“Really,” the guy said with a little chuckle in his voice. “Maybe we’ll walk you there. It’s not really safe on these streets at night.”

“We’re fine,” Dre had said. “We’re almost there and our folks are expecting us.”

“Really?” Another one of the guys asked, a bit too much interest in his voice. “Maybe we could crash there for the night. Like Damian said, these streets ain’t that safe when it’s dark out.”

He must have been the funny one in the group, because they all started laughing at the implications.

“Ha, yeah,” another one had too eagerly chimed in, his voice high and nasally. “I don’t know about you guys,” indicating his group, “but I’m really thirsty too. I’m sure you’ve got something at your place that could help with that, right?”

More laughter came from the group and I remember starting to feel more worried than I ever had when I was with the twins.

“Come on,” Damian, the head asshole, said in a mocking tone. “It’ll be fun.”

He was openly leering at Aisha, who was clearly trying to melt into Dre’s looming shadow, and just as clearly failing at it.

I guess, I don’t really know what possessed me to do what I did. Maybe I was trying to be a smart ass; it wouldn’t have been the first time my actions had gotten me into deeper shit. Maybe I was trying to get their attention off of Aisha who was clearly scared.

I don’t remember much of what I screamed at Damian when I charged him. I assume there were a lot of “fuckers” and “assholes” thrown in for flavor, I was at that age. I do remember though, exactly what I did, clear as day. Almost as if it were burned into my soul when I did it.

I took a quick couple of steps around Dre and swung the bag, with the remaining cans of Coke in it, straight at Damian’s balls. It connected at an awkward angle, but even so, Damian doubled over with a squeal of pain-filled terror. I screamed something like, “Still thirsty Bitch,” my voice likely breaking at that moment due to the tension and my age, and swung the bag again hitting him in the ribs with a meaty thud.

I remember feeling overwhelmed with elation and pride at what I had done. I’d done it…me. I’d kicked that guy’s ass. Saved my friends, and myself. I’d even come up with an awesome one-liner on the spot. Hell, the neighborhood would be talking about this for weeks, months even. I’d finally be cool shit at my school. Nobody would fuck with me anymore. Maybe, somebody would want to make a movie about it one day. Yeah, then I’d be famous, and rich, and everyone would ask me to take care of things, like Warren.

All of that flashed through my thoughts, as I stood triumphant over the monster I’d just stopped.

I turned back to look at Dre, the plastic bag leaking with the wet contents of the burst cans of Coke inside, and my smiling face met the fist of the guy I had thought of as the funny one. My legs turned to jelly when he hit me and I fell sideways with the blow onto the bag of sodas I had been holding, pinning it beneath me and feeling the contents dig painfully into my ribs, warm liquid beginning to soak slowly into my shirt.

I’d barely gotten my eyes focused when a shoe, approximately the size of Texas, slammed into me just below my rib cage. The kick blasted the air from my lungs, and I suddenly felt like one of those astronauts in the movies that try to breathe when their tanks run empty. Then there was the pain, oh God the pain. My guts felt like someone filled me with liquid fire. I probably threw up; you usually do after a hit like that.

Damian and I made an interesting matched set on the sidewalk, I suppose. Both of us curled up into a ball, whimpering and trying not to move, afraid the slightest twitch would make everything get worse.

Of the two of us though, Damian was the luckier one. He was left alone to manage his agony. Me, well, I got to entertain his funny friend who kept kicking me while I was down and gasping for air. It seemed like anywhere his foot could reach was fair game, my stomach, my back, face, arms. He even kicked me in the ass, and the whole time he kept laughing and asking me if I liked it.

I didn’t like it. Not even a little.

That is, until I looked up at him in time to watch a basketball, thrown by Dre, slam into the side of the funny guy’s head as he drew his foot back for another kick. His head snapped viciously to the side and I saw the guy’s eyes lose focus as he too dropped to the ground in a senseless heap.

Later, we would talk about how lucky that throw had been. If he’d missed, a lot of things about that night might have ended differently. As it happens though he didn’t miss, and I remember thinking the strangest thing at the time. I could see Dre, still extended from his throw, standing between the other two guys, who hadn’t moved, and Aisha.

He had a look on his face that I suddenly remembered seeing when I was eight and he’d fought off the other boy. It was an intense expression, a mixture of rage and fear, guilt and acceptance. It was the look I’ve since then seen on soldier’s faces when they gunned down civilians strapped with bombs that were charging their unit. The look a loving father has when he spanks his child for the first time, or that good doctor’s get when they realize it’s better off for their patient to die. That look of doing something they hate, out of love.

I remember looking at his young face, his brown eyes wide, his lips slightly parted. I could see his body trembling, and he was breathing the night air in gulps. Our gazes locked, and an intense feeling of intimate connection rose within me as I thought about how good he looked in that moment.

My mind did a quick stutter step…Wait. What? Then everything began to happen again too quickly to continue down that train of thought.

Nobody had watched the basketball after it had hit the funny guy in the head. It had sailed off, and landed in the street, bouncing several times. A car that had been driving down the street towards us suddenly slammed on its breaks to avoid hitting the bouncing ball. The squeal of tires on asphalt was deafening as it split the night air.

At the same time, Damian began to get to his feet, finally getting over the shot I’d given him. His eyes still held a measure of pain as he gingerly crawled to his hands and knees. When he finally got to his feet, he looked down at me and I could see murder in his eyes. My muddled thoughts latched onto that particular scene with strange fascination. I’d seen hatred before in the eyes of others as they looked at me, that wasn’t new, but I’d never seen anything like this. It was pure, undiluted, murderous intent, and it was directed towards me.

As Damian reached behind his back toward his belt line, I heard a car door open and a deep voice suddenly filled my heart with hope.

“Dre, Aisha! You were supposed to be home an hour ago. Where have you been?” The voice of Warren King yelling at his children was like sweet music to my ears.

I heard Damian curse under his breath and he stopped reaching for whatever it had been. Instead, he carefully stooped down to grab his funny friend from the ground as the guy’s eyes finally came back into focus. He gestured for the others to help him, and as they lifted the guy to his feet I heard Damian whisper to the others.

“Shit! That’s Warren King. Fuck, I didn’t know these were his kids. Let’s get out of here.” The group quickly took off down an ally and vanished into the shadows of the evening.

Still lying on my side, I watched Aisha dash over to her Dad and wrap her arms around him. I could see that she was crying, great wracking sobs of too many emotions all at once, into his chest as he looked a bit puzzled at what was going on.

Dre hurried over to me and knelt down to offer me his hand up. I remember that I wanted to tell him what a nice throw it had been; I wanted to act cool in front of him instead of lying on the ground. I even opened my mouth to say just that while he grabbed my outstretched hand and pulled me to my feet.

The pain of being hauled to my feet left me feeling dizzy and out of focus, however, and the compliment turned into a wheeze of pain. My stomach and side hurt so badly that I couldn’t stand up straight and remained hunched forward a bit. I looked up at Dre’s face after I got my breath and abruptly stopped what I was about to say for the second time, when I saw his face.

In the space of a heartbeat, I watched emotions fly across his face starting with happiness, a touch of confusion that then made a beeline for fear. I remember watching his lips move as if he were speaking to me, but I couldn’t seem to hear him. Everything seemed to be fuzzy and I couldn’t focus.

I don’t remember how I got back onto the ground, but I do remember looking up as Warren’s huge frame gathered in close to my aching side. Dre’s face was right next to mine and he looked like he was talking again.

His mouth looked interesting when he did that. I remember that his eyes looked really big, and brown, and worried, and they were focused on me. Aisha’s face hovered behind his, and she had her hand pressed to her mouth, a look of horror on her face. I couldn’t pay attention to her though, her brother was just so close to me.

The next thing I knew; Warren was carrying me to his car while Aisha held the door open. Dre got in the other side of the back seat and reached out to help guide me into the car. I was really cold for some reason, and Warren’s huge arms were warm and steady.

Then I remember feeling like I was moving really fast. I opened my eyes to see Dre looking down at me, I must have had my head in his lap from the angle. He was saying my name and he had one hand on my forehead and the other arm wrapped around my shoulders, steadying me.

Then I was being lifted out of the car again by Warren. He held me close against the bare skin of his stomach and chest, and I noticed that his shirt was tied around my midsection. It felt so warm there. Like I was at home, in my bed, with the blankets pulled up close to my chin. I closed my eyes and tried to wriggle a bit deeper into that feeling of warmth.

An Outerlords Chronicle Story

My vision is filled with the oddities of a normal life. I’m standing in a small kitchen next to the refrigerator. Dishes are piled in the sink, stinking and moldy. A small pot sits on top of the stove, the electric burner glowing an angry red beneath it. Whatever had been in the pot has long since burned away. The metal has blackened and heatwaves radiate from it distorting everything else around it. My gaze is pulled to pictures hanging on the refrigerator door. Photographs showing a family of four seated together in a booth with large plates of food, or huddled together outside of a theatre with the words “Cirque de Soleil” visible above them, are attached with an assortment of magnets. A small child’s drawing of a person is attached to the door, the picture stating in blocky unpracticed letters “I luv u momme.” A dry erase board tells me that the family needs to get eggs, sugar and toilet paper the next time they go out. Behind me I hear a sound like snarling coming through a long metal pipe. I turn my head to see what is making that awful noise, and when I do everything changes.

Everything goes black and screaming fills my ears, it’s coming from everywhere. I clamp my hands over my ears to try to drown out the screaming, but it doesn’t help. It’s so loud that I can feel it vibrating the ground beneath me and it is only then that I realize that I’m lying down. With that realization the noise abruptly stops and light pierces my vision like a thousand suns and I close my eyes plunging my vision into darkness again.

With the darkness, the screams return.

I slowly open my eyes again fearfully, but normal daylight greets me and I can see that I’m lying on a slight hill covered with grass. A bright blue sky stretches above me, here and there dotted by a lazy cloud drifting on a soft breeze. I sit up to look around and see that wildflowers surround me as far as I can see. My vision blurs with tears and I burst out laughing with joy at the beauty of it all. My laughter is answered by other voices behind me, and I turn my head to see a pair of young children playing in the grass not far down the hill upon which I sit. They’re the children from earlier, the children from the photos. Not far from them I can see their parents, and my joy and laughter die.

The man and woman are unrecognizable from their photos. They lay as though they had clutched each other in the end. Both have been savaged by something awful, strips of meat and skin ripped from them. Their bellies had been split open, and what organs remain are spread out around them staining the once pristine grass. Dark flies pour from the bodies in clouds as the children’s rough housing carries them into their dead parents. They don’t even seem to notice. The girl trips over the severed leg of her father and falls into a shallow pool of still wet blood. She gets back up, heedless of the gore now covering her hands and knees, and gives chase once again to her brother. Their laughter makes a mocking harmony to my wretched sobs as the world begins to fade to black.

With the darkness, the screams return…and I welcome them.

---------------------------------------------------------

My pillow is wet with tears when I wake up, and I find that I’d covered my ears with my hands as I’d slept. God dammit I hate these dreams, I think to myself as I throw off the sheet covering me, it too is damp from a cold sweat that still clings to my skin.

It’s been years since I first found out that the dreams that I’d been having my whole life were more than just something to ruin my sleep. In fact, they’re a connection to the activity of the Outers around me. I’m not sure how it works yet, but the Knights are looking into it.

The Knights…It’s still strange to think I’m one of them.

By the time I pulled myself out of bed, washed away the drying sweat with a hot shower and dressed, I’d already made up my mind to call Don about my dream. Don was my Exemplar when I first joined the Knights. He’d been my mentor, and now he’s my friend. I don’t think I’ll ever see myself as something other than his Squire, but he’s the only person in the organization that I can talk to about my dreams. He was the one who, early on, recognized that what I’d been experiencing was something to be used rather than feared. Most of the others had wanted to kill me as an Outer when they learned what I was inadvertently doing, but Don had seen past all that and helped me survive.

I looked at the clock and knew that it was too early to call him, so I decided to sit down and write out what I could remember from the dream. It’s what Don would ask me for anyway when I got ahold of him, and it seems to help me process what I see.

A while later after eating breakfast and jotting down what I could remember, I decided it would be best for me to just get on with my day. There was no point in waiting around for Don to wake up. He works the night shift at his bar and doesn’t usually get up until well into the afternoon. As I stepped out of my apartment, I nearly bumped into my neighbor from across the hall.

“Oh. Excuse me Mrs. Vega, I didn’t mean to startle you.”

Mrs. Vega is an 84 year old Mexican native who moved to America with her husband several decades ago. They’d decided to settle in Henderson just south of Las Vegas because her husband had gotten work at one of the casinos. Even now with her husband dead for the last six years, Mrs. Vega still rents the same two bedroom apartment she and her husband had occupied since the sixties.

“It is no problem Mr. Sebastian,” she says to me, her thick Spanish accent coloring her words, “I was just leaving.”

I noticed that she was having trouble closing her door because of a large box she was carrying. “May I help you with that?” I ask, indicating her full hands.

“Gracias,” she says and hands over the surprisingly light box. She locks her door and turns back to me for her box.

“It’s alright Mrs. Vega, I can carry this down for you. Are you heading to your car?”

“Yes I am. Thank you Mr. Sebastian,” and we start to walk towards the stairs leading down to the main floor.

“So,” I ask making conversation, “where are you heading on such a hot day?”

“I am taking some of Roberto’s things to the church. They always need more clothes, and he doesn’t anymore.” As she says it she fingers the small rosary that she keeps around her wrist. “My Roberto would want to help.”

“I’m sure he would,” I reply. “I’m sorry I never got to meet him.”

We’d had this same conversation several times since I had moved in across from her, and each time I could still see small tears well up in her eyes every time she talked about her late husband.

We made it downstairs, and stepped out into the heat of the day. Nevada isn’t the most hospitable place to live. The cities of Nevada thrive because of the marvels in technology and engineering that make it habitable. Even with these technologies, like air-conditioning and running water, the weather in a Nevada summer can drive even the most stalwart person back inside. Today was no different. Well over one hundred degrees and not a cloud in the sky, the heat was already beating down mercilessly.

After I put the box into Mrs. Vega’s trunk, I was helping her into her car when I noticed something that caused my heart to stop for a moment. Sitting on her passenger seat, peeking out from beneath her purse, I saw a flier for the Cirque de Soleil. I’ve been using my dreams for long enough to spot a sign when I see one.

“Mrs. Vega, could I follow you to your church to help you unload your box. It’s close to where I’m going anyway.”

“I could not ask you to do that Mr. Sebastian. You have done so much already.”

“Really, Mrs. Vega, it’s no problem,” I reply. “I really am heading that way, and I would be happy to help.”

“Oh, Mr. Sebstian I would love that. Gracias.”

“You’re very welcome Mrs. Vega. I’ll follow you.”

***************************************************************

A twenty-minute drive, turned into more than forty-five due to traffic and Mrs. Vega’s slower driving. By the time we pulled into the lot for St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Catholic Parish it was early afternoon.

The parking lot had only one other car in it, and after we parked I helped Mrs. Vega out of her car and grabbed the box. We went into the small church and found the Priest walking down the center aisle to greet us. He was a small man, but the way he held himself told of a quiet dignity. The small square of his white priest’s collar perfectly contrasted the deep black of his shirt and slacks.

“Padre,” Mrs. Vega said, “Yo quería traer un poco de las cosas de Roberto para donar.”

“Muchas gracias señora Vega. I know exactly what we can do with these.”

As they continued their conversation, I set the box on a pew, quietly excused myself, and started to make my way back to my car. As I got to the door, I caught a glimpse of a message board covered in notes and announcements of various sizes and colors. I turned my full attention to the board and scanned over the papers held in place with a variety of mismatched magnets. Announcements for the next week’s mass were placed alongside an advertisement of kittens for sale. A parishioner had left a sign-up sheet for volunteers for a local charity and a nearby apartment complex was advertising vacancies with several strips of contact info along the bottom already ripped off. Envelopes were held in place, open, crammed full of coupons, and several business cards were sporadically attached here and there.

As I studied the board, I heard faint footfalls behind me and turned to see the priest strolling up to me carrying the box. Behind him I noticed Mrs. Vega kneeling near the front of the church by rows of lit candles, head down and praying.

“Thank you for helping Mrs. Vega today, young man,” the priest said setting the box down. “It isn’t often these days you see such a quiet act of charity.” The man’s deep caramel skin perfectly matched the tone of his voice, and his accent added a light spice to his words.

“It wasn’t any trouble,” I told the man, “I was coming to this side of town anyway.”

“I am Father Fernando,” he said extending his now empty hand.

“Sebastian Rooks,” I replied shaking it.

“Tell me Sebastian, how do you know Mrs. Vega?” He asked, his tone pleasant.

“I’m her neighbor. We bumped into each other on our way out today.”

“Ah,” he replied.

“Say, Father,” I asked, “has there been anything strange going on around here lately?”

“How do you mean?” He replied.

“Oh, nothing specific. I just like to keep my eyes and ears open when I go to a new place. It’s part of my job, you might say.”

“Really?” He asked, interest plain in his voice. “What kind of work do you do?”

“I’m a photographer.” I said reaching into my pocket for several business cards. “Mostly I take pictures for events, or private photos, but you never know when something interesting might pop up. Sometimes I do a little side work for local newspapers.”

“That must be very interesting.” He said, absently taking the cards from my hand.

“It has its moments.” I replied turning my gaze back to the message board.

“Well, there is one thing about these apartments I’ve been noticing lately.” He said slowly as he moved to stand next to me.

I looked at the paper with several information tabs removed and gave the Father a quirked eyebrow.

“It’s their fifth flier this month.” He said in a flat tone.

That startled me a bit. Even in the poorer parts of the city, like this area, apartments shouldn’t be going through tenants that quickly.

“Is the place new?” I asked.

“No,” he replied. “We’ve worked with them for years. The church helped the owners fix their roof a few years ago, and since then our parishioners get a special rate if they move in.”

I reached out and tore a tab off the flier with the companies contact information on it, pocketing the small strip of paper.

“Thanks Father,” I said as I turned to leave. “Maybe I’ll give them a call.”

“Mr. Rooks, could you wait a moment?” The priest asked. As I turned back to him, he continued. “If you go to those apartments, could you do something for me?”

“Of course, Father” I replied.

“There is a family that lives there, in apartment 23, the Blaidd’s. They haven’t been to mass for a couple of weeks. Could you look in on them for me? I would just like to know that they’re ok.”

“Sure, Father, I can do that.”

“Thank you Mr. Rooks.” We shook hands and he turned, picked up the box of donated clothing, and walked into a small office.

“Well,” I said, talking to myself, “I guess it’s time to call Don.”

************************************************

Half an hour later I pull up to the Red Rock Apartments, and park across the street. While driving, I’d called Don but just as I had guessed he didn’t answer. I left him a message to call me back as soon as he could, and that I might need his help with something.

The Red Rock Apartments is a fairly typical structure. Light colored brick walls help keep the heat of the sun out, and the landscape outside is dotted with large red boulders. The building is only two stories tall, which makes it a fairly small complex, and on the wall facing the street a sign claiming “Rooms for Rent” hung limply in the oppressive heat of the day.

Getting out of my air-conditioned car is a true test of my commitment since the day had already reached nearly 110 degrees. Heat waves rise from the street, casting everything into a strange kind of picture. Like looking through an old window, or at the bed of a slow running stream. Just thinking about water makes my throat feel dry and my skin feel parched. Nobody else is outside as I quickly walk to the entrance of the building.

The first thing I notice, upon entering the building, is how hot it is inside. It feels almost as hot as it had outside. I quickly spot a set of stairs leading up, just off to my left, and hurry towards them not wanting to spend much time in the stifling heat of the hallway. Upstairs I see a small plaque indicating the direction I need to go to find apartment 23. Unfortunately for me I don’t find the right room until I’d gone to the end of the hall. It’s a strange location for a room. There isn’t a room across the hall, and between it and its closest neighbor, a utility closet sits locked. The heat up here is even worse than the lower level, and I’m dripping sweat when I knock on the door. After a few moments I knock again, a little harder, to make sure someone hears me. Damn it’s hot in here.

I’m about to knock again, when I hear faint footsteps coming from the other side of the door. There is the sound of a lock clicking, and then the door opens a few inches before reaching the end of a short chain and coming to a halt.

Through the small slot I can see a young boy, maybe nine or ten, staring out at me. He has big brown eyes that seem just a little too close together, a nose that seems a touch too small and his dark brown hair is cut into the familiar household staple of a bowl cut, albeit slightly crooked.

When he sees me, I see him flinch back and start to close the door. I’m not exactly a scary guy. I stand maybe a breath over six feet tall, and though my last couple years of training have hardened me, I’m not heavily muscled. The thing that is remarkable about me though is my face. It’s all sharp angles and planes made up of high cheek bones and a strong, square jawline. My light tan skin and large eye sockets seem to make my brilliant blue eyes shine.

“Hey, wait a second,” I say as I get my foot in the door to keep it from closing. “Are your parents home?” As soon as I ask it, I know just how creepy it sounds.

“No,” the boy says trying to push the door closed. “Go away.”

“Father Fernando sent me to check on your family.” I tell the boy as I put my hand in the small gap to help keep the door open. “My name’s Sebastian, what’s yours?” As I say my name, the boy looks up sharply at me and starts to adjust his hands for better leverage on the door.

Have you ever experienced one of those moments when so much is happening at the same time that it all seems to go in slow motion? Well, I had one of those.

As the boy begins to shift his hands on the door, I notice that behind him I can see another person in the room, a little girl of no more than six. She’s just standing there staring at me with hatred in her eyes. If you’ve never seen a small girl hate something, you’re lucky. In her hand she holds a small red cloth which she has stuck in her mouth. As the boy’s hand starts to move, I notice that the apartment is even hotter than it is in the hallway. It’s so hot in fact that my hand pressing against the door is starting to feel uncomfortable. Third, I catch a faint whiff of something foul smelling coming from the apartment. Then, right before the boys hand touches mine to push on the door, the air duct behind me begins to groan…and I know.

The boy’s hand touches mine, and everything speeds back up again. A sharp tingle races up my arm and down my back, causing my muscles to spasm, and settles into the familiar place in my stomach. At the same time the boy jerks his hand back and shrieks a pain filled cry clutching it to his chest. He hops back from the door and, with his weight gone, the force I was using to keep the door open easily rips the cheap chain from the wall. With the door standing open, I catch my first glimpse of the entire apartment. It opens up immediately to a small kitchen on my left attached to the living room in front of me. The kitchen is dominated by an island that seems too large for the space, and the top of the island is stained red, with small streams dried black running down the sides.

The boy in front of me still clutches the hand he touched me with, and he gives it a few shakes like someone would do if their hand were asleep. As he does this, he looks up at me with a seething rage and begins speaking to me with a strange voice. It sounds like more than one person speaking from the same mouth.

“Well, Knight,” he says with scorn dripping from every word. “I’d not expected to be found. How did you do it I wonder? Was it my progeny who gave itself away? It’s much too young I’m afraid, and the young cannot control themselves.”

I don’t answer the boy, but instead step into the apartment and close the door behind me. I know that going into this fight is a bad idea, I don’t have my equipment and my backup isn’t even awake yet, but I can’t let this thing go.

“Who’s Champion are you?” I ask the boy.

“I serve Outerlord Eideros, Knight. Are you afraid?”

“Afraid,” I scoff at the boy. “Obviously your boss hasn’t told you about the Baron he lost to me.”

“You weren’t alone then, Knight.”

“Neither was he,” I reply, and I make a quick lunge at the small child.

As I strike at the boy with an open hand, he lifts the hand I hadn’t touched earlier, and makes a strange twisted sign with his fingers. With my hand barely an inch from his face my palm slams up against something hard that I can’t see. With a tingling in my arm, I keep on the pressure and I see his eyes widen in alarm as my hand presses through whatever had been holding it back.

“How?” The boy quickly gets out before I seize his head in my hand. After that, the rest of his sentence breaks down into low agonized moaning.

Painful shocks, like surging electricity, race up my arm and down my back settling into the pit of my stomach. The power pools there and I can feel it slithering around inside me like a living thing. As I keep holding on, I begin to notice that there is something in the boy’s large brown eyes. Small worms begin to move around the sclera and then drop from his eyes like disgusting tears.

I’m so focused on what is happening in front of me, that I’m caught completely off guard when something hits me from the front and slams me back hard against the door. The boy and I crumple to the floor together and I see standing in the living room, still sucking on that small red cloth, the little girl staring hard at me. She raises her other hand towards me, and I can see in the corners of her eyes small black lines franticly wriggling.

I try to get quickly to my feet, but the heat in the room seems to pull the energy from me and I can’t do more than roll toward the kitchen before the carpet at the girl’s feet peels up into strips and begins to lash at me. I barely miss getting hit, and the linoleum floor where I had been lying splits with the force of the lashes.

By the time I look up from my roll the girl is nowhere to be seen. The carpet still whips at me, but I continue my roll and get behind the island in time to avoid getting bloodied by the lashing tendrils.

I stand up behind the island and extend my arm toward the mass of living carpet. With a thought, I imagine the carpet disintegrating. The power pooled in my stomach convulses painfully, and immediately I see millions of specks, like ants, appear covering the carpet. Within moments, the specks have ripped apart the carpet leaving nothing more than the bare wood floor beneath. I race through the living room and push open the door I see at the end of a short hallway.

Suddenly, a black cloud rises in front of me and I throw out the thought of an invisible wall between me and the cloud. I feel the energy in the pit of my stomach shrink further and then realize that the cloud isn’t another attack, it’s a mass of flies, kicked up from a pair of bodies by my sudden arrival. Amid the bodies and the flies, the little girl kneels staring blankly at the smaller of the bodies, still sucking on her red cloth.

I imagine the flies popping, and the energy within me claws at my insides. A shower of dead fly parts blankets everything in the room, and the little girl doesn’t stir in the slightest.

I move into the room and kneel down next to the child who doesn’t even blink. As I reach out to take her free hand, she jerks back slightly and suddenly looks at me. Her eyes are filled with writhing worms, like thin black lines, and I can barely see her pupils.

“What do I do now?” The girl asks, removing the cloth from her lips leaving them stained deeply red. Her voice sounds, strangely, like several voices at once. “My elder is dead.”

“You can go home,” I say to the girl that isn’t a girl.

“Really?” She asks. “How?”

“I can send you there.” The lie comes easily to my lips.

“That’s good.” She says and begins to lean against me.

I hold her in place as she screams and my whole body spasms as a new energy starts to pool in my stomach alongside what is left of the energy I stole from the boy. The new energy has a quality of uncertainty about it, as though it’s not sure what’s happening to it. Just before the spasms fade, I hear two things. The first is the sound of small pats hitting the floor, like heavy tears. The second is the girl’s voice, just the one now, whisper “Mommy.”

I slowly lay the now dead child next to her parents and go to get her brother from the living room. He’d been tossed by the mass of whips the creature inside the girl had created and he lay sprawled against the far wall across from the door. When I get to him I notice that miraculously the boy is alive, though unconscious. Perhaps because the creature inside him was old enough, it hadn’t killed the host body when it had invaded. Perhaps it was because the boy was older and stronger than his sister that he lived. Whatever the reason, I’m glad that someone survived.

I gather him into my arms and this time when I touch him nothing happens. When I get to the door of the apartment I turn to look back at what had been done. It’s obvious that something awful has happened here, so with a thought I set it all on fire. It burns so intensely and so quickly that the flames don’t have time to spread before I snuff them out with another thought. I turn then, with the boy in my arms, and carry him out to my car. The heat outside is a relief on my skin after the oppressive heat of the apartment, though it’s still hot enough to keep any prying eyes indoors. The boy fits snuggly into the back seat of Maxine, my Nissan Maxima that my daughter named, and as I drive away from the Red Rock Apartments, I weep.

Later that night I finally get ahold of Don and tell him everything that happened. He drives over to my place and trades a bottle of scotch for the boy. Don will take him to the other Knights in Las Vegas and get the boy taken care of from there. Don’s a great guy.

I hear on the news the next day about a freak fire that killed a family of four on the east side of Las Vegas, and later I go over to tell Father Fernando in person that the family mentioned on the news were the Blaidd’s.

Further investigation by the police turns up that tenants had been leaving the Red Rock Apartments because of faulty air-conditioning causing many to seek residence elsewhere. When the owners were asked about it, they stated that they had hired several repairmen to fix the issue, but none of them were ever able to find the problem. Since the fire, however, the problem seems to have resolved itself.

As for me, I nursed that bottle of scotch for a couple days before finally going to visit the graves of the family. Since the fire had destroyed their bodies, there hadn’t been anything to bury. The city did give the family a single headstone to recognize them though.

The girl’s name had been Emily.

It’s carved right next to her mother’s.

The too hot pizza boxes from Gianni’s burned my fingers as I quickly approached Autumn’s apartment building in SoHo. You would think that the burning sensation would almost be pleasant on the cold October night, but you would be wrong. It hurt, and I was constantly shifting my fingers to give them some relief.

The lights beneath each building showed me that the extensive grid of stilts was nearly deserted. Just me and a removal crew out later than normal. The lack of other people walking around wasn’t unexpected, but in a neighborhood that still housed thousands it was unnerving. Only the bags of trash, illegally tossed out of people’s windows, and the occasional tied off rusty bicycle too large to carry upstairs marred the concrete jungle of stilts around me.

As I got to the stairs that led up the exterior of Autumn’s building to the main entrance, the removal crew was wrapping the remains in a large plastic bag. I mentally gave it even odds as to whether they would just leave the body there with the trash bags, or if they would actually take it with them when they left.

I put them out of my mind as I climbed the stairs, and after pounding up the metal grated steps for three stories I rang the buzzer for her apartment building’s front door.

“Yeah,” came a male voice through the speaker. The sounds of several people talking in the background blurred the edges of his voice, but I recognized it.

“Hey Reefer, it’s Grant. Let me in.”

“Sure,”

A moment later a loud click clack came from the door and I carefully balanced the pizzas and opened the door with a hiss of releasing pressure. The elevator wasn’t far inside the main entrance. I hit the call button and waited for a few moments, still gingerly handling the pizza boxes, until it arrived. I got inside and clumsily kicked at the buttons because of my full hands and hit the four. Since Autumn’s place was on third, I sighed and made another kick hitting the right button this time.

I rode in silence, looking down through the metal grated floor as the elevator shaft stretched out further beneath me until the doors made a sharp ding and slid open.

My feet echoed off the smooth, not quite level, white tiled floor as I walked to Autumn’s apartment door. I gave the door a sharp double tap with the toe of my shoe, and a light hiss preceded its opening. Reefer swung the door open for me, and I strode past his skinny frame with confidence, holding the boxes above my head to the resounding cheers of my friends. I had finally arrived with the evening’s meal.

I was the last to arrive, and the small apartment was comfortably crowded. Reefer closed the door behind me with a resealing hiss and Jenn, playing group Mom as usual, went into the kitchen to grab plates out of the cabinet and a beer for me from the fridge.

An unfamiliar voice drew my attention over to the TV. “…tenth anniversary of the Collision today, thank you for watching. We will be right back with more commentary after these messages from our spons…” The newscaster’s voice was cut off as Dre hit mute on the TV and everyone started piling into the kitchen. I handed the boxes to Dre as he passed by and asked, “Where’s Autumn?”

“Her room. She should be...”

“’Ey Dre,” The blunted corners of Reefer’s thick Bronx accent interrupted the conversation, “you gonna stand around ‘oldin’ those, or we gonna eat ’em?”

“Fuck off Reef,” Dre responded in his genial mid-western tone, “I’m coming. Not all of us have your level of munchies.”

Reefer lowered his voice to a harsh whisper that everyone could hear. “Oh it’s not me man. I’m jus’ worryin’ about you. Rosa’s lookin’ ‘ungry enough to eat your dick off the next time she blows you. Oi, no pinchin’!” The last came out in a good humored little squeak.

A small caramel colored hand lowered from Reefer’s ear, it was all I could see of Rosa’s diminutive frame, and her smooth south-of-the-border accent shot back. “Poor gringo doesn’t realize.” Her voice dropping to smolder, she added, “Nobody could be hungry enough to finish that meal.” Everyone but Acid Mike laughed, with Reefer snorting his weird horse laugh the loudest.

It wasn’t unusual for Acid Mike to not join in the laughter. Rosa’s twin brother Miguel had dropped too much a couple years ago, so he doesn’t talk or do much anymore. We still love him though, and when Reefer started calling him Acid Mike, it stuck. We’re pretty sure Miguel likes the new name.

I felt a cold beer pressed into my hand and Jenn smiled, her cheeks adorably dimpled, up at me. She wiped at her brilliant blue eyes before giving me a quick hug. “Thanks for picking those up. I wish Gianni’s would still deliver this late.”

“It’s alright, Gianni is too smart to let his kids out on deliveries this close to the surge. And I’m just dumb enough to do it.” I replied with a quick smile and a quicker squeeze.

She moved off and put her arms around Reefer’s waist from behind. Hugging him tightly and kissing the back of his neck. Everyone agreed, especially Reefer, that Jenn was too good for him. Hell, she was too good for all of us.

“Hey Stranger, you just get here?”

I turned to find Autumn standing behind me. Her heavily mascaraed blue eyes were sparkling, and her hair, dyed to match her eyes, was pulled back into a long, intricate, weave that reminded me of crashing waves. I just stood there, watching as she took the beer from my hand and held it up to her lips, thick with black lipstick, and took a long slow pull from the bottle. The stud in her tongue clicked against the tip of the bottle as she, very deliberately, licked the remaining moisture off her upper lip. As she held the cold bottle in her hand, I could see the tips of her breasts begin to strain against the fabric of her old black Ramones t-shirt. She obviously wasn’t wearing a bra, and my pants suddenly felt too small.

“Hey Autumn,” I managed to croak after clearing my throat. “Yeah, uh, Gianni’s is on the counter.” I gasped a little laugh, “we better hurry if we want some, Reefer smells like he’ll eat it all if we don’t.”

“Yeah,” she giggled, keeping a firm hold on my beer and looking down at the curves of breasts, stomach, hips, and thighs that her clothing did little to hide, “I wish I could eat the way he does and stay skinny. It’s not fair at all.”

From the direction of the kitchen Reefer piped in, “I’d teach you ‘ow to get down to my weight, Tum, but then we couldn’t catch Grant starin’ at your tits…like now. Ow, ‘ey no smackin’!’”

I turned to see Reefer rubbing the back of his head as Rosa, smirking, passed behind him on her way back to the couch with a couple of slices on her plate. We all laughed, Reefer loudest of all, and Autumn and I joined our friends to see what was left to eat. Then we all gathered around the TV, crammed into what seating Autumn had or sprawled out on the floor.

Empty plastic plates and even more empty beer bottles covered most of the available surfaces. Reefer was on Jenn’s lap in an attempt at mocking Rosa and Dre. Autumn had given me her space on the La-Z-Boy. She’d said it was a thank you for saving dinner by getting her favorite pizza. She sat comfortably next to me on the floor, the way only girls seem able to do, and leaned over to rest her head in my lap.

“Thank you for tuning in as our coverage of the tenth anniversary of the Collision continues. Just ten years ago to the day a massive asteroid, later designated as Hades, crashed into the moon. During the subsequent year, astronomers theorize, the gravitational stresses of the Earth and Sun were too great for the weakened structure of the Moon to withstand. The resulting pieces, later named Luna, Ignio, and Yuèliàng, as well as the now orbiting remains of Hades and the cloud of smaller debris colloquially called moon-murk, changed life on Earth as we knew it. The subsequent record breaking earthquakes tore cities apart. Tsunamis smashed nearly every coastline for hundreds of miles, and once dormant volcanos covered entire areas in ashen darkness and fire. The resulting death toll was staggering. Now, after ten years of hardship, the massive undertaking of Reconstruction across the globe is well underway. Cities are being rebuilt and repopulated. With new safety measures in place, they are able to withstand our new weather patterns with greater success. Coastal cities, especially along the east coast, have seen massive changes to infrastructure that allow them to thrive once more. Humanity has seen the worst things imaginable come, and Humanism has done its best to replace worry with enlighten…”

The announcer’s voice was once again cut off as Reefer muted the TV. The responding jeers from the rest of us didn’t seem to faze him as he spoke.

“Fuck that guy! ’E’s just spewin’ a load of crap. Seriously?” he continued in a mocking copy of the announcer’s voice. “’Umanity ‘as seen the worst things come, an’ ’umanism ’as done its best. For Christ’s sake, they talked about the Tidal Unity whateva last hour, ‘A beautiful en’ for each person as they choose,’ an’ now this joker is talkin’ about the ‘umanism revival. Christ, nobody’s talkin’ about Ignio slowly spiralin’ closa. ‘Ell, I ‘eard it won’t be much longa before that fucka ‘its us, an’ then we’re really fucked.” He rolled off Jenn onto his feet. “It’s too much man. Fuck that guy!” he repeated and tossed the remote down, haphazardly knocking over several empty beer bottles. “Anyone else need anotha beer?”

Autumn shouted after him, “The Tidal Unity Movement, dumbass. How hard is that to remember?”

“I’ll take one,” called Dre.

“Yeah, those guys.” Reefer responded, his voice muffled with his face in the fridge. “I mean, what kinda nutjob follows a movement where you gotta off yourself?”

Looking after Reefer, Autumn responded with obvious and intense heat in her voice. “Nutjob? Fuck you Reefer.”

I saw Reefer peak his head back out of the fridge, confusion and several alterative substances evident in his face. “Woah, ’ey Tum, what was that for?”

“Tidal Unity isn’t a bunch of crazy people Reefer. It’s just a choice. A way out that everyone can take if they want to.”

Reefer stared blankly at Autumn for a moment before he began to chuckle. “Good one Tum. You ‘ad me goin’ for a second there.” Continuing to chuckle, he went back to rummaging in the fridge.

I could feel Autumn shaking, and I looked down to see a mix of rage and hurt in her eyes. Her voice took on the cold edge of a razor, and she clipped each word short as she responded. “I wasn’t joking Reefer.”

He must not have heard her, or else he might have thought better about his next words. “I mean, yeah, it’s their choice, but suicide is suicide. I’d ratha not spen’ eternity in ’ell. Shit!” The sound of breaking glass followed as several bottles hit the hard tiled floor.

Jenn sighed and got up to help, while Rosa went to comfort a startled Acid Mike and Dre went to the broom closet. “Don’t touch anything Jared.” Jenn said to Reefer, “We’ll sweep it up.”

“I’ll grab some towels.” Autumn said as she used my leg to help herself off the ground. “Can you help me Grant?”

“Sure.” Came my easy reply and she took my hand to help me stand. Her bathroom was through her bedroom, and I followed her.

Her bathroom didn’t have a door, so I instinctively closed the bedroom door behind me. When I turned around, Autumn had her head down and her shoulders were shaking. I could hear small sobs escaping from her as though she were trying to hide them. “Hey, whoa.” I said, coming up behind her to put a hand on her shoulder, then moving around and bending over to look at her face. “What’s up?”

“Reefer’s such an asshole.” She sobbed. “Not everyone wants to hear his dumb, pot-stained, brain spout off about his beliefs.” She leaned against me, and I hugged her trying to understand what was happening.

She continued. “Tidal Unity isn’t a bunch of crazy people killing themselves, you know. The Movement is important. I know it sounds strange, but it gives people hope. Like we have a choice. After this last decade, some people just want to know they can choose what happens to them. Even if that choice is to die.” She trailed off and I could feel her silently sobbing, her body tense, against my chest. I didn’t have any words so I just held her close, one hand stroking the intricate knots of her braided hair.

After a moment she seemed to calm a bit, and she sagged into the hug. With a finger, I lifted her chin to look into her eyes. Her mascara hadn’t run, but I could see tear lines in the foundation on her rounded cheeks. Her eyes were glittering again. This time with more tears instead of mischief. She stopped nibbling on her lower lip after a moment and then she said, in halting words, “What’s wrong with me?”

I immediately answered. “Nothing. Why?”

“I mean,” she continued, “we flirt all the time, but nothing happens. I know you’re into me, at least a little, tonight isn’t the first time I’ve felt you get hard.”

That was unexpected. “Wait. I…uh. What?”

“Seriously Grant. We’ve known each other a long time, and I’ve wanted to fuck you for a while now. Ever since that bitch Chrystal broke up with you. But, it’s like you’ve been in some shitty funk since then.”

“You want to fuck me?”

My words came out a bit strangled, and she flinched back. “I’m sorry I said anything. Here, let’s get those towels.” As she turned away, I reached out and grabbed her hand. It was warmer than I had expected, and there was a slight sheen of sweat on her palm. She turned, her eyes met mine, and we came together for a kiss we desperately wanted. We lingered in the kiss, feeling the heat between us grow. Soon the heat was all that mattered to either of us.

She flicked her Ramones t-shirt off, the curving nature of her stomach butted up against the swell of her breasts. Her nipples were large and hard and dark. Her soft skin was very smooth and very pale with no discernable tan lines.

I frantically began to tear at my own clothing. Nothing of her grace of movement was evident in my reactions. I was jerky, and clumsy, and had started to sweat. In my haste, each layer came off more slowly than I wanted.

She had undone my belt, and the weight of the leather strap pulled my khakis down to gather around my ankles. Then she did the most sensual thing I have ever experienced. She knelt down, careful not to touch me, and untied my shoes. The sight of her, half naked and on her knees hit my like a physical blow. I tripped over the tangle of my pants, and I ended up falling back onto the bed. I kicked off my shoes and the tangle of my pants, and then quickly undid the last of the buttons on my shirt flinging it aside. She stood up from her kneeling position and began to remove her leggings. They too bunched around her ankles, and we shared an exasperated laugh before they finally came free.

She slowly crawled up my body, leaving delicate lines of kisses from my thighs to my neck missing nothing. By the time she finally kissed my lips again, I was so hard that the pain of it was delicious. She was straddling me, and I felt her hand lightly tickle my stomach before she wrapped her hand around me and helped guide me into her.

What followed is difficult to put into words. I’ve never had sex like it before. It was great sex. Magnifacent sex. The kind of sex I’ll never forget. Sex that felt as though more than just our bodies connected. There’s too much to describe. The slick warmth of her as she closed around me. The frantic rhythm of our motions slowly synching to the same beat. The exquisite feel of her breasts in my hands. The taste of her on my tongue. The smell of our sex filling the room. The sounds of her harsh moans urging me slower or faster. I’m not sure how long it was before I felt her thighs tighten around my waist, and her arms lock around my neck. She finished before I did, the rippling motion of her climax driving me to my end. I prepared to pull out before I finished, remembering that I wasn’t wearing a condom, when she looked me in the eyes and rasped between harsh breaths. “No. Please. Stay with me.”

My God those words were sexy.

Sometime later we came to our senses, and the first thing we noticed was that the TV was back on…and it was very loud. We shared a soft laugh and Autumn crawled out of bed. She grabbed my button-up shirt off the floor and pulled it on as she headed to the bathroom. It was too small for her, and it exposed her front to the mirror. Something that I very much appreciated. She was perfect.

Not perfection, nothing as vulgar as that. But she was perfect for me. She was smiling, though I thought a bit sadly. She noticed me staring and wriggled in front of the mirror. I laughed, and growled, and made other appreciative noises.

“Talk about a tidal unity movement.” I said, quirking an eyebrow. She stopped wriggling, all at once, and I saw sadness enter into her eyes for the briefest moment.

“You,” she said, “are much better at using your mouth for sex than for words.”

“It’s a curse,” I replied.

She responded with a throaty laugh, and lay back down next to me. “I’m glad I could help discover your true talents.” Again, a hint of sadness appeared behind her eyes as she spoke, and there was a slight tremble to her voice.

“Hey, is everything ok?” I asked, rolling onto my side facing her.

“Yeah,” she said, “I’m just tired.” A bit of mischief crept into her voice. “Someone seems to have worn me out.”

We both laughed and she leaned up against me. She smelled of fresh soap, beer, and sex. A short time later, I heard her breath deepen into sleep, and I joined her.

I came awake when the surge hit. It was very loud, and the building shook slightly under the initial impact of the suddenly rising tide. It always reminded me of the wave pools I used to enjoy as a kid. Before the Collision. Before thoughts of those pools began to cause nightmares. The TV was off, and I could imagine everyone in the living room curled up in their sleeping bags. The one that Dre had brought for me would be empty, and the thought made me smile.

Why is it so loud? I thought.

I noticed Autumn wasn’t in bed. We had fallen asleep above the blankets, but I was now covered with a spare she kept in her closet. Even with it, I was shivering from the cold. Then I noticed that the door from her room out onto the balcony was wide open. That’s why it’s so loud.

I rolled out of bed, and searched for my clothes. I couldn’t find where Autumn had put my shirt, so I wrapped the spare blanket around me and went to look out on the balcony.

Autumn was there, and aside from my shirt, she was still naked.

“Hey Stranger.” I said as I closed the balcony door behind me. She made a startled jump and turned to look back at me.

“Oh. Grant. Hey.”

“Aren’t you cold out here?” I asked, opening up the blanket for her to share.

“What? Oh. No, I’m fine. I’m trying to get used to the cold.”

I gave her a skeptical look. “Why?”

Again, that look of sadness entered her eyes, but this time she didn’t hide it. “Grant?”

“Yeah?”

“What do you think of Tidal Unity?”

It took me a moment to understand what she was talking about. “I guess,” I replied hesitantly, “I’ve never really thought about it.”

“Oh.” She replied her eyes lowering as she turned to look back out at the incoming surge of tide. After a moment of silence she spoke again. “It seems worse lately, doesn’t it?”

“Maybe,” I responded. Then, trying to cheer up the mood with bad comedy, I said. “Although if Reefer ends up being right about Ignio, I think I’d have to kill myself.”

She didn’t share in my laughter, and I quickly quieted. “Hey,” I asked, taking a step closer and reaching out with a hand. “What’s wrong?”

Even though the balcony was small, Autumn found a way to take a step away from me. “Please, don’t.” The sound of her voice was nearly drown out as another surge of the tide slammed into the buildings massive stilts. Though she was hard to hear, the pain in her voice came through. She had large tears in her eyes, and she had turned her back to the balcony’s rail to look at me.

“Grant, I’m so sorry. I just wanted to know what it was like to be with you.”

I dropped my voice to something soothing. “It was amazing Autumn. You’re amazing.”

I watched as a bit of spray from the newest surge of the tide managed to make it up to Autumn’s balcony and splash onto her back. She quivered, and the motion which had, minutes ago, seemed so erotic was now troubling.

“The water’s cold.” She said in a whisper, barely loud enough for me to hear.

A spike of purest terror lanced through me as I had a thought. “Autumn,” my voice laced with the terror I was feeling. “Let’s go back inside.”

“I’ve made my choice, Grant.”

“But…” I started to say something, anything that would keep her where she was so that I could grab her.

“Please don’t hate me.” She tipped backward over the railing.

I rushed forward screaming and looked down to see her plummeting toward the rising ocean waves. I could still see her nakedness as she fell. My shirt around her shoulders a, too small, funeral shroud. I thought, just for a moment, that I could hear the snap of the shirt’s material in the wind. It sounded a lot like a shattered dream.

I met a woman I’ve known for

twelve years

and more to come? She glanced at

me perhaps.

I met the boy who stole that

woman?

He has a rough tongue

and rougher hands.

Hands that shape her face.

She told me to leave

his words in

her mouth

hateful, and scathing, and desperate, and

empty.

To stay denies her respect choice

makes me into him

a Catch 22

she’s only nineteen.

I need to get back.

I’m glad this challenge is so short. It allows me to feel like I've done something. I can justify the lack of time that I give to my creative mind.

It won’t wait for me.

I can hear it in the other room. It calls, not to me, but to whoever is with it right now. It doesn’t matter.

I can’t pause it.

It tells me lies. Things like, “Best Game of the Year,” or “Must See Experience.” Things I need to hear.

I don’t have time for 100 words.”