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Killer Wolf
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When you're bound by your own convictions, a discipline can be your addiction.
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Killer Wolf's Ashcan Edition vol1 An abandoned NaNoWriMo Entry
In preparation for this year's NaNoWriMo, I've been evaluating some of my false start fiction from the past. I wrote this in two days, and passed both sections along to a friend once they were done. She accused me of trying to replicate Twin Peaks via Chuck Palanhiuk. I was having fun with the story, right up to the point where I figured out how it had to end and lost interest in continuing it.
The first person sections are letters from Todd to Emily, or snippets of one of his articles.
Day One
A man is driving a blue sedan down a long expanse of public highway. His name is Todd Garrett, and he spends exactly six thousand, four hundred and ninety three dollars a year on post office boxes. He has at least three in each of the forty eight contiguous states, with extras in a couple of the bigger ones, Texas in particular.
Todd notices that it has been almost an hour since the last time he saw another vehicle, but that is okay because of the rain. As long as it keeps raining, the fewer cars around him, the better. The last twenty mile stretch on the interstate had almost been a nightmare. Todd didn’t consider himself the hysterical type, but the sight of a tractor trailer rig listing, then swerving, at an ever increasing angle behind him made him very conscious of the brake lights on the two rigs ahead of him that had, effectively, boxed him in for the last fifteen minutes.
Compared to that, the relative calm of the back road’s emptiness, despite the storm’s continued attacks, was a welcome change. In some ways it was a mixed blessing, because while it let Todd’s blood pressure settle back down to healthy levels, it gave him time to think.
He thought about blue bottles, but not the blue bottles that he typically found his vodka pouring out of. No, Todd Garrett was thinking of the Calliphora vomitoria, and more specifically, he was thinking of a number of them that were likely responsible for the maggots he’d seen churning away inside of Ernesta Groom’s decaying corpse. That had been the closest he’d come to The Hunter’s handiwork so far. He’d actually been the one to discover the body, although he was only ahead of local and federal law enforcement by about thirteen and a half minutes.
It had been the buzzing sound that first drew him in. His ears had always been sharper then most of his other senses, which came as somewhat of a mixed blessing. His nose was too busy trying to play ketchup to notice the sharp tang of rotting meat before it had fully enveloped him. Todd remembered coughing and putting a hand up to the shed’s door to support himself as his body took its sweet time making its mind up as to whether or not he was going to see his lunch again. When his weight transferred through his palm, the shed door swung away a few fractions of an inch; it wasn’t bolted shut. The buzzing grew louder then, not only was he getting closer to it, he was agitating its source.
That was when he saw the dead woman, lit partially by sunlight that filtered down through holes in the shed’s decrepit roof. Todd remembered feeling his legs start to get a little unsteady underneath him as he pushed the door open wider. With the sun above, and at his back, to a certain degree, him standing in the doorway like that caused his shadow to fall over the body. He was being superimposed on a corpse. It could just as easily been him laying there, butchered like a spring hog. That was a flight of pure fantasy though, Todd knew that The Hunter only killed women, and while Mr. Garrett could be called a great many things, that was most certainly not one of them.
The county sheriff, and of course the pair of FBI agents he and his deputies followed in the wake of, didn’t know much about Todd at all. The only important fact they had, at the moment, was that he was conspicuously planted in the middle of their crime scene. For all Todd knew, the two federal agents might have had just as rough a night as he had, slept in the same kind of flea bag motel, and consumed the same week old coffee and stale donuts. He might have asked them about it, had they not been pointing their side arms at him and ordering him onto the ground.
Todd surfaced from thoughts of his most recent arrest in time to catch sight of a large antique wagon by the side of the road.
…of course, the term ‘antique’ seems miss-applied in this instance, as the ancient horse drawn vehicle seemed like it would fall apart before my eyes. There was a sign tacked to it, facing the road. The top line read ‘The Amazing Susan’, while the next two added ‘Premiere Psychic’ and ‘Expert Chandler’, respectively. Not quite sure what to expect from the next couple of hours, I turned off of the pavement and onto a dirt road of baked clay.
My confusion continued to mount as I pulled into what I took to be the Amazing Susan’s driveway. The clay gave way to gravel which crunched admirably underneath my tires as I came to a stop. The house looked as though it were only a decade or two newer than the wagon by the roadside, but it clearly had at least one modern convenience. A nest of cables and wires carried electrical current to several homemade signs. Some of them no more complicated than a peg board with Christmas lights stuck through in the patterns of various arcane looking shapes. The words Psychic and Chandler appeared again and again as if the owner needed as much of a reminder about their intended trades as the customers did. The signs seemed like some great collective fire hazard, but perhaps the psychic in residence felt safe enough using them because she knew that they wouldn’t catch fire and burn her private empire to the ground.
Then again…
Emily Powell took her glasses off and rubbed her eyes. It was late, as usual, when she received the beginnings of the latest article from Todd Garrett, but that wasn’t what was really bothering her. Going into a job where you’re constantly required to stare at type, usually framed by the glare of a computer monitor, when you have permanent eye damage due to catching a quart of paint thinner in the face at age seven requires a specific type of tenacity and stubbornness. Some might even call it stupidity, but Emily wouldn’t, and since it was her life, her opinion was the only one that mattered.
She could see, for the most part, but close up she was blind as a bat in the middle of nuclear winter unless she had her glasses on. Of course, her glasses tended to give her headaches because in addition to the chemical damage, she had something of an astigmatism that kept changing, ever so slightly, each time she took a knock to the head. To compound the situation, she also happened to be a bit of a klutz, albeit an attractive klutz. She wouldn’t necessarily refer to herself as attractive, but she enjoyed it when others arrived at that conclusion on their own.
Once the sharp pain somewhere behind her eyes receded into a dull throb, Emily slid her glasses back into place and took a second look at the electronic scrawl she’d received. Garrett was good when he wanted to be, or perhaps he was just good by accident every now and then, but lately he’d been the victim of another type of accident altogether and that wasn’t good at all. The piece on the down home psychic was supposed to be a lighter side sort of article. Something with heart and humor, but instead Garrett had turned into a sarcasm laden mess that wouldn’t be running any time in the near future, at least not without some heavy re-writing and adjustments.
Todd Garrett never re-wrote, and by a logical extension of that principle, he never made adjustments. That was his editor’s job, although Emily felt equal parts editor and wrangler, due to the lengths she had to go to sometimes in order to keep Garrett alive, sober, and producing. She’d slept with him a couple of times, not had sex, just slept with him. He’d been broke and homeless, which he always was, but more so at the time than normal, and she’d let him stay with her. He could be charming in his own way, she reasoned, and though she’d honestly considered giving in on a handful of the occasions that Garrett had floated the idea by her, she knew that she wouldn’t have sex with him. She wouldn’t become one of his women, at least not in that sense, because the moment she did, she knew that eventually she would show up in his writing.
It might be some unflattering metaphor that related a traffic accident or some other distasteful occurrence to some personal flaw he would discover in her, or she might simply pop up as a character in one of the serials Garrett has been known to write for men’s magazines. So no, she would be his editor, his wrangler, his den mother, his confessor and confidant, and now apparently his co-author as well, but she would not be his lover.
With that decision made, or rather re-made, as she had gone back and forth on it a couple of times in the past, Emily checked her computer’s clock. There wasn’t much to work with yet, as far as the article was going, but she needed to have something submitted before morning to keep the machine rolling. If she was able to whip the teaser into shape quickly, she could be done early enough that she wouldn’t have to cancel her late night coffee date.
--
“It was a freak accident,” Barbara Canary said on the topic of her mother’s death, once she had regained enough composure to do so, “you see, about five years ago momma was doing a psychic archery display for some kids from Carter County elementary.”
“Psychic archery?” Todd found himself asking.
“Anyone can hit a target if they work at it long enough, but momma could do something even better. She told the kids to think about where they wanted to put the targets, you get it? She told them ‘think of the perfect spot to put a target’, and once they did, she’d take a shot at it.”
“This actually worked?”
“You’d be surprised, Mr. Garrett. Momma was truly gifted. She went eighteen for twenty kids, that’s pretty good I’d say. Of course, she really got nineteen out of twenty. See, one of the kids ran back to momma before the bus left to tell her the truth. He wanted to put his target up in the tree instead of on the ground like she’d asked them too.”
“So…your mother shot an arrow into a tree?”
“Well, up into the boughs. She got it to stay up there, not stuck in the bark, but just kind of caught in the branches and leaves,” Barbara took a breath before continuing, “and well, last week momma was doing her gardening, and a wind kicked up. It was the start of this big storm we’ve been having, I guess. That’s how it happened, the wind must have shook the arrow loose, and it fell. Sharp side down, right over the garden. Doc said she was gone before she hit the ground, didn’t even feel it, probably.”
“She was killed by an arrow she’d shot into a tree from five years ago?” Todd asked with unabashed incredulity.
“Yes,” Barbara said, seeming to be on the verge of another crying spell.
“You would think she might have seen that coming,” Todd wanted to say that, but he didn’t. It had been over a couple of weeks since the last time he’d had sex with anything warm that wasn’t attached to his own body, and Barbara was both of legal age and extremely vulnerable.
The reporter tried not to leer at the grieving young woman. She had an overall country look about her, couldn’t really be avoided, all things considered, but she didn’t suffer for it too much. She had a nicely shaped mouth, with the minor exception of a slight overbite that could have been corrected easily by a year or two of braces, and freckles on her cheeks. They would probably disappear under any normal application of makeup. Her eyes were large, but tinged with red. The hair was blonde, but nowhere near the bottle variety, and she had a rich, even, tan.
If he turned it on, Todd thought, if he really turned it on, he could have her eating out of his hand inside of fifteen minutes. So why wasn’t he turning it on?
He felt a little ill when he connected the dots. She reminded him of himself, all alone after a random twist of fate, though she’d gotten the benefit of at least one of her parents, as eccentric as Susan the Psychic may have been, for at least a decade longer than he had been able to spend with his own family. Correction, his first family. The foster homes he hop scotched through didn’t really count. He found himself feeling guilty for wanting her. Todd needed to leave.
“Well, I’m sorry for your loss, Miss Canary,” he began, “I should be going. I was sent down here to do a piece on the psychic of Carter County, and unfortunately, she’s no longer with us, so…”
“That’s not true,” Barbara said, sniffling her way back into control of her tear ducts, “I’ve got momma’s gift too.”
“So you couldn’t see it coming either? Remind me to keep your contact information on file incase I need some lottery numbers,” Todd wanted to say, but again, he did not.
“I’ve been sexing goose eggs like momma showed me for a few months now,” Barbara said, matter of factly.
There was so much wrong with that sentence that Todd didn’t even know where to start. He found himself just sort of sitting there with his mouth hanging slightly open, almost as though he soon expected the young woman to transmute into another creature.
“See, all it takes is a doll’s leg and some string.”
That didn’t help much.
“You tie the string around the doll’s leg, and then you hold it over the egg. You have to be real still, and you have to have the gift, otherwise nothing happens. Now, if you’re really still, and you have the gift, the doll’s leg will start to move. It turns clockwise for baby boys and counter clockwise for baby girls.
“And it’s not just geese either, Mr. Garrett. You dangle the doll leg over a pregnant woman’s big belly, and you can tell what she’ll have just as easy.”
Or you could have an ultra-sound taken, Todd heard himself thinking.
“You must think I’m just some silly little girl, but I’m not.”
Don’t think about her naked, don’t think about her naked on your bed.
“Momma gave me her gift when I was born, and it’s my job to share it with the world, so I’d like it if you stayed and saw for yourself what I can do,”
I’d really like to, you have no idea, kid, Todd thought to himself, realizing that he wanted to be anywhere else. He could almost see himself in the corner, or hiding behind the sofa. Hell, he might have even been under the kitchen table hatching plans with one of his not quite brothers. Maybe Barbara was one of his almost siblings, maybe he was still seven years old.
“Alright,” he said, “tell you what, I’ve been driving all day and I need some rack time under my belt before I do anything else. I’m going to get a room at the motel, and I’ll come back tomorrow. We can get an early start on your article.”
“Okay, Mr. Garrett,” Barbara said, a little too cheerily, “I’ll see you tomorrow. And you know how I know I will?”
She smiled and tapped the side of her head.
--
“Sometimes, Emily, I wish I could just take a big black marker and write all over my life, wiping it out. Redacting it. I don’t really care if anyone else knows, I just want to forget it,” Todd’s voice was weak and shaky over a bad phone connection.
Emily knew better than to try and talk Todd down, they both knew that wasn’t what he wanted any way. He was holed up in a filthy motel room someplace, alone, by the sound of it, and drunk. He’d struck out, maybe more than once, in the mood he was in it was most likely on purpose. All he wanted was for someone to sit and listen to him, he just wanted to be heard. He knew he could trust Emily because they’d worked together for a long time, and she also had an interest in him staying functional. She set her glasses down on the desk and looked out her window at the afternoon sky.
“Did I ever tell you about the first girl I saw naked, now I don’t mean like in a magazine or on tv, but up close, in the flesh. The first foster family they placed me with was pretty nice, but they couldn’t handle me, or at least they were decent enough to tell the state that they didn’t think they could handle me. Now, the second home, it was a fucking pit. Once you grow up, you figure a lot of stuff out. I know they were getting checks for all of us, it was supposed to be for food, for medicine, for clothes. We saw maybe ten cents on the dollar, or less, if we were lucky.
“They fed us, enough to keep us alive and looking sort of healthy for when the inspectors showed up, but that was just about it. We used hand me down clothes from kids we never even met. They were too old or too difficult to make money off of anymore, so they were gone and we got the leftovers, meanwhile, Ted and Jeanie got a big screen and a giant leather sofa that they kept in their air-conditioned garage. See, the house was shit poor, but the garage was like their little palace.
“They paid for it off our backs, but if we tried to get in, they’d punish us. They couldn’t hit us, because that would show up, but they ran us into the ground just the same. I remember being locked up in the crawlspace under the house for almost two days once. Greg snuck food to me through this break in the boards. As hungry as I was, I didn’t eat it, because I knew I’d get out. They had to let me out, because if I disappeared, so did my check. Food, and on those rare occasions we got it, candy, were like gold to us. We traded with each other for whatever we wanted.
“Well, there was this one girl, I guess she might have been border line special needs, but she wasn’t all that dumb. She had, I guess you’d call it a milk tooth or something. It looked like she’d nursed way too long, and her front teeth came in funny, almost pointing straight out in front of her. She sucked on her teeth a lot, so her face looked almost sunken or just fucked up from the mouth down, but she was holding it that way on purpose. Her name was Luanne. So, this one night, Greg decides he wants to see what Luanne has, or doesn’t have, under her dress. He promises that we’ll give her four pieces of candy if she shows us.
“So, she lifts her little dress up. At the time it was probably spectacular, you know, seeing the unknown, the great mystery of the universe there between her little legs. But really, it was pretty fucking boring, and thinking back, it makes me want to take a shower. She was supposed to be like a sister to us, you know? Greg was just amazed, he couldn’t stop talking about it. I guess that happens when your foster parents won’t buy you video games or comic books. So, Luanne puts her dress back down and we hand over the candy. She starts sucking on one piece of it and says to us, ‘if you give me eight candies you can touch, too’
“Naturally, Greg wants to touch it. He tried a swap on Luanne, she could touch our stuff if we could touch hers, but she said no, she wanted eight candies. Like I said, she may have been borderline special needs, but she wasn’t dumb. Greg raided his stash and only had six pieces left, so he wanted me to come up with the rest. I said no. You know what he did, the fucking little rat, he stole my candy while I was in the bathroom. I was really pissed, probably as pissed off as a little kid can get, and I went looking for him. Not a big deal, because it was a small house, and I knew he wouldn’t be in the garage. I found them in a hall closet, and I just sort of jumped at Greg like an animal. Really, we fought like animals. I guess that is what Ted and Jeanie were raising us to be. We hit, we kicked, we bit. But I know I won, I probably broke his nose, the way it started bleeding.
“That was when Ted found the three of us. Luanne was in the back, her panties around one ankle and her little dress pushed up, her mouth full of candy. I was still on top of Greg, still hitting. Somehow, the whole thing was my fault. I was the only one who got locked under the house for it, but that time, and every time after, no one snuck any food to me.”
Emily wanted to tell Todd to come home, to come to her home. She had a thing for broken people, she liked to fall for them and try to fix them. She knew that she couldn’t fix Todd though, hell, even if she could it might be the wrong thing to do. There was an old saying about how pain made art. When Todd was on, which was rare anymore, he could come just about as close to art as you could get with the written word. The logical side of Emily’s brain, the business side, that is, clicked back into control.
“Todd, I don’t want to push you,” yes she did, she had to, “but I need the article in two days, and you haven’t sent me anything yet. I’m,” she stopped for a moment, she hated doing this to him, but she knew it was the only thing he would respond too. It was one of the bonuses of their honest relationship, they could both be incredibly cruel to each other and get away with it, “I’m meeting someone later tonight, so if you have anything to send, it needs to be here before I leave for the night.”
“Alright,” Todd seemed to dry up by leaps and bounds on the other end of the phone, “I’ll send you the prelim as soon as I’m off the phone. It’s just the trip out there though, I won’t have the rest of the meat until tomorrow.”
“That’s fine, as long as I have something to show the home office in the morning, it should be no problem to get your usual fee,”
“Thanks for listening, Em,” Todd said.
--
“Do you really think he looks good for this?”
Todd heard that from the direction of the federal agents. It didn’t really matter which one of them said it, it was the answer that concerned him. The cheap government suits and ties were almost comical to him. Being ordered onto his stomach, less than three feet from a maggot ridden corpse had not been comical to him in the least, but thankfully the sheriff’s station had smelled better by at least a couple orders of magnitude.
“He was at the scene, he’s not a local, he fits the profile. If I’m missing something here, Marlene, would you tell me what it is?”
Marlene was the female one, obviously. From the dark hair and her features, Todd figured her for being Hispanic. For some reason, he wanted to hang the ‘female law enforcement agent as lesbian’ cliché on her. If he’d been the one writing her that is how she would have been written. She didn’t seem like the type to let a man get the better of her, and Todd thought to himself that even if she did lower herself to sleeping with men, that she would still be in charge.
Maybe she’s a dominatrix, Todd thought to himself, trying to control the urge to twist his hands against the cuffs. He’d been handcuffed before, and every time it had reminded him of his childhood, once he’d gotten too big for the crawlspace, that is. Marlene the butch dominatrix, she had to be in charge. Maybe she was wearing black leather under her government issue.
“First, it is agent Carerra. Second, You’re too eager. You’re seeing what you want to see, and not what the evidence is trying to show you.”
They shouldn’t be having this conversation in front of him. He knows it, he is pretty sure that they do too, or at least that they should. Then it hits him, it is an act. They’re feeding him this bullshit to make it look like he’s getting away clean so that he’ll lead them to something really incriminating. They’re going to be watching him now, everywhere he goes?
“Are blinders standard issue for senior field agents?”
“That’s enough, Agent Montgomery,” Marlene’s voice cuts like a scythe, “go wait in the car.”
You can almost see it, Todd thinks to himself, Agent Montgomery’s severed manhood falling free down his pants leg and rolling out from his cuff onto the tile floor. If it did happen like that, he had no doubt that Marlene would have stepped on it and ground it underneath her shoe. They’re putting on a nice little play.
The agent’s expression seems to soften as she turns to her remaining prisoner, “I’m sorry about that. We’re working on processing your release right now, we have no reason to hold you, but I would like to ask you a few questions, if you don’t mind?”
“Now you want to listen to me?” Todd’s mouth reacts faster than his brain, he figures he might as well let it keep going like that for a while, “For the last three years I’ve been trying to tell the FBI that the cases have all been connected. Thirty four dead women in eleven states, thirty four, all from the same killer,”
“Mr. Garrett, why are you so certain that it is the work of one individual. Do you have any new information that could help us?”
He likes her subtle accent. She must be very good at what she does, because she has been allowed to keep a part of her racial identity. She isn’t like the newscasters with Latin last names who have perfect diction, the only concession to their natural accent appearing when they say their own surname at the beginning or end of their reports. No, Agent Marlene Carerra is good enough to be herself. She must be very dangerous. Todd imagines he can see a blow fly buzzing around Marlene. It plays around her throat, dipping down to crawl over skin that probably shouldn’t have been exposed. Todd admitted he didn’t know if FBI regulations allowed their agents to pop the first couple of buttons when they were caught short in a rural hell that suffered from a malfunctioning air conditioning system. The blow fly is buzzing again, gone from the agent’s throat. It flutters around the side of Marlene’s head before it disappears into her right ear.
“You want to know how I beat you to the body, how I cracked The Hunter’s code and figured out where he would drop the next one, right?” Todd took a deep breath, “I was there for his first kill, covering it, I mean, back when I was still on a regular newsbeat in New York. He’s the reason I turned into this: a gypsy newshound who runs down stories about miracle bathtubs, spontaneous combustion, and the appearance of religious figures on moldy bread. I’ve been following him for three years, and now I’m really starting to get close.”
“Think about that, Mr. Garrett,” Marlene almost purred, “If you are getting as close to him as you say, close enough to predict his movements, don’t you think he knows? He’s been one step ahead the whole time. Are you sure you want to leave this office today? We might be able to arrange protection for you, in exchange for your information.”
“Lady, I’ve been giving your office my information for the last three years, for free. You couldn’t protect the last thirty three victims, what makes you think you could protect me?”
--
Emily Powell couldn’t believe her luck. Not only did her date admit to having a ‘thing’ for girls who wear glasses, he was built like an athlete and he also happened to be a successful lawyer. He’d arrived early for their date, and she’d actually caught him reading, wait for it, the new issue of the Economist. It was the closest to smitten that she had gotten in quite a long time.
“I’m really glad that Rebecca set us up,” the date said. His name was Hoight Braskell, and Emily didn’t know that people could really have eyes that were that blue, “I don’t get to meet a lot of women in court.”
“I can’t believe that,” Emily replied, playing with the handle of her nearly empty coffee cup, “I’m sure there must be one or two around.”
“Oh, don’t get me wrong,” Hoight’s smile seemed impossibly wide and bright, “there are a lot of women there, but they usually come in only three categories. Lawyers, Judges, and Criminals. Lawyers are okay, but it is hard enough to get out when it is just my case schedule I have to work around. Judges are a lot like lawyers, only they’re usually older, not to mention married, and things would get really complicated if I got involved with one.”
“That leaves criminals then,” Emily pointed out, “all the desperate women at your complete mercy, you could live like a king.” What the hell was she saying, she wondered. She sounded like an idiot. Had she managed to miss someone adding a fifth of Irish whiskey to her coffee?
“Even more complicated to deal with than judges,” Hoight chuckled, “It took me a long time to get where I am, I’d rather not risk it. Besides, if I thought it would work with any of them, I wouldn’t be here talking to you. I don’t really regret the choice I made. Okay, enough of that. I think it’s my turn now. Becca said you were in publishing?”
“I’m into a few things. I work as a literary agent for a couple of local clients, I’m on the review board for Cooper-Smith Publishing, and I do a little head hunting on the side.”
Hoight set his coffee cup back down, “Head hunting, now that sounds exciting.”
“It can be, but not for the reasons it might sound like. Basically, I just put people together with other people who need them. An example, I have a running contract with a couple of news magazines. I get a commission for bringing stories in to them. Now, just about anyone could submit stuff to them, if they know the right numbers to call, but with me, they get almost like a guarantee. Because of my background, they know I’m not going to feed them something they can’t use. It works both ways, they know my people can produce, so they’re willing to pay a little more, sometimes they’re even willing to dish it out on speculation.”
“I bet you must have some interesting clients, then? Renegade journalists, living on the edge and filing a report about it?” Hoight asked. He was infinitely less interested in what Emily did then in the fact that not only did she look good doing it, she was able to talk about it intelligently.
“Sometimes I feel like I’m a teacher, running a class room full of very gifted five year olds. Once I get them to slow down and go in the right direction, they never cease to amaze me.”
From there, they moved on to more random fact finding about each other. They’d attended the same university, albeit several years apart. Emily had always preferred her men slightly older though, so it was more of a bonus than a sticking point to her. Eventually they meandered into discussing a few of the recent articles that they had both read.
Whether they were arguing or agreeing about whatever topic at hand, it was becoming starkly obvious to both of them that they had already made up their minds about another issue.
So, even though it went contrary to her usual character, Emily knew that she would be inviting Hoight up when he dropped her off back at her place. She also knew that he would demure at first, the mark of a gentleman, but eventually he would accede.
It was no surprise when Emily found herself nude and straddling the man on her bed, bucking up and down and feeling his tongue as well as his large, but strangely soft, hands on her skin. For whatever reason, she hadn’t allowed herself to feel like that, to feel that good, in a long time.
Later, when he lay spent beneath her, she folded herself down onto his chest, listening as his pounding heart began returning to its normal rhythm. Hoight ran a hand through Emily’s hair as she looked up at his face, a stray shaft of moonlight coming through the drapes to give the entire affair a poignant glow.
“You’re incredible,” he still sounded out of breath.
“I know,” she smiled back it him before playfully biting him on the chest.
--
In Todd Garrett’s dreams, his house was always made of fire. Not Ted and Jeanie’s house, not any of the houses he did time in after theirs, his house, his real house. It was alive, twisting, turning. Something made of fire could not be burned down. That was the type of infallible logic that could only appear in a dream. His real family lived there, his mother and his father, but they were not made of fire. Their faces were burned away leaving a mask of black ash, and as they talked to him, the ash shimmered and shook like curtains before an open window on a windy night.
“Go back to bed,” ash mother said to him. Her voice should have been warm and soothing, the one thing in the world that he would truly be able to take comfort from, but it was not. Instead, it was harsh and sibilant. The voice sounded like it had to be drug up from a deep pit, parts of it getting scraped off along the way.
“it will be okay,” ash father said. Todd usually pictured him being a towering giant, having to hunch his shoulders to stay below the roiling flame of the ceiling, this time he was small, smaller than Todd was.
Luanne rode by on a bicycle made of human bones, her mouth stuffed so full of candy that she would certainly choke if she attempted to swallow.
From the far end of the great hallway, Todd could hear the sound again. It always came back, every time. It started like a scream but quickly plummeted in pitch so that it made the walls and floor shake.
“Is this hell?”, young Todd asked the ash father.
“Yes.”
Day Two
Emily, I could kiss you for prodding me into going out on the psychic story. For starters, you can unclench, I wrote the article that the magazine wanted, and I’m sure you’ll be able to put it all back together. You’ll find it attached.
Now, moving on to what is really going on. Remember a couple months ago when I found the Hunter’s most recent victim, how the FBI detained me for questioning? Well, it seems that they’ve been watching me, at least intermittently, since then. As far as I can tell, they are almost completely convinced that I’m involved in the Groom killing. It still looks like they’re not convinced that all of the victims are connected, but then again that might work to my favor. They’re only accusing me of one murder, not thirty four. I guess I should be thankful for small favors.
I should also be thankful to Barbara Canary. Without her intervention, you wouldn’t be reading this right now. One version of my return trip to the new and improved Carter County Psychic is in the attached article, here’s the real deal:
When I woke up this morning, it was to a ringing phone. I hadn’t asked the desk for a wake up call. It was the girl! Initially, I thought that she’d been able to pick my location and the phone number straight out of the ether, of course in my defense I had just woken up from what could be referred to as a vodka induced temporary coma, so I wasn’t exactly firing on all cylinders.
I was almost disappointed when she explained that it was a small town, and it had taken her about four minutes on the telephone to get my location and room number. I was about to hang up at that point when she hit me with the reason for her call. She told me she had a vision about me, that I was in a house of fire chasing a man with many weapons. She told me that in her vision I kept getting close to him, almost close enough to touch, but he would burst into flames and re-appear somewhere else. At the end of the vision, I got close enough to touch the fire as he burned up, but then I lost the trail because now I was the one being chased. Sound familiar?
Barbara says she can help me. We’re off to buy a bunch of maps. She brought along an overnight bag and her doll leg for divining. It sounds insane, but at this point I’m up for almost anything.
As soon as I have a bearing, I’ll let you know so you can start looking for anything in the area I might be able to sell a story about. Money is really tight, and it is only going to get tighter with two of us eating on the same dime now. I feel like this could be it though, if I can get him before the next cycle starts this whole thing can be over.
"I’m agent Carerra, this is Agent Montgomery. We need to ask you some questions about the man who assaulted you, Miss Teale,” Marlene was trying her best not to be imposing. She had an entire catalog of expressions and looks that said ‘Have you seen my marksmanship scores, I could drop you from across a football field with a pistol. Iron sights only.’ That look helped with suspects sometimes, but it usually made the witnesses squirm and dry up.
“He didn’t assault me, I mean, he didn’t do anything against my will,” The young woman was fresh off her shift, still wearing her waitress’ uniform. Her feet were killing her.
“So you wanted him to rape you at gunpoint?” That was Montgomery’s approach at tactfulness.
“What? There was no rape,” the waitress rested her head in her hands, “Look, that isn’t what happened at all.”
“Then tell us what happened,” Carerra prompted.
Waitress Teale looked back and forth between the two agents. She would lock eyes with Marlene, flick over to Montgomery, and then back before cutting her eyes over to the door.
“Agent Montgomery, would you get us some sodas or something?” Carerra asked.
“Sure thing,” the junior agent said. A few seconds later and he was out the door.
“Alright honey, he’s gone,” Carerra sat down opposite the waitress and leaned toward her like they were college girlfriends getting together over a cup of coffee for the first time in years, “why don’t you tell me what really happened?”
“He came in really late, my replacement was already in, but she was… well, she was stuck in the bathroom so I figured, why not? One last table for the night, maybe he leaves a big tip, you know?”
Marlene nodded.
“He ordered a sandwich, fries, and some tea. The place was pretty dead, so I kept going over and checking on him, making sure everything was okay. I figured it couldn’t hurt my chances. Anyway, he was really nice, and funny too. We ended up flirting, a lot.
“He paid for his food when he was done and gave me a nice tip, but we didn’t stop talking. Since I was out of there anyway, we were leaving at the same time. He held the door for me, all of that. I’d asked him where he was headed, basic small talk back in the restaurant, he said he wasn’t really sure yet. It usually wasn’t up to him, those were his exact words.
“I’m not even sure how it happened. I mean, I know how it happened, but… okay, I’d been dating this guy for a while, and it was boring but safe. Not even that fun anymore, but it worked, you know? So, there is this other guy, probably never see him again my whole life, and he wants me. He was being cool about it, or trying, but I could tell. I figure why not, he’s not bad looking, he’s funny, and no matter how good or bad it is, I won’t have to see him again. He was like a holiday, and I really needed one.”
“Did you take him back to your place, or go to a motel?”
“My place. My boyfriend and I weren’t living together, we’d stay over a couple nights at a time, but that was it. I kind of hate his apartment anyway,” Miss Teale was on the verge of rambling, but Agent Carerra was able to steer her back on course using only her facial expressions, “so, I bring him home and we start. He’s not bad at all, knows what he’s doing. Very nice,” The waitress smiles at the thought, blushing slightly, “but after we’re finished, he started getting weird.”
“How so?”
“He told me that he had a fantasy, and asked if I wanted to help. We’d started drinking when we got to my place, and then after the other stuff, I mean, it just seemed okay. I wasn’t ready for him to leave yet I guess. I said sure, lets do it. That was when he comes up with the gun out of nowhere. Now, right off, he tells me it isn’t loaded, but he wants me to act like it is.”
“What did he do?”
“Not that much really, he pushed the barrel up against me a couple of times. It was very cold. He drew on me with it for a while, like he put it up against me and traced over my body with it. He asked me if I could put the barrel in my mouth, and I started to get a little scared… but he said it was okay and we could stop. He put it someplace out of sight and we went back to doing regular stuff, because maybe the stuff with the gun helped him and he was definitely ready to go again. In the morning, he was gone, and so was the gun. I got what I wanted, a one off casual affair, and he got to do his gun thing.”
“I don’t understand. It sounds like everything was consensual, that doesn’t fit with the report that…”
“The report is bullshit,” Miss Teale affirmed, “I was telling one of the girls on my next shift about it, sort of like ‘you wouldn’t believe what I did last night’. Bitch couldn’t keep her mouth shut, told my boyfriend. He came up with the whole ‘raped at gunpoint’ thing.”
“I see,” Agent Carerra said, trying, and failing, to suppress a frown. Garrett was fucked up, there was no real question of that, but he hadn’t actually done anything illegal.
“There was one other thing though,” Miss Teale added, “he mumbled something when he was holding the gun on me. I think it was ‘help me understand’.”
“Thank you Miss Teale,” Agent Carerra responded, “You’ve been a big help.”
“Sure thing, now where did your partner go to get my drink, Canada?”
--
Todd Garrett was trying not to ask too many questions, but when Barbara attached a small votive candle to his dash with double sided tape and then proceeded to light it, he had to make the obvious inquiry.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“I’m protecting us and getting ready to do a reading for you,” Barbara explained.
Okay, so an open flame in a moving vehicle had protective properties. There was a first time for everything. It took a couple of minutes for Garrett to notice that the candle was steadily filling his car with the aroma of vanilla. That was a problem.
“Do you have one that doesn’t smell?” He asked.
“Is it bothering you?”
“Well, I kind of have to drive by smell, which is ironic because I’m not too good at it. Smelling, I mean, not driving.”
Clearly, the young rustic seer wasn’t getting the picture. She looked cute with her face slightly pinched up in a confused expression.
“My valve cover leaks, so sometimes oil sprays out under the hood. The car runs very hot, small engine, so the oil gets burned, and after a while, I can smell it. When it gets really bad, I know that I’m down to just the older, heavier, oil that is left from a while ago. That means I need to put more oil in, and I have to be able to smell it.”
“Couldn’t you just check the dipstick every so often?”
“I do that too, but the leak isn’t constant. It has to do with pressure and a whole bunch of other stuff I don’t understand. So yeah, I check it every time I start off on a long trip,”
“You didn’t check it when we left the hotel this morning,” Barbara interrupted.
“No, you’re right, I didn’t. That’s why it is important for me to be able to smell when the oil starts burning.”
Garrett hadn’t been paying much attention to the flat road spooling out ahead of his oil burning car during his debate with his passenger, so he was naturally surprised when he flicked his gaze back out the front of the windshield and saw oncoming cars planted in the middle of both lanes.
Todd jerked the wheel, sending his blue sedan off the road and up onto the shoulder as the pair of apparent drag racers screamed by without really seeming to notice anyone else had even been on the road with them.
The grass underneath the tires was wet, and the vehicle’s forward momentum was starting to translate into a spin. When the vehicle finally came to a stop, thankfully without the intervention of any of the nearby trees or fence posts, Todd had to make a definite effort to uncoil his fingers from around the steering wheel. He found himself breathing heavily. He wished that one, or both, of the redneck racers had stopped to check on him so that he could yell at them about driving like idiots.
That was a lie. What he really wanted to do was to chase them down and blow their brains out with the magnum he kept wrapped up in an old pair of panties in the glove compartment. He noticed he was smiling at the thought of murder again, but at the same time he realized he hadn’t even thought to check on his passenger. Luckily, she was smiling too, but the writer wasn’t quite sure why.
“We’re here,” Barbara said, before she leaned forward, cupped her hand behind the candle’s flame and blew it out.
--
Todd Garrett had been twenty one, once. He had also been drunk frequently. One night in particular stood out to his memory, which was something of a miracle considering how much alcohol he’d actually consumed on that very occasion. It was his first time with an older woman, well, almost. He’d been with older girls for most of his life, but only by a margin of three or four years or so. He’d always looked older than he really was, and didn’t see the need to point out that he had been below the age of consent for most of his initial liaisons.
Jenny was different though. She wasn’t a couple of years older, more like thirteen.
Todd worked with Jenny’s husband, a rough looking guy named Perry. He was a head shorter than his wife, and always seemed to be dirty. The business practically demanded it. Perry bought up old railroad ties, the big pieces of wood soaked in creosote, and re-sold them as decorative landscaping elements. That meant that most weekdays, starting at around six thirty in the morning, Todd, Perry, and a couple of other employees were filling up trailers with two hundred and fifty pound logs. It was rough work, so the boss compensated by having regular barbecues at his house.
These were mostly an excuse to let the employees and their girlfriends or wives, whichever applied, get lobotomized drunk on the boss’s dime. On the night in question, Perry was the first one to fall to a combination of tequila, vodka, and cheap bourbon. The other employees and their significant others peeled off over the next thirty two minutes, leaving only Jenny, Todd, and a couple inches of booze left to be polished off.
“You drink like a fish, Ted,” Jenny announced.
“Todd,” he felt the need to clarify.
“Right,” Jenny had a pretty smile, despite the smoker’s teeth, “are you going to stay and help me clean up?”
“Sure,” Todd said, wobbling in his seat like a boat at sea.
“Good man,” Jenny said, with an exaggerated nod of her head, “we need some music though. I feel like dancing.”
After noticing that the vodka was already gone, Todd finished what was left of the tequila and then found himself watching Jenny’s ass as she got up from her chair and tried to reach the radio. Todd wondered why they’d put it up so high. If Jenny was having trouble reaching it, not that he didn’t enjoy watching her try, there was no way in hell Perry could make that stretch.
“Here, let me,” Todd said. It took more effort to stand up than he’d expected, and his legs felt a little unsteady as he made his way over.
Jenny moved to the side a little, but didn’t get far enough out of the way. Todd stumbled a little and fell against her, managing to catch his balance on one of the posts that framed in the porch so that his full weight hadn’t driven the woman through the front window of her own house.
“Sorry,” he said.
“Its okay,” came the reply. Jenny was close enough that Todd could actually smell the liquor on her breath, “If you can reach it, just about anything will do.”
It took Todd a moment to remind himself that she was talking about the radio. He made the stretch easily, and turned the knob to the on position, but not too loud. For some reason he couldn’t really hear the music that clearly, he always got a little deaf when he was drunk, but he was able to catch the main beat underneath it. He thought it was very sensual. When he started to lose his balance, Jenny caught his waist with both hands and pulled him back to her.
“Dance with me,”
It was an offer he couldn’t refuse. The alcohol had washed away his normal body consciousness, and he was already weaving this way and that a little, so for once in his life, it actually came easy to him, or at least as easily as it could come to someone who couldn’t really hear the music.
They stayed close together as they moved, and it was starting to drive Todd a little bit crazy. All the grazing touches and rubbing contact. Out of the blue, Jenny pulled him in for a kiss, and Todd felt the woman’s tongue in his mouth, probing his own. As a reflex, he was conscious of one of his arms going around the woman’s waist, pulling her toward him so that their bodies pressed tight together. Even through their jeans and despite the night’s chill, Todd could tell that his boss’s wife was very warm. Instead of pushing him away, Jenny took his other hand and placed it on her right breast.
Todd had never thought about Jenny this way. Sure, she was attractive. She had raven black hair that fell to her waist, large dark eyes, nice breasts that still managed to keep most of their shape without requiring the use of a bra, and she always wore tight clothes to show off an ass that she was very clearly proud of. It all seemed so distant though, like it just didn’t apply to him.
“Fuck me,” Jenny’s voice seemed husky when he heard it from so close up. As a punctuation, she closed her teeth on his earlobe.
Of course he did exactly as told, though it took him a while to get it right. With all the liquor in his system, he couldn’t seem to get more than about half hard, and once he finally did, it didn’t take much longer before he shot his load home inside of Jenny’s clinging warmth. It was cold that night, and he could almost have sworn that they were steaming as they came apart.
They heard a door close, someplace up on the second story. Perry probably, got up to go to the bathroom. That was Todd’s cue to leave. As he was buttoning his pants back up, Jenny kissed him again, and he knew that he was going to have to find another job soon.
The woman looked exquisite as she pulled her own jeans back on, the dark nest of her bush vanishing behind the rising zipper. She hugged Todd one last time, stuffing her discarded panties into one of his pockets. As he made his way down the porch stairs, Todd figured that either the sex itself or the adrenaline of the surrounding situation had sobered him up a great deal.
When he sank into the driver’s seat of his car, it hit him: Jenny had been the best fuck of his entire life. It hadn’t just been the woman though, she wasn’t really any tighter or wetter or warmer than he’d had before, it was the fact that she was supposed to belong to somebody else that really made it perfect. The fact that he got to keep a trophy was just icing on the cake.
--
“The director wants me to pull the plug on your investigation,” the words came into Marlene Carerra’s ear via her cell phone’s speaker, “as far as most of the people in this office are concerned, you’ve been on an extended, paid, vacation for the last month and a half.”
“He’s our guy, Fields,” Marlene replied.
“Despite all the evidence to the contrary?” The voice on the other end of the line prompted.
“He fits the profile.”
“That doesn’t mean a damn thing. All we have is a basic offender profile. White, late twenties to mid thirties, intelligent. That’s almost a third of the bureau right there. Has there been any movement on motive, victim selection, any of those other important parts of the puzzle?”
“We thought we were on to something, sir, but it didn’t pan out.”
“What was it?”
“Aside from all of the victims being female, there haven’t been any other unifying themes. Age, socio economic standing, race, hair color, even the method of their killing, you name it. None of it matches up.”
“Hold on a second,” Fields said, “it sounds to me like you’re buying Garrett’s story about the thirty plus victims now.”
“He’s our prime suspect. We have letters from him over the last couple of years claiming to link all of the victims together. I’m looking at him as our killer, so if he says all the cases are related, then I’m going to treat them like they are.”
“Maybe he’s saying that to throw you off, to make you do exactly what you’re doing now: trying to connect cases that have nothing to do with each other. It is a waste of time.”
“It feels like he wants to get caught, I don’t want to disappoint him,” Marlene wasn’t happy about having to defend her investigation. She was on the trail of, possibly, the most prolific serial killer in her lifetime, and she would be damned if she let the trail go cold because the head office was tired of paying her expense account, “anyway, the thread we thought we had, the one thing that all of the victims had in common, was that all the women were married at the time of their deaths.”
“But that didn’t hold up?”
“The most recent victim, Ernesta Groom, was not, and had never been, married according to county records.”
“Did you do a follow-up?” Fields said.
“The records were there in black and white, besides, Garrett didn’t stay around too long once we cut him loose. We’ve been busy running down some claims that have been made against him, contacting his associates, trying to get the full picture. The way it reads right now, he’s a very disturbed man.”
“This call was supposed to end with me ordering you back to the office and reassigning you, but I’m going to give you another couple of days. Instead of cris-crossing every backwoods motel in the south following Todd Garrett, hoping to catch him doing something, go back and dig a little deeper into Ernesta Groom. If she’s the one sticking point in your hypothesis about the victims, you need to put more time into her.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“But, if you run into another dead-end, I want you back here first thing. I’m putting myself on the line here, so do me a favor, and find something that makes it worth while.”
--
“Where were you just now?” Hoight asked, studying Emily’s face.
It seemed like they’d scarcely been apart since their dinner the night before, but somehow it felt natural to be seeing him again so soon. That was one of Emily’s reasons for accepting his lunch invitation. Another had been that she needed something to take her mind off of a growing problem.
“One of my writers,” Emily began.
“One of your gifted five year olds,” Hoight clarified with a smile.
“He’s always been, I guess you could call it, eccentric. Maybe even ego-centric? He does very quirky things, and then justifies it because he thinks it is all significant, almost like the world, and everyone in it, revolve around him.”
“And here you are, talking about him, and proving him right,”
“You asked,” Emily protested, then conceded the point with a sigh, “I’m really worried about him this time. Sometimes, I hope that some of what he tells me is just made up, like it is just another story of his, but then sometimes things happen and I know that he’s been telling me the truth.”
“Such as?”
“This afternoon, I received a call from the federal bureau of investigations. Well, an agent of theirs. She was asking me a whole bunch of questions about my client, she even wanted to come and interview me in person. I sort of know what it is about, but I always thought it was just one of his quirks, and not something that really…” she shook her head, “Sorry, I’m rambling a little.”
“Perfectly understandable,” Hoight’s voice sounded so reassuring that Emily was fairly certain he’d slipped into his practiced lawyer tone for her benefit, “it is not every day that someone gets a call from an fbi agent. I’ll tell you what, Miss Powell. If it comes down to a court case, I’ll represent this client of yours for you, make sure none of his civil liberties get violated, etc.”
Emily almost choked on her tea, “Don’t make fun of me.”
“I’m not, I’m being serious,” Hoight said, and she knew that he was being serious, though she wasn’t sure why.
“You don’t even know him, Hoight. You barely know me,”
“I know enough,” the lawyer said, “I know that you’re much prettier when you smile then you are when you are worrying about him. Let me take care of it.”
Perhaps that was the kind of thing that should have sent some tinge of apprehension up the literary agent’s spine, maybe a little bell should have gone off in her brain, but instead she was sort of surprised to find that she just felt relieved. Instead of getting upset about her concern over another man, as some of her recent relationship partners had been known to do, Hoight accepted it and, without missing a beat, offered to help.
In one way, that made Emily Powell feel a little bit like a lesbian: she was ready to move in with someone on their second date.
The first person sections are letters from Todd to Emily, or snippets of one of his articles.
Day One
A man is driving a blue sedan down a long expanse of public highway. His name is Todd Garrett, and he spends exactly six thousand, four hundred and ninety three dollars a year on post office boxes. He has at least three in each of the forty eight contiguous states, with extras in a couple of the bigger ones, Texas in particular.
Todd notices that it has been almost an hour since the last time he saw another vehicle, but that is okay because of the rain. As long as it keeps raining, the fewer cars around him, the better. The last twenty mile stretch on the interstate had almost been a nightmare. Todd didn’t consider himself the hysterical type, but the sight of a tractor trailer rig listing, then swerving, at an ever increasing angle behind him made him very conscious of the brake lights on the two rigs ahead of him that had, effectively, boxed him in for the last fifteen minutes.
Compared to that, the relative calm of the back road’s emptiness, despite the storm’s continued attacks, was a welcome change. In some ways it was a mixed blessing, because while it let Todd’s blood pressure settle back down to healthy levels, it gave him time to think.
He thought about blue bottles, but not the blue bottles that he typically found his vodka pouring out of. No, Todd Garrett was thinking of the Calliphora vomitoria, and more specifically, he was thinking of a number of them that were likely responsible for the maggots he’d seen churning away inside of Ernesta Groom’s decaying corpse. That had been the closest he’d come to The Hunter’s handiwork so far. He’d actually been the one to discover the body, although he was only ahead of local and federal law enforcement by about thirteen and a half minutes.
It had been the buzzing sound that first drew him in. His ears had always been sharper then most of his other senses, which came as somewhat of a mixed blessing. His nose was too busy trying to play ketchup to notice the sharp tang of rotting meat before it had fully enveloped him. Todd remembered coughing and putting a hand up to the shed’s door to support himself as his body took its sweet time making its mind up as to whether or not he was going to see his lunch again. When his weight transferred through his palm, the shed door swung away a few fractions of an inch; it wasn’t bolted shut. The buzzing grew louder then, not only was he getting closer to it, he was agitating its source.
That was when he saw the dead woman, lit partially by sunlight that filtered down through holes in the shed’s decrepit roof. Todd remembered feeling his legs start to get a little unsteady underneath him as he pushed the door open wider. With the sun above, and at his back, to a certain degree, him standing in the doorway like that caused his shadow to fall over the body. He was being superimposed on a corpse. It could just as easily been him laying there, butchered like a spring hog. That was a flight of pure fantasy though, Todd knew that The Hunter only killed women, and while Mr. Garrett could be called a great many things, that was most certainly not one of them.
The county sheriff, and of course the pair of FBI agents he and his deputies followed in the wake of, didn’t know much about Todd at all. The only important fact they had, at the moment, was that he was conspicuously planted in the middle of their crime scene. For all Todd knew, the two federal agents might have had just as rough a night as he had, slept in the same kind of flea bag motel, and consumed the same week old coffee and stale donuts. He might have asked them about it, had they not been pointing their side arms at him and ordering him onto the ground.
Todd surfaced from thoughts of his most recent arrest in time to catch sight of a large antique wagon by the side of the road.
…of course, the term ‘antique’ seems miss-applied in this instance, as the ancient horse drawn vehicle seemed like it would fall apart before my eyes. There was a sign tacked to it, facing the road. The top line read ‘The Amazing Susan’, while the next two added ‘Premiere Psychic’ and ‘Expert Chandler’, respectively. Not quite sure what to expect from the next couple of hours, I turned off of the pavement and onto a dirt road of baked clay.
My confusion continued to mount as I pulled into what I took to be the Amazing Susan’s driveway. The clay gave way to gravel which crunched admirably underneath my tires as I came to a stop. The house looked as though it were only a decade or two newer than the wagon by the roadside, but it clearly had at least one modern convenience. A nest of cables and wires carried electrical current to several homemade signs. Some of them no more complicated than a peg board with Christmas lights stuck through in the patterns of various arcane looking shapes. The words Psychic and Chandler appeared again and again as if the owner needed as much of a reminder about their intended trades as the customers did. The signs seemed like some great collective fire hazard, but perhaps the psychic in residence felt safe enough using them because she knew that they wouldn’t catch fire and burn her private empire to the ground.
Then again…
Emily Powell took her glasses off and rubbed her eyes. It was late, as usual, when she received the beginnings of the latest article from Todd Garrett, but that wasn’t what was really bothering her. Going into a job where you’re constantly required to stare at type, usually framed by the glare of a computer monitor, when you have permanent eye damage due to catching a quart of paint thinner in the face at age seven requires a specific type of tenacity and stubbornness. Some might even call it stupidity, but Emily wouldn’t, and since it was her life, her opinion was the only one that mattered.
She could see, for the most part, but close up she was blind as a bat in the middle of nuclear winter unless she had her glasses on. Of course, her glasses tended to give her headaches because in addition to the chemical damage, she had something of an astigmatism that kept changing, ever so slightly, each time she took a knock to the head. To compound the situation, she also happened to be a bit of a klutz, albeit an attractive klutz. She wouldn’t necessarily refer to herself as attractive, but she enjoyed it when others arrived at that conclusion on their own.
Once the sharp pain somewhere behind her eyes receded into a dull throb, Emily slid her glasses back into place and took a second look at the electronic scrawl she’d received. Garrett was good when he wanted to be, or perhaps he was just good by accident every now and then, but lately he’d been the victim of another type of accident altogether and that wasn’t good at all. The piece on the down home psychic was supposed to be a lighter side sort of article. Something with heart and humor, but instead Garrett had turned into a sarcasm laden mess that wouldn’t be running any time in the near future, at least not without some heavy re-writing and adjustments.
Todd Garrett never re-wrote, and by a logical extension of that principle, he never made adjustments. That was his editor’s job, although Emily felt equal parts editor and wrangler, due to the lengths she had to go to sometimes in order to keep Garrett alive, sober, and producing. She’d slept with him a couple of times, not had sex, just slept with him. He’d been broke and homeless, which he always was, but more so at the time than normal, and she’d let him stay with her. He could be charming in his own way, she reasoned, and though she’d honestly considered giving in on a handful of the occasions that Garrett had floated the idea by her, she knew that she wouldn’t have sex with him. She wouldn’t become one of his women, at least not in that sense, because the moment she did, she knew that eventually she would show up in his writing.
It might be some unflattering metaphor that related a traffic accident or some other distasteful occurrence to some personal flaw he would discover in her, or she might simply pop up as a character in one of the serials Garrett has been known to write for men’s magazines. So no, she would be his editor, his wrangler, his den mother, his confessor and confidant, and now apparently his co-author as well, but she would not be his lover.
With that decision made, or rather re-made, as she had gone back and forth on it a couple of times in the past, Emily checked her computer’s clock. There wasn’t much to work with yet, as far as the article was going, but she needed to have something submitted before morning to keep the machine rolling. If she was able to whip the teaser into shape quickly, she could be done early enough that she wouldn’t have to cancel her late night coffee date.
--
“It was a freak accident,” Barbara Canary said on the topic of her mother’s death, once she had regained enough composure to do so, “you see, about five years ago momma was doing a psychic archery display for some kids from Carter County elementary.”
“Psychic archery?” Todd found himself asking.
“Anyone can hit a target if they work at it long enough, but momma could do something even better. She told the kids to think about where they wanted to put the targets, you get it? She told them ‘think of the perfect spot to put a target’, and once they did, she’d take a shot at it.”
“This actually worked?”
“You’d be surprised, Mr. Garrett. Momma was truly gifted. She went eighteen for twenty kids, that’s pretty good I’d say. Of course, she really got nineteen out of twenty. See, one of the kids ran back to momma before the bus left to tell her the truth. He wanted to put his target up in the tree instead of on the ground like she’d asked them too.”
“So…your mother shot an arrow into a tree?”
“Well, up into the boughs. She got it to stay up there, not stuck in the bark, but just kind of caught in the branches and leaves,” Barbara took a breath before continuing, “and well, last week momma was doing her gardening, and a wind kicked up. It was the start of this big storm we’ve been having, I guess. That’s how it happened, the wind must have shook the arrow loose, and it fell. Sharp side down, right over the garden. Doc said she was gone before she hit the ground, didn’t even feel it, probably.”
“She was killed by an arrow she’d shot into a tree from five years ago?” Todd asked with unabashed incredulity.
“Yes,” Barbara said, seeming to be on the verge of another crying spell.
“You would think she might have seen that coming,” Todd wanted to say that, but he didn’t. It had been over a couple of weeks since the last time he’d had sex with anything warm that wasn’t attached to his own body, and Barbara was both of legal age and extremely vulnerable.
The reporter tried not to leer at the grieving young woman. She had an overall country look about her, couldn’t really be avoided, all things considered, but she didn’t suffer for it too much. She had a nicely shaped mouth, with the minor exception of a slight overbite that could have been corrected easily by a year or two of braces, and freckles on her cheeks. They would probably disappear under any normal application of makeup. Her eyes were large, but tinged with red. The hair was blonde, but nowhere near the bottle variety, and she had a rich, even, tan.
If he turned it on, Todd thought, if he really turned it on, he could have her eating out of his hand inside of fifteen minutes. So why wasn’t he turning it on?
He felt a little ill when he connected the dots. She reminded him of himself, all alone after a random twist of fate, though she’d gotten the benefit of at least one of her parents, as eccentric as Susan the Psychic may have been, for at least a decade longer than he had been able to spend with his own family. Correction, his first family. The foster homes he hop scotched through didn’t really count. He found himself feeling guilty for wanting her. Todd needed to leave.
“Well, I’m sorry for your loss, Miss Canary,” he began, “I should be going. I was sent down here to do a piece on the psychic of Carter County, and unfortunately, she’s no longer with us, so…”
“That’s not true,” Barbara said, sniffling her way back into control of her tear ducts, “I’ve got momma’s gift too.”
“So you couldn’t see it coming either? Remind me to keep your contact information on file incase I need some lottery numbers,” Todd wanted to say, but again, he did not.
“I’ve been sexing goose eggs like momma showed me for a few months now,” Barbara said, matter of factly.
There was so much wrong with that sentence that Todd didn’t even know where to start. He found himself just sort of sitting there with his mouth hanging slightly open, almost as though he soon expected the young woman to transmute into another creature.
“See, all it takes is a doll’s leg and some string.”
That didn’t help much.
“You tie the string around the doll’s leg, and then you hold it over the egg. You have to be real still, and you have to have the gift, otherwise nothing happens. Now, if you’re really still, and you have the gift, the doll’s leg will start to move. It turns clockwise for baby boys and counter clockwise for baby girls.
“And it’s not just geese either, Mr. Garrett. You dangle the doll leg over a pregnant woman’s big belly, and you can tell what she’ll have just as easy.”
Or you could have an ultra-sound taken, Todd heard himself thinking.
“You must think I’m just some silly little girl, but I’m not.”
Don’t think about her naked, don’t think about her naked on your bed.
“Momma gave me her gift when I was born, and it’s my job to share it with the world, so I’d like it if you stayed and saw for yourself what I can do,”
I’d really like to, you have no idea, kid, Todd thought to himself, realizing that he wanted to be anywhere else. He could almost see himself in the corner, or hiding behind the sofa. Hell, he might have even been under the kitchen table hatching plans with one of his not quite brothers. Maybe Barbara was one of his almost siblings, maybe he was still seven years old.
“Alright,” he said, “tell you what, I’ve been driving all day and I need some rack time under my belt before I do anything else. I’m going to get a room at the motel, and I’ll come back tomorrow. We can get an early start on your article.”
“Okay, Mr. Garrett,” Barbara said, a little too cheerily, “I’ll see you tomorrow. And you know how I know I will?”
She smiled and tapped the side of her head.
--
“Sometimes, Emily, I wish I could just take a big black marker and write all over my life, wiping it out. Redacting it. I don’t really care if anyone else knows, I just want to forget it,” Todd’s voice was weak and shaky over a bad phone connection.
Emily knew better than to try and talk Todd down, they both knew that wasn’t what he wanted any way. He was holed up in a filthy motel room someplace, alone, by the sound of it, and drunk. He’d struck out, maybe more than once, in the mood he was in it was most likely on purpose. All he wanted was for someone to sit and listen to him, he just wanted to be heard. He knew he could trust Emily because they’d worked together for a long time, and she also had an interest in him staying functional. She set her glasses down on the desk and looked out her window at the afternoon sky.
“Did I ever tell you about the first girl I saw naked, now I don’t mean like in a magazine or on tv, but up close, in the flesh. The first foster family they placed me with was pretty nice, but they couldn’t handle me, or at least they were decent enough to tell the state that they didn’t think they could handle me. Now, the second home, it was a fucking pit. Once you grow up, you figure a lot of stuff out. I know they were getting checks for all of us, it was supposed to be for food, for medicine, for clothes. We saw maybe ten cents on the dollar, or less, if we were lucky.
“They fed us, enough to keep us alive and looking sort of healthy for when the inspectors showed up, but that was just about it. We used hand me down clothes from kids we never even met. They were too old or too difficult to make money off of anymore, so they were gone and we got the leftovers, meanwhile, Ted and Jeanie got a big screen and a giant leather sofa that they kept in their air-conditioned garage. See, the house was shit poor, but the garage was like their little palace.
“They paid for it off our backs, but if we tried to get in, they’d punish us. They couldn’t hit us, because that would show up, but they ran us into the ground just the same. I remember being locked up in the crawlspace under the house for almost two days once. Greg snuck food to me through this break in the boards. As hungry as I was, I didn’t eat it, because I knew I’d get out. They had to let me out, because if I disappeared, so did my check. Food, and on those rare occasions we got it, candy, were like gold to us. We traded with each other for whatever we wanted.
“Well, there was this one girl, I guess she might have been border line special needs, but she wasn’t all that dumb. She had, I guess you’d call it a milk tooth or something. It looked like she’d nursed way too long, and her front teeth came in funny, almost pointing straight out in front of her. She sucked on her teeth a lot, so her face looked almost sunken or just fucked up from the mouth down, but she was holding it that way on purpose. Her name was Luanne. So, this one night, Greg decides he wants to see what Luanne has, or doesn’t have, under her dress. He promises that we’ll give her four pieces of candy if she shows us.
“So, she lifts her little dress up. At the time it was probably spectacular, you know, seeing the unknown, the great mystery of the universe there between her little legs. But really, it was pretty fucking boring, and thinking back, it makes me want to take a shower. She was supposed to be like a sister to us, you know? Greg was just amazed, he couldn’t stop talking about it. I guess that happens when your foster parents won’t buy you video games or comic books. So, Luanne puts her dress back down and we hand over the candy. She starts sucking on one piece of it and says to us, ‘if you give me eight candies you can touch, too’
“Naturally, Greg wants to touch it. He tried a swap on Luanne, she could touch our stuff if we could touch hers, but she said no, she wanted eight candies. Like I said, she may have been borderline special needs, but she wasn’t dumb. Greg raided his stash and only had six pieces left, so he wanted me to come up with the rest. I said no. You know what he did, the fucking little rat, he stole my candy while I was in the bathroom. I was really pissed, probably as pissed off as a little kid can get, and I went looking for him. Not a big deal, because it was a small house, and I knew he wouldn’t be in the garage. I found them in a hall closet, and I just sort of jumped at Greg like an animal. Really, we fought like animals. I guess that is what Ted and Jeanie were raising us to be. We hit, we kicked, we bit. But I know I won, I probably broke his nose, the way it started bleeding.
“That was when Ted found the three of us. Luanne was in the back, her panties around one ankle and her little dress pushed up, her mouth full of candy. I was still on top of Greg, still hitting. Somehow, the whole thing was my fault. I was the only one who got locked under the house for it, but that time, and every time after, no one snuck any food to me.”
Emily wanted to tell Todd to come home, to come to her home. She had a thing for broken people, she liked to fall for them and try to fix them. She knew that she couldn’t fix Todd though, hell, even if she could it might be the wrong thing to do. There was an old saying about how pain made art. When Todd was on, which was rare anymore, he could come just about as close to art as you could get with the written word. The logical side of Emily’s brain, the business side, that is, clicked back into control.
“Todd, I don’t want to push you,” yes she did, she had to, “but I need the article in two days, and you haven’t sent me anything yet. I’m,” she stopped for a moment, she hated doing this to him, but she knew it was the only thing he would respond too. It was one of the bonuses of their honest relationship, they could both be incredibly cruel to each other and get away with it, “I’m meeting someone later tonight, so if you have anything to send, it needs to be here before I leave for the night.”
“Alright,” Todd seemed to dry up by leaps and bounds on the other end of the phone, “I’ll send you the prelim as soon as I’m off the phone. It’s just the trip out there though, I won’t have the rest of the meat until tomorrow.”
“That’s fine, as long as I have something to show the home office in the morning, it should be no problem to get your usual fee,”
“Thanks for listening, Em,” Todd said.
--
“Do you really think he looks good for this?”
Todd heard that from the direction of the federal agents. It didn’t really matter which one of them said it, it was the answer that concerned him. The cheap government suits and ties were almost comical to him. Being ordered onto his stomach, less than three feet from a maggot ridden corpse had not been comical to him in the least, but thankfully the sheriff’s station had smelled better by at least a couple orders of magnitude.
“He was at the scene, he’s not a local, he fits the profile. If I’m missing something here, Marlene, would you tell me what it is?”
Marlene was the female one, obviously. From the dark hair and her features, Todd figured her for being Hispanic. For some reason, he wanted to hang the ‘female law enforcement agent as lesbian’ cliché on her. If he’d been the one writing her that is how she would have been written. She didn’t seem like the type to let a man get the better of her, and Todd thought to himself that even if she did lower herself to sleeping with men, that she would still be in charge.
Maybe she’s a dominatrix, Todd thought to himself, trying to control the urge to twist his hands against the cuffs. He’d been handcuffed before, and every time it had reminded him of his childhood, once he’d gotten too big for the crawlspace, that is. Marlene the butch dominatrix, she had to be in charge. Maybe she was wearing black leather under her government issue.
“First, it is agent Carerra. Second, You’re too eager. You’re seeing what you want to see, and not what the evidence is trying to show you.”
They shouldn’t be having this conversation in front of him. He knows it, he is pretty sure that they do too, or at least that they should. Then it hits him, it is an act. They’re feeding him this bullshit to make it look like he’s getting away clean so that he’ll lead them to something really incriminating. They’re going to be watching him now, everywhere he goes?
“Are blinders standard issue for senior field agents?”
“That’s enough, Agent Montgomery,” Marlene’s voice cuts like a scythe, “go wait in the car.”
You can almost see it, Todd thinks to himself, Agent Montgomery’s severed manhood falling free down his pants leg and rolling out from his cuff onto the tile floor. If it did happen like that, he had no doubt that Marlene would have stepped on it and ground it underneath her shoe. They’re putting on a nice little play.
The agent’s expression seems to soften as she turns to her remaining prisoner, “I’m sorry about that. We’re working on processing your release right now, we have no reason to hold you, but I would like to ask you a few questions, if you don’t mind?”
“Now you want to listen to me?” Todd’s mouth reacts faster than his brain, he figures he might as well let it keep going like that for a while, “For the last three years I’ve been trying to tell the FBI that the cases have all been connected. Thirty four dead women in eleven states, thirty four, all from the same killer,”
“Mr. Garrett, why are you so certain that it is the work of one individual. Do you have any new information that could help us?”
He likes her subtle accent. She must be very good at what she does, because she has been allowed to keep a part of her racial identity. She isn’t like the newscasters with Latin last names who have perfect diction, the only concession to their natural accent appearing when they say their own surname at the beginning or end of their reports. No, Agent Marlene Carerra is good enough to be herself. She must be very dangerous. Todd imagines he can see a blow fly buzzing around Marlene. It plays around her throat, dipping down to crawl over skin that probably shouldn’t have been exposed. Todd admitted he didn’t know if FBI regulations allowed their agents to pop the first couple of buttons when they were caught short in a rural hell that suffered from a malfunctioning air conditioning system. The blow fly is buzzing again, gone from the agent’s throat. It flutters around the side of Marlene’s head before it disappears into her right ear.
“You want to know how I beat you to the body, how I cracked The Hunter’s code and figured out where he would drop the next one, right?” Todd took a deep breath, “I was there for his first kill, covering it, I mean, back when I was still on a regular newsbeat in New York. He’s the reason I turned into this: a gypsy newshound who runs down stories about miracle bathtubs, spontaneous combustion, and the appearance of religious figures on moldy bread. I’ve been following him for three years, and now I’m really starting to get close.”
“Think about that, Mr. Garrett,” Marlene almost purred, “If you are getting as close to him as you say, close enough to predict his movements, don’t you think he knows? He’s been one step ahead the whole time. Are you sure you want to leave this office today? We might be able to arrange protection for you, in exchange for your information.”
“Lady, I’ve been giving your office my information for the last three years, for free. You couldn’t protect the last thirty three victims, what makes you think you could protect me?”
--
Emily Powell couldn’t believe her luck. Not only did her date admit to having a ‘thing’ for girls who wear glasses, he was built like an athlete and he also happened to be a successful lawyer. He’d arrived early for their date, and she’d actually caught him reading, wait for it, the new issue of the Economist. It was the closest to smitten that she had gotten in quite a long time.
“I’m really glad that Rebecca set us up,” the date said. His name was Hoight Braskell, and Emily didn’t know that people could really have eyes that were that blue, “I don’t get to meet a lot of women in court.”
“I can’t believe that,” Emily replied, playing with the handle of her nearly empty coffee cup, “I’m sure there must be one or two around.”
“Oh, don’t get me wrong,” Hoight’s smile seemed impossibly wide and bright, “there are a lot of women there, but they usually come in only three categories. Lawyers, Judges, and Criminals. Lawyers are okay, but it is hard enough to get out when it is just my case schedule I have to work around. Judges are a lot like lawyers, only they’re usually older, not to mention married, and things would get really complicated if I got involved with one.”
“That leaves criminals then,” Emily pointed out, “all the desperate women at your complete mercy, you could live like a king.” What the hell was she saying, she wondered. She sounded like an idiot. Had she managed to miss someone adding a fifth of Irish whiskey to her coffee?
“Even more complicated to deal with than judges,” Hoight chuckled, “It took me a long time to get where I am, I’d rather not risk it. Besides, if I thought it would work with any of them, I wouldn’t be here talking to you. I don’t really regret the choice I made. Okay, enough of that. I think it’s my turn now. Becca said you were in publishing?”
“I’m into a few things. I work as a literary agent for a couple of local clients, I’m on the review board for Cooper-Smith Publishing, and I do a little head hunting on the side.”
Hoight set his coffee cup back down, “Head hunting, now that sounds exciting.”
“It can be, but not for the reasons it might sound like. Basically, I just put people together with other people who need them. An example, I have a running contract with a couple of news magazines. I get a commission for bringing stories in to them. Now, just about anyone could submit stuff to them, if they know the right numbers to call, but with me, they get almost like a guarantee. Because of my background, they know I’m not going to feed them something they can’t use. It works both ways, they know my people can produce, so they’re willing to pay a little more, sometimes they’re even willing to dish it out on speculation.”
“I bet you must have some interesting clients, then? Renegade journalists, living on the edge and filing a report about it?” Hoight asked. He was infinitely less interested in what Emily did then in the fact that not only did she look good doing it, she was able to talk about it intelligently.
“Sometimes I feel like I’m a teacher, running a class room full of very gifted five year olds. Once I get them to slow down and go in the right direction, they never cease to amaze me.”
From there, they moved on to more random fact finding about each other. They’d attended the same university, albeit several years apart. Emily had always preferred her men slightly older though, so it was more of a bonus than a sticking point to her. Eventually they meandered into discussing a few of the recent articles that they had both read.
Whether they were arguing or agreeing about whatever topic at hand, it was becoming starkly obvious to both of them that they had already made up their minds about another issue.
So, even though it went contrary to her usual character, Emily knew that she would be inviting Hoight up when he dropped her off back at her place. She also knew that he would demure at first, the mark of a gentleman, but eventually he would accede.
It was no surprise when Emily found herself nude and straddling the man on her bed, bucking up and down and feeling his tongue as well as his large, but strangely soft, hands on her skin. For whatever reason, she hadn’t allowed herself to feel like that, to feel that good, in a long time.
Later, when he lay spent beneath her, she folded herself down onto his chest, listening as his pounding heart began returning to its normal rhythm. Hoight ran a hand through Emily’s hair as she looked up at his face, a stray shaft of moonlight coming through the drapes to give the entire affair a poignant glow.
“You’re incredible,” he still sounded out of breath.
“I know,” she smiled back it him before playfully biting him on the chest.
--
In Todd Garrett’s dreams, his house was always made of fire. Not Ted and Jeanie’s house, not any of the houses he did time in after theirs, his house, his real house. It was alive, twisting, turning. Something made of fire could not be burned down. That was the type of infallible logic that could only appear in a dream. His real family lived there, his mother and his father, but they were not made of fire. Their faces were burned away leaving a mask of black ash, and as they talked to him, the ash shimmered and shook like curtains before an open window on a windy night.
“Go back to bed,” ash mother said to him. Her voice should have been warm and soothing, the one thing in the world that he would truly be able to take comfort from, but it was not. Instead, it was harsh and sibilant. The voice sounded like it had to be drug up from a deep pit, parts of it getting scraped off along the way.
“it will be okay,” ash father said. Todd usually pictured him being a towering giant, having to hunch his shoulders to stay below the roiling flame of the ceiling, this time he was small, smaller than Todd was.
Luanne rode by on a bicycle made of human bones, her mouth stuffed so full of candy that she would certainly choke if she attempted to swallow.
From the far end of the great hallway, Todd could hear the sound again. It always came back, every time. It started like a scream but quickly plummeted in pitch so that it made the walls and floor shake.
“Is this hell?”, young Todd asked the ash father.
“Yes.”
Day Two
Emily, I could kiss you for prodding me into going out on the psychic story. For starters, you can unclench, I wrote the article that the magazine wanted, and I’m sure you’ll be able to put it all back together. You’ll find it attached.
Now, moving on to what is really going on. Remember a couple months ago when I found the Hunter’s most recent victim, how the FBI detained me for questioning? Well, it seems that they’ve been watching me, at least intermittently, since then. As far as I can tell, they are almost completely convinced that I’m involved in the Groom killing. It still looks like they’re not convinced that all of the victims are connected, but then again that might work to my favor. They’re only accusing me of one murder, not thirty four. I guess I should be thankful for small favors.
I should also be thankful to Barbara Canary. Without her intervention, you wouldn’t be reading this right now. One version of my return trip to the new and improved Carter County Psychic is in the attached article, here’s the real deal:
When I woke up this morning, it was to a ringing phone. I hadn’t asked the desk for a wake up call. It was the girl! Initially, I thought that she’d been able to pick my location and the phone number straight out of the ether, of course in my defense I had just woken up from what could be referred to as a vodka induced temporary coma, so I wasn’t exactly firing on all cylinders.
I was almost disappointed when she explained that it was a small town, and it had taken her about four minutes on the telephone to get my location and room number. I was about to hang up at that point when she hit me with the reason for her call. She told me she had a vision about me, that I was in a house of fire chasing a man with many weapons. She told me that in her vision I kept getting close to him, almost close enough to touch, but he would burst into flames and re-appear somewhere else. At the end of the vision, I got close enough to touch the fire as he burned up, but then I lost the trail because now I was the one being chased. Sound familiar?
Barbara says she can help me. We’re off to buy a bunch of maps. She brought along an overnight bag and her doll leg for divining. It sounds insane, but at this point I’m up for almost anything.
As soon as I have a bearing, I’ll let you know so you can start looking for anything in the area I might be able to sell a story about. Money is really tight, and it is only going to get tighter with two of us eating on the same dime now. I feel like this could be it though, if I can get him before the next cycle starts this whole thing can be over.
"I’m agent Carerra, this is Agent Montgomery. We need to ask you some questions about the man who assaulted you, Miss Teale,” Marlene was trying her best not to be imposing. She had an entire catalog of expressions and looks that said ‘Have you seen my marksmanship scores, I could drop you from across a football field with a pistol. Iron sights only.’ That look helped with suspects sometimes, but it usually made the witnesses squirm and dry up.
“He didn’t assault me, I mean, he didn’t do anything against my will,” The young woman was fresh off her shift, still wearing her waitress’ uniform. Her feet were killing her.
“So you wanted him to rape you at gunpoint?” That was Montgomery’s approach at tactfulness.
“What? There was no rape,” the waitress rested her head in her hands, “Look, that isn’t what happened at all.”
“Then tell us what happened,” Carerra prompted.
Waitress Teale looked back and forth between the two agents. She would lock eyes with Marlene, flick over to Montgomery, and then back before cutting her eyes over to the door.
“Agent Montgomery, would you get us some sodas or something?” Carerra asked.
“Sure thing,” the junior agent said. A few seconds later and he was out the door.
“Alright honey, he’s gone,” Carerra sat down opposite the waitress and leaned toward her like they were college girlfriends getting together over a cup of coffee for the first time in years, “why don’t you tell me what really happened?”
“He came in really late, my replacement was already in, but she was… well, she was stuck in the bathroom so I figured, why not? One last table for the night, maybe he leaves a big tip, you know?”
Marlene nodded.
“He ordered a sandwich, fries, and some tea. The place was pretty dead, so I kept going over and checking on him, making sure everything was okay. I figured it couldn’t hurt my chances. Anyway, he was really nice, and funny too. We ended up flirting, a lot.
“He paid for his food when he was done and gave me a nice tip, but we didn’t stop talking. Since I was out of there anyway, we were leaving at the same time. He held the door for me, all of that. I’d asked him where he was headed, basic small talk back in the restaurant, he said he wasn’t really sure yet. It usually wasn’t up to him, those were his exact words.
“I’m not even sure how it happened. I mean, I know how it happened, but… okay, I’d been dating this guy for a while, and it was boring but safe. Not even that fun anymore, but it worked, you know? So, there is this other guy, probably never see him again my whole life, and he wants me. He was being cool about it, or trying, but I could tell. I figure why not, he’s not bad looking, he’s funny, and no matter how good or bad it is, I won’t have to see him again. He was like a holiday, and I really needed one.”
“Did you take him back to your place, or go to a motel?”
“My place. My boyfriend and I weren’t living together, we’d stay over a couple nights at a time, but that was it. I kind of hate his apartment anyway,” Miss Teale was on the verge of rambling, but Agent Carerra was able to steer her back on course using only her facial expressions, “so, I bring him home and we start. He’s not bad at all, knows what he’s doing. Very nice,” The waitress smiles at the thought, blushing slightly, “but after we’re finished, he started getting weird.”
“How so?”
“He told me that he had a fantasy, and asked if I wanted to help. We’d started drinking when we got to my place, and then after the other stuff, I mean, it just seemed okay. I wasn’t ready for him to leave yet I guess. I said sure, lets do it. That was when he comes up with the gun out of nowhere. Now, right off, he tells me it isn’t loaded, but he wants me to act like it is.”
“What did he do?”
“Not that much really, he pushed the barrel up against me a couple of times. It was very cold. He drew on me with it for a while, like he put it up against me and traced over my body with it. He asked me if I could put the barrel in my mouth, and I started to get a little scared… but he said it was okay and we could stop. He put it someplace out of sight and we went back to doing regular stuff, because maybe the stuff with the gun helped him and he was definitely ready to go again. In the morning, he was gone, and so was the gun. I got what I wanted, a one off casual affair, and he got to do his gun thing.”
“I don’t understand. It sounds like everything was consensual, that doesn’t fit with the report that…”
“The report is bullshit,” Miss Teale affirmed, “I was telling one of the girls on my next shift about it, sort of like ‘you wouldn’t believe what I did last night’. Bitch couldn’t keep her mouth shut, told my boyfriend. He came up with the whole ‘raped at gunpoint’ thing.”
“I see,” Agent Carerra said, trying, and failing, to suppress a frown. Garrett was fucked up, there was no real question of that, but he hadn’t actually done anything illegal.
“There was one other thing though,” Miss Teale added, “he mumbled something when he was holding the gun on me. I think it was ‘help me understand’.”
“Thank you Miss Teale,” Agent Carerra responded, “You’ve been a big help.”
“Sure thing, now where did your partner go to get my drink, Canada?”
--
Todd Garrett was trying not to ask too many questions, but when Barbara attached a small votive candle to his dash with double sided tape and then proceeded to light it, he had to make the obvious inquiry.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“I’m protecting us and getting ready to do a reading for you,” Barbara explained.
Okay, so an open flame in a moving vehicle had protective properties. There was a first time for everything. It took a couple of minutes for Garrett to notice that the candle was steadily filling his car with the aroma of vanilla. That was a problem.
“Do you have one that doesn’t smell?” He asked.
“Is it bothering you?”
“Well, I kind of have to drive by smell, which is ironic because I’m not too good at it. Smelling, I mean, not driving.”
Clearly, the young rustic seer wasn’t getting the picture. She looked cute with her face slightly pinched up in a confused expression.
“My valve cover leaks, so sometimes oil sprays out under the hood. The car runs very hot, small engine, so the oil gets burned, and after a while, I can smell it. When it gets really bad, I know that I’m down to just the older, heavier, oil that is left from a while ago. That means I need to put more oil in, and I have to be able to smell it.”
“Couldn’t you just check the dipstick every so often?”
“I do that too, but the leak isn’t constant. It has to do with pressure and a whole bunch of other stuff I don’t understand. So yeah, I check it every time I start off on a long trip,”
“You didn’t check it when we left the hotel this morning,” Barbara interrupted.
“No, you’re right, I didn’t. That’s why it is important for me to be able to smell when the oil starts burning.”
Garrett hadn’t been paying much attention to the flat road spooling out ahead of his oil burning car during his debate with his passenger, so he was naturally surprised when he flicked his gaze back out the front of the windshield and saw oncoming cars planted in the middle of both lanes.
Todd jerked the wheel, sending his blue sedan off the road and up onto the shoulder as the pair of apparent drag racers screamed by without really seeming to notice anyone else had even been on the road with them.
The grass underneath the tires was wet, and the vehicle’s forward momentum was starting to translate into a spin. When the vehicle finally came to a stop, thankfully without the intervention of any of the nearby trees or fence posts, Todd had to make a definite effort to uncoil his fingers from around the steering wheel. He found himself breathing heavily. He wished that one, or both, of the redneck racers had stopped to check on him so that he could yell at them about driving like idiots.
That was a lie. What he really wanted to do was to chase them down and blow their brains out with the magnum he kept wrapped up in an old pair of panties in the glove compartment. He noticed he was smiling at the thought of murder again, but at the same time he realized he hadn’t even thought to check on his passenger. Luckily, she was smiling too, but the writer wasn’t quite sure why.
“We’re here,” Barbara said, before she leaned forward, cupped her hand behind the candle’s flame and blew it out.
--
Todd Garrett had been twenty one, once. He had also been drunk frequently. One night in particular stood out to his memory, which was something of a miracle considering how much alcohol he’d actually consumed on that very occasion. It was his first time with an older woman, well, almost. He’d been with older girls for most of his life, but only by a margin of three or four years or so. He’d always looked older than he really was, and didn’t see the need to point out that he had been below the age of consent for most of his initial liaisons.
Jenny was different though. She wasn’t a couple of years older, more like thirteen.
Todd worked with Jenny’s husband, a rough looking guy named Perry. He was a head shorter than his wife, and always seemed to be dirty. The business practically demanded it. Perry bought up old railroad ties, the big pieces of wood soaked in creosote, and re-sold them as decorative landscaping elements. That meant that most weekdays, starting at around six thirty in the morning, Todd, Perry, and a couple of other employees were filling up trailers with two hundred and fifty pound logs. It was rough work, so the boss compensated by having regular barbecues at his house.
These were mostly an excuse to let the employees and their girlfriends or wives, whichever applied, get lobotomized drunk on the boss’s dime. On the night in question, Perry was the first one to fall to a combination of tequila, vodka, and cheap bourbon. The other employees and their significant others peeled off over the next thirty two minutes, leaving only Jenny, Todd, and a couple inches of booze left to be polished off.
“You drink like a fish, Ted,” Jenny announced.
“Todd,” he felt the need to clarify.
“Right,” Jenny had a pretty smile, despite the smoker’s teeth, “are you going to stay and help me clean up?”
“Sure,” Todd said, wobbling in his seat like a boat at sea.
“Good man,” Jenny said, with an exaggerated nod of her head, “we need some music though. I feel like dancing.”
After noticing that the vodka was already gone, Todd finished what was left of the tequila and then found himself watching Jenny’s ass as she got up from her chair and tried to reach the radio. Todd wondered why they’d put it up so high. If Jenny was having trouble reaching it, not that he didn’t enjoy watching her try, there was no way in hell Perry could make that stretch.
“Here, let me,” Todd said. It took more effort to stand up than he’d expected, and his legs felt a little unsteady as he made his way over.
Jenny moved to the side a little, but didn’t get far enough out of the way. Todd stumbled a little and fell against her, managing to catch his balance on one of the posts that framed in the porch so that his full weight hadn’t driven the woman through the front window of her own house.
“Sorry,” he said.
“Its okay,” came the reply. Jenny was close enough that Todd could actually smell the liquor on her breath, “If you can reach it, just about anything will do.”
It took Todd a moment to remind himself that she was talking about the radio. He made the stretch easily, and turned the knob to the on position, but not too loud. For some reason he couldn’t really hear the music that clearly, he always got a little deaf when he was drunk, but he was able to catch the main beat underneath it. He thought it was very sensual. When he started to lose his balance, Jenny caught his waist with both hands and pulled him back to her.
“Dance with me,”
It was an offer he couldn’t refuse. The alcohol had washed away his normal body consciousness, and he was already weaving this way and that a little, so for once in his life, it actually came easy to him, or at least as easily as it could come to someone who couldn’t really hear the music.
They stayed close together as they moved, and it was starting to drive Todd a little bit crazy. All the grazing touches and rubbing contact. Out of the blue, Jenny pulled him in for a kiss, and Todd felt the woman’s tongue in his mouth, probing his own. As a reflex, he was conscious of one of his arms going around the woman’s waist, pulling her toward him so that their bodies pressed tight together. Even through their jeans and despite the night’s chill, Todd could tell that his boss’s wife was very warm. Instead of pushing him away, Jenny took his other hand and placed it on her right breast.
Todd had never thought about Jenny this way. Sure, she was attractive. She had raven black hair that fell to her waist, large dark eyes, nice breasts that still managed to keep most of their shape without requiring the use of a bra, and she always wore tight clothes to show off an ass that she was very clearly proud of. It all seemed so distant though, like it just didn’t apply to him.
“Fuck me,” Jenny’s voice seemed husky when he heard it from so close up. As a punctuation, she closed her teeth on his earlobe.
Of course he did exactly as told, though it took him a while to get it right. With all the liquor in his system, he couldn’t seem to get more than about half hard, and once he finally did, it didn’t take much longer before he shot his load home inside of Jenny’s clinging warmth. It was cold that night, and he could almost have sworn that they were steaming as they came apart.
They heard a door close, someplace up on the second story. Perry probably, got up to go to the bathroom. That was Todd’s cue to leave. As he was buttoning his pants back up, Jenny kissed him again, and he knew that he was going to have to find another job soon.
The woman looked exquisite as she pulled her own jeans back on, the dark nest of her bush vanishing behind the rising zipper. She hugged Todd one last time, stuffing her discarded panties into one of his pockets. As he made his way down the porch stairs, Todd figured that either the sex itself or the adrenaline of the surrounding situation had sobered him up a great deal.
When he sank into the driver’s seat of his car, it hit him: Jenny had been the best fuck of his entire life. It hadn’t just been the woman though, she wasn’t really any tighter or wetter or warmer than he’d had before, it was the fact that she was supposed to belong to somebody else that really made it perfect. The fact that he got to keep a trophy was just icing on the cake.
--
“The director wants me to pull the plug on your investigation,” the words came into Marlene Carerra’s ear via her cell phone’s speaker, “as far as most of the people in this office are concerned, you’ve been on an extended, paid, vacation for the last month and a half.”
“He’s our guy, Fields,” Marlene replied.
“Despite all the evidence to the contrary?” The voice on the other end of the line prompted.
“He fits the profile.”
“That doesn’t mean a damn thing. All we have is a basic offender profile. White, late twenties to mid thirties, intelligent. That’s almost a third of the bureau right there. Has there been any movement on motive, victim selection, any of those other important parts of the puzzle?”
“We thought we were on to something, sir, but it didn’t pan out.”
“What was it?”
“Aside from all of the victims being female, there haven’t been any other unifying themes. Age, socio economic standing, race, hair color, even the method of their killing, you name it. None of it matches up.”
“Hold on a second,” Fields said, “it sounds to me like you’re buying Garrett’s story about the thirty plus victims now.”
“He’s our prime suspect. We have letters from him over the last couple of years claiming to link all of the victims together. I’m looking at him as our killer, so if he says all the cases are related, then I’m going to treat them like they are.”
“Maybe he’s saying that to throw you off, to make you do exactly what you’re doing now: trying to connect cases that have nothing to do with each other. It is a waste of time.”
“It feels like he wants to get caught, I don’t want to disappoint him,” Marlene wasn’t happy about having to defend her investigation. She was on the trail of, possibly, the most prolific serial killer in her lifetime, and she would be damned if she let the trail go cold because the head office was tired of paying her expense account, “anyway, the thread we thought we had, the one thing that all of the victims had in common, was that all the women were married at the time of their deaths.”
“But that didn’t hold up?”
“The most recent victim, Ernesta Groom, was not, and had never been, married according to county records.”
“Did you do a follow-up?” Fields said.
“The records were there in black and white, besides, Garrett didn’t stay around too long once we cut him loose. We’ve been busy running down some claims that have been made against him, contacting his associates, trying to get the full picture. The way it reads right now, he’s a very disturbed man.”
“This call was supposed to end with me ordering you back to the office and reassigning you, but I’m going to give you another couple of days. Instead of cris-crossing every backwoods motel in the south following Todd Garrett, hoping to catch him doing something, go back and dig a little deeper into Ernesta Groom. If she’s the one sticking point in your hypothesis about the victims, you need to put more time into her.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“But, if you run into another dead-end, I want you back here first thing. I’m putting myself on the line here, so do me a favor, and find something that makes it worth while.”
--
“Where were you just now?” Hoight asked, studying Emily’s face.
It seemed like they’d scarcely been apart since their dinner the night before, but somehow it felt natural to be seeing him again so soon. That was one of Emily’s reasons for accepting his lunch invitation. Another had been that she needed something to take her mind off of a growing problem.
“One of my writers,” Emily began.
“One of your gifted five year olds,” Hoight clarified with a smile.
“He’s always been, I guess you could call it, eccentric. Maybe even ego-centric? He does very quirky things, and then justifies it because he thinks it is all significant, almost like the world, and everyone in it, revolve around him.”
“And here you are, talking about him, and proving him right,”
“You asked,” Emily protested, then conceded the point with a sigh, “I’m really worried about him this time. Sometimes, I hope that some of what he tells me is just made up, like it is just another story of his, but then sometimes things happen and I know that he’s been telling me the truth.”
“Such as?”
“This afternoon, I received a call from the federal bureau of investigations. Well, an agent of theirs. She was asking me a whole bunch of questions about my client, she even wanted to come and interview me in person. I sort of know what it is about, but I always thought it was just one of his quirks, and not something that really…” she shook her head, “Sorry, I’m rambling a little.”
“Perfectly understandable,” Hoight’s voice sounded so reassuring that Emily was fairly certain he’d slipped into his practiced lawyer tone for her benefit, “it is not every day that someone gets a call from an fbi agent. I’ll tell you what, Miss Powell. If it comes down to a court case, I’ll represent this client of yours for you, make sure none of his civil liberties get violated, etc.”
Emily almost choked on her tea, “Don’t make fun of me.”
“I’m not, I’m being serious,” Hoight said, and she knew that he was being serious, though she wasn’t sure why.
“You don’t even know him, Hoight. You barely know me,”
“I know enough,” the lawyer said, “I know that you’re much prettier when you smile then you are when you are worrying about him. Let me take care of it.”
Perhaps that was the kind of thing that should have sent some tinge of apprehension up the literary agent’s spine, maybe a little bell should have gone off in her brain, but instead she was sort of surprised to find that she just felt relieved. Instead of getting upset about her concern over another man, as some of her recent relationship partners had been known to do, Hoight accepted it and, without missing a beat, offered to help.
In one way, that made Emily Powell feel a little bit like a lesbian: she was ready to move in with someone on their second date.
Beautify - Lyrics for a song in progress
A few weeks ago, I played a recording of an old song for a friend and frequent collaborator of mine. He said that the vocals reminded him of a specific singer. I'd never noticed the similarity before, but once he brought it up it has been nagging at me. I decided to try playing around with that style a little bit.
I put some lyrics together today, and they just happened to synch up perfectly with something I wrote back when I first switched from guitar to bass for my band.
Usually, I write songs with something in mind, this just sort of made up its own meaning while I was putting sounds together. It is about image over substance, people in the media and in power, and how easily people can get distracted from important things.
It also, right now, goes into a local case for the second 'verse'. There was a young woman who was arrested and was enlisted for a sting. The cops then managed to lose her/get her killed.
---
You've got to beautify,
before you testify,
so when you tell a lie,
nobody bats an eye.
Don't want to live with your lies anymore
don't want to get pulled inside,
don't want to live in your lies anymore,
can you look me in the eye?
+Always tried to mean everything that I said
if the opposite were true would I'd be better off dead
tell me, do I have to be a puppet just to get ahead?+
Does it get to you, all the things you say?
Was it set in stone, before you changed?
Does it bother you, all the things you do?
You know you're ugly too.
You need to beautify
Her life was on the line,
she had to drop a dime,
they hung her out to dry,
gagged by the thin blue line
----end, for now
The part in +'s is new, and likely pure placeholder.
Anyway, any comments/constructive criticism would be welcome. I'm new to this structure/style, so there is plenty of room to improve!
By the way, if someone guesses the band that is the major influence for this song, I'll pm them a copy of the track in its larval state, which is kind of lol-worthy right now.
I put some lyrics together today, and they just happened to synch up perfectly with something I wrote back when I first switched from guitar to bass for my band.
Usually, I write songs with something in mind, this just sort of made up its own meaning while I was putting sounds together. It is about image over substance, people in the media and in power, and how easily people can get distracted from important things.
It also, right now, goes into a local case for the second 'verse'. There was a young woman who was arrested and was enlisted for a sting. The cops then managed to lose her/get her killed.
---
You've got to beautify,
before you testify,
so when you tell a lie,
nobody bats an eye.
Don't want to live with your lies anymore
don't want to get pulled inside,
don't want to live in your lies anymore,
can you look me in the eye?
+Always tried to mean everything that I said
if the opposite were true would I'd be better off dead
tell me, do I have to be a puppet just to get ahead?+
Does it get to you, all the things you say?
Was it set in stone, before you changed?
Does it bother you, all the things you do?
You know you're ugly too.
You need to beautify
Her life was on the line,
she had to drop a dime,
they hung her out to dry,
gagged by the thin blue line
----end, for now
The part in +'s is new, and likely pure placeholder.
Anyway, any comments/constructive criticism would be welcome. I'm new to this structure/style, so there is plenty of room to improve!
By the way, if someone guesses the band that is the major influence for this song, I'll pm them a copy of the track in its larval state, which is kind of lol-worthy right now.
An unfinished sci-fi/romance? story
Inspired by Liberty's Write off the Bat event, I excavated my way through my back catalog and found this little piece from June 21, 2010
Not sure what I was going for, except for the phrase "different."
A failed assassination attempt finds an aristocrat lost on a world that is not as empty of life as it should be. A rescue from pursuit ignites strange desires.
One:
“My lady, the skiff to take you down to Blue Waters is ready,” the words came, somewhat garbled, from the outdated relay machine bolted to the bedside table, which was itself bolted to the floor of the cabin. What was the state of the empire coming to, Ilyra Fe’Arda pondering for a moment, when a member of the ruling house was forced to travel aboard such a rickety and under equipped craft as the one which now carried her?
“Thank you, Tamarin,” she said after depressing the reply switch, using a voice that almost dripped sweetness, entirely out of keeping with her present mood.
As soon as her finger slid off the device and her room’s privacy was returned, Lady Fe’Arda added, “For your fifth not so gentle reminder in the last three units.”
In her defense, her mood wasn’t entirely her fault. The trip from Arda House on Sesyrin had been pleasant up to a point, but once the outer marker to the Burning Hand cluster was reached, the ship’s crew had begun to suffer the effects of the ship’s artificial, and incrementally increasing, gravity. That had drained any lingering enjoyment right out of Lady Fe’Arda, who despite being sturdy and relatively strong by Empire Standards, felt herself bogged down to a crawl.
In truth, she’d been sleeping for the last two days, with the aide of some of Tamarin’s considerable pharmacology knowledge, interspersed with rounds of delicate massage from her private attendant. Supposedly, it was best to sleep through as much of one’s acclimatization to Blue Waters’ heavier gravity as possible, but in practice it only made Lady Fe’Arda dread having to wake up. Still, it wasn’t as bad is it used to be, at least according to some of the stories she’d heard about the earliest expeditions. The Empire’s first landing parties had been almost completely immobilized on reaching the surface, and those few that had remained able to move about ended up breaking something in the process, often fatally.
In comparison to that, two weeks of feeling herself grow progressively weaker, or heavier, whichever sensation fit the best at a given moment, had seemed like a pleasant alternative. Her attendant’s skilled hands hadn’t exactly hurt, either.
“Penna, help me dress,” Ilyra said, none of the false syrup in her voice that time.
Private Attendants were not exclusive to the Fe’Arda house, in fact they were a luxury enjoyed almost universally through ought the Empire, regardless of one’s station. In some places they were known by other names but their basic services remained the same.
Penna was a typical Fe’Arda Private Attendant: no older than twenty of Sesyrin’s full cycles, thin enough to seem almost insubstantial, with blonde hair and green eyes. She wore a sheer light weight gown that tended to cling to her legs as she walked. In some places, it was the custom for servants like Penna to wear as little as possible, with the display of flesh reflecting positively on the House that one served.
Ilyra understood that Penna had been designed to be as she was, not built like a machine, but designed none the less. Fe’Arda’s Flesh Makers prided themselves on their ability to regularly produce Pennas. The genetic information for fair hair was much less common, and the traits for the fine facial bones and eye color were even harder to maintain.
One thing had always bothered Lady Fe’Arda about the system: It had been designed by the ruling males in the Old Period, and so all the servants that were created had naturally been female. Sure, there were tales of some Houses who dabbled in creating males, but few were willing to risk the heavy sanctions that the Empire had imposed in the past when things had gotten out of hand.
Penna dutifully carried Ilyra’s protective garment over from its secure container and began helping her mistress dress into it. The first step was to remove Lady Fe’Arda’s night gown. Penna’s fingers were quick, not even appearing to pause for a millisecond as they flicked the releases at the back of the garment.
As Ilyra began to step into her protective body sheath, Penna’s hands wandered a bit, dancing across Lady Fe’Arda’s taut belly. Normally, the servant would have made a couple of circuits that included her mistress’ buttocks, her ample breasts, and finished with a bit of exploration between her legs. Arousal was considered the most attractive look that a noble woman could wear, but Lady Fe’Arda would be spending the next several hours locked up in a pressure suit and unable to relieve whatever tensions Penna might raise in her body.
“I’m in no mood to be frustrated today, Penna,” Ilyra said.
With a bow of her head, the attendant acknowledged the adjustment to her standing orders and instead busied herself with all the fasteners and clips that the complicated garment required.
-------------
Lady Fe’Arda checked that her breathing mask was still sealed into the face of her pressure suit, that it was still connected to both the atmosphere tank as well as the emergency scrubbers, and that all of the various components involved in its operation were still switched into the on position. It was the third time she’d completed her inspection inside of fifteen minutes. Normally, Ilyra would never have displayed such anxiety even if she’d felt it, but there was nothing normal about this trip.
It had been thirty years since the Empire last tread within the Burning Hand cluster, thirty years since the last Empire ship had entered the atmosphere of Blue Waters. It had also been thirty years since Sesyrin’s brightest minds had decided to spread a genetic plague from one end of the planet to the other in hopes of exterminating the resistance movement that had been organized by runaway servants.
That was the major cause for Ilyra’s concern, that she would soon be walking on a planet that her people had done their best to render lifeless. The plague had been engineered to target only the specific genetics of the servant bloodlines, but there was always a chance that a freak mutation could have occurred in the last three decades. It wasn’t that much of a stretch to believe that the disease could jump from servant to master, after all, the people of the Empire were, when you got right down to it, only very distant cousins of the species that they’d replicated and subsequently enslaved.
The two peoples were close enough in composition that they were able to engage in sexual acts, that is to say that they had the corresponding parts to make it work, but not close enough to produce offspring from such a union. Considering the strict population controls in place throughout the Empire, that genetic difference had made servants like Penna into a perfect alternative, the ultimate contraceptive agent.
“Relax, my lady,” Tamarin advised, speaking over his shoulder as he almost unconsciously worked to trim their angle of descent.
Ilyra found herself gripping the arm rests of her co-pilot’s seat. She was relieved that it was Tamarin at her side, his long service to House Fe’Arda meaning that she could rely on his discretion regarding any breaches in protocol she might commit. Lady Fe’Arda didn’t even want to think about what the trip down would have been like if she’d had to keep up the ice cold façade she would have been expected to wear with anyone outside of the peerage.
“I wish I could have seen it before,” Ilyra commented, not so much thinking about what she was saying but just saying something to keep her mind off of wondering if her seals were still intact.
“From what I’ve been able to see so far, and what the machines tell me,” Tamarin said, “there hasn’t been much of a change to the surface. Blue Waters was almost completely uninhabited for almost thirty years before the uprising.”
“How can that be,” Ilyra asked, “I remember my father talking about going there on safari to hunt and coming back with three Beast Women for the Flesh Makers.”
“Almost completely uninhabited, my lady,” Tamarin repeated, “The aboriginal tribes maintained settlements in a few small areas.”
“Do you think any of the natives, or the runaways, survived the plague?” Lady Fe’Arda asked.
“I wouldn’t think the likelihood should be all that high, my lady. Besides, if there is any trouble, we have a detachment of Konos hoplites to help deal with it.”
Ilyra leaned closer to her pilot and long time adjutant, “I don’t like having to trust my security to the house of Konos, they’ve been our rivals for three generations.”
“It is a simple matter of specialization, my lady,” Tamarin said, his voice changing in tone a bit, trying to reassure Ilyra about their passengers and protectors, “Fe’Arda doesn’t have any enhanced gravity trained warriors.”
“Then why was our house chosen to make this inspection?” Lady Fe’Arda demanded.
“You worry too much, my lady. It is an honor for you and for house Fe’Arda, just as it is an honor for the Konos Hoplites to accompany you.
-------------
The Fe’Arda skiff set down in a clearing between a stand of gigantic trees and a lake that was so still it appeared to be fashioned out of a single piece of cut glass. Ilyra couldn’t take her eyes off of it, losing herself in the deep pure blue that had given this world its name in the Imperial Registrar. She wondered what it would be like to bathe in that beautiful water, to feel it lapping at her skin like an eager lover.
It was then that Ilyra realized that her landing party wasn’t alone. A magnificent looking animal stared back at her from the far shore. It stood on four legs, with its proud head held high on an impossibly muscular neck. It was black as a starless night, and, Lady Fe’Arda could swear, it was staring back at her.
“Tamarin, look,” she said, pressing her private communicator.
When her adjutant turned towards her, Ilyra pointed at the distant animal.
“What a spectacular creature,” Tamarin said, “I believe they were once called ‘horses’.”
“Horses,” Ilyra tried the word and found that she liked how it sounded, “Do you think I could obtain Imperial permission to bring one back with us?”
The sudden laughter in Lady Fe’Arda’s ears reminded her that she’d let go of her private communicator and had said her last words on the broad channel that they shared with the Hoplites.
“My lady, I apologize,” Alvax Thorin, commander of the hoplite detachment, said with a voice that was so deep that it seemed to vibrate against Ilyra’s skin, “but I can save you a lot of trouble. They’re stupid animals, bred to serve. Look at him, he doesn’t even know what to do. His masters are gone, so what does he do? He looks at us like that, waiting for someone to take control of him.
“It would be too easy for you to break his spirit, My lady, but even then you could never trust it. It wants to be controlled, but it hates it at the same time. It is too stupid to decide how it really feels. Such a low creature is not fitting as a conquest for someone of your breeding. If you would still like to inspect the creature, my men can fell it for you.”
Ilyra felt herself sneering at the hoplite commander, only her protective face plate serving to conceal her true feelings toward him. The hoplites looked like they were all assembled from the same parts pile. Their bodies had been hardened through rigorous training programs in varying gravities, giving them an overall coarse look. Their armor only served to intensify their beastly appearance, making them seem even larger than they were.
“No, that is quite alright,” she said, “we have more important matters to attend to.”
“As you command, my lady,” Thorin said, although his voice suggested more mockery than reverence. If he’d used that tone on Sesyrin, Ilyra could have had him disciplined.
Lady Fe’Arda watched the hoplites as they unloaded the rest of their gear. They were hulking monstrosities, and they all seemed to take more notice of her than she would have liked. It felt more like they were sizing her up instead of keeping a vigilant watch over her.
It was common knowledge that the hoplites were not permitted mates or personal servants for the duration of their training and active postings. This particular band of ten of House Konos’ best had been near the end of a five cycle deployment when they’d been tapped for this protection detail.
There had been an incident on the ship, one of the House Fe’Arda servants had disappeared. Eventually, the poor girl’s body had been found, twisted and crushed almost beyond recognition. It seemed as though she’d somehow fallen into the machinery that was responsible for the simulated gravity onboard, but Ilyra wasn’t convinced. She’d suspected one or more of the hoplites had likely had their way with the girl and then discarded her when they were through.
And now here she was, a noble woman, for all intents and purposes stranded on an alien planet with a bunch of heavily armed thugs.
She turned back in time to see the horse stand up on its back legs and then run off. Lady Fe’Arda couldn’t help but envy its freedom.
Two:
Ilyra watched Tamarin as he finished assembling the last package worth of sensors. His civilized outline was more comforting to her than those of the hoplites who milled about in their makeshift camp. They’d moved away from the skiff’s landing site, trying to keep any debris or gasses from their landing from contaminating the results of their scans. The ground was harder there, uneven and with jagged rocks jutting out at random intervals. Ilyra felt like she could trip and slice open her protective suit at any moment.
She feared that Tamarin had done just that as she heard him utter an old Empire curse.
“Are you okay?” Lady Fe’Arda demanded.
“I’m fine, my lady,” Tamarin replied, “but these sensors are way off. I can’t get any two of them to agree with each other. I’m afraid the trip down was tougher on them than I’d anticipated.”
“What does that mean?” the noble woman asked.
As if sensing a problem, Thorin and his hoplites began to close in around the two Fe’Ardans.
“I’m going to have to return to the skiff, I need a few things to help me recalibrate the sensors. I could have sworn I brought some of them with me, but…”
“So we’re going back to the skiff?” Lady Fe’Arda asked, trying not to sound too hopeful. The idea of sightseeing on a poisonous planet was seeming worse by the second, especially considering the knife edged rocks all around them.
“No,” Thorin said, “It would be a waste of time for all of us to return. My hoplites can handle this terrain better than the two of you. I’ll send them to retrieve whatever is needed.”
“I appreciate your offer, Thorin, but I’m going to need to salvage some components from the skiff’s electronics. One of the sensor batteries is almost completely burned up. I don’t understand how this could have happened.”
“Very well,” Thorin said, “Two of my men will accompany Tamarin back to the skiff, the rest of us will keep this site secure and protect Lady Fe’Arda.”
Before Tamarin or Ilyra could articulate a response, two of Thorin’s hoplites had deployed some kind of a device between themselves. A third hoplite lifted Tamarin and set him in place, revealing the devices purpose to be a kind of harness that would allow the brutes to carry him easily between themselves.
“Unless, of course, my lady has any objections?” Thorin added as something of an afterthought.
“Of course not,” Ilyra said, “whatever completes our objectives in the most efficient manner.”
She could have sworn that Thorin was grinning at her as the pair of his hoplites took off, Tamarin bouncing along in the makeshift carriage between them, clearly less than comfortable with their loping gait.
Almost predictably, Tamarin was barely out of sight when Lady Fe’Arda’s comm system began to malfunction. She could only hear a faint hiss when she dialed into her private frequency.
“Is there a problem, my lady?” Thorin inquired.
Ilyra was taken aback by how close the hoplite commander was standing to her. If they hadn’t been wearing environmental suits, she would have been overwhelmed by his smell. As it was, she could almost imagine it anyway. It wasn’t a pleasant sensation.
“Nothing that won’t sort itself out in time, thank you,” Ilyra replied, being in an uncomfortable position, protocol wise. House Fe’Arda was above House Konos in the peerage, and so under no circumstances should a Fe’Arda give ground to a Konos hoplite. Still, she wondered if that meant she was supposed to let him knock her over, since he was clearly intent on getting even closer or forcing her to take a step back. “Konos Hoplite,” Ilyra said, in her most imperious voice, “I think you are forgetting your place.”
“My place is inside you,” Thorin said.
“What?” Ilyra demanded.
“I said my place is beside you, my lady,” his entire helmet seemed to be smiling.
Ilyra was sure of what she’d heard, just sure as she was that the remaining six of Thorin’s men were pressing into a circle around the pair of them. She tried to be casual about checking for her weapon’s power supply, but more laugher from Thorin’s men made it plain that she’d failed in that endeavor.
“I’m afraid your Sleska is malfunctioning, much like your nursemaid’s sensors,” Thorin said, “But you have nothing to fear, my lady, we are here to protect you.”
There was a flash that Ilyra barely noticed followed by a sharp burning pain across her left breast that was impossible to ignore. She felt the panic setting in when she saw that one of the hoplites had just slashed through her encounter suit. She franticly grabbed at the frayed edges, fighting to hold the garment together even as her compressed atmosphere was vented out.
She felt another sting of pain, this time flitting across her right thigh. The hoplites were masters of their weapons, able to deliver a wound as fleeting as a paper cut or as fatal as in impaled heart in equal measure. She knew that they were toying with her, not that it mattered since she was dead anyway. The poison atmosphere would make certain of that, her own family’s legacy would see her suffocate to death on an alien world.
But she wasn’t suffocating. She was exposed to the environment and there had been no effect. As if to drive this point even further home, Thorin removed his own breath mask.
“We’ve been planning this for months, Lady Fe’Arda. We’ve known that this world was safe for our kind all along,” then to his men, Thorin gave another command, “Take her.”
The hoplites took hold of Ilyra’s arms, legs, and head, leaving their captain to taunt and posture with his energy spear. He’d stripped down to the field gear he was wearing beneath his encounter suit, and despite the fact the he was obviously very proud of the misshapen body that his high grav training had crafted, Ilyra was still sickened by the sight of him.
Thorin spun his weapon around almost recklessly, but it was just an act, because when he directed it against Lady Fe’Arda’s encounter suit, he worked with surgical precision. It was not long before the noble woman found herself wearing little more than tattered rags and showing off far more of her body to these Konos dogs than she would have ever cared too.
As she felt the buzzing tip of Thorin’s weapon whispering back and forth in front of her throat, Lady Fe’Arda wanted to scream. Her station, all the ceremony and politeness that she had grown to detest on Sesyrin had been stripped away. She was nothing now, just another servant to be raped and murdered like that girl on the ship.
Thorin removed all doubt about his further intentions when he undid the buckles and catches that held his uniform in place. His energy spear laid down beside him, the hoplite commander advanced on his prisoner with a weapon of a different sort clutched in his hand.
“Lift her,” he snarled to his men who eagerly complied.
Ilyra knew what was going to happen, and what she had to do. Before she’d let that piece of trash get inside of her, she’d bite through her own tongue and die. Or at least that was what she would have done if Thorin hadn’t suddenly thrust the ridge of his hand into her mouth.
She still made the attempt, trying to tear through her captor’s skin. She drew blood, but the grip did not relent. She squirmed, trying to climb higher somehow, as she felt Thorin’s phallus brush against her inner thigh. There was no escape, it was going to happen.
As she clenched her eyes shut, still trying to twist away from the hoplites’ vise like grips, she felt something warm spray against her face. It didn’t make sense, and what happened next was even more confusing. She was falling.
She took a chance and opened her eyes, though she didn’t believe what they were telling her. Thorin wasn’t there to threaten her anymore, instead he was being supported between two of the hoplites as the others formed a protective cocoon with their pulse shields. Thorin momentarily locked eyes with Ilyra, or more correctly locked eye with her, as he only had one left. Where the other should have been, there was only a long wooden shaft surrounded by an ugly mess of gore.
As Lady Fe’Arda watched, one of Thorin’s hoplites jerked back and fell to the ground, dead. She could see that the dead one, as well as another that was still on his feet, had also been hit by whatever type of weapon had struck their commander.
Thinking that perhaps Tamarin had come to her rescue, Ilyra got to her feet determined to make the most of it. Between the unfamiliar ground, the tattered clothes, and the fact that she spent more time looking over her shoulder to try and see what manner of attack had actually driven Imperial Hoplites to retreat, she didn’t really have a chance. Her balance ran away, and before she could catch it, she felt her head hit something hard and then saw only black.
----------
The noble woman awoke to an unfamiliar sensation. At first, she feared that her rescue had been a dream and that when she opened her eyes she would be back on the cliffs with Thorin and his hoplites pounding away at her. With her eyes open, she could at first see only an expanse of rippling black. It was then she realized that she was not the one being ridden, but the rider. Though she couldn’t be certain, she believed she was perched on top of the same horse she’d seen when the skiff first landed.
It was an exhilarating feeling, to be carried along by such a strong animal. Ilyra lifted her face some to feel the wind rushing past her, but in doing so she managed to upset her tenuous point of balance. It was then she knew that she was not alone on the animal’s broad back, as an arm clamped around her midsection like a vise to hold her in place.
She relaxed into the strength that she felt, finding herself leaning back against whomever she was sharing her mount with. He was large, but without any of the deformity that marred the hoplites. Lady Fe’Arda craned her neck up and back to steal a glimpse of him and felt her breath catch in her throat.
He seemed to tower over her, his hair a wild tangle that the wind took hold of like a standard bearer’s flag. The line of his jaw was obscured with a growth of stubble, but she could see the muscles bunched up. In the moment that he caught her studying him and met her glance, the magnificent savage kindled something in the noblewoman’s chest that made her feel weak.
The rider relaxed his hold at her waist and instead grabbed both of her forearms, steering them to the horse’s neck. Ilyra felt herself bend forward as he pushed his chest against her, driving her down flat with the animal’s neck. He squeezed her arms.
“Hold,” he commanded, his breath on the noble woman’s cheek, “tight.”
And with that, he was gone. Ilyra did exactly as she was told, for possibly the first time in her life, and held onto the animal’s neck as tightly as she could. The horse continued at a break neck pace. Ilyra chanced a quick look over her shoulder, trying to find where the rider had gotten himself to, and wished that she hadn’t. She saw a pair of loping shapes erupt from the nearby tree line.
The hoplites couldn’t quite match the horse’s pace, but they didn’t have to, as long as they could out reach it’s run with their spears. The first drew his arm back, preparing to loft his weapon down range but never got the chance. He was taken through the throat from behind by another of the savage’s arrows. The falling brute managed to foul his partner’s aim so that the remaining hoplite’s spear sailed off in a harmless direction a moment before an arrow found the small section of his neck that was left uncovered by either helmet or armor plate.
Ilyra did not know any of that though, instead she only knew that she was holding onto a runaway animal for her life. Mercifully though, the horse seemed to be coming out of his galloping pace, snorting and prancing as he transitioned back into a walk. The noble woman had just begun to think of herself as actually having escaped immediate danger when one of the brutish hoplites erupted from the unlikely cover of a nearby hedgerow.
The horse stood up and seemed to scream, front legs pawing wildly. Ilyra had no way of keeping her grip, aside from the feeble attempt she made at clenching her legs tight around the animal’s broad back. She couldn’t help but feel abandoned as her back hit the forest floor, the horse bolting for anywhere that was not within reach of the searing tip of the hoplite’s energy spear. Before Ilyra could react, or even get her bearings, she saw the hoplite rush her and felt the cold click of a restraint collar fastening around her neck.
“On your royal feet, my lady,” the brute grunted at her through a leer, a split second before hauling her up by the collar’s tether, “Thorin still wants a piece of you before we finish the job we came for.”
Lady Fe’Arda tried to say something cutting in one of the Empire’s old tongues, but the hoplite cut her off. The way the restraint collar and its tether were designed, all the brute had to do was depress a button on the handle to send a pacifying neural shock down its conductive length.
“Walk,” the brute commanded.
With her choices being limited to shock pacification, or being run through by an energy spear, Ilyra did the one thing that came least naturally to her, she followed orders.
They had not gone very far before Lady Fe’Arda’s hoplite captor was attacked by a blur. Something hit the brute hard enough to force him to the ground, with the sudden tension it caused along the restraint tether being significant to take the noble woman down as well.
It was Ilyra’s savage protector coming to her rescue again. He’d snaked an arm around the hoplite’s ample neck, and had used all of his weight against one of the brute’s leg joints to take him down. Despite the Konos soldier’s valiant attempts, he was unable to dislodge his attacker, who managed to maintain his grip with one arm leaving his second completely free.
Lady Fe’Arda caught the briefest glimpse of whatever bladed weapon it was that the savage carried before its entire length disappeared into the hoplite’s back. She could swear that her savior was snarling as he sawed back and forth through the brute’s tissue and spine. Once he seemed satisfied that everything below the blade’s point of insertion had been rendered inert, he withdrew the weapon. Using the crook of his arm to lift and pull back on the hoplite’s head, the savage plunged his knife into the far side of the soldier’s throat and drew it all the way across.
Despite the way she’d comported herself up to that point during her sojourn to Blue Waters, Ilyra had always prided herself on having a sterner constitution than most of the other nobles she was accustomed to dealing with, and definitely a stronger stomach than the other noble women. Even so, it was all she could do to keep from retching when she noticed that the savage’s last attack had actually succeeded in removing the hoplite’s head from his body.
She lay there helplessly, as if hypnotized or in shock, as her unknown protector approached. She watched him wipe the brute’s pale, thick, blood from his blade before returning it to a sheath that apparently ran parallel to his spine with the handle pointing down. She could see his chest and knew that he was breathing heavily, even for someone as strong as he appeared, it would have been no easy task to subdue the Konos dog like that.
He wore boots and leg guards, along with something that might have been described as a loin cloth, had this been one of the Empire’s old exploitation films rather than real life. Everything was made from the hides of some animal or another. She noticed he wore other weapons, besides the knife, with the pistol secured beneath his left arm appearing to be his most modern piece of equipment. She wondered why he hadn’t simply used that. Then again, as capable as he seemed with that great bow of his, perhaps the hoplites simply didn’t warrant wasting good ammunition.
The savage knelt next to her, and at first she thought he was glaring down at her. Ilyra soon realized though that his contempt was not for her, but for the device around her neck. Of course, she thought, he’s seen something like this before. The noble woman was a little taken by surprise as the man’s hands latched onto the collar. She watched as the muscles in his arms, shoulders, and upper chest tightened. The collar split along its seams with a crackle of energy, completely unable to resist the savage’s strength.
Lady Fe’Arda found herself in the savage’s arms as he lifted her from the ground, she also found herself completely content with that turn of events. Wherever he wanted to carry her, he had her approval.
Three:
The beast man did not live in a simple hole carved into the side of a mountain, but rather a well made cabin of wood and stone. It seemed the only limits imposed on its constructions were the savage’s considerable strength, and the apparent cunning he was accustomed to applying it with. The dwelling was a cross of several styles, from multiple time periods and cultures, at least as far as the noble woman could tell from what little instruction she’d received in the history of the planet that the Empire had named Blue Waters, yet it all fit together somehow.
The man locked the door behind them before setting the noble woman down on a pallet that was far more comfortable than the bed she’d been assigned for the trip out. Ilyra felt at ease, almost intoxicated. With nothing better to do, she simply studied the man as he went about removing his weapons and pouches. He treated the bow as if it was his most prized possession, and it was easy to see why. Of all the tools he carried, it seemed the most likely to have been hewn with his own hands. The harnesses for the blade and the pistol were separate, but the weapons went the same place once they were removed: a small table that also supported what appeared to be a box of hard ammunition. For some reason, Ilyra got the impression that the savage had more weapons hidden on his person. The last piece of equipment to come off before he turned back to her was a coil of rope.
Without warning or preamble, he took Ilyra’s head in his hands and bent close to her face. He pulled at the skin around her eyes with his thumbs, intently studying the movement of her pupils. She winced as he squeezed at the wound on her forehead, which likely came from when she toppled down the incline after Thorin’s attempted rape was interrupted.
He left her for a moment, only to return with some leaves, a small bowl, and something that looked like a piece of heavy bone. He chewed one of the leaves a couple of times before spitting it into the bowl and adding other ingredients. Ilyra propped her head up on one hand and watched as he used the bone to grind the mixture into a sort of paste. When it appeared to gain the proper consistency, the savage scooped some out on the tip of his forefinger and applied it to the cut. It felt warm and tingly, Ilyra thought, but it also seemed to take the pain away instantly.
He set the bowl on the edge of the table and continued to inspect Lady Fe’Arda for further injuries. She realized that his scrutiny of her body was beginning to arouse her. The fact that he cradled her wounded breast with one hand as he rubbed more of the medicine on it with the other wasn’t helping, or perhaps it was, from a different point of view.
Up to that point, Ilyra’s only real concession to decorum and modesty had been the fact that she kept her legs tight to each other and drawn up almost protectively to keep him from seeing anything. At the touch of his warm hand on her thigh, even if it was just to apply more medicine, she felt herself wanting him to see everything. To be honest, she wanted him to do more than just see.
Ilyra felt like a child as she consciously changed her posture and started to open her legs. She remembered taunting her classmates at the Junior Academy. They were too immature to know what to do with what she was offering them, though still too proud to actually admit it. Watching the woman open herself up for him, the savage’s brow wrinkled ever so slightly. Clearly, he hadn’t expected her to behave like that, his eyes flicked up to her face. She held his steely gaze for a moment before closing her eyes and nodding her head, a silent assent to whatever he wanted to do to her.
The savage’s mouth was suddenly pressing onto the Ilyra’s. A bit unsure what to do, the noble woman followed her rescuer’s lead, allowing his tongue into her mouth. It brought a whole host of foreign but pleasant sensations with it. The noble woman caught herself briefly wondering why her lips had been just about the only part of her body that Penna’s mouth had never touched.
“I thought I was the last.” The savage said in accented Imperial.
That was when Ilyra realized that her savior was under the impression that she was a fellow survivor, a native of Blue Water. She was at least a good fifty years away from the skin hardening effect that would eventually out her dominant ancestor as reptilian rather than mammalian, and her eyes were protected from the light of the Burning Hand by artificial membranes that mimicked the photosensitive properties of the natives’.
“The Masters will never hurt you again, I promise.”
Lady Fe’Arda’s breath caught in her throat. The form that her rescuer had used, The Masters, as a way of referring to the Imperial Houses, was very old, and not a kind one at all. It was strange to hear a single voice drip with that much venom and nectar at the same time.
Almost before she could fashion another coherent thought together, the savage had buried himself to the hilt within her body. The noblewoman let out a sharp gasp, surprised not as much by his size, but by the warmth of him. His whole body seemed to burn for her, from the heat of his breath against her throat to the touch of his skin against hers. His arms wrapped around her back, both cradling her and pulling her closer as their hips bucked against each other.
Ilyra had never felt like this with any Imperial. By nature they had always been cold and harsh, so that she felt more like she’d been the victim of repeated stabbings than an act of intimacy, and she’d never once left a bedroom without nursing puncture wounds from the possessive bites that Imperial men seemed to think their woman adored. That was what she was feeling, she realized, because of what he thought she was, the savage cherished her completely.
A sudden start of fear kindled in Lady Fe’Arda’s chest as their coupling built towards its natural crescendo. What if something in her anatomy gave her away? Would this man who had been taking such good care of her suddenly snap and murder her as easily as he had the Konos Hoplites? She knew that her people’s reproductive anatomy had undergone some significant changes a few thousand years ago, coming more in line with the mammalian norm than they had before, but as to what her insides would feel like to her lover, or what he had to compare them to, Ilyra had no clue.
If there were any tell tale signs, the native obviously missed or disregarded them. Ilyra felt the change in his breathing and realized that even between different species, certain cues were the same. After pressing his mouth against hers another time, the rhythm of his hips changed again and the noblewoman felt a fresh warmth spread inside of her that ignited all kinds of involuntary reactions within her body.
Her mind dulled by shock, trauma, and pleasure, Lady Fe’Arda had no idea what the sudden flash of bright light that filled the room meant, or why her lover fell away from her as if struck down by the gods themselves.
----------
Tamarin stood over the savage’s subdued form, his weapon still whining from the high capacity discharge. Apparently he too had seen the futility of the pressure suits and had gone back to his standard uniform.
“Did the savage hurt you, my lady?” Tamarin demanded, stepping gingerly over the fallen man as he holstered his side-arm.
“No, not at all,” Ilyra said, her breathing still ragged and heavy, “He rescued me from Thorin and his men, they were going too…”
“I know, my lady,” Tamarin said, reaching for a magnificent hide blanket he spotted that would go a long way toward returning his mistress’ modesty to her, “I was able to escape the death that my two escorts had planned for me in time to convince one of them to betray the details of Thorin’s plan. My only regret is that I couldn’t find you sooner, before…”
With that, the savage let out a groan and Tamarin’s sidearm slid free of its holster again.
“Don’t hurt him,” the noblewoman shouted, her voice coming out as more of a forced hiss than anything else, since there was no time to dress it up with fancy tones.
Tamarin was struck dumb not by his mistress’ command, but by the posture she’d adopted while giving it. She was acting like a common feral rather than the High Lady of House Fe’Arda, having sprung to a forward crouch with her teeth bared and her hands poised to claw at her adjutant’s eyes and throat.
“By the gods,” Tamarin’s voice fell, “You… the coupling with him was your choice?”
Suddenly possessing an animal grace she hadn’t thought herself capable of within the harsh gravity of the Burning Hand’s reach, Lady Fe’Arda leapt to the floor, using her body to block Tamarin’s aim from the chest of her lover.
“You can have me zipped into a bag and fired into the deep cold for this if you want, but it’s my duty,” Tamarin said, with great resolve as he holstered his pistol.
The adjutant’s slap was felt before it could be seen, but it seemed to have the desired effect: clearing Ilyra’s head long enough for her to realize what she was doing and who she was threatening.
“I’m… I’m sorry Tamarin, I don’t know what came over me,” she said. Her awareness with regard to her stark nudity returned shortly thereafter, but Tamarin was quick with the blanket he’d spied earlier.
“I was able to lock out the skiff’s controls, so Thorin and his remaining men won’t be leaving without us, but we need to hurry. I don’t want to give them any more time to put a plan together.”
“We can’t leave him here,” Ilyra said, meaning her rescuer, “I think he’s the only one left.”
“If you’ll permit me, my lady,” Tamarin said, feeling not the slightest ill at ease with the full bore return to formality. It was definitely preferable to having his mistress hissing at him from on all fours.
Once Ilyra got out of the way, her adjutant knelt next to the stunned savage. He laid a fingertip along the side of the man’s neck and nodded. He moved to the savages face, reaching up to open one of the man’s eyes.
“His eyes aren’t green,” Tamarin said, confused. “Why aren’t his eyes green?”
He continued his inspection, looking for the maker’s mark of whatever Imperial Flesh Maker surely must have minted the form, but there was none. Tamarin wasn’t quite sure what to make of the man, but he did know that the stun charge wasn’t going to keep him down much longer.
“He lacks any known maker’s marks. The alternative is… impossible, but in any case, that is a mystery for another day,” Tamarin said, straightening back up, “we must go. I wouldn’t put it past Thorin to destroy the skiff once he realizes his men won’t be able to get it working again.”
“But what about him? He’s no slave. He even speaks the Imperial tongue.”
“He’s better off here, milady. Even if he is the last of his kind. Males of his species are incredibly rare, kept only as curiosities or pets. They are castrated to remove the threat of the servant population swelling beyond containable numbers. To take him from this place would be to destroy him, my lady.”
Ilyra Fe’Arda knew that her trusted advisor was telling her the truth. Maybe it was just because she was so ashamed at how she’d acted when she thought Tamarin was about to kill the man, or maybe it was guilt at allowing the savage to think she was something that she was most certainly not, but something made it a lot easier to steer her away from that place than she would have thought it could be.
The highest lady of House Fe’Arda knelt to touch her lips to the savage’s one last time before allowing Tamarin to escort her away.
Four:
Alvax Thorin’s mind sifted back through the last ten years worth of memories regarding the interactions between Houses Konos and Fe’Arda. His own father played largely in the events in question, or it would be more accurate to say that his father’s fall from grace played largely. If only the old serpent hadn’t become such a slave to first the markets and then to the whims of dice and cards, perhaps things would have played out very differently.
As a younger man, before his body had been warped into a high gravity monstrosity, Thorin had appeared on the short list for potential mates for a certain member of House Fe’Arda. Sure, Ilyra was attractive enough to make him covet possession of her, but it was all that such a union implied that really inspired him. The Empire had faced no real organized threat since the last days of the Great Uprising, so those born into even the highest warrior houses held little real value to the Emperor. With little left within close enough reach to actually conquer, it fell to scientists instead of warriors to extend the Empire’s glory.
House Fe’Arda had always been known for its elitist breeding policies, and the fine minds that those policies had routinely produced during the last thirteen generations. The fact that Thorin had even passed the initial genetic screening could have been considered a high honor. If Thorin had been the one to take Ilyra’s hand, he could have been awash in riches and respectability, but instead his father had pissed away half the coffers of House Konos and ruined any chance of that ever happening.
Thorin had been removed from the list of potential mates and selected for high gravity training within a matter of days. Still, for some reason he found that he’d always blamed House Fe’Arda more than he blamed his own father. He blamed Ilyra most of all, believing somehow that a single word from her could have rescued him from his fate.
That was the basic train of thought that kept looping through Thorin’s mind as he and his men waited for Lady Fe’Arda to come for the skiff. When the unexpected attack from the savage had disrupted his initial plans, it hadn’t taken Thorin long to formulate another approach. He smugly wondered of that frail and overly self-satisfied man servant of Ilyra’s had actually thought that he was able to escape on his own.
One of the remaining hoplites made a brief gesture. Thorin nodded. It wouldn’t be long now. He would take everything he could manage to from lady Fe’Arda, and then he would make sure there was nothing left of her large enough to identify, although he did fancy the notion of keeping some manner of trophy for himself. Her skull perhaps?
----------
“My lady, I believe you dropped this earlier,” Tamarin said, extending the case of Ilyra’s Sleska to her, “I took the liberty of making the required repairs.”
Ilyra affixed the device to her left wrist and tested the power coil. This time the weapon actually responded. Combined with her makeshift clothes, which consisted of the blanket taken from the savage’s home and a length of chord to cinch it closed at the waist, the presence of the weapon almost made her feel like a child again, acting out the barbarian queen fantasy that one of the old holos had drilled into her brain so long ago.
“Very good,” Thorin’s voice burst out of the tree line roughly twenty meters ahead of them, “I’d begun to worry that you weren’t coming at all.”
Tamarin took aim at the general direction of the voice, but did not take a shot.
“This was never the place for you to settle your grudge with our House,” Ilyra declared.
“I disagree, your highness,” Thorin’s voice replied from a different location. Tamarin shifted his aim accordingly, “this is the perfect venue. I only wish that your new pet had lived long enough to follow you into the void.”
“What are you talking about?” Ilyra demanded, a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach suggesting that she already knew.
“The runaway that came to your rescue,” Thorin’s voice had moved yet again, “one of my men caught him trying to follow your trail from that little hovel. Arnos is probably still working on him as we speak. I gave orders that I wanted its skin.”
It was strange how much of Ilyra’s training was able to run on automatic despite the fact that she was about as calm and collected as a super nova. Without even thinking about it, she’d tuned the sleska to reach both maximum distance and output, even as she began swinging it.
The result was a plasma whip that was entirely capable of reaching the location that Thorin’s voice seemed to originate from. The only problem was that as the energy lash sizzled through the trunk of a great tree, there was no Konos flesh behind for it to bite into.
A trio of hoplites exploded from the tree cover behind the Fe’Ardans, but they had gravely misjudged Ilyra’s skill with the Sleska. Somehow she managed to move eighteen meters worth of a near weightless energy whip with the grace of a master calligrapher. The tip, which burned hottest of the whole length, danced between the noblewoman and her adjutant close enough for them to hear the snapping hiss of the air burning, before leaping forward again and neatly bisecting all three warriors before their feet returned to the ground.
Tamarin pumped a few shots into the head of a familiar hoplite as he approached, taking note of the fact that their hardened skin and armor took a few more hits to get through than he thought. This time, he was certain that the big warrior was truly dead and not just playing at it for strategic effect.
Ilyra adjusted the sleska again, reducing the length and intensity of the whip to ensure that her power pack would last her through the remainder of Thorin’s men. She was almost amused at how easy it was for her weapon to bypass the hoplites vaunted defenses. Charged polarity shields weren’t very effective against a weapon that simply curved around them and sliced through whatever was on the other side. She was just about to congratulate herself on how efficiently she was mowing down the Konos military elite when Tamarin dropped to the ground clutching painfully at the place where his left arm used to join his elbow.
In battle, Thorin seemed to be an exception to the laws of physics. Something that big, with the weight distributed that poorly, should not have been able to move that fast. The tip of his spear was reduced to a glowing blur that kept slicing ever closer to Lady Fe’Arda.
The leader of the hoplites had sacrificed what few men he had left to probe the noble’s capability with her chosen tool. It hadn’t been all that difficult for the seasoned warrior to pick apart the flaws. Despite her skill with the sleska, Ilyra knew that Thorin had the upper hand, baring a lucky strike or a careless mistake on his part.
He began to tag her lightly, taken care to make sure the tip of his spear made contact first with each of the sites he’d previously wounded Lady Fe’Arda before moving on to new territory.
Ilyra rallied briefly, and was almost able to get Thorin snared in her energy whip, but the hoplite leader was able to slice through the clasps holding the device onto her wrist, leaving her functionally defenseless.
“I always thought that the Sleska was the perfect noble’s dueling weapon. All flash, no substance,” Thorin said, “No adaptability in the field. No defense against an enemy who gets close.”
With that he delivered a strike to Ilyra’s abdomen with the dead end of the spear, easily knocking her onto her back and making her gasp for her next several breaths. The last remaining hoplite switched his energy spear off, leaving a tip that was still sharp enough to slide through flesh with ease, but that was able to lift the corner of Ilyra’s makeshift robe without immediately burning through.
“All the finery of the Empire at your disposal, and you decide to go native? If only our houses could see us now.”
Out of the corner of his remaining eye, Thorin caught movement. He lifted his spear to his shoulder, chambering for the toss, but saw that the outline approaching through the trees matched up with Arnos’ armor. His attention fell back to his prisoner and prize.
“House Fe’Arda will have your entire family gutted for this,” Ilyra hissed.
“For what? I’m the brave hero who fought to defend a doomed Fe’Ardan experiment. When we arrived here, we were swarmed by an army of organized natives. They slaughtered most of my men, your assistant, and unfortunately you as well, my lady,” Thorin smiled, “But don’t worry, I have the skin of their war chief to take back with me, and I’m sure that rumors of an organized slave army will make sure that the fleet arrives within the week to scorch this rock into a cinder. It’s a shame you won’t be there to see it, my lady. I’ll probably be awarded my own House for avenging your murder.”
Ilyra rolled to her feet and lunged at Thorin, but the big warrior easily caught her momentum and twisted it against her so the she ended up back on the ground and nursing what was possibly a freshly broken arm.
“Be that way,” Thorin hissed, “I would rather you have lived to feel what I’m going to do, but you made your choice,”
He chambered to drive the point of his staff down through Lady Fe’Arda’s heart, but instead found himself mutely staring at the shaft of a spear protruding from his own chest. The warrior fell to his knees, the strength rapidly fleeing from his hands and arms. His own weapon clattered to the ground next to him. Thorin’s head turned slowly back to where he’d seen Arnos approaching.
Where he’d seen the warrior’s shape before, now he saw the savage that he’d presumed skinned. Behind him, Arnos hulking frame lie inert, leaking what was left of its lifeblood onto the ground below it.
Thorin’s eye closed for the last time before his body had even hit the dirt.
Ilyra could barely believed how happy she felt when she saw that her savior was still alive. She ran to him, wrapping her arms around him, but something was wrong. It seemed like most of his strength was missing, it was all he could do to stay on his feet. Lady Fe’Arda could feel more of his warmth, but this time it was leaking out of him from several ugly wounds. She felt him start to sway and then had to catch him as his body went limp.
He’d been practically dead on his feet, and still his only thought had been protecting her. There was no way she could leave him behind anymore.
Five:
Tamarin regained consciousness sometime shortly after the anesthesia wore off from the surgery to attach his temporary prosthetic limb. Organic limbs could be regenerated easily enough, but Tamarin had made a point of requesting the use of a mechanical unit if he ever suffered a severe enough injury while away from the capital. He didn’t want Lady Fe’Arda to have to suffer through the time it would take for him to re-grow the missing limb without the benefit of his council and service. Besides, there was nothing stopping him from having the wound healed the proper way once they were back on Sesyrin and the veritable army of servants available to House Fe’Arda could pick up his slack.
He was still trying to get used to the mechanical ticks and whines that the replacement limb made when he discovered that he and Ilyra were not the only ones to have made it back to their ship.
“My lady, I thought we agreed that it would be wrong to take him from his world,” Tamarin said, evenly.
“He almost died to protect me, he would have died if I left him there. I couldn’t do it,” Ilyra was sitting on the edge of her bed, making slow circles on the savage’s chest with the fingertips of her left hand.
Tamarin walked over to the side of the bed and looked down at the man. His wounds were not quite as severe as Ilyra had taken them to be, but he wasn’t about to point that out.
“How many know about him?” The adjutant asked.
“You, me, and one medic. He’s sworn to secrecy though. It is amazing the level of confidentiality you can buy with the promise of a villa on Garniv, complete with its own harem. I’m having him kept under sedation until I can figure out what to do about this.”
“He’s stable now, perhaps we should just make an excuse to take him back?”
“I know what you think this is,” Ilyra said, “You saw us, you know what happened, but there is more to it than that. Look at this,” Ilyra sifted through the wounded man’s unruly hair and came up with a small charm that he’d apparently tied into it at some point.
“Did you… give that to him?” Tamarin inquired.
“No, I didn’t even see it until I was loading him onto the skiff. Why does he have a signet ring for my house tied into his hair? I know all servants are taught to understand the Imperial tongue, but why can he speak it so well? Why does he know the Old Words that have barely been spoken in our lifetimes?”
“And then there is the mystery of his eyes and the lack of maker’s marks. To say nothing of the fact that he does not appear to be old enough to have been born before the attempted sterilization of Blue Waters. I believe you are right, my lady. There is more to him than would appear at first glance.”
“I want you to try and gather whatever information you can about this, as quietly as possible. I want to know as much as I can before we return home.”
“There is one thing you’re missing in all of this, my lady,” Tamarin reminded her, “We have no way of knowing how he’ll act when he learns the truth about you, and about what you’ve done to him by bringing him aboard an Imperial ship.”
“Maybe he never has to,” Ilyra suggested, “I wouldn’t be the first Fe’Ardan to take an eccentric streak and disappear to some remote estate for the rest of my life.”
“My lady, you have responsibilities to your House and to the Empire,” Tamarin pointed out, “and need I remind you, that you also have a husband. One who, as I was told on my way to your quarters, has been trying to get through to you for the last several hours.”
“This isn’t going to be simple, is it, Tamarin?” Ilyra said, watching the little escapist fantasy she’d put together in her mind, the one where she and her new lover could escape to some remote corner of the Empire and live out their days without any interference from reality, fracture and then explode into a trillion tiny shards.
“It never is, my lady,” Tamarin replied, “It never is.”
----------
When he awoke, it felt like his mind was full of sand, and that it started to leak out any time he turned his head. The first thing he tried to do was put the pieces back together and see if he could remember how he got to be in such an unfamiliar place. He could remember the fight with the monsters, and how the biggest one had almost killed him. He remembered trying to rescue… the woman.
At first, when he’d woken up in his home, muscles and brain all aching and strange, he’d thought that she must have been a dream. The monsters, the woman, their ride through the forest, it had all been a dream. He’d been alone so long that his mind had started to conjure up things to keep him going.
But you couldn’t smell dreams, and he could definitely notice the subtle tang of her perfume in his home. It was a strange smell, floral and sweet, but not matching anything he’d known before. There had also been subtle evidence that he had not been alone in his bed.
He remembered putting it together, that if the woman was real and they had actually been together, then the monsters that were chasing her had to be real as well. The Masters’ monsters had come back to his world to finish what they started. He couldn’t let that happen. He had to protect her.
He had been alone on his world long enough to know every rhythm that it contained. The aching joints that had never quite set right after an old injury let him know with perfect accuracy when the weather would turn. He could hear game moving at incredible distances. He’d actually been able to follow the woman through her perfume more than her tracks, since the smells of his world were so common to him that she stood out like a giant signal fire.
He knew that wherever he was now, it was not his world, for he knew nothing about it. The smells were harsh and unnatural, the sounds all crashed together, and the very floor thrummed below his feet. At first, superstition got the best of him and he briefly believed he was in the belly of some great beast that would fly him to the netherworld for his final judgment.
That was when his mentor’s lessons started to come back to him. He was in some kind of ship, likely traveling at speeds beyond what his mind could easily process. The only place vast enough to allow for that kind of travel was space, the dark haze beyond the light of the world.
Man had not owned the technology to accomplish such a feat in more than a thousand years, so he knew he was not among kinsmen. The Masters had returned with their warriors, and they had taken him. That also meant that they had taken his woman. He knew that he must find her and protect her from The Masters.
But there was something wrong. In the whole constellation of strange sensations, there was one that was freshly familiar. The perfume that his woman wore. Once he noticed it, he couldn’t get away from it. The smell was much thicker than it had been in his home. He searched the room and eventually located a small phial of liquid. As he tried to pick it up, he accidentally activated the sprayer and had to cough. This was where her scent had come from?
Was she a tool of The Masters’, sent to lure him into a trap?
He heard a high pitched noise briefly before a door at the far side of the room split in half and then vanished. A thin female figure appeared, lit from behind by hallway’s ambient glow. He knew that it was not his woman, her sizes and curves were wrong, but he could tell that at least on the surface, whoever it was seemed to be like him.
He realized that she couldn’t see him. The room was kept dark, and her sight would take time to adjust from the light in the hallway. She did seem accustomed to functioning in the dark though. She moved with confidence born of routine and familiarity. She didn’t need to see the room to move through it, she was that accustomed to it.
It made it almost too easy to sneak up on her.
Penna let out a brief startled cry before a strong hand clamped shut over her mouth. She tried to struggle at first, but was easily led to a corner of the room where one of the environmental readouts for her mistress’s quarters gave the room its only ambient glow. She could make out a male face, eyes glaring at her. She saw the man press a finger to his lips. Penna nodded, and tried to relax as the hand fell away from her mouth.
“Where are we?” the man asked, speaking the Imperial tongue perfectly, if with a slight accent.
“The bed chamber of Mistress Ilyra of the House Fe’Arda,” Penna replied in the only language she knew how to speak, which didn’t happen to be Imperial.
The man’s brow only knitted at her. He didn’t understand what she said. He repeated his question.
Penna started to panic. Like all Pennas, she was able to understand the language perfectly, but had never quite been able to respond well in it. If this person was speaking to her that clearly in Imperial, he was probably Sesyreen, even if he didn’t look like it. That meant that she was expected to serve him, perfectly… yet she wasn’t able to reply to him because he didn’t understand her low-tongue. The Sesyreen never formed their questions like that, they usually never even asked questions, just made demands.
The man took her by the shoulders and shook her a couple of times before releasing her and repeating his question again, adding, “Do you understand me?” at the end.
Not knowing what else to do, since she was fairly certain that screaming would probably get her killed or punished at the very least, Penna dropped to her knees in front of him and reached up to move out of the way whatever that flimsy garment he was covering himself up with was so that she could start to service him. She’d been trained to cater exclusively to females, like Mistress Fe’Arda, but figured that men shouldn’t be too difficult to figure out.
When the man snatched her back up to her feet by her wrists, Penna decided that maybe she was wrong about that.
“What are you doing?” he demanded.
“I serve?,” Penna managed the two words of the Imperial tongue she was able to, forcing the latter into a question with her inflection alone.
“No, I don’t want that,” the man said, “I need to know where…” he faltered, seeming not to know how to phrase his question. “Where is the woman who smells like this?” he asked, dragging Penna over to where the phial of perfume rested.
“You’re not Sesyreen,” Penna said. The man looked at her blankly, clearly not understanding a word of what she said, “You don’t belong here. I’ll get in trouble if they find you here. You have to leave.”
The man had no idea what language the girl was spewing at him. It wasn’t the language he’d spoken with his people, and it wasn’t one of the languages that the old man had taught him.
Clearly knowing the room better than the intruder did, Penna was able to draw a blade that was concealed along the lip of a nearby shelf. Whoever the man was, he didn’t belong there and that made it Penna’s responsibility to remove him.
Penna didn’t really have any combat training though, so she just slashed on instinct so the blade took a little notch out of the man’s cheek instead of severing anything important in his throat. He answered her frantic attack with a simple slap that should have maybe knocked her back a little as an absolute worst case, but somehow managed to send her to the ground in such a way that he knew she wasn’t going to be getting back up.
He felt something twist in his chest as he looked down at her crumpled form. He wasn’t sure what she was, she seemed to be like him, but she had smelled wrong. The old man had referred to it as pheromones, and whatever this girl was, she didn’t seem to have any. She was about as chemically inert as anything alive could be. Only she wasn’t alive anymore. The thought that he might have just accidentally killed one of the only others like him in the universe tore through him like a blade.
Six:
The first two words out of Grand Duke Hasre Kahn Fe’Arda’s mouth on seeing his wife’s battered face on his screen were, “My beloved.” The rest of the sentence went something along the lines of “where in the gods name have you been, and what in the deep cold happened to your face?”
“My Konos escorts decided to try to rape and assassinate me,” Ilyra bit, “ and not necessarily in that order.”
Lady Fe’Arda was irritated at just about everything in the Empire at that moment, but she was especially irritated at her husband for having the audacity to remind her that she was, in fact, married. She briefly toyed with the idea of divulging the nature of her liaison with the savage, including the fact that she was pretty sure she could still feel some of his seed inside of her, but decided that while it would definitely shut the duke up in the short term it would probably get everyone on her crew killed when the Imperial military decided to scuttle their ship with all hands still onboard.
“Are you okay?” That is what the Grand Duke seemed to ask, but what he really meant was, “Did my perfect bride get herself defiled by a pack of Konos High-Grav dogs?”
“Tamarin and I were able to stop them,” Ilyra said, finding it hard to look directly at the screen for some reason.
“I must confess that I already read one of the reports. The entire unit of Konos Hoplites, along with their leader, were wiped out? Do you expect anyone in the empire, with the possible exception of the more boastful members of Fe’Arda, to believe that a Lady of the House and her manservant were able to slaughter a full company of trained warriors?”
“What do you want me to say, Hasre?” Ilyra asked, “I told you it was a mistake to trust House Konos from the beginning. If anything, I think an act of retaliation is required.”
“House Konos has already condemned the actions of Alvax Thorin and his renegade band of warriors. It was a jilted man’s petty attempt at revenge, nothing more. You get such a fire in your eyes when you call for blood, my beloved. Save some of that passion for when you return to me, Ilyra. Our bed has been cold too long, and I’m still waiting for those sons you promised me.”
Almost mercifully, Tamarin arrived at her side, presumably with some contrived excuse to get her out of the conversation. Then Ilyra discovered that what Tamarin had actually come to bring to her attention was that not only had their secret guest gone missing, but that he’d apparently snapped Penna’s neck like a twig in the process.
----------
Somehow, he’d stumbled into the servant’s quarters. He saw roughly twenty variations of the young girl he’d just killed, covering about a five year age range. Again, he briefly considered that he had descended into some kind of afterlife, and again it was the old man and his words that brought him back to reality: A manufactured race that will never grow or change.
Even though many of them were in various stages of undress, either coming from or heading to the shower to freshen up between their shifts, they all froze to study the man that they now saw before them.
“I’m not one of them,” he said, his clear Imperial startling a couple of the younger variations, “But I’m not one of you either.”
They stared back mutely, making him wonder if their intellect had been dialed down along with their pheromones.
“Can any of you help me find…” he had to pause again, not knowing what to call the woman he’d rescued, “can you help me find the woman who came from the planet with me?”
“Don’t move,” Tamarin ordered, his sidearm trained on the savage, though tuned down to a high stun setting instead of a killing blast.
Naturally, the savage moved, turning to face him, but Tamarin neglected to take his shot. He could feel the other’s eyes tearing him apart. His aim never wavering, Tamarin briefly found himself looking past his target as one of the servant girls broke and ran.
“A young Master with a metal hand?” The savage asked, “Did I take off your hand? I don’t remember everything that happened yet.”
“No, it was one of our mutual warrior friends that did it, one of the ones you killed, so I guess I should thank you,” Tamarin said, “Now, I want you to step away from the girls slowly. Nobody else needs to die.”
“I didn’t want to kill her,” the savage said, “I didn’t think I hit her that hard. I just wanted to find the woman I rescued.”
“I can take you to see her,” Tamarin was surprised at himself for what he did next, which was to stow his pistol away in its holster, “Just come with me.”
----------
Ilyra was much happier to see her lover’s face appear at her door than she had been to see her husbands appear on her communcation screen. Much to Tamarin’s surprise and dismay, there was nothing he could do to keep the savage from rushing to Lady Fe’Arda’s side and sweeping her up off the ground. They kissed again before the savage broke the embrace and positioned himself to block Tamarin from advancing towards Ilyra.
“Have the Masters hurt you?” The savage asked.
“No,” Ilyra said, pulling on the man’s shoulder to turn him back towards her. She ended up with a hand on his chest, feeling his warmth and the beating of his heart, “He is a friend.”
“You are friends with the Masters?”
Tamarin was trying to be subtle as he shook his head no. He was actually trying to will Lady Fe’Arda into not telling the truth, for all the good it did.
“I have to tell you something, and I’m sorry that it took me this long,” Ilyra said, “I’m not who you think I am. I’m not even what you think I am.”
The savage took a step back from her, a confused look on his face.
“I’m a Sesyreen, Lady Ilyra Khan Fe’Arda.”
“You’re a Master?”
“Please let me explain. I didn’t mean to trick you, but everything happened so fast. You saved me from Thorin and his men, and you were taking care of me and then…it just happened. I’ve never felt anything like that before, and I just wanted to…”
Tamarin made a point of loudly clearing his throat. Understanding and compassion for other species aside, he didn’t like seeing her tapdance for this savage any more than he liked the idea of her being impaled on any piece of his anatomy in the first place.
“You never lied,” the savage said, slumping his shoulders slightly forward, “I never stopped to ask, I just wanted you to be like me.”
“I’m afraid that I put you in a lot of danger by bringing you back with me,” Ilyra said.
“I just wanted to protect you,” the savage replied, possibly not actually having paid attention the Lady Fe’Arda’s last sentence.
“Now its my turn to protect you,” Ilyra said, “I have a plan to hide you, until we can figure out how to take you home. We can make you seem to be like us, and our surgeons can just fix you later when it is safe.”
That is as far as I was able to go at the time. Chapter six is the messiest, by far. I had something in mind, but it got all muddled up once I moved the action off of the planet. I sensed it veering off into Stranger in a Strange Land/Brave New World territory.
The inspiration for the story came from a scene in Brotherhood of the Wolf, when Mark Dacascos' character sees the other "savages." The section of the story in the servant's quarters with the line "I'm not one of them, but I'm not one of you either," particularly makes me think of that scene.
Not sure what I was going for, except for the phrase "different."
A failed assassination attempt finds an aristocrat lost on a world that is not as empty of life as it should be. A rescue from pursuit ignites strange desires.
One:
“My lady, the skiff to take you down to Blue Waters is ready,” the words came, somewhat garbled, from the outdated relay machine bolted to the bedside table, which was itself bolted to the floor of the cabin. What was the state of the empire coming to, Ilyra Fe’Arda pondering for a moment, when a member of the ruling house was forced to travel aboard such a rickety and under equipped craft as the one which now carried her?
“Thank you, Tamarin,” she said after depressing the reply switch, using a voice that almost dripped sweetness, entirely out of keeping with her present mood.
As soon as her finger slid off the device and her room’s privacy was returned, Lady Fe’Arda added, “For your fifth not so gentle reminder in the last three units.”
In her defense, her mood wasn’t entirely her fault. The trip from Arda House on Sesyrin had been pleasant up to a point, but once the outer marker to the Burning Hand cluster was reached, the ship’s crew had begun to suffer the effects of the ship’s artificial, and incrementally increasing, gravity. That had drained any lingering enjoyment right out of Lady Fe’Arda, who despite being sturdy and relatively strong by Empire Standards, felt herself bogged down to a crawl.
In truth, she’d been sleeping for the last two days, with the aide of some of Tamarin’s considerable pharmacology knowledge, interspersed with rounds of delicate massage from her private attendant. Supposedly, it was best to sleep through as much of one’s acclimatization to Blue Waters’ heavier gravity as possible, but in practice it only made Lady Fe’Arda dread having to wake up. Still, it wasn’t as bad is it used to be, at least according to some of the stories she’d heard about the earliest expeditions. The Empire’s first landing parties had been almost completely immobilized on reaching the surface, and those few that had remained able to move about ended up breaking something in the process, often fatally.
In comparison to that, two weeks of feeling herself grow progressively weaker, or heavier, whichever sensation fit the best at a given moment, had seemed like a pleasant alternative. Her attendant’s skilled hands hadn’t exactly hurt, either.
“Penna, help me dress,” Ilyra said, none of the false syrup in her voice that time.
Private Attendants were not exclusive to the Fe’Arda house, in fact they were a luxury enjoyed almost universally through ought the Empire, regardless of one’s station. In some places they were known by other names but their basic services remained the same.
Penna was a typical Fe’Arda Private Attendant: no older than twenty of Sesyrin’s full cycles, thin enough to seem almost insubstantial, with blonde hair and green eyes. She wore a sheer light weight gown that tended to cling to her legs as she walked. In some places, it was the custom for servants like Penna to wear as little as possible, with the display of flesh reflecting positively on the House that one served.
Ilyra understood that Penna had been designed to be as she was, not built like a machine, but designed none the less. Fe’Arda’s Flesh Makers prided themselves on their ability to regularly produce Pennas. The genetic information for fair hair was much less common, and the traits for the fine facial bones and eye color were even harder to maintain.
One thing had always bothered Lady Fe’Arda about the system: It had been designed by the ruling males in the Old Period, and so all the servants that were created had naturally been female. Sure, there were tales of some Houses who dabbled in creating males, but few were willing to risk the heavy sanctions that the Empire had imposed in the past when things had gotten out of hand.
Penna dutifully carried Ilyra’s protective garment over from its secure container and began helping her mistress dress into it. The first step was to remove Lady Fe’Arda’s night gown. Penna’s fingers were quick, not even appearing to pause for a millisecond as they flicked the releases at the back of the garment.
As Ilyra began to step into her protective body sheath, Penna’s hands wandered a bit, dancing across Lady Fe’Arda’s taut belly. Normally, the servant would have made a couple of circuits that included her mistress’ buttocks, her ample breasts, and finished with a bit of exploration between her legs. Arousal was considered the most attractive look that a noble woman could wear, but Lady Fe’Arda would be spending the next several hours locked up in a pressure suit and unable to relieve whatever tensions Penna might raise in her body.
“I’m in no mood to be frustrated today, Penna,” Ilyra said.
With a bow of her head, the attendant acknowledged the adjustment to her standing orders and instead busied herself with all the fasteners and clips that the complicated garment required.
-------------
Lady Fe’Arda checked that her breathing mask was still sealed into the face of her pressure suit, that it was still connected to both the atmosphere tank as well as the emergency scrubbers, and that all of the various components involved in its operation were still switched into the on position. It was the third time she’d completed her inspection inside of fifteen minutes. Normally, Ilyra would never have displayed such anxiety even if she’d felt it, but there was nothing normal about this trip.
It had been thirty years since the Empire last tread within the Burning Hand cluster, thirty years since the last Empire ship had entered the atmosphere of Blue Waters. It had also been thirty years since Sesyrin’s brightest minds had decided to spread a genetic plague from one end of the planet to the other in hopes of exterminating the resistance movement that had been organized by runaway servants.
That was the major cause for Ilyra’s concern, that she would soon be walking on a planet that her people had done their best to render lifeless. The plague had been engineered to target only the specific genetics of the servant bloodlines, but there was always a chance that a freak mutation could have occurred in the last three decades. It wasn’t that much of a stretch to believe that the disease could jump from servant to master, after all, the people of the Empire were, when you got right down to it, only very distant cousins of the species that they’d replicated and subsequently enslaved.
The two peoples were close enough in composition that they were able to engage in sexual acts, that is to say that they had the corresponding parts to make it work, but not close enough to produce offspring from such a union. Considering the strict population controls in place throughout the Empire, that genetic difference had made servants like Penna into a perfect alternative, the ultimate contraceptive agent.
“Relax, my lady,” Tamarin advised, speaking over his shoulder as he almost unconsciously worked to trim their angle of descent.
Ilyra found herself gripping the arm rests of her co-pilot’s seat. She was relieved that it was Tamarin at her side, his long service to House Fe’Arda meaning that she could rely on his discretion regarding any breaches in protocol she might commit. Lady Fe’Arda didn’t even want to think about what the trip down would have been like if she’d had to keep up the ice cold façade she would have been expected to wear with anyone outside of the peerage.
“I wish I could have seen it before,” Ilyra commented, not so much thinking about what she was saying but just saying something to keep her mind off of wondering if her seals were still intact.
“From what I’ve been able to see so far, and what the machines tell me,” Tamarin said, “there hasn’t been much of a change to the surface. Blue Waters was almost completely uninhabited for almost thirty years before the uprising.”
“How can that be,” Ilyra asked, “I remember my father talking about going there on safari to hunt and coming back with three Beast Women for the Flesh Makers.”
“Almost completely uninhabited, my lady,” Tamarin repeated, “The aboriginal tribes maintained settlements in a few small areas.”
“Do you think any of the natives, or the runaways, survived the plague?” Lady Fe’Arda asked.
“I wouldn’t think the likelihood should be all that high, my lady. Besides, if there is any trouble, we have a detachment of Konos hoplites to help deal with it.”
Ilyra leaned closer to her pilot and long time adjutant, “I don’t like having to trust my security to the house of Konos, they’ve been our rivals for three generations.”
“It is a simple matter of specialization, my lady,” Tamarin said, his voice changing in tone a bit, trying to reassure Ilyra about their passengers and protectors, “Fe’Arda doesn’t have any enhanced gravity trained warriors.”
“Then why was our house chosen to make this inspection?” Lady Fe’Arda demanded.
“You worry too much, my lady. It is an honor for you and for house Fe’Arda, just as it is an honor for the Konos Hoplites to accompany you.
-------------
The Fe’Arda skiff set down in a clearing between a stand of gigantic trees and a lake that was so still it appeared to be fashioned out of a single piece of cut glass. Ilyra couldn’t take her eyes off of it, losing herself in the deep pure blue that had given this world its name in the Imperial Registrar. She wondered what it would be like to bathe in that beautiful water, to feel it lapping at her skin like an eager lover.
It was then that Ilyra realized that her landing party wasn’t alone. A magnificent looking animal stared back at her from the far shore. It stood on four legs, with its proud head held high on an impossibly muscular neck. It was black as a starless night, and, Lady Fe’Arda could swear, it was staring back at her.
“Tamarin, look,” she said, pressing her private communicator.
When her adjutant turned towards her, Ilyra pointed at the distant animal.
“What a spectacular creature,” Tamarin said, “I believe they were once called ‘horses’.”
“Horses,” Ilyra tried the word and found that she liked how it sounded, “Do you think I could obtain Imperial permission to bring one back with us?”
The sudden laughter in Lady Fe’Arda’s ears reminded her that she’d let go of her private communicator and had said her last words on the broad channel that they shared with the Hoplites.
“My lady, I apologize,” Alvax Thorin, commander of the hoplite detachment, said with a voice that was so deep that it seemed to vibrate against Ilyra’s skin, “but I can save you a lot of trouble. They’re stupid animals, bred to serve. Look at him, he doesn’t even know what to do. His masters are gone, so what does he do? He looks at us like that, waiting for someone to take control of him.
“It would be too easy for you to break his spirit, My lady, but even then you could never trust it. It wants to be controlled, but it hates it at the same time. It is too stupid to decide how it really feels. Such a low creature is not fitting as a conquest for someone of your breeding. If you would still like to inspect the creature, my men can fell it for you.”
Ilyra felt herself sneering at the hoplite commander, only her protective face plate serving to conceal her true feelings toward him. The hoplites looked like they were all assembled from the same parts pile. Their bodies had been hardened through rigorous training programs in varying gravities, giving them an overall coarse look. Their armor only served to intensify their beastly appearance, making them seem even larger than they were.
“No, that is quite alright,” she said, “we have more important matters to attend to.”
“As you command, my lady,” Thorin said, although his voice suggested more mockery than reverence. If he’d used that tone on Sesyrin, Ilyra could have had him disciplined.
Lady Fe’Arda watched the hoplites as they unloaded the rest of their gear. They were hulking monstrosities, and they all seemed to take more notice of her than she would have liked. It felt more like they were sizing her up instead of keeping a vigilant watch over her.
It was common knowledge that the hoplites were not permitted mates or personal servants for the duration of their training and active postings. This particular band of ten of House Konos’ best had been near the end of a five cycle deployment when they’d been tapped for this protection detail.
There had been an incident on the ship, one of the House Fe’Arda servants had disappeared. Eventually, the poor girl’s body had been found, twisted and crushed almost beyond recognition. It seemed as though she’d somehow fallen into the machinery that was responsible for the simulated gravity onboard, but Ilyra wasn’t convinced. She’d suspected one or more of the hoplites had likely had their way with the girl and then discarded her when they were through.
And now here she was, a noble woman, for all intents and purposes stranded on an alien planet with a bunch of heavily armed thugs.
She turned back in time to see the horse stand up on its back legs and then run off. Lady Fe’Arda couldn’t help but envy its freedom.
Two:
Ilyra watched Tamarin as he finished assembling the last package worth of sensors. His civilized outline was more comforting to her than those of the hoplites who milled about in their makeshift camp. They’d moved away from the skiff’s landing site, trying to keep any debris or gasses from their landing from contaminating the results of their scans. The ground was harder there, uneven and with jagged rocks jutting out at random intervals. Ilyra felt like she could trip and slice open her protective suit at any moment.
She feared that Tamarin had done just that as she heard him utter an old Empire curse.
“Are you okay?” Lady Fe’Arda demanded.
“I’m fine, my lady,” Tamarin replied, “but these sensors are way off. I can’t get any two of them to agree with each other. I’m afraid the trip down was tougher on them than I’d anticipated.”
“What does that mean?” the noble woman asked.
As if sensing a problem, Thorin and his hoplites began to close in around the two Fe’Ardans.
“I’m going to have to return to the skiff, I need a few things to help me recalibrate the sensors. I could have sworn I brought some of them with me, but…”
“So we’re going back to the skiff?” Lady Fe’Arda asked, trying not to sound too hopeful. The idea of sightseeing on a poisonous planet was seeming worse by the second, especially considering the knife edged rocks all around them.
“No,” Thorin said, “It would be a waste of time for all of us to return. My hoplites can handle this terrain better than the two of you. I’ll send them to retrieve whatever is needed.”
“I appreciate your offer, Thorin, but I’m going to need to salvage some components from the skiff’s electronics. One of the sensor batteries is almost completely burned up. I don’t understand how this could have happened.”
“Very well,” Thorin said, “Two of my men will accompany Tamarin back to the skiff, the rest of us will keep this site secure and protect Lady Fe’Arda.”
Before Tamarin or Ilyra could articulate a response, two of Thorin’s hoplites had deployed some kind of a device between themselves. A third hoplite lifted Tamarin and set him in place, revealing the devices purpose to be a kind of harness that would allow the brutes to carry him easily between themselves.
“Unless, of course, my lady has any objections?” Thorin added as something of an afterthought.
“Of course not,” Ilyra said, “whatever completes our objectives in the most efficient manner.”
She could have sworn that Thorin was grinning at her as the pair of his hoplites took off, Tamarin bouncing along in the makeshift carriage between them, clearly less than comfortable with their loping gait.
Almost predictably, Tamarin was barely out of sight when Lady Fe’Arda’s comm system began to malfunction. She could only hear a faint hiss when she dialed into her private frequency.
“Is there a problem, my lady?” Thorin inquired.
Ilyra was taken aback by how close the hoplite commander was standing to her. If they hadn’t been wearing environmental suits, she would have been overwhelmed by his smell. As it was, she could almost imagine it anyway. It wasn’t a pleasant sensation.
“Nothing that won’t sort itself out in time, thank you,” Ilyra replied, being in an uncomfortable position, protocol wise. House Fe’Arda was above House Konos in the peerage, and so under no circumstances should a Fe’Arda give ground to a Konos hoplite. Still, she wondered if that meant she was supposed to let him knock her over, since he was clearly intent on getting even closer or forcing her to take a step back. “Konos Hoplite,” Ilyra said, in her most imperious voice, “I think you are forgetting your place.”
“My place is inside you,” Thorin said.
“What?” Ilyra demanded.
“I said my place is beside you, my lady,” his entire helmet seemed to be smiling.
Ilyra was sure of what she’d heard, just sure as she was that the remaining six of Thorin’s men were pressing into a circle around the pair of them. She tried to be casual about checking for her weapon’s power supply, but more laugher from Thorin’s men made it plain that she’d failed in that endeavor.
“I’m afraid your Sleska is malfunctioning, much like your nursemaid’s sensors,” Thorin said, “But you have nothing to fear, my lady, we are here to protect you.”
There was a flash that Ilyra barely noticed followed by a sharp burning pain across her left breast that was impossible to ignore. She felt the panic setting in when she saw that one of the hoplites had just slashed through her encounter suit. She franticly grabbed at the frayed edges, fighting to hold the garment together even as her compressed atmosphere was vented out.
She felt another sting of pain, this time flitting across her right thigh. The hoplites were masters of their weapons, able to deliver a wound as fleeting as a paper cut or as fatal as in impaled heart in equal measure. She knew that they were toying with her, not that it mattered since she was dead anyway. The poison atmosphere would make certain of that, her own family’s legacy would see her suffocate to death on an alien world.
But she wasn’t suffocating. She was exposed to the environment and there had been no effect. As if to drive this point even further home, Thorin removed his own breath mask.
“We’ve been planning this for months, Lady Fe’Arda. We’ve known that this world was safe for our kind all along,” then to his men, Thorin gave another command, “Take her.”
The hoplites took hold of Ilyra’s arms, legs, and head, leaving their captain to taunt and posture with his energy spear. He’d stripped down to the field gear he was wearing beneath his encounter suit, and despite the fact the he was obviously very proud of the misshapen body that his high grav training had crafted, Ilyra was still sickened by the sight of him.
Thorin spun his weapon around almost recklessly, but it was just an act, because when he directed it against Lady Fe’Arda’s encounter suit, he worked with surgical precision. It was not long before the noble woman found herself wearing little more than tattered rags and showing off far more of her body to these Konos dogs than she would have ever cared too.
As she felt the buzzing tip of Thorin’s weapon whispering back and forth in front of her throat, Lady Fe’Arda wanted to scream. Her station, all the ceremony and politeness that she had grown to detest on Sesyrin had been stripped away. She was nothing now, just another servant to be raped and murdered like that girl on the ship.
Thorin removed all doubt about his further intentions when he undid the buckles and catches that held his uniform in place. His energy spear laid down beside him, the hoplite commander advanced on his prisoner with a weapon of a different sort clutched in his hand.
“Lift her,” he snarled to his men who eagerly complied.
Ilyra knew what was going to happen, and what she had to do. Before she’d let that piece of trash get inside of her, she’d bite through her own tongue and die. Or at least that was what she would have done if Thorin hadn’t suddenly thrust the ridge of his hand into her mouth.
She still made the attempt, trying to tear through her captor’s skin. She drew blood, but the grip did not relent. She squirmed, trying to climb higher somehow, as she felt Thorin’s phallus brush against her inner thigh. There was no escape, it was going to happen.
As she clenched her eyes shut, still trying to twist away from the hoplites’ vise like grips, she felt something warm spray against her face. It didn’t make sense, and what happened next was even more confusing. She was falling.
She took a chance and opened her eyes, though she didn’t believe what they were telling her. Thorin wasn’t there to threaten her anymore, instead he was being supported between two of the hoplites as the others formed a protective cocoon with their pulse shields. Thorin momentarily locked eyes with Ilyra, or more correctly locked eye with her, as he only had one left. Where the other should have been, there was only a long wooden shaft surrounded by an ugly mess of gore.
As Lady Fe’Arda watched, one of Thorin’s hoplites jerked back and fell to the ground, dead. She could see that the dead one, as well as another that was still on his feet, had also been hit by whatever type of weapon had struck their commander.
Thinking that perhaps Tamarin had come to her rescue, Ilyra got to her feet determined to make the most of it. Between the unfamiliar ground, the tattered clothes, and the fact that she spent more time looking over her shoulder to try and see what manner of attack had actually driven Imperial Hoplites to retreat, she didn’t really have a chance. Her balance ran away, and before she could catch it, she felt her head hit something hard and then saw only black.
----------
The noble woman awoke to an unfamiliar sensation. At first, she feared that her rescue had been a dream and that when she opened her eyes she would be back on the cliffs with Thorin and his hoplites pounding away at her. With her eyes open, she could at first see only an expanse of rippling black. It was then she realized that she was not the one being ridden, but the rider. Though she couldn’t be certain, she believed she was perched on top of the same horse she’d seen when the skiff first landed.
It was an exhilarating feeling, to be carried along by such a strong animal. Ilyra lifted her face some to feel the wind rushing past her, but in doing so she managed to upset her tenuous point of balance. It was then she knew that she was not alone on the animal’s broad back, as an arm clamped around her midsection like a vise to hold her in place.
She relaxed into the strength that she felt, finding herself leaning back against whomever she was sharing her mount with. He was large, but without any of the deformity that marred the hoplites. Lady Fe’Arda craned her neck up and back to steal a glimpse of him and felt her breath catch in her throat.
He seemed to tower over her, his hair a wild tangle that the wind took hold of like a standard bearer’s flag. The line of his jaw was obscured with a growth of stubble, but she could see the muscles bunched up. In the moment that he caught her studying him and met her glance, the magnificent savage kindled something in the noblewoman’s chest that made her feel weak.
The rider relaxed his hold at her waist and instead grabbed both of her forearms, steering them to the horse’s neck. Ilyra felt herself bend forward as he pushed his chest against her, driving her down flat with the animal’s neck. He squeezed her arms.
“Hold,” he commanded, his breath on the noble woman’s cheek, “tight.”
And with that, he was gone. Ilyra did exactly as she was told, for possibly the first time in her life, and held onto the animal’s neck as tightly as she could. The horse continued at a break neck pace. Ilyra chanced a quick look over her shoulder, trying to find where the rider had gotten himself to, and wished that she hadn’t. She saw a pair of loping shapes erupt from the nearby tree line.
The hoplites couldn’t quite match the horse’s pace, but they didn’t have to, as long as they could out reach it’s run with their spears. The first drew his arm back, preparing to loft his weapon down range but never got the chance. He was taken through the throat from behind by another of the savage’s arrows. The falling brute managed to foul his partner’s aim so that the remaining hoplite’s spear sailed off in a harmless direction a moment before an arrow found the small section of his neck that was left uncovered by either helmet or armor plate.
Ilyra did not know any of that though, instead she only knew that she was holding onto a runaway animal for her life. Mercifully though, the horse seemed to be coming out of his galloping pace, snorting and prancing as he transitioned back into a walk. The noble woman had just begun to think of herself as actually having escaped immediate danger when one of the brutish hoplites erupted from the unlikely cover of a nearby hedgerow.
The horse stood up and seemed to scream, front legs pawing wildly. Ilyra had no way of keeping her grip, aside from the feeble attempt she made at clenching her legs tight around the animal’s broad back. She couldn’t help but feel abandoned as her back hit the forest floor, the horse bolting for anywhere that was not within reach of the searing tip of the hoplite’s energy spear. Before Ilyra could react, or even get her bearings, she saw the hoplite rush her and felt the cold click of a restraint collar fastening around her neck.
“On your royal feet, my lady,” the brute grunted at her through a leer, a split second before hauling her up by the collar’s tether, “Thorin still wants a piece of you before we finish the job we came for.”
Lady Fe’Arda tried to say something cutting in one of the Empire’s old tongues, but the hoplite cut her off. The way the restraint collar and its tether were designed, all the brute had to do was depress a button on the handle to send a pacifying neural shock down its conductive length.
“Walk,” the brute commanded.
With her choices being limited to shock pacification, or being run through by an energy spear, Ilyra did the one thing that came least naturally to her, she followed orders.
They had not gone very far before Lady Fe’Arda’s hoplite captor was attacked by a blur. Something hit the brute hard enough to force him to the ground, with the sudden tension it caused along the restraint tether being significant to take the noble woman down as well.
It was Ilyra’s savage protector coming to her rescue again. He’d snaked an arm around the hoplite’s ample neck, and had used all of his weight against one of the brute’s leg joints to take him down. Despite the Konos soldier’s valiant attempts, he was unable to dislodge his attacker, who managed to maintain his grip with one arm leaving his second completely free.
Lady Fe’Arda caught the briefest glimpse of whatever bladed weapon it was that the savage carried before its entire length disappeared into the hoplite’s back. She could swear that her savior was snarling as he sawed back and forth through the brute’s tissue and spine. Once he seemed satisfied that everything below the blade’s point of insertion had been rendered inert, he withdrew the weapon. Using the crook of his arm to lift and pull back on the hoplite’s head, the savage plunged his knife into the far side of the soldier’s throat and drew it all the way across.
Despite the way she’d comported herself up to that point during her sojourn to Blue Waters, Ilyra had always prided herself on having a sterner constitution than most of the other nobles she was accustomed to dealing with, and definitely a stronger stomach than the other noble women. Even so, it was all she could do to keep from retching when she noticed that the savage’s last attack had actually succeeded in removing the hoplite’s head from his body.
She lay there helplessly, as if hypnotized or in shock, as her unknown protector approached. She watched him wipe the brute’s pale, thick, blood from his blade before returning it to a sheath that apparently ran parallel to his spine with the handle pointing down. She could see his chest and knew that he was breathing heavily, even for someone as strong as he appeared, it would have been no easy task to subdue the Konos dog like that.
He wore boots and leg guards, along with something that might have been described as a loin cloth, had this been one of the Empire’s old exploitation films rather than real life. Everything was made from the hides of some animal or another. She noticed he wore other weapons, besides the knife, with the pistol secured beneath his left arm appearing to be his most modern piece of equipment. She wondered why he hadn’t simply used that. Then again, as capable as he seemed with that great bow of his, perhaps the hoplites simply didn’t warrant wasting good ammunition.
The savage knelt next to her, and at first she thought he was glaring down at her. Ilyra soon realized though that his contempt was not for her, but for the device around her neck. Of course, she thought, he’s seen something like this before. The noble woman was a little taken by surprise as the man’s hands latched onto the collar. She watched as the muscles in his arms, shoulders, and upper chest tightened. The collar split along its seams with a crackle of energy, completely unable to resist the savage’s strength.
Lady Fe’Arda found herself in the savage’s arms as he lifted her from the ground, she also found herself completely content with that turn of events. Wherever he wanted to carry her, he had her approval.
Three:
The beast man did not live in a simple hole carved into the side of a mountain, but rather a well made cabin of wood and stone. It seemed the only limits imposed on its constructions were the savage’s considerable strength, and the apparent cunning he was accustomed to applying it with. The dwelling was a cross of several styles, from multiple time periods and cultures, at least as far as the noble woman could tell from what little instruction she’d received in the history of the planet that the Empire had named Blue Waters, yet it all fit together somehow.
The man locked the door behind them before setting the noble woman down on a pallet that was far more comfortable than the bed she’d been assigned for the trip out. Ilyra felt at ease, almost intoxicated. With nothing better to do, she simply studied the man as he went about removing his weapons and pouches. He treated the bow as if it was his most prized possession, and it was easy to see why. Of all the tools he carried, it seemed the most likely to have been hewn with his own hands. The harnesses for the blade and the pistol were separate, but the weapons went the same place once they were removed: a small table that also supported what appeared to be a box of hard ammunition. For some reason, Ilyra got the impression that the savage had more weapons hidden on his person. The last piece of equipment to come off before he turned back to her was a coil of rope.
Without warning or preamble, he took Ilyra’s head in his hands and bent close to her face. He pulled at the skin around her eyes with his thumbs, intently studying the movement of her pupils. She winced as he squeezed at the wound on her forehead, which likely came from when she toppled down the incline after Thorin’s attempted rape was interrupted.
He left her for a moment, only to return with some leaves, a small bowl, and something that looked like a piece of heavy bone. He chewed one of the leaves a couple of times before spitting it into the bowl and adding other ingredients. Ilyra propped her head up on one hand and watched as he used the bone to grind the mixture into a sort of paste. When it appeared to gain the proper consistency, the savage scooped some out on the tip of his forefinger and applied it to the cut. It felt warm and tingly, Ilyra thought, but it also seemed to take the pain away instantly.
He set the bowl on the edge of the table and continued to inspect Lady Fe’Arda for further injuries. She realized that his scrutiny of her body was beginning to arouse her. The fact that he cradled her wounded breast with one hand as he rubbed more of the medicine on it with the other wasn’t helping, or perhaps it was, from a different point of view.
Up to that point, Ilyra’s only real concession to decorum and modesty had been the fact that she kept her legs tight to each other and drawn up almost protectively to keep him from seeing anything. At the touch of his warm hand on her thigh, even if it was just to apply more medicine, she felt herself wanting him to see everything. To be honest, she wanted him to do more than just see.
Ilyra felt like a child as she consciously changed her posture and started to open her legs. She remembered taunting her classmates at the Junior Academy. They were too immature to know what to do with what she was offering them, though still too proud to actually admit it. Watching the woman open herself up for him, the savage’s brow wrinkled ever so slightly. Clearly, he hadn’t expected her to behave like that, his eyes flicked up to her face. She held his steely gaze for a moment before closing her eyes and nodding her head, a silent assent to whatever he wanted to do to her.
The savage’s mouth was suddenly pressing onto the Ilyra’s. A bit unsure what to do, the noble woman followed her rescuer’s lead, allowing his tongue into her mouth. It brought a whole host of foreign but pleasant sensations with it. The noble woman caught herself briefly wondering why her lips had been just about the only part of her body that Penna’s mouth had never touched.
“I thought I was the last.” The savage said in accented Imperial.
That was when Ilyra realized that her savior was under the impression that she was a fellow survivor, a native of Blue Water. She was at least a good fifty years away from the skin hardening effect that would eventually out her dominant ancestor as reptilian rather than mammalian, and her eyes were protected from the light of the Burning Hand by artificial membranes that mimicked the photosensitive properties of the natives’.
“The Masters will never hurt you again, I promise.”
Lady Fe’Arda’s breath caught in her throat. The form that her rescuer had used, The Masters, as a way of referring to the Imperial Houses, was very old, and not a kind one at all. It was strange to hear a single voice drip with that much venom and nectar at the same time.
Almost before she could fashion another coherent thought together, the savage had buried himself to the hilt within her body. The noblewoman let out a sharp gasp, surprised not as much by his size, but by the warmth of him. His whole body seemed to burn for her, from the heat of his breath against her throat to the touch of his skin against hers. His arms wrapped around her back, both cradling her and pulling her closer as their hips bucked against each other.
Ilyra had never felt like this with any Imperial. By nature they had always been cold and harsh, so that she felt more like she’d been the victim of repeated stabbings than an act of intimacy, and she’d never once left a bedroom without nursing puncture wounds from the possessive bites that Imperial men seemed to think their woman adored. That was what she was feeling, she realized, because of what he thought she was, the savage cherished her completely.
A sudden start of fear kindled in Lady Fe’Arda’s chest as their coupling built towards its natural crescendo. What if something in her anatomy gave her away? Would this man who had been taking such good care of her suddenly snap and murder her as easily as he had the Konos Hoplites? She knew that her people’s reproductive anatomy had undergone some significant changes a few thousand years ago, coming more in line with the mammalian norm than they had before, but as to what her insides would feel like to her lover, or what he had to compare them to, Ilyra had no clue.
If there were any tell tale signs, the native obviously missed or disregarded them. Ilyra felt the change in his breathing and realized that even between different species, certain cues were the same. After pressing his mouth against hers another time, the rhythm of his hips changed again and the noblewoman felt a fresh warmth spread inside of her that ignited all kinds of involuntary reactions within her body.
Her mind dulled by shock, trauma, and pleasure, Lady Fe’Arda had no idea what the sudden flash of bright light that filled the room meant, or why her lover fell away from her as if struck down by the gods themselves.
----------
Tamarin stood over the savage’s subdued form, his weapon still whining from the high capacity discharge. Apparently he too had seen the futility of the pressure suits and had gone back to his standard uniform.
“Did the savage hurt you, my lady?” Tamarin demanded, stepping gingerly over the fallen man as he holstered his side-arm.
“No, not at all,” Ilyra said, her breathing still ragged and heavy, “He rescued me from Thorin and his men, they were going too…”
“I know, my lady,” Tamarin said, reaching for a magnificent hide blanket he spotted that would go a long way toward returning his mistress’ modesty to her, “I was able to escape the death that my two escorts had planned for me in time to convince one of them to betray the details of Thorin’s plan. My only regret is that I couldn’t find you sooner, before…”
With that, the savage let out a groan and Tamarin’s sidearm slid free of its holster again.
“Don’t hurt him,” the noblewoman shouted, her voice coming out as more of a forced hiss than anything else, since there was no time to dress it up with fancy tones.
Tamarin was struck dumb not by his mistress’ command, but by the posture she’d adopted while giving it. She was acting like a common feral rather than the High Lady of House Fe’Arda, having sprung to a forward crouch with her teeth bared and her hands poised to claw at her adjutant’s eyes and throat.
“By the gods,” Tamarin’s voice fell, “You… the coupling with him was your choice?”
Suddenly possessing an animal grace she hadn’t thought herself capable of within the harsh gravity of the Burning Hand’s reach, Lady Fe’Arda leapt to the floor, using her body to block Tamarin’s aim from the chest of her lover.
“You can have me zipped into a bag and fired into the deep cold for this if you want, but it’s my duty,” Tamarin said, with great resolve as he holstered his pistol.
The adjutant’s slap was felt before it could be seen, but it seemed to have the desired effect: clearing Ilyra’s head long enough for her to realize what she was doing and who she was threatening.
“I’m… I’m sorry Tamarin, I don’t know what came over me,” she said. Her awareness with regard to her stark nudity returned shortly thereafter, but Tamarin was quick with the blanket he’d spied earlier.
“I was able to lock out the skiff’s controls, so Thorin and his remaining men won’t be leaving without us, but we need to hurry. I don’t want to give them any more time to put a plan together.”
“We can’t leave him here,” Ilyra said, meaning her rescuer, “I think he’s the only one left.”
“If you’ll permit me, my lady,” Tamarin said, feeling not the slightest ill at ease with the full bore return to formality. It was definitely preferable to having his mistress hissing at him from on all fours.
Once Ilyra got out of the way, her adjutant knelt next to the stunned savage. He laid a fingertip along the side of the man’s neck and nodded. He moved to the savages face, reaching up to open one of the man’s eyes.
“His eyes aren’t green,” Tamarin said, confused. “Why aren’t his eyes green?”
He continued his inspection, looking for the maker’s mark of whatever Imperial Flesh Maker surely must have minted the form, but there was none. Tamarin wasn’t quite sure what to make of the man, but he did know that the stun charge wasn’t going to keep him down much longer.
“He lacks any known maker’s marks. The alternative is… impossible, but in any case, that is a mystery for another day,” Tamarin said, straightening back up, “we must go. I wouldn’t put it past Thorin to destroy the skiff once he realizes his men won’t be able to get it working again.”
“But what about him? He’s no slave. He even speaks the Imperial tongue.”
“He’s better off here, milady. Even if he is the last of his kind. Males of his species are incredibly rare, kept only as curiosities or pets. They are castrated to remove the threat of the servant population swelling beyond containable numbers. To take him from this place would be to destroy him, my lady.”
Ilyra Fe’Arda knew that her trusted advisor was telling her the truth. Maybe it was just because she was so ashamed at how she’d acted when she thought Tamarin was about to kill the man, or maybe it was guilt at allowing the savage to think she was something that she was most certainly not, but something made it a lot easier to steer her away from that place than she would have thought it could be.
The highest lady of House Fe’Arda knelt to touch her lips to the savage’s one last time before allowing Tamarin to escort her away.
Four:
Alvax Thorin’s mind sifted back through the last ten years worth of memories regarding the interactions between Houses Konos and Fe’Arda. His own father played largely in the events in question, or it would be more accurate to say that his father’s fall from grace played largely. If only the old serpent hadn’t become such a slave to first the markets and then to the whims of dice and cards, perhaps things would have played out very differently.
As a younger man, before his body had been warped into a high gravity monstrosity, Thorin had appeared on the short list for potential mates for a certain member of House Fe’Arda. Sure, Ilyra was attractive enough to make him covet possession of her, but it was all that such a union implied that really inspired him. The Empire had faced no real organized threat since the last days of the Great Uprising, so those born into even the highest warrior houses held little real value to the Emperor. With little left within close enough reach to actually conquer, it fell to scientists instead of warriors to extend the Empire’s glory.
House Fe’Arda had always been known for its elitist breeding policies, and the fine minds that those policies had routinely produced during the last thirteen generations. The fact that Thorin had even passed the initial genetic screening could have been considered a high honor. If Thorin had been the one to take Ilyra’s hand, he could have been awash in riches and respectability, but instead his father had pissed away half the coffers of House Konos and ruined any chance of that ever happening.
Thorin had been removed from the list of potential mates and selected for high gravity training within a matter of days. Still, for some reason he found that he’d always blamed House Fe’Arda more than he blamed his own father. He blamed Ilyra most of all, believing somehow that a single word from her could have rescued him from his fate.
That was the basic train of thought that kept looping through Thorin’s mind as he and his men waited for Lady Fe’Arda to come for the skiff. When the unexpected attack from the savage had disrupted his initial plans, it hadn’t taken Thorin long to formulate another approach. He smugly wondered of that frail and overly self-satisfied man servant of Ilyra’s had actually thought that he was able to escape on his own.
One of the remaining hoplites made a brief gesture. Thorin nodded. It wouldn’t be long now. He would take everything he could manage to from lady Fe’Arda, and then he would make sure there was nothing left of her large enough to identify, although he did fancy the notion of keeping some manner of trophy for himself. Her skull perhaps?
----------
“My lady, I believe you dropped this earlier,” Tamarin said, extending the case of Ilyra’s Sleska to her, “I took the liberty of making the required repairs.”
Ilyra affixed the device to her left wrist and tested the power coil. This time the weapon actually responded. Combined with her makeshift clothes, which consisted of the blanket taken from the savage’s home and a length of chord to cinch it closed at the waist, the presence of the weapon almost made her feel like a child again, acting out the barbarian queen fantasy that one of the old holos had drilled into her brain so long ago.
“Very good,” Thorin’s voice burst out of the tree line roughly twenty meters ahead of them, “I’d begun to worry that you weren’t coming at all.”
Tamarin took aim at the general direction of the voice, but did not take a shot.
“This was never the place for you to settle your grudge with our House,” Ilyra declared.
“I disagree, your highness,” Thorin’s voice replied from a different location. Tamarin shifted his aim accordingly, “this is the perfect venue. I only wish that your new pet had lived long enough to follow you into the void.”
“What are you talking about?” Ilyra demanded, a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach suggesting that she already knew.
“The runaway that came to your rescue,” Thorin’s voice had moved yet again, “one of my men caught him trying to follow your trail from that little hovel. Arnos is probably still working on him as we speak. I gave orders that I wanted its skin.”
It was strange how much of Ilyra’s training was able to run on automatic despite the fact that she was about as calm and collected as a super nova. Without even thinking about it, she’d tuned the sleska to reach both maximum distance and output, even as she began swinging it.
The result was a plasma whip that was entirely capable of reaching the location that Thorin’s voice seemed to originate from. The only problem was that as the energy lash sizzled through the trunk of a great tree, there was no Konos flesh behind for it to bite into.
A trio of hoplites exploded from the tree cover behind the Fe’Ardans, but they had gravely misjudged Ilyra’s skill with the Sleska. Somehow she managed to move eighteen meters worth of a near weightless energy whip with the grace of a master calligrapher. The tip, which burned hottest of the whole length, danced between the noblewoman and her adjutant close enough for them to hear the snapping hiss of the air burning, before leaping forward again and neatly bisecting all three warriors before their feet returned to the ground.
Tamarin pumped a few shots into the head of a familiar hoplite as he approached, taking note of the fact that their hardened skin and armor took a few more hits to get through than he thought. This time, he was certain that the big warrior was truly dead and not just playing at it for strategic effect.
Ilyra adjusted the sleska again, reducing the length and intensity of the whip to ensure that her power pack would last her through the remainder of Thorin’s men. She was almost amused at how easy it was for her weapon to bypass the hoplites vaunted defenses. Charged polarity shields weren’t very effective against a weapon that simply curved around them and sliced through whatever was on the other side. She was just about to congratulate herself on how efficiently she was mowing down the Konos military elite when Tamarin dropped to the ground clutching painfully at the place where his left arm used to join his elbow.
In battle, Thorin seemed to be an exception to the laws of physics. Something that big, with the weight distributed that poorly, should not have been able to move that fast. The tip of his spear was reduced to a glowing blur that kept slicing ever closer to Lady Fe’Arda.
The leader of the hoplites had sacrificed what few men he had left to probe the noble’s capability with her chosen tool. It hadn’t been all that difficult for the seasoned warrior to pick apart the flaws. Despite her skill with the sleska, Ilyra knew that Thorin had the upper hand, baring a lucky strike or a careless mistake on his part.
He began to tag her lightly, taken care to make sure the tip of his spear made contact first with each of the sites he’d previously wounded Lady Fe’Arda before moving on to new territory.
Ilyra rallied briefly, and was almost able to get Thorin snared in her energy whip, but the hoplite leader was able to slice through the clasps holding the device onto her wrist, leaving her functionally defenseless.
“I always thought that the Sleska was the perfect noble’s dueling weapon. All flash, no substance,” Thorin said, “No adaptability in the field. No defense against an enemy who gets close.”
With that he delivered a strike to Ilyra’s abdomen with the dead end of the spear, easily knocking her onto her back and making her gasp for her next several breaths. The last remaining hoplite switched his energy spear off, leaving a tip that was still sharp enough to slide through flesh with ease, but that was able to lift the corner of Ilyra’s makeshift robe without immediately burning through.
“All the finery of the Empire at your disposal, and you decide to go native? If only our houses could see us now.”
Out of the corner of his remaining eye, Thorin caught movement. He lifted his spear to his shoulder, chambering for the toss, but saw that the outline approaching through the trees matched up with Arnos’ armor. His attention fell back to his prisoner and prize.
“House Fe’Arda will have your entire family gutted for this,” Ilyra hissed.
“For what? I’m the brave hero who fought to defend a doomed Fe’Ardan experiment. When we arrived here, we were swarmed by an army of organized natives. They slaughtered most of my men, your assistant, and unfortunately you as well, my lady,” Thorin smiled, “But don’t worry, I have the skin of their war chief to take back with me, and I’m sure that rumors of an organized slave army will make sure that the fleet arrives within the week to scorch this rock into a cinder. It’s a shame you won’t be there to see it, my lady. I’ll probably be awarded my own House for avenging your murder.”
Ilyra rolled to her feet and lunged at Thorin, but the big warrior easily caught her momentum and twisted it against her so the she ended up back on the ground and nursing what was possibly a freshly broken arm.
“Be that way,” Thorin hissed, “I would rather you have lived to feel what I’m going to do, but you made your choice,”
He chambered to drive the point of his staff down through Lady Fe’Arda’s heart, but instead found himself mutely staring at the shaft of a spear protruding from his own chest. The warrior fell to his knees, the strength rapidly fleeing from his hands and arms. His own weapon clattered to the ground next to him. Thorin’s head turned slowly back to where he’d seen Arnos approaching.
Where he’d seen the warrior’s shape before, now he saw the savage that he’d presumed skinned. Behind him, Arnos hulking frame lie inert, leaking what was left of its lifeblood onto the ground below it.
Thorin’s eye closed for the last time before his body had even hit the dirt.
Ilyra could barely believed how happy she felt when she saw that her savior was still alive. She ran to him, wrapping her arms around him, but something was wrong. It seemed like most of his strength was missing, it was all he could do to stay on his feet. Lady Fe’Arda could feel more of his warmth, but this time it was leaking out of him from several ugly wounds. She felt him start to sway and then had to catch him as his body went limp.
He’d been practically dead on his feet, and still his only thought had been protecting her. There was no way she could leave him behind anymore.
Five:
Tamarin regained consciousness sometime shortly after the anesthesia wore off from the surgery to attach his temporary prosthetic limb. Organic limbs could be regenerated easily enough, but Tamarin had made a point of requesting the use of a mechanical unit if he ever suffered a severe enough injury while away from the capital. He didn’t want Lady Fe’Arda to have to suffer through the time it would take for him to re-grow the missing limb without the benefit of his council and service. Besides, there was nothing stopping him from having the wound healed the proper way once they were back on Sesyrin and the veritable army of servants available to House Fe’Arda could pick up his slack.
He was still trying to get used to the mechanical ticks and whines that the replacement limb made when he discovered that he and Ilyra were not the only ones to have made it back to their ship.
“My lady, I thought we agreed that it would be wrong to take him from his world,” Tamarin said, evenly.
“He almost died to protect me, he would have died if I left him there. I couldn’t do it,” Ilyra was sitting on the edge of her bed, making slow circles on the savage’s chest with the fingertips of her left hand.
Tamarin walked over to the side of the bed and looked down at the man. His wounds were not quite as severe as Ilyra had taken them to be, but he wasn’t about to point that out.
“How many know about him?” The adjutant asked.
“You, me, and one medic. He’s sworn to secrecy though. It is amazing the level of confidentiality you can buy with the promise of a villa on Garniv, complete with its own harem. I’m having him kept under sedation until I can figure out what to do about this.”
“He’s stable now, perhaps we should just make an excuse to take him back?”
“I know what you think this is,” Ilyra said, “You saw us, you know what happened, but there is more to it than that. Look at this,” Ilyra sifted through the wounded man’s unruly hair and came up with a small charm that he’d apparently tied into it at some point.
“Did you… give that to him?” Tamarin inquired.
“No, I didn’t even see it until I was loading him onto the skiff. Why does he have a signet ring for my house tied into his hair? I know all servants are taught to understand the Imperial tongue, but why can he speak it so well? Why does he know the Old Words that have barely been spoken in our lifetimes?”
“And then there is the mystery of his eyes and the lack of maker’s marks. To say nothing of the fact that he does not appear to be old enough to have been born before the attempted sterilization of Blue Waters. I believe you are right, my lady. There is more to him than would appear at first glance.”
“I want you to try and gather whatever information you can about this, as quietly as possible. I want to know as much as I can before we return home.”
“There is one thing you’re missing in all of this, my lady,” Tamarin reminded her, “We have no way of knowing how he’ll act when he learns the truth about you, and about what you’ve done to him by bringing him aboard an Imperial ship.”
“Maybe he never has to,” Ilyra suggested, “I wouldn’t be the first Fe’Ardan to take an eccentric streak and disappear to some remote estate for the rest of my life.”
“My lady, you have responsibilities to your House and to the Empire,” Tamarin pointed out, “and need I remind you, that you also have a husband. One who, as I was told on my way to your quarters, has been trying to get through to you for the last several hours.”
“This isn’t going to be simple, is it, Tamarin?” Ilyra said, watching the little escapist fantasy she’d put together in her mind, the one where she and her new lover could escape to some remote corner of the Empire and live out their days without any interference from reality, fracture and then explode into a trillion tiny shards.
“It never is, my lady,” Tamarin replied, “It never is.”
----------
When he awoke, it felt like his mind was full of sand, and that it started to leak out any time he turned his head. The first thing he tried to do was put the pieces back together and see if he could remember how he got to be in such an unfamiliar place. He could remember the fight with the monsters, and how the biggest one had almost killed him. He remembered trying to rescue… the woman.
At first, when he’d woken up in his home, muscles and brain all aching and strange, he’d thought that she must have been a dream. The monsters, the woman, their ride through the forest, it had all been a dream. He’d been alone so long that his mind had started to conjure up things to keep him going.
But you couldn’t smell dreams, and he could definitely notice the subtle tang of her perfume in his home. It was a strange smell, floral and sweet, but not matching anything he’d known before. There had also been subtle evidence that he had not been alone in his bed.
He remembered putting it together, that if the woman was real and they had actually been together, then the monsters that were chasing her had to be real as well. The Masters’ monsters had come back to his world to finish what they started. He couldn’t let that happen. He had to protect her.
He had been alone on his world long enough to know every rhythm that it contained. The aching joints that had never quite set right after an old injury let him know with perfect accuracy when the weather would turn. He could hear game moving at incredible distances. He’d actually been able to follow the woman through her perfume more than her tracks, since the smells of his world were so common to him that she stood out like a giant signal fire.
He knew that wherever he was now, it was not his world, for he knew nothing about it. The smells were harsh and unnatural, the sounds all crashed together, and the very floor thrummed below his feet. At first, superstition got the best of him and he briefly believed he was in the belly of some great beast that would fly him to the netherworld for his final judgment.
That was when his mentor’s lessons started to come back to him. He was in some kind of ship, likely traveling at speeds beyond what his mind could easily process. The only place vast enough to allow for that kind of travel was space, the dark haze beyond the light of the world.
Man had not owned the technology to accomplish such a feat in more than a thousand years, so he knew he was not among kinsmen. The Masters had returned with their warriors, and they had taken him. That also meant that they had taken his woman. He knew that he must find her and protect her from The Masters.
But there was something wrong. In the whole constellation of strange sensations, there was one that was freshly familiar. The perfume that his woman wore. Once he noticed it, he couldn’t get away from it. The smell was much thicker than it had been in his home. He searched the room and eventually located a small phial of liquid. As he tried to pick it up, he accidentally activated the sprayer and had to cough. This was where her scent had come from?
Was she a tool of The Masters’, sent to lure him into a trap?
He heard a high pitched noise briefly before a door at the far side of the room split in half and then vanished. A thin female figure appeared, lit from behind by hallway’s ambient glow. He knew that it was not his woman, her sizes and curves were wrong, but he could tell that at least on the surface, whoever it was seemed to be like him.
He realized that she couldn’t see him. The room was kept dark, and her sight would take time to adjust from the light in the hallway. She did seem accustomed to functioning in the dark though. She moved with confidence born of routine and familiarity. She didn’t need to see the room to move through it, she was that accustomed to it.
It made it almost too easy to sneak up on her.
Penna let out a brief startled cry before a strong hand clamped shut over her mouth. She tried to struggle at first, but was easily led to a corner of the room where one of the environmental readouts for her mistress’s quarters gave the room its only ambient glow. She could make out a male face, eyes glaring at her. She saw the man press a finger to his lips. Penna nodded, and tried to relax as the hand fell away from her mouth.
“Where are we?” the man asked, speaking the Imperial tongue perfectly, if with a slight accent.
“The bed chamber of Mistress Ilyra of the House Fe’Arda,” Penna replied in the only language she knew how to speak, which didn’t happen to be Imperial.
The man’s brow only knitted at her. He didn’t understand what she said. He repeated his question.
Penna started to panic. Like all Pennas, she was able to understand the language perfectly, but had never quite been able to respond well in it. If this person was speaking to her that clearly in Imperial, he was probably Sesyreen, even if he didn’t look like it. That meant that she was expected to serve him, perfectly… yet she wasn’t able to reply to him because he didn’t understand her low-tongue. The Sesyreen never formed their questions like that, they usually never even asked questions, just made demands.
The man took her by the shoulders and shook her a couple of times before releasing her and repeating his question again, adding, “Do you understand me?” at the end.
Not knowing what else to do, since she was fairly certain that screaming would probably get her killed or punished at the very least, Penna dropped to her knees in front of him and reached up to move out of the way whatever that flimsy garment he was covering himself up with was so that she could start to service him. She’d been trained to cater exclusively to females, like Mistress Fe’Arda, but figured that men shouldn’t be too difficult to figure out.
When the man snatched her back up to her feet by her wrists, Penna decided that maybe she was wrong about that.
“What are you doing?” he demanded.
“I serve?,” Penna managed the two words of the Imperial tongue she was able to, forcing the latter into a question with her inflection alone.
“No, I don’t want that,” the man said, “I need to know where…” he faltered, seeming not to know how to phrase his question. “Where is the woman who smells like this?” he asked, dragging Penna over to where the phial of perfume rested.
“You’re not Sesyreen,” Penna said. The man looked at her blankly, clearly not understanding a word of what she said, “You don’t belong here. I’ll get in trouble if they find you here. You have to leave.”
The man had no idea what language the girl was spewing at him. It wasn’t the language he’d spoken with his people, and it wasn’t one of the languages that the old man had taught him.
Clearly knowing the room better than the intruder did, Penna was able to draw a blade that was concealed along the lip of a nearby shelf. Whoever the man was, he didn’t belong there and that made it Penna’s responsibility to remove him.
Penna didn’t really have any combat training though, so she just slashed on instinct so the blade took a little notch out of the man’s cheek instead of severing anything important in his throat. He answered her frantic attack with a simple slap that should have maybe knocked her back a little as an absolute worst case, but somehow managed to send her to the ground in such a way that he knew she wasn’t going to be getting back up.
He felt something twist in his chest as he looked down at her crumpled form. He wasn’t sure what she was, she seemed to be like him, but she had smelled wrong. The old man had referred to it as pheromones, and whatever this girl was, she didn’t seem to have any. She was about as chemically inert as anything alive could be. Only she wasn’t alive anymore. The thought that he might have just accidentally killed one of the only others like him in the universe tore through him like a blade.
Six:
The first two words out of Grand Duke Hasre Kahn Fe’Arda’s mouth on seeing his wife’s battered face on his screen were, “My beloved.” The rest of the sentence went something along the lines of “where in the gods name have you been, and what in the deep cold happened to your face?”
“My Konos escorts decided to try to rape and assassinate me,” Ilyra bit, “ and not necessarily in that order.”
Lady Fe’Arda was irritated at just about everything in the Empire at that moment, but she was especially irritated at her husband for having the audacity to remind her that she was, in fact, married. She briefly toyed with the idea of divulging the nature of her liaison with the savage, including the fact that she was pretty sure she could still feel some of his seed inside of her, but decided that while it would definitely shut the duke up in the short term it would probably get everyone on her crew killed when the Imperial military decided to scuttle their ship with all hands still onboard.
“Are you okay?” That is what the Grand Duke seemed to ask, but what he really meant was, “Did my perfect bride get herself defiled by a pack of Konos High-Grav dogs?”
“Tamarin and I were able to stop them,” Ilyra said, finding it hard to look directly at the screen for some reason.
“I must confess that I already read one of the reports. The entire unit of Konos Hoplites, along with their leader, were wiped out? Do you expect anyone in the empire, with the possible exception of the more boastful members of Fe’Arda, to believe that a Lady of the House and her manservant were able to slaughter a full company of trained warriors?”
“What do you want me to say, Hasre?” Ilyra asked, “I told you it was a mistake to trust House Konos from the beginning. If anything, I think an act of retaliation is required.”
“House Konos has already condemned the actions of Alvax Thorin and his renegade band of warriors. It was a jilted man’s petty attempt at revenge, nothing more. You get such a fire in your eyes when you call for blood, my beloved. Save some of that passion for when you return to me, Ilyra. Our bed has been cold too long, and I’m still waiting for those sons you promised me.”
Almost mercifully, Tamarin arrived at her side, presumably with some contrived excuse to get her out of the conversation. Then Ilyra discovered that what Tamarin had actually come to bring to her attention was that not only had their secret guest gone missing, but that he’d apparently snapped Penna’s neck like a twig in the process.
----------
Somehow, he’d stumbled into the servant’s quarters. He saw roughly twenty variations of the young girl he’d just killed, covering about a five year age range. Again, he briefly considered that he had descended into some kind of afterlife, and again it was the old man and his words that brought him back to reality: A manufactured race that will never grow or change.
Even though many of them were in various stages of undress, either coming from or heading to the shower to freshen up between their shifts, they all froze to study the man that they now saw before them.
“I’m not one of them,” he said, his clear Imperial startling a couple of the younger variations, “But I’m not one of you either.”
They stared back mutely, making him wonder if their intellect had been dialed down along with their pheromones.
“Can any of you help me find…” he had to pause again, not knowing what to call the woman he’d rescued, “can you help me find the woman who came from the planet with me?”
“Don’t move,” Tamarin ordered, his sidearm trained on the savage, though tuned down to a high stun setting instead of a killing blast.
Naturally, the savage moved, turning to face him, but Tamarin neglected to take his shot. He could feel the other’s eyes tearing him apart. His aim never wavering, Tamarin briefly found himself looking past his target as one of the servant girls broke and ran.
“A young Master with a metal hand?” The savage asked, “Did I take off your hand? I don’t remember everything that happened yet.”
“No, it was one of our mutual warrior friends that did it, one of the ones you killed, so I guess I should thank you,” Tamarin said, “Now, I want you to step away from the girls slowly. Nobody else needs to die.”
“I didn’t want to kill her,” the savage said, “I didn’t think I hit her that hard. I just wanted to find the woman I rescued.”
“I can take you to see her,” Tamarin was surprised at himself for what he did next, which was to stow his pistol away in its holster, “Just come with me.”
----------
Ilyra was much happier to see her lover’s face appear at her door than she had been to see her husbands appear on her communcation screen. Much to Tamarin’s surprise and dismay, there was nothing he could do to keep the savage from rushing to Lady Fe’Arda’s side and sweeping her up off the ground. They kissed again before the savage broke the embrace and positioned himself to block Tamarin from advancing towards Ilyra.
“Have the Masters hurt you?” The savage asked.
“No,” Ilyra said, pulling on the man’s shoulder to turn him back towards her. She ended up with a hand on his chest, feeling his warmth and the beating of his heart, “He is a friend.”
“You are friends with the Masters?”
Tamarin was trying to be subtle as he shook his head no. He was actually trying to will Lady Fe’Arda into not telling the truth, for all the good it did.
“I have to tell you something, and I’m sorry that it took me this long,” Ilyra said, “I’m not who you think I am. I’m not even what you think I am.”
The savage took a step back from her, a confused look on his face.
“I’m a Sesyreen, Lady Ilyra Khan Fe’Arda.”
“You’re a Master?”
“Please let me explain. I didn’t mean to trick you, but everything happened so fast. You saved me from Thorin and his men, and you were taking care of me and then…it just happened. I’ve never felt anything like that before, and I just wanted to…”
Tamarin made a point of loudly clearing his throat. Understanding and compassion for other species aside, he didn’t like seeing her tapdance for this savage any more than he liked the idea of her being impaled on any piece of his anatomy in the first place.
“You never lied,” the savage said, slumping his shoulders slightly forward, “I never stopped to ask, I just wanted you to be like me.”
“I’m afraid that I put you in a lot of danger by bringing you back with me,” Ilyra said.
“I just wanted to protect you,” the savage replied, possibly not actually having paid attention the Lady Fe’Arda’s last sentence.
“Now its my turn to protect you,” Ilyra said, “I have a plan to hide you, until we can figure out how to take you home. We can make you seem to be like us, and our surgeons can just fix you later when it is safe.”
That is as far as I was able to go at the time. Chapter six is the messiest, by far. I had something in mind, but it got all muddled up once I moved the action off of the planet. I sensed it veering off into Stranger in a Strange Land/Brave New World territory.
The inspiration for the story came from a scene in Brotherhood of the Wolf, when Mark Dacascos' character sees the other "savages." The section of the story in the servant's quarters with the line "I'm not one of them, but I'm not one of you either," particularly makes me think of that scene.
The cold opening from my new story
A black Mercedes barreled down the dirt road like a runaway freight train, throwing up tails of dust and scattering small stones, left over from some ill fated attempt at smoothing out some of the deepest ruts, to the wind. The vehicle’s air suspension was dialed in to a setting called “Sport 2” which was supposed to improve handling by providing more agility on bumpy road surfaces. Considering how the terribly maintained dirt road felt even through the finely tuned suspension, the driver wondered how rough the ride would have felt in a cheaper car as he decided to blow straight through a pock-marked stop sign and yanked the wheel hard to the left. The German engineering in the car’s steering and a bit of luck were the only things that kept him from leaving the road and plowing through a sand pine and the thicket of blackberry bushes that stood between the road and a thick looking wooden fence. The driver was just about to relax, mentally patting himself on the back for the all the clever maneuvering he’d done in the last fifteen minutes, when the headlights from before reappeared in his rearview mirror.
The driver swallowed hard and stepped down even harder on the accelerator. It wasn’t supposed to be like this, he thought to himself. He was an important man. He was above this, or at least he should have been.
He chanced taking one hand off the wheel long enough to check his cell again. He was rewarded with an onscreen message telling him the phone still couldn’t find a signal and had entered standby mode to conserve power.
With a roar from its big v-8 engine, the truck started gaining on the Mercedes, despite its own modest 3.0 liter diesel v6 humming along admirably. The driver gave up on his cell phone and tried to put everything out of his mind except for making it back to the paved road. Once he got out of this godforsaken warren of dirt trails and dead ends, he knew he could get away. From the second his tires kissed asphalt again, it would be a seven mile straight line with no reason to slow down whatsoever. From there, a quick jog to the right would put him within sight of the interstate. There was no way that lumbering gas guzzler on his tail could keep up with the one hundred and fifty five miles an hour the Mercedes could do in its sleep.
All he had to do was get there in one piece.
With the flick of a pair of dashboard mounted switches, the row of lights on the truck’s roll bar, as well as the extra pair mounted below the front fender, snapped on. The sudden glare painted the Mercedes’ basalt gray interior a stark white. The driver couldn’t help flicking his eyes up to the mirror to see where the flash came from, and likewise couldn’t stop himself from reflexively flinching away and blinking his eyes.
That was all it took. Well, that and a doe with a very unfortunate sense of timing. The driver saw the deer too late and over-corrected. The big car skewed sideways, momentum following a straight line despite where the front wheels were pointed. The animal made a loud and distinctive thump against the passenger side rear quarter panel but didn’t have much of an effect on the vehicle’s forward speed.
The driver clenched his teeth hard enough to crack one of his fillings as he fought to regain control of the car. He managed to get straightened out only to drop a tire off of the side of the road. The car’s collision response system sensed there was a problem and had already locked the sun roof, tightened the seatbelt down across the driver’s chest and tilted his seat into a crash safe position. The car did almost everything except get itself back on the road. Unfortunately, it was the back end of the middle of nowhere, so there was only a sharp decline where a soft shoulder should have been, and absolutely nothing to stop the rest of the car from careening down the slope, where it came to an abrupt, and total, stop as soon as the front bumper plowed into the massive concrete culvert below.
The radical slant the driver had on the wheel during the crash worked against him as the airbag inflated, driving his own forearm into his face with enough force to fracture his right zygomatic bone. It was still an entirely survivable crash, except for that sudden numbness in his left arm and the feeling of intense pressure in his chest that he, despite the fact he knew better, hoped he could simply blame on the self tightening seatbelt.
He briefly considered trying the phone again, but even if he could find it in the aftermath of the crash, he knew it wouldn’t have done him any good. When he realized he could hear again, the driver noticed that the vehicle’s horn had somehow been locked into the on position by the crash.
The truck lurched to a stop even with the wreck, giving up both a subtle screech from one of the brake pads and a sound similar to a twisting spring from the suspension. The driver was able to hear the sound of one of its doors opening over the low gallop of the engine’s idle, followed by a scuffling he figured was one of the men who had been chasing him sliding down the edge of the ditch. As the car door swung open, the driver entertained a brief fantasy that it had all been in his head, that these men hadn’t been trying to kill him. Maybe they were just good old boys out for a night drive, knocking over mailboxes or whatever the hell they did for fun around here, and maybe now they would turn out to be good samaritans as well and save his life.
“He don’t look so good,” this voice was close, but for some reason the driver’s vision had begun to white out around the edges so he couldn’t see the man it came from.
“You see the papers?” another voice called back, this one was further away. It was harder to hear. The driver realized he’d stopped breathing at some point and couldn’t start again.
“I think he’s having a heart attack or something,” the nearer voice again, but this too was getting more difficult to make out.
“Saves us the trouble,” the other voice called back.
By then, of course, the driver wasn’t really paying attention. He was getting cold and really wishing he could take another breath.
One last breath.
-----------------
About the project:
I'm trying to take my own advice and write what I know, so even in this cold open we have callbacks to my time driving cars for a dealership, my pre-pre med days, and my history of speeding down dirt roads.
The story is going to be set in a fake rural county in Florida and revolve around a powerful family that owns a lucrative construction business with many state contracts, as well as the private gentleman's club they run that deals both in illegal gambling and prostitution.
The idea is something I've had kicking around in my head for a few years now. At one of my band's shows, I ran into the older brother of a guy I went to high school with. He was blown away by my band, and very drunk. Personally, I think the latter had a lot to do with the former. Anyway, he said "When you're a gangster in a small town, you can run the whole world."
It also tied in with discussions we had about how far we wanted to go with our band. Every step up the ladder means a whole new set of issues. You can be a great local band, but run out of steam when you try to go regional. You can be a hot regional act but get ignored when you try to go national, etc.
It gave me the idea of a "big fish in a small pond" sort of set up, and the problems that could start surfacing when the fledgling backwoods mafia tries to expand its reach.
The main driving point at the start of the story is the Hewes family trying to kill legislation that would legalize gambling in the county, thus removing their criminal monopoly.
I'm kind of planning it for my NaNoWriMo entry this year, provided I can keep from getting started on the rest of the story for that long. (To keep things honest, I just wouldn't count what I have written for the intro). If it starts burning a hole in my brain and I have to get it out earlier, so be it. (I could always just count from the day I start on chapter one, proper, and make sure I finish within a month's time.)
The driver swallowed hard and stepped down even harder on the accelerator. It wasn’t supposed to be like this, he thought to himself. He was an important man. He was above this, or at least he should have been.
He chanced taking one hand off the wheel long enough to check his cell again. He was rewarded with an onscreen message telling him the phone still couldn’t find a signal and had entered standby mode to conserve power.
With a roar from its big v-8 engine, the truck started gaining on the Mercedes, despite its own modest 3.0 liter diesel v6 humming along admirably. The driver gave up on his cell phone and tried to put everything out of his mind except for making it back to the paved road. Once he got out of this godforsaken warren of dirt trails and dead ends, he knew he could get away. From the second his tires kissed asphalt again, it would be a seven mile straight line with no reason to slow down whatsoever. From there, a quick jog to the right would put him within sight of the interstate. There was no way that lumbering gas guzzler on his tail could keep up with the one hundred and fifty five miles an hour the Mercedes could do in its sleep.
All he had to do was get there in one piece.
With the flick of a pair of dashboard mounted switches, the row of lights on the truck’s roll bar, as well as the extra pair mounted below the front fender, snapped on. The sudden glare painted the Mercedes’ basalt gray interior a stark white. The driver couldn’t help flicking his eyes up to the mirror to see where the flash came from, and likewise couldn’t stop himself from reflexively flinching away and blinking his eyes.
That was all it took. Well, that and a doe with a very unfortunate sense of timing. The driver saw the deer too late and over-corrected. The big car skewed sideways, momentum following a straight line despite where the front wheels were pointed. The animal made a loud and distinctive thump against the passenger side rear quarter panel but didn’t have much of an effect on the vehicle’s forward speed.
The driver clenched his teeth hard enough to crack one of his fillings as he fought to regain control of the car. He managed to get straightened out only to drop a tire off of the side of the road. The car’s collision response system sensed there was a problem and had already locked the sun roof, tightened the seatbelt down across the driver’s chest and tilted his seat into a crash safe position. The car did almost everything except get itself back on the road. Unfortunately, it was the back end of the middle of nowhere, so there was only a sharp decline where a soft shoulder should have been, and absolutely nothing to stop the rest of the car from careening down the slope, where it came to an abrupt, and total, stop as soon as the front bumper plowed into the massive concrete culvert below.
The radical slant the driver had on the wheel during the crash worked against him as the airbag inflated, driving his own forearm into his face with enough force to fracture his right zygomatic bone. It was still an entirely survivable crash, except for that sudden numbness in his left arm and the feeling of intense pressure in his chest that he, despite the fact he knew better, hoped he could simply blame on the self tightening seatbelt.
He briefly considered trying the phone again, but even if he could find it in the aftermath of the crash, he knew it wouldn’t have done him any good. When he realized he could hear again, the driver noticed that the vehicle’s horn had somehow been locked into the on position by the crash.
The truck lurched to a stop even with the wreck, giving up both a subtle screech from one of the brake pads and a sound similar to a twisting spring from the suspension. The driver was able to hear the sound of one of its doors opening over the low gallop of the engine’s idle, followed by a scuffling he figured was one of the men who had been chasing him sliding down the edge of the ditch. As the car door swung open, the driver entertained a brief fantasy that it had all been in his head, that these men hadn’t been trying to kill him. Maybe they were just good old boys out for a night drive, knocking over mailboxes or whatever the hell they did for fun around here, and maybe now they would turn out to be good samaritans as well and save his life.
“He don’t look so good,” this voice was close, but for some reason the driver’s vision had begun to white out around the edges so he couldn’t see the man it came from.
“You see the papers?” another voice called back, this one was further away. It was harder to hear. The driver realized he’d stopped breathing at some point and couldn’t start again.
“I think he’s having a heart attack or something,” the nearer voice again, but this too was getting more difficult to make out.
“Saves us the trouble,” the other voice called back.
By then, of course, the driver wasn’t really paying attention. He was getting cold and really wishing he could take another breath.
One last breath.
-----------------
About the project:
I'm trying to take my own advice and write what I know, so even in this cold open we have callbacks to my time driving cars for a dealership, my pre-pre med days, and my history of speeding down dirt roads.
The story is going to be set in a fake rural county in Florida and revolve around a powerful family that owns a lucrative construction business with many state contracts, as well as the private gentleman's club they run that deals both in illegal gambling and prostitution.
The idea is something I've had kicking around in my head for a few years now. At one of my band's shows, I ran into the older brother of a guy I went to high school with. He was blown away by my band, and very drunk. Personally, I think the latter had a lot to do with the former. Anyway, he said "When you're a gangster in a small town, you can run the whole world."
It also tied in with discussions we had about how far we wanted to go with our band. Every step up the ladder means a whole new set of issues. You can be a great local band, but run out of steam when you try to go regional. You can be a hot regional act but get ignored when you try to go national, etc.
It gave me the idea of a "big fish in a small pond" sort of set up, and the problems that could start surfacing when the fledgling backwoods mafia tries to expand its reach.
The main driving point at the start of the story is the Hewes family trying to kill legislation that would legalize gambling in the county, thus removing their criminal monopoly.
I'm kind of planning it for my NaNoWriMo entry this year, provided I can keep from getting started on the rest of the story for that long. (To keep things honest, I just wouldn't count what I have written for the intro). If it starts burning a hole in my brain and I have to get it out earlier, so be it. (I could always just count from the day I start on chapter one, proper, and make sure I finish within a month's time.)
An old "Super Hero" story of mine, presented episodically. -New Section Up 7-30
His name was not Johnny, but that was what everyone called him. Not Johnny didn’t like it, but there wasn’t much he could do. It seemed he was surrounded by people with horrible memories and bad manners. To Not Johnny, it felt just like home.
Not Johnny had never been quite right, and that is somewhat of an understatement. He did bad things in his youth, and tried to make up for them by being a kind of super Samaritan. Not Johnny helped others at his own expense, and when he got sick, all of his money was already gone.
The term sickness is actually misapplied. Not Johnny wasn’t sick, he was broken. An aborted attempt at heroics around the age of sixteen left him with a spine that was just a couple steps up the ladder from broken glass. He’d gotten into the car with a friend of his when she had been drinking, severely. Not Johnny was being a good guy and driving her home so that none of the other Not Johnny’s of the world could take advantage of her. His heroism was somewhat selfish, he’d wanted her for himself…but even he wasn’t about to try and take her in that state. There would have been no challenge, and Not Johnny didn’t like things that came easily…with the life he’d had, he couldn’t even understand them.
Some people become more and more despondent as they drink, and that was how Not Johnny’s friend was. The memory is crystal clear. One moment, he looked over to smile at her as she appeared to sleep with her head against the window, a shared favorite song on the radio. The next, all hell broke loose.
With a shriek, the girl came bolt awake and snatched at the steering wheel. Not Johnny over corrected and went off the road in the opposite direction. The bridge abutment was less then forgiving. When the dust settled and the horn finally died out, Not Johnny’s friend was dead and he was paralyzed, unable to get away from her blood as it pooled and dripped down. It was hell on earth, and Not Johnny wanted to die.
Ten years later, Not Johnny had regained, somewhat, the use of his body and kicked the booze habit. It was somewhat ironic that what was in a roundabout way responsible for his predicament was also the only thing that could numb his mangled body and let him get to sleep at night.
Life had not gotten any easier, but it had not gotten any worse. That was until the first tremor. Not Johnny didn’t know what it meant, but he knew that it as not good. When he finally knuckled under and went to the doctor, he was referred to a specialist. The specialist used words like “unforeseen” and “inoperable” to describe Not Johnny’s condition.
The young man who’s name was not Johnny was also not a doctor, so talk of bone shards, fusing vertebrae, dying nerves and an electrical problem in his brain went over his head. It was beside the point really. He was a walking time bomb…but with varied methods of detonation. He could survive for years, slowly losing control of his body a piece at a time until there was nothing left capable of feeling…or one of the tiny bone spears inside of him could shift, killing him before he even knew anything had changed.
He left the specialist’s office with a garbage bag full of pain pills, in four to a pack free sample blisters, and a referral for end of life counseling. He folded it into a small paper airplane and sailed it away from the top level of the hospital’s parking garage.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Behind him, where they could be seen between the stands of trees, the distant lights looked like a flickering fire from the speeding car on the interstate. Terrence Coates kept flicking his eyes up to the mirror and having to turn slightly behind the wheel to keep checking just to make sure it was only a trick conjured up by the interaction between the input and what his brain was doing with it. He’d had entirely too much fire in his life, and the thought of it chasing him was very disquieting.
He twisted a knob on the old car’s radio and it snapped off. The radio was now locked in the on position, but all it reported was a dull hiss of static that, at random intervals, allowed a little bleed over from a different station. It was like being wheeled down a long hallway and hearing little bits of what was going on in each room as you went past.
His cellular phone rang again, the upbeat little piece of digitized music seeming sharply at odds with the content he was expecting. He flipped the phone open and held it to his ear with one hand, again scanning his mirrors almost absently.
“Coates.” He said. This was how he always answered his phone. He was having trouble making it out over the static. “Hold on a minute.” He said, setting the phone in his lap so he had a free hand to scout the dash for something he could kill the radio with.
He’d been sharing the car with his daughter, reluctantly. She’d left the car adapter for her mp3 player. Actually, it was designed back in the days of the Sony CD player, but it worked just as well. Hell, it was so utilitarian that even Coates could find a use for it. He slammed the dead tape into the deck and, with a click, the static died off into a high pitched whine.
“Okay, lets try it again.” He said into the phone.
The voice on the other end belonged to a nervous young officer on site at the worst crime scene of his, admittedly short, career. This wasn’t so much an official channels thing as it was a matter of fraternity. It was a big time case unfolding in a back woods venue. In some ways, it could have been considered a big break. If the call had come down in some other place, a place where someone that Terrence, sometimes called Terry, but usually only by women or people older then himself, knew wasn’t running the show, this would not be happening.
As it was, the middle aged cop, now a single father of two, was closing in on a fresh lead in a case that had been nagging him for six years. He had no illusions that closing this case would make it easier to get along with his kids, or help him get to sleep at night, or to tell the truth, even make the smallest dent in his nightly alcohol consumption. No, Terrence Coates was not a man who hoped for the best.
All he wanted was that one piece of evidence that would put him closer to the son of a bitch who murdered his wife.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Not Johnny drifted along like that for a while, and then there was the sudden upturn in his daily events. Despite the fact he’d previously applied on at least three occasions, which is bad memory short hand for six times, he had finally been approved for disability. It seemed strange, but fitting in a way, that they had declined to take care of him while he was alive…now that his clock was running down, they seemed much less reticent to put his name on a check.
That is why Not Johnny was in the bank that day. There had been a problem with his direct deposit, and he’d had to come down to sort it out. He was stuck in line, and two days off his medicine. At the time, it was little more then a pronounced inconvenience to him, the fact he felt like he had to walk in slow motion to keep from screaming every so many steps, but it would turn out to be more important later.
A young woman slid by him in line, excusing her self and promising “It’ll only be a minute.” She was attractive, cold, and could lie without pause. If he wasn’t partially convinced that a good roll in the hay would kill him, he would have tried asking her out. As it was, he just took note of how her ass looked in that skirt.
He was still looking at it when the first gunshot went off. The involuntary jump made it feel as if two ropes of something had been torn apart in his back. Not Johnny was close to the gunmen. He had some flecks of plaster from the fresh hole in the ceiling on his head and shoulders. His ears were ringing.
There were two of them. One with a pistol, the other a shotgun. The first shot had gone into the roof, a good place for it. Fairly safe, what with this being a one story building. They wore masks and angrily swept their weapons back and forth across the crowd.
“Get down on the ground, all of you.” Pistol said.
“NOW!” Shotgun added with a shout, jabbing the shotgun in the crowd’s general direction.
Not Johnny could hear the other people making their quick descents. Not Johnny was not moving.
“What the hell’s the matter with you?” Pistol demanded, gesturing towards him, “You deaf?”
“Not quite, but you came close firing that thing in here.” Not Johnny said, not caring. Perhaps this was a better way to go out then waiting for some shard of bone or short circuit in his brain to do him in.
“Are you stupid?” Pistol asked.
“You’re the one robbing a bank that is literally down the street from the cop shop.” Not Johnny said.
“Oh, funny guy.” Pistol said. “Lets see how funny you think…”
And he stopped. Pistol was right there, gun hand cocked up and behind his shoulder to come down on this asshole’s head and knock him to the ground, but he stopped. He was not still though, a slight tremor was shaking his entire body.
Soon, it seemed to spread around the room, in varying degrees. Shotgun was caught up in the fringe of it. A couple of the computers, and the main surveillance camera as the police would later discover, reported nothing but static or white noise.
Not Johnny stood there in what seemed to be the eye of a hurricane of a kind of palsy or seizure disorder. It was then that he realized he was, somehow, responsible for it. Just coming to this realization seemed to break the spell, or whatever it was, long enough for Pistol to fall to the ground with a nosebleed.
Shotgun regained control of his legs and took off running. Not Johnny was not sure why, but he felt compelled to give chase. Once they made it outside, he had to stop. One of his legs was going numb and cold, and running would do him no favors. He put his hand to the railing to steady himself.
It was quite by luck that he made contact at the exact time Shotgun was trying to vault the same railing further down the walkway. Whatever it was that Not Johnny could do to a person just by standing next to them was made even worse by conduction. Shotgun jerked in midair like someone laid a livewire down on his spine. He collapsed onto a heap next to the bank manager’s new car.
Not Johnny staggered off. This was the sort of event that would bring a lot of questions, and he was not in the mood to answer any of them. Hell, as far as he knew he might end up inadvertently killing whoever came round to ask them. He’d have to try to fix the checks some other way, he realized. He would also need to open a new bank account.
This was partially because he wanted to avoid any potential recognition, and the ensuing questions, but also largely because the service at this place was just horrible. He made it to his car and drove off.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Some explanation provided-
Not Johnny had never been quite right, and that is somewhat of an understatement. He did bad things in his youth, and tried to make up for them by being a kind of super Samaritan. Not Johnny helped others at his own expense, and when he got sick, all of his money was already gone.
The term sickness is actually misapplied. Not Johnny wasn’t sick, he was broken. An aborted attempt at heroics around the age of sixteen left him with a spine that was just a couple steps up the ladder from broken glass. He’d gotten into the car with a friend of his when she had been drinking, severely. Not Johnny was being a good guy and driving her home so that none of the other Not Johnny’s of the world could take advantage of her. His heroism was somewhat selfish, he’d wanted her for himself…but even he wasn’t about to try and take her in that state. There would have been no challenge, and Not Johnny didn’t like things that came easily…with the life he’d had, he couldn’t even understand them.
Some people become more and more despondent as they drink, and that was how Not Johnny’s friend was. The memory is crystal clear. One moment, he looked over to smile at her as she appeared to sleep with her head against the window, a shared favorite song on the radio. The next, all hell broke loose.
With a shriek, the girl came bolt awake and snatched at the steering wheel. Not Johnny over corrected and went off the road in the opposite direction. The bridge abutment was less then forgiving. When the dust settled and the horn finally died out, Not Johnny’s friend was dead and he was paralyzed, unable to get away from her blood as it pooled and dripped down. It was hell on earth, and Not Johnny wanted to die.
Ten years later, Not Johnny had regained, somewhat, the use of his body and kicked the booze habit. It was somewhat ironic that what was in a roundabout way responsible for his predicament was also the only thing that could numb his mangled body and let him get to sleep at night.
Life had not gotten any easier, but it had not gotten any worse. That was until the first tremor. Not Johnny didn’t know what it meant, but he knew that it as not good. When he finally knuckled under and went to the doctor, he was referred to a specialist. The specialist used words like “unforeseen” and “inoperable” to describe Not Johnny’s condition.
The young man who’s name was not Johnny was also not a doctor, so talk of bone shards, fusing vertebrae, dying nerves and an electrical problem in his brain went over his head. It was beside the point really. He was a walking time bomb…but with varied methods of detonation. He could survive for years, slowly losing control of his body a piece at a time until there was nothing left capable of feeling…or one of the tiny bone spears inside of him could shift, killing him before he even knew anything had changed.
He left the specialist’s office with a garbage bag full of pain pills, in four to a pack free sample blisters, and a referral for end of life counseling. He folded it into a small paper airplane and sailed it away from the top level of the hospital’s parking garage.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Behind him, where they could be seen between the stands of trees, the distant lights looked like a flickering fire from the speeding car on the interstate. Terrence Coates kept flicking his eyes up to the mirror and having to turn slightly behind the wheel to keep checking just to make sure it was only a trick conjured up by the interaction between the input and what his brain was doing with it. He’d had entirely too much fire in his life, and the thought of it chasing him was very disquieting.
He twisted a knob on the old car’s radio and it snapped off. The radio was now locked in the on position, but all it reported was a dull hiss of static that, at random intervals, allowed a little bleed over from a different station. It was like being wheeled down a long hallway and hearing little bits of what was going on in each room as you went past.
His cellular phone rang again, the upbeat little piece of digitized music seeming sharply at odds with the content he was expecting. He flipped the phone open and held it to his ear with one hand, again scanning his mirrors almost absently.
“Coates.” He said. This was how he always answered his phone. He was having trouble making it out over the static. “Hold on a minute.” He said, setting the phone in his lap so he had a free hand to scout the dash for something he could kill the radio with.
He’d been sharing the car with his daughter, reluctantly. She’d left the car adapter for her mp3 player. Actually, it was designed back in the days of the Sony CD player, but it worked just as well. Hell, it was so utilitarian that even Coates could find a use for it. He slammed the dead tape into the deck and, with a click, the static died off into a high pitched whine.
“Okay, lets try it again.” He said into the phone.
The voice on the other end belonged to a nervous young officer on site at the worst crime scene of his, admittedly short, career. This wasn’t so much an official channels thing as it was a matter of fraternity. It was a big time case unfolding in a back woods venue. In some ways, it could have been considered a big break. If the call had come down in some other place, a place where someone that Terrence, sometimes called Terry, but usually only by women or people older then himself, knew wasn’t running the show, this would not be happening.
As it was, the middle aged cop, now a single father of two, was closing in on a fresh lead in a case that had been nagging him for six years. He had no illusions that closing this case would make it easier to get along with his kids, or help him get to sleep at night, or to tell the truth, even make the smallest dent in his nightly alcohol consumption. No, Terrence Coates was not a man who hoped for the best.
All he wanted was that one piece of evidence that would put him closer to the son of a bitch who murdered his wife.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Not Johnny drifted along like that for a while, and then there was the sudden upturn in his daily events. Despite the fact he’d previously applied on at least three occasions, which is bad memory short hand for six times, he had finally been approved for disability. It seemed strange, but fitting in a way, that they had declined to take care of him while he was alive…now that his clock was running down, they seemed much less reticent to put his name on a check.
That is why Not Johnny was in the bank that day. There had been a problem with his direct deposit, and he’d had to come down to sort it out. He was stuck in line, and two days off his medicine. At the time, it was little more then a pronounced inconvenience to him, the fact he felt like he had to walk in slow motion to keep from screaming every so many steps, but it would turn out to be more important later.
A young woman slid by him in line, excusing her self and promising “It’ll only be a minute.” She was attractive, cold, and could lie without pause. If he wasn’t partially convinced that a good roll in the hay would kill him, he would have tried asking her out. As it was, he just took note of how her ass looked in that skirt.
He was still looking at it when the first gunshot went off. The involuntary jump made it feel as if two ropes of something had been torn apart in his back. Not Johnny was close to the gunmen. He had some flecks of plaster from the fresh hole in the ceiling on his head and shoulders. His ears were ringing.
There were two of them. One with a pistol, the other a shotgun. The first shot had gone into the roof, a good place for it. Fairly safe, what with this being a one story building. They wore masks and angrily swept their weapons back and forth across the crowd.
“Get down on the ground, all of you.” Pistol said.
“NOW!” Shotgun added with a shout, jabbing the shotgun in the crowd’s general direction.
Not Johnny could hear the other people making their quick descents. Not Johnny was not moving.
“What the hell’s the matter with you?” Pistol demanded, gesturing towards him, “You deaf?”
“Not quite, but you came close firing that thing in here.” Not Johnny said, not caring. Perhaps this was a better way to go out then waiting for some shard of bone or short circuit in his brain to do him in.
“Are you stupid?” Pistol asked.
“You’re the one robbing a bank that is literally down the street from the cop shop.” Not Johnny said.
“Oh, funny guy.” Pistol said. “Lets see how funny you think…”
And he stopped. Pistol was right there, gun hand cocked up and behind his shoulder to come down on this asshole’s head and knock him to the ground, but he stopped. He was not still though, a slight tremor was shaking his entire body.
Soon, it seemed to spread around the room, in varying degrees. Shotgun was caught up in the fringe of it. A couple of the computers, and the main surveillance camera as the police would later discover, reported nothing but static or white noise.
Not Johnny stood there in what seemed to be the eye of a hurricane of a kind of palsy or seizure disorder. It was then that he realized he was, somehow, responsible for it. Just coming to this realization seemed to break the spell, or whatever it was, long enough for Pistol to fall to the ground with a nosebleed.
Shotgun regained control of his legs and took off running. Not Johnny was not sure why, but he felt compelled to give chase. Once they made it outside, he had to stop. One of his legs was going numb and cold, and running would do him no favors. He put his hand to the railing to steady himself.
It was quite by luck that he made contact at the exact time Shotgun was trying to vault the same railing further down the walkway. Whatever it was that Not Johnny could do to a person just by standing next to them was made even worse by conduction. Shotgun jerked in midair like someone laid a livewire down on his spine. He collapsed onto a heap next to the bank manager’s new car.
Not Johnny staggered off. This was the sort of event that would bring a lot of questions, and he was not in the mood to answer any of them. Hell, as far as he knew he might end up inadvertently killing whoever came round to ask them. He’d have to try to fix the checks some other way, he realized. He would also need to open a new bank account.
This was partially because he wanted to avoid any potential recognition, and the ensuing questions, but also largely because the service at this place was just horrible. He made it to his car and drove off.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Some explanation provided-
Yeah, this is kind of a blatant author insert with respect to NJ's character. The whole idea for his name came from a disturbing trend a few of years ago where everyone thought my name was Johnny for some reason.
The initial concept played in my head a few times as like a serial semi-recurring dream. Of course, by the time I got around to writing it down, a friend had clued me into Darker Than Black.
Originally, NJ's power was supposed to be electricity, pure and simple. He could generate a huge charge, but couldn't arc it to distant targets like a disciple of the Emperor or anything, so he had to use conductive cables and blades. It was entirely too similar (read: identical) to what the protagonist of DTB did that I decided to revise NJ's method some.
It was also a weird exercise in writing for me. Besides the initial idea of "guy with a fucked up body fights back with the time he has left", I wanted to try writing a story that just grew organically out of the characters interactions with each other.
As I moved on with it, I started thinking of how current media coverage would effect a costumed vigilante type, and I wrote some of that in for later chapters.
The initial concept played in my head a few times as like a serial semi-recurring dream. Of course, by the time I got around to writing it down, a friend had clued me into Darker Than Black.
Originally, NJ's power was supposed to be electricity, pure and simple. He could generate a huge charge, but couldn't arc it to distant targets like a disciple of the Emperor or anything, so he had to use conductive cables and blades. It was entirely too similar (read: identical) to what the protagonist of DTB did that I decided to revise NJ's method some.
It was also a weird exercise in writing for me. Besides the initial idea of "guy with a fucked up body fights back with the time he has left", I wanted to try writing a story that just grew organically out of the characters interactions with each other.
As I moved on with it, I started thinking of how current media coverage would effect a costumed vigilante type, and I wrote some of that in for later chapters.
How to fake a First Person view for your (MAKER NAME HERE) games!
This tutorial is geared towards Rm2k(3), but should be feasible for any maker that uses terrain id, or a comparable function. At the end, I’ll suggest a method for porting this ‘system’ into Multimedia Fusion 2, but right now I’m assuming Rm2k3.
Getting the most out of this tutorial requires only a very basic understanding of the Show Picture command, Terrain ID, and a bit of busy work.
So, you like retro gaming, huh? You’ve got a nagging voice in the back of your head telling you that dungeon crawler of yours might look really interesting if you could put the player’s eyes in the main character’s head.
Ok, so how are you going to go about it? First, I’ll tell you what NOT to do.
Every time I attempted this sort of display for a game, I began with a critical error. I picked up a piece of graph paper and started marking my rooms out. Then, I started putting things together. I’d plan on a depth of three cells, and I’d go about setting up the wall data for each possible direction for each possible cell, based on my lovely graph paper cartography.
Needless to say, I always got about four or so rooms in before deciding I wasn’t quite masochistic enough to continue. I’ve started and given up on this type of project no less than six times.
Enter Terrain Ids, the beam of sunlight breaking through that cloud formation overhead.
A brief word on Terrain Id: In Rm2k(3), you can set Terrain ID values for each tile in your tile set. You can store these values into variables based on your character’s position, take a reading for a specific tile from a set of x and y coordinates, and use them to trigger pretty much any function you need.
The basic idea here is to make use of the map, taking terrain id values to supply your show picture events with the info they need to place your walls. It is a fast process, and best of all, it literally lets you DRAW YOUR ‘3D’ MAPS IN THE DEFAULT RM MAP EDITOR!
What the hell is going on in that shot? We’re getting to that, so hold onto your hats.
The first step is configuring your terrain ids. Lets start with a basic handful of useful types. Lets use id 1 for blank space, 2 for wall type a, 3 for wall type b, 4 for wall type a with a door, and 5 for the ground. You need at least two variations for each wall type. By placing them next to each other they will cycle as the player moves and this helps to reinforce the illusion of traveling in a first person environment.
Another step that helps sell the movement illusion is using alternating versions of your ceiling and floor pictures. I’m using a quick solution, which just adds to a variable when the character moves forward or backward. If the variable is 0, one set of ceiling/floor show, if it is 1, the other set is displayed. Check for when the variable is greater than 1 and reset it to 0. Congratulations. You now have a cycling floor.
Next, we need a game piece to move around our board, because that cycling floor won’t make much sense if you’re not actually mobile at the time. I don’t use the hero event for this because it isn’t conducive to the control style I’m shooting for. I call this event Blip. I set its function to record its current x and y value in the parallel event I use for tracking player input.
Since we’re sticking with the three cell depth of view, we need some events to act as the player’s visual field. This is one of those busy work segments, unfortunately. There is probably a more streamlined way to do this, but this is what I’m currently using. You derive the x and y coordinates for each section within the player’s sight, and store the terrain id of the corresponding tiles.
This replicates the player’s cone of vision. You need to set one version up for each of the four directions. It is important that you get the spatial relationships right. (Trust me on this one, I screwed up by trying to copy paste my right and left iterations only to find that my walls flipped positions when I ran the game!)
You now have a bunch of stored terrain ids. What do you do with them?
This section is kind of busywork intensive. You need to figure out where you want your images to display on the screen. Once you have the x,y value for the center of your intended display, you’re in business.
I use a single size image for each wall type and position (left angle, center, right angle), and scale it through the show picture commands. Because of the angle I chose, my wall sizes do not scale exactly, so I was required to use an offset system to get them to stitch together properly, giving the illusion of depth.
I store my intended x,y for the center of the display into a pair of variables, then I store them in a second pair of variables that I actually use in the picture display commands. This explains the Call Common event Main Offset from the above screen.
A lot of testing goes into getting your objects placed correctly onscreen. I’m using an old stock version of Rm2k3 that has a 40 picture limit. My system uses a maximum of around 32 images at a time.
My system currently finds the ids for every tile in the visual range, even if they are hidden by other objects. At first blush, it might seem like a feat of bad optimization, but it allows me to include things like transparent walls.
Now, lets take a moment to talk about movement. We have to get blip to move around, don’t we? I go with what I guess we can call tank controls. Pressing the directional key up moves “forward.” Pressing left and right pan the view in those directions. Pressing down moves “backwards.”
I set the default view to “North”. I call this 1 in my Camera Facing Variable. Pressing the right arrow increases this number by one, pressing the left arrow decreases it by one. Follow up your “rotation” directional key conditions with one that sets Camera Facing to 1 if it is greater than 4, and 4 if it is less than 1.
In the conditions for when the Inkey variable is equal to 1 or 4 (forward or backward), I have triggers for each possible Camera Facing. You can still use passability settings for your tiles to control where blip is allowed to go.
Okay, now we have the basic shell. We can draw a map in the editor using the terrain id for our empty/floor space. Then, we just have to make sure to set up alternating wall types to make the movement look good.
But, how are we going to handle objects that we need to trigger? I mean, it will be a pretty pointless dungeon if you can’t open chests, hack keypads, go through sliding doors, etc.
For this, I use a separate event called an Object Finder. It checks for when blip is at certain positions and allows for the player to interact with the environment. Since I’m trying to keep the number of parallel events running at any given time as low as I can, I set the condition to either blip’s x or y value being equal to the object’s. In the event page, I set a condition using the remaining position variable. If you’re going to have multiple objects for the player to interact with on a given x or y axis, you can stack them together to save pages.
I use a variable to for the type of object being displayed, and the name for an unused Hero slot to store position information for the objects in regular expressions. FrontCloseCn means Front Close Center, etc.
I have a separate set of show picture events for objects. The object type for the kiosk is 5. Object place is CloseFrontCn. This combination triggers the show picture command for the kiosk in the center of the player’s view.
Now we have an area we can move around in, and some stuff to do in it. This is going pretty good. One problem though… fake first person exploration can get a little disorienting. Sometimes you might spin around an extra time than you meant to, and you might not be able to tell that you’re actually looking down the wrong hallway. Some kind of overhead map would be a godsend at this point, no?
But damn, we’re using close to our picture ceiling. Problem?
Not a problem. We have a built in map function, that is if we planned for it. All you have to do to get a top down view of your environment is to erase all the pictures. Ugh! You’re showing your naked level! Cover that up, man.. or at least put some tiles on there to make it look more mappish.
Wait, so now I have to draw a regular map to have my 3d map? Why not just do the normal Rm2k3 ¾ overhead thing? Can you answer me that, wise guy?
Sure. Go play a game with a 20x15 map. Feels… small doesn’t it? Claustrophobic, almost. Now, check out the tutorial’s visual aide again. That is a tiny damn map… but it feels bigger than it really is, doesn’t it?
Then again, maybe that part is just me. Let’s not dwell, although I would like to point out that you can tint your screen to black and teleport your hero location to blip’s current location to keep the screen centered on your current location if you’re using a map larger than 20x15. Just remember to tint the screen back to normal when you’re ready to show off that map.
I mentioned how I’m trying to keep parallel hell to a minimum earlier. I guess it is time to expand on that. Most of the time the game is running, there is only one parallel event in use by the ‘system’ I’ve outlined here. It makes calls to map events (object finder) and common events (View Near, View Medium, View Far, Object View). During the map option, a couple of parallel events are turned on to block the main routine from calling the show picture series.
Being able to interrupt or bypass the regular translation of terrain id to wall graphics is important if you want to be able to animate a door opening.
Now, for the issues. The way I have it set up right now, I actually separate placing objects and interacting with them into two different events, called from different places within the single main parallel.
The way my events are set up, the object placement and attending show picture commands have to occur before the Show Picture sequence for the level geometry is called in order for it to show up at the same time. The problem is that if you put the interaction call in the same place, there will be ocassions where you’re getting the message for an interaction in a room which hasn’t been displayed yet. The workaround is easy enough.
The other big issue you’ll probably notice is some missing wall geometry in the large central room. This is due to me still not liking the solution I came up with for open spaces yet. It is still a little glitchy, so I cut it out of the example.
I figured instead of just posting reams of event code, I’d give you a brief overview to explain everything that is going on in the example project. Feel free to tinker around with it. Get a feel for drawing maps in the editor and let me know if you find any more disappearing wall bugs (other than the open room fix I mentioned right above here).
Of course, you’re limited to just wall types 4,5,15,and 16 for sample purposes, with walls 15 and 16 being a closed door and an open door, respectively.
This last section will touch briefly on porting of this system over to MMF2.
If you set up a grid of active objects with different values written into one of their onboard variables to represent different wall types, and moved a player object around the grid, you can accomplish pretty much the exact same effect. In all actuality, you could even make things easier for yourself by doing this. You could set the objects to only become visible once you’d passed over them which would be a much easier way of revealing more of the map as you go than how it would have to be done in one of the rms.
Visual Aid
The Smoking Gun - an old western short story of mine
Jed Brody gingerly pulled the door to his cabin in the sleeper car closed. He set his bag down on the bench and watched what he could of the scenery filter by his window. He shed his black vest, standing there in a silk shirt from the east he pulled up a little kit he kept with him. Before becoming what he was, he had been a longhaired field hand working a small farm day in and day out. A visitor had dropped by, an older man, intense eyes and skeletal fingers reminiscent of the way Brody's hands looked, if you factored in the withering of advanced age. The visitor was a gentleman from up north, an undertaker he told them, who was just passing through.
He stayed on the farm for three days, resting most of the time, and then going for long walks at twilight. Pistol shots in the distance. Jed followed the old man one night, careful to keep his feet in the old man's tracks, because where the old man moved there seemed to be no brush to crackle underfoot. Jed's trip brought him to what the old man was using for a shooting range. The old man was standing there, a pistol in his hand facing a butte some distance away. Jed crouched down and watched the old man put a few rounds into an old can down range. After six shots, the old man spoke.
"You make more noise then rutting moose." The older man said. As the undertaker, his voice was a reserved and measured tone, reeking of proper training and time spent with various tutors of his wealthy family's cost, but on the pistol range his voice was like a serrated knife that slowly cut across the distance, leaving the very atmosphere rent apart where the words passed through.
Jed stood up, he'd been made. Was the old man going to shoot him? The old man reloaded his pistol, his slim fingers working fast, dropping old shells into a pocket in his vest, sliding the new ones home in the cylinder. The time of judgment, the old man turned and Jed was looking at a pistol from a new perspective for the first time in his life. A fear like he'd never felt crept over him, suddenly he felt all the mistakes of his past and would have prayed for the chance to endure his pain again in the future, anything so long as he made it through the night.
"Why don't you give it a try." The old man says, flipping the gun around in his hand, offering it to Jed butt first.
Brody slowly walked over to where the old man stood, he reached out slowly with a shaking hand and clasped it around the gun butt, the old man held the barrel still.
"Christ, try to shoot with a shake like that you'd be lucky to hit a barn from a distance you could piss across." The old man pulled the gun away, stuffed it into the waist line of his trousers. His slim fingers went into another pocket in his vest, came up with a pouch of tobacco.
The old man sat down on a wide flat rock, Jed walked over to where he was sitting. As the old undertaker rolled a cigarette, he spoke in his signature voice.
"Didn't your father teach you how to shoot?"
"I never knew my father, sir." Jed said, in nineteen years he'd never seen nor heard from anyone in his family.
"That's a shame, young man." The old man said slowly, "Here." The old man handed Jed Brody his first cigarette. The old man lit it for him and watched him smoke it, coughing like all young initiates do. "You feel that now?" The old man said haltingly as Brody finished his smoke "You feel that light calm settling over you?"
Jed nodded.
"Okay, now try it again." The old man said, pulling out the pistol, offering it to Brody who took it with a steady hand. "Now for your lesson, young man."
The old man stands up and walks to where he was standing at first, Brody walks beside him. He sets the gun up in his hand, holding it in a rather odd way.
"You really don't know your way around one of these, do you?" The old man asks, he gave him directions on how to hold the gun then continued. "Different methods for different men. The fastest draw in the whole world isn't worth a shithouse if he isn't accurate. Accuracy takes time, young man. Time in practice, and time on target."
Brody made a certain effort to listen to the old man, but he reasoned that the voice would have cut into his subconscious had he been trying to ignore it, he felt the words being written on his mind for all time. He followed the old man's instructions to the letter. About to fire, pulling the trigger he squinted an eye down as the light began to wane.
"Hold it. Get your eyes open! How the hell are you going to know what's going on around you with one closed? Are you behind a rifle? No this is a pistol, an extension of your arm, young man. You hold it the way I showed you, lesson one hit your target. Take in a breath, feel it go down inside you, that's what you're gonna shoot with tonight. As you breath back out, let half out and hold it. That's when you pull the trigger, and chase it towards your target by letting out the rest of the breath."
Brody followed his directions and went through the process. The hammer fell, the flash in the dying light, the sound. Down range, the can jumped as Brody's bullet went through. Brody was ready to fire again when the old man's hand was on his arm.
"If it hits right, you only need one shot." He said.
That night on the shooting range changed things for Jed Brody. The old man was only under the cover of an undertaker, he was a trigger man known for his skill, but not his appearance. As he maneuvered through society, he was capable of invisibility, people simply looked at him and saw nothing there that warranted a second look. The undertaker bit was only one of many covers he had used, others included a magician and a doctor.
Perhaps he saw potential in Brody, he left him with a small allowance. A small chip off the iceberg of loot the old man had pulled down for a job cleaning up after a sloppy bunch of outlaws. In the bag with the money, he left a small card with his name and how a letter could be gotten to him. The name: Lincoln Hall, wasn't familiar. But the place he was hanging his hat was. It was the name of a place that Brody stumbled across in research on his father's whereabouts at the time of Jed's conception. With some of the money, Brody bought a pistol , a small number, worn grips, chipped metal. He bought bullets.
Brody was contemplating setting off for the address, but Hall had told him he wouldn't be around that way for a good bit yet, so Jed just waited. Nightly, he would go to the "range" and fire a single bullet at the old can, until he needed a new can which worked just as good. At dawn and dusk, after Jed upped his schedule, he began to work on his speed. He quickly found that the faster he got the gun free of his makeshift holster, the further he seemed to miss his target by. He worked on it hardcore for a while, burning quite a bit away on bullets and eventually got it to where he could hit within a fist sized target area while trying to hit the center of it.
He was about to consider heading out to Hall's place when a letter came for him.
-Brody, if you've been practicing what I told you keep reading, if not throw this in the trashbin, you'd be wasting both our time. I've got something coming down soon, not a solo this time. I'm putting together a pack. A couple of mine caught a slight case of death, so there's an opening for you.
Lincoln Hall-
Brody was on the next train he could catch out to the address on the letter. That was how the story finds him, just settling into his cabin, some of the allowance from Hall held out long enough to put him in halfway decent clothes and get him a shave and haircut, his pistol in his bag. He put the mirror away and tied the case back up. He tossed it to his bag and sat down beside it. He was feeling to alive to sleep, so he pulled out some parchment and entombed his day in ink.
-
Brody sat down in the club car, he wasn't feeling hungry. He considered rolling himself a smoke, but was saving the tobacco in case he came down with a case of nerves and needed a cure. He listened to two old women go on about rose water or something, he wasn't paying attention to them. A vision of riding into some town, part of a mismatched group of hired guns and outlaws to carry out a contract and be out before the sheriff closed in. Jed never felt his eyes get heavy.
He woke up with a weight pressed down on him, something smothering him. He isn't in his room, his gun no where in sight. He opens his eyes, staring right into a pair of frightened, frenzied, female eyes. He has a woman on top of him, putting on a good show that they are well acquainted. Jed goes to move, and he feels something push into his abdomen, hard, metal. The woman laying on top of him on the bench has a derringer buried in his gut.
He watches in her eyes as she makes a hurried check of the periphery. She puts a hand in the center of his chest and pushed herself up. She's straddling him, looking around the car. Whoever she was worried about is gone, walking off. A quick look out the window, new city, but not Jed's destination.
The woman dismounts, she hikes her dress up and stows the derringer in her garter.
"What's going on?" Jed asked, feeling much like a prop in a stage show.
"Don't worry about it. It isn't your business."
"Really?" Jed was to his feet, he grabbed her arm. "You made it my business." He shoves her down into the seat, the guitar case in her hand falls to the floor. Jed gently picks it up. "Now, would you mind telling me what's going on here?"
"Just give me the case." She says, a hand out and demanding.
"You know I used to play a little bit, do you mind?" Jed asks, sitting down next to her.
"Don't open that!" She half screams at him.
"Okay, fine." Jed laid the case out on a seat. "What's your story."
"Why should I tell you anything?"
"Because I woke up with a derringer in my stomach, put there by some woman I don't know."
"Fine, I'm trying to get away from a cheating no good fiancee. He followed me onto the train, had to make a show he'd understand. Simple as that, now my case please."
Jed didn't like being lied to. But, he did like looking at the woman. Dark hair, full lips, bright eyes. They gave the lie away. Good form, or at least as far as he could tell from waking up with her on top of him. Guitar case was heavy. Derringer in the garter. It didn't add up to a small town girl getting out of a relationship.
-
Brody didn't see her again until the late meal that night. He had his pistol in his right boot, the pants leg pulled down over it. He was wearing a different shirt, same make as the first and bought at the same time, and the vest. It gave him an heir of dignity and class, he put off as best an act as he could, and borrowed Hall's undertaker line, or he would at least if he got the chance to tell anyone. As it was, he was content not to have to put his story on someone and see if they bought it. He sat down at a table with the young woman from earlier.
"Good evening, ma'am." He said, feigning class.
"Have we met?" She asks, impassively.
"Climb on top of me and have a look from a different angle, then you tell me." Classic Brody shined through.
"Be quiet." She hissed. "I don't want to draw attention to myself."
"Well, you have my full attention." Jed said, calmly.
"Just get up and go to another table."
"Why?"
"I'm holding a gun on you under the table."
"I've got one on you too. Want to have a look?" Brody's hand had slipped down and withdrew his pistol, he held it up where the tablecloth hid it.
"Okay, so we can sit here and shoot each other. What's that going to help?" She asks.
"Nothing. I just want some answers. Straight answers, this time." Brody really didn't care about real answers, just stretching out his time with her.
"Let's put our toys away." She said, slowly. "And just eat dinner like two civilized people. Come to my cabin later, I'll give you your truth."
-
Brody walked with the young woman back to her cabin. Over dinner, they made small talk. Her name was Sadie North, singer musician dancer, whatever was paying in the town she stopped in next. Brody felt a disquieting feeling pass over him as she had said "Whatever pays."
It wasn't long after Brody was in her cabin before Sadie tried to kill him. A knife drawn from her other garter, Brody saw it coming and wrenched it out of her grip. He pushed her down onto the bench, made up as a bed for the evening.
"And we were becoming such good friends." Brody said slowly, playing with the knife in his hand. "Who are you really?"
Sadie opened the guitar case silently. Inside was what looked like the top of a guitar, it was part of a fake panel, window dressing so to speak. Sadie pulled a little latch and opened the panel. Inside she had a revolver and a rifle in the guitar case, with some old clothes packed around them.
"You're a hired killer?" Jed asked.
"Yeah, I'm going to meet up with some gunslinger named Lincoln Hall for some big manhunt or something."
Jed laughed, he reached into his vest with his left hand and brought out his own letter from Old Hall. He handed it to Sadie as she put her case back together. She read over it and looked back up at Jed.
They made it in Sadie's cabin. She was very good, Jed thought. She had ridden him harder then the girls he knew back home, perhaps hired guns in the business of death do everything with a sense of urgency like that, like it's the last chance. Brody left Sadie under the covers and pulled on his dry goods. He made a check to see if he still had everything he'd come in the room with, and then left quietly.
At some point, there had been an interlude of conversation in which he found out Sadie was wanted in the town she boarded from. The man who came on board looking for her was in fact the sheriff of that town.
Also, Sadie's dark hair was part of her act. Her natural color was blond. When she took off the wig, underneath her hair was short, just past the middle of her neck. Jed couldn't think of a better way to begin his life as a hired trigger man.
-
When Brody and North met Lincoln in a saloon in the next town, there was an immediate problem.
"You're a woman." Hall said to Sadie, as if it was the most scathing comment he could make.
"Yeah, Hall, I'm a woman, but I'm still good. Besides, you sent me the letter." Sadie said.
"Good for what, a quick roll in the hay?" Hall asked, he gauged the response on Jed's face and on Sadie's, he sighed loudly and rubbed the bridge of his nose (something Brody would also do at times that warranted it) "I sent that letter to SAM NORTH." Hall said at length.
"You mailed it to S North, it just happens my late father and I have the same initials." Sadie said.
"Well, I'm not going to watch out for you just so you can put some 'cowboy notches' on your garter belt. Go look for a whore house to set up shop in. I have things to discuss with Brody." Hall said.
Sadie fired a look over at Brody, maybe lovers' code for "help me, you aren't going to let him talk to me like that, are you?"
"Hall, "Brody began, feeling his voice in the back of his throat "I'll watch out for her. She wont be your responsibility."
"For Chrissakes, she's already got her hooks in? Fine, I don't care if you keep a harem, just keep them out of the way when the time comes." Hall was bathing Sadie in scalding looks.
"Hall, you old buzzard I hope someone gets the drop on you, and I'm the one to put him down. Then, we'll see who's the better trigger." Sadie stood up, Jed was about to make a move to follow her, but she beat Brody to the punch with more words "I'll get us a room, you two talk business and you can tell me the details later." She walked away.
"I still say you're better off dumping her." Hall said. Jed shrugged absently. "In any case, here's the deal on my pack. We (Jed was sure Hall was mentally deleting Sadie from the equation) ride out in the morning. The others are meeting up west of here, coming east. We'll ride out and meet them halfway through and then set out for business."
"How much does it take for a horse here?" Jed asked.
"Taken care of." Hall said. "If you can talk her out of coming with you I can get back the money I put down for horse and tack for Sam."
"I don't own her, Hall." Brody said.
Hall sat there silently for a while. "If you can run her off before morning its extra money to go around."
-
The next morning, Hall, Brody, and North rode out the town gates. The morning on horseback brought the trio to the described meeting place. The rest of Hall's pack was assembled.
There was Old Wang, a Chinese who was in charge of explosives and had three sticks of dynamite in his belt at all times. Moccasin Joe, who was a short thick fellow who was down right deadly with his twin pistols. Avery the Whisper, a lean man advancing in age who works at distance with his rifle. The introductions were made, that is Brody was introduced. Sadie wasn't even there as far as Hall was concerned, but the others tipped their hats a fraction to her when Hall wasn't looking.
"So, Hall, where do we go from here?" Wang spoke good English, but his accent took a little getting used to.
"North, the Olander Gang and some hired savages and are holding out in a town called Prosperity. We bring 'em down quick and clean and the town name will ring true in our ears." Hall said.
"How many?" Old Wang asked.
"Does it make a difference? Numbers don't mean a thing, just shoot until you don't see anymore Olander boys, and hope there aren't any Indians holed up in Prosperity on lawful terms." Moccasin Joe stated.
"We'll find out when we get there." Hall said, "Let's ride."
-
It was a good piece out there. It was seven days hard riding, Hall didn't want to leave any openings for others who might have picked up on the contract, undercutting his estimate. The days passed relentlessly, under a burning sun. The nights were calm and quiet, spent out under the moon.
Every day at the end of the ride, Hall would walk off with Brody, teaching him the mechanics of being a shootist. Jed's piece was a single action.
"The trick is you gotta cock the trigger with your thumb as you draw. Some folks hold the trigger down so that as soon as they line up with their prey, they drop their thumb off the hammer and the gun goes off. Of course that ain't the most accurate way. " Old Hall instructed Jed to unload his pistol. "There, now you've got a dead man's your draw, get smooth as that silk shirt you wore two days ago."
Jed was going through the steps. Making good progress too. His speed was itmproving, and Hall seemed pleased with his progression.
"Now, remember the first shot doesn't mean shit. The first shot that hits is slightly more important. The first shot that kills is what you focus on, young man. And keep both eyes open, intent on your target you see all of him, from the top of his hat to the toes behind the front of his boots. I think you've got good instincts though, kid. " Hall pulled up a cigarette, lit it, "You still get the jitters?"
"On the target range, I got myself calmed down pretty good. Haven't smoked much, if that's what you mean." Jed reloaded his gun and returned it to it's holster.
"Well, everyone needs a gimmick, a distraction. Understand?" Hall pauses, "When you're in public, make sure your gun hand shakes like a tumbleweed in a twister, make a show of calming yourself down with a quick smoke. You wont seem like a threat, till someone calls you out. Walk into the duel with a lit cigarette, if the situation permits drag out the process of rolling it as long as possible. Make the other guy wait, get him jittery. You getting all this?"
"Yes." Brody said, practicing an unsteady hand.
"Alright, it'll make you famous. Guy can't even hold a drink steady in his right hand...actually use the right hand as little as possible...can you make due with your left?" Jed nodded, "Good, now once you start to put notches on the ole gunbelt, you put on a show. A duel with a renowned triggerman and you light two cigarettes at the same time. Judge your opponents in terms of how many cigarettes it takes to calm you down. People will start calling you the Smoking Gun. Nice name eh? Well, the real reason is one:you've got something for the other guy to focus on in an encounter other then his shooting. And two: if someone ever gets it in their pants to confront you someplace, they're cocky, cause you don't have time to calm down with a smoke. They think they've got you dead bang, bang they turn up dead."
"Makes sense, thanks." Jed said, absorbing the information permanently.
"Let me give you the formulae for survival. My formula. I take a team of good individuals, good at shooting I don't care whether they're good, bad, or ugly as people. Anyway, I take a team of lone wolves in with me. Everyone watches their own back, does their own job. No concern for someone else slowing them up. Nobody is counting on someone else to save their ass, so they don't get sloppy." Hall finished his cigarette and ground the stub out with his fingers. He put it in a pocket. He was truly a shadow on the plains, leaving no evidence of his passing through a place. "Now, you take some time to talk to Wang. Get him to show you how to breath like they do in the east. The damndest thing I ever saw. This guy was strangling Wang, before I met him personally, and Wang is just sitting there calm. The guy gave up, couldn't do it at all. Wang just sat there and watched him walk out the door. You spend some time with Wang, besides the breathing, get him to show you some of the stuff he can do with his hands, in case you ever get caught short without your pistol."
-
And so was the way Brody spent the traveling time. Riding during the day, any time there was a stop made, he spent time getting thrown around by Old Wang. At nights, it was time for quick draw practice, and lessons on surviving a gunfight, then off to Old Wang to learn how to breathe. Then, at the end of his curriculum for the day, Jed wrapped up in his bedroll.
He hadn't made it again with Sadie until the fourth night, when he followed her down to the stream where they had all washed up earlier. (Minus Sadie of course, Hall wouldn't let her anywhere near his crew during bathing hours) Brody and Sadie made it on the bank of the stream and took a swim to clean off. They dressed and walked back to the camp, Hall was sitting up, smoking, catching his ashes in the cup of his hand.
"Evening, kids." He said.
"Good night Hall." Sadie said, walking past him and setting up her bedroll for the night.
"When the time comes, kid, are you going to be able to do your job? Or are you going to think with your crotch, and get your brains blasted out trying to save her." He said 'her' like one would say the name of a hated foe. "Think about that the next time you two coil up like rattlesnakes." Hall stood up, pouring the ashes into a pocket. He walked off to his own bedroll.
They came to a ridge, the horses tied up in a grove of trees some way back, Hall judged they would have kicked up to much dust. The last night, there hadn't even been a campfire allowed, and everyone who talked, talked in a whisper. Over the ridge, they could see Prosperity, a quaint little town surrounded by a somewhat low wall, Brody knew he could take it easy.
Sadie was in her working clothes, laid flat on her stomach looking through her scope at the layout. When she tried to tell Hall the layout, Hall merely had Avery the Whisper scan it out through his own scope.
Prosperity looked like an average town, but no one was on the streets. The Whisper passed his rifle to Hall who scanned the area for himself. He saw a faint stirring in the window of a shop. Then he looks around, they're all inside the buildings. He picks out a few sniper posts in second story windows. He caught someone in a priest suit outside the church. It was Jarvis Olander, Hall knew him right off. Olander walked back into the church.
"Alright, they're holed up good. The townsfolk are in the jail, the ones that ain't dead and laid out in the doorways for us to trip over. Jarvis Olander is in the church in the center, I'm putting about ten in there with him, a ready made ambush for us to walk into." Hall passed the rifle back to Avery the Whisper. "Avery, you see right over there?" Hall is pointing to another position, closer to Prosperity with a better vantage to shoot from. "We may have to blast them out of the church, and we might have to do a little demolition to make some breathing room. You ready to show us your magic, Wang? I want you to approach, and come up on the east side."
Avery the Whisper was already making his way to his post, Old man Wang disappeared over the edge of the ridge, making his way down nimbly and quickly for one of his age, or any age for that matter. Sadie gave Brody a wink and went to walk off after The Whisper for the sniper spot.
"Where do you think you're going?" Hall demands.
"I was going to the rifle post, Hall." Sadie said.
"Only one person at that spot." Hall says "Who said I'm going to trust you up here with a rifle once I turn my back on you?"
"You're not touching my things." Sadie said.
"I wouldn't want to." Hall dripped menace from his voice, "I guess I've got to keep you close. You come down with Brody, Joe, and me. Once we're through the town gates and the shooting starts, feel free to hide out wherever you want."
-
As Hall, Moccasin Joe, Brody and Sadie entered the town, there was a sudden stillness, like nature was loath to disturb the scene. The calm before the storm. Sadie disobeyed Hall's orders to wait for the first shot before acting, she caught a glint off a gun barrel from a second story window up ahead, a few buildings away. She has her rifle to her shoulder, looks through her scope at the ugly face nestled in behind it's owner's rifle. She put a bullet through that face.
Like glass shattering, silence cracked and fell all around. Doors on both sides of the street slammed open, Moccasin Joe hadn't even drawn yet as an Olander with a shotgun and an Indian with a rifle emerged right up ahead of him. In one smooth motion, he had his pistols drawn and put a bullet through each. Old Hall casually picked off a man with a pistol who was trying to get a good vantage. Brody's gun felt heavy in his hand for the first few moments.
A cloud of dirt kicked up, a bad shot at him from elevation, he spins, see's someone on a rooftop. Brody put a bullet in him as Avery the Whisper did the same from his vantage. The body jerked first one way, then the other, finally rolling down the roof and landing on the dirt. Jed Brody had his first kill, or at least his first assist.
The others were moving forward, he seemed pinned to his spot. He turned to his right and dropped to one knee, he put a bullet into an Indian gunman who was coming around the building. Brody got to his feet and advanced as Hall and Moccasin Joe fanned out, their six shooters spewing death. Sadie was picking off gunmen who were completely out of pistol range, one of them casually stepped out of the bank, a rifle ready in his hands as one of Sadie's bullets pulped his skull. A thunderous roar as one of Old Wang's sticks of dynamite went off.
Hall was as fast at reloading as he was at shooting, dumping his spent casings into a pocket, Brody half wondered if he'd dig the bullets out of the dead bodies to completely erase his hand in things. Moccasin Joe covered Hall, then reloaded his own pieces. Sadie still had about three of her sixteen cartridges left. Brody was on his second cylinder of bullets, he had no idea how Wang was doing.
Another explosion, bodies hurtle out the front window of a shop. Old Wang's hand at work. A barrage of fire, six Olander gunmen loosing streams of lead down from their place in the second story of a hotel. The group scatters, Hall makes an entrance into a building and puts a round through the surprised door gaurd. Moccasin Joe barely avoids a hail of bullets, ducking behind a water trough, he trades shots, but the gunmen in the window have the advantage. Even so, one of them clutches his stomach and falls. Sadie ran sideways for cover behind a building, and Brody dove into what constituted an alley between two close set buildings. Bullets ricochet, and whine by, chips of the walls vanishing a haze of dust.
Brody found Hall's voice in his mind, telling him to do his job and forget the others. If he wastes time worrying about them, he'll get himself killed, and that didn't help anyone. He even put Sadie out of his mind as he moved on. What should he do? Jed Brody makes up his mind, he's going into the hotel to clean it out from the inside. Only as a means of self preservation he reminds himself.
Brody was thinking only of himself as he dropped an Indian who was quite surprised to see him coming around the corner. Brody scooped up the Indian's sawed off shotgun, a double barrel weapon. He didn't have time to search the body for any more ammunition, a bullet missed him by a breath of air and a bit of luck. Brody's return shot was true, the gunman went down.
Keeping his head low, Brody maneuvered around so he had a straight shot at the front door of the hotel. He crosses the distance, aware of covering fire from Moccasin Joe, but only because he'd been engaging the gunmen who had turned their attention to Brody's charge. Brody caught the door with a boot with all his weight behind it. Into the hotel, his first opposition was a man halfway up the stairs, Brody ducked and put a bullet an inch and a half above the man's belt. The gunman clutched at his stomach and fell down the stairs with no less then fifteen "clunks".
Brody lifted the dead man's pistol and took the time to replace the rounds in his own piece. He felt like a walking arsenal, the sawed off in his left, the extra piece shoved in his pants at the back. He made his way up the stairs cautiously. He came to the room the shooting was coming out of. He knocked on the door.
"What's the signal?" The one on the other side asks and Brody puts the sawed off up to the door and gives it the left barrel. In a hail of splinters and shot pellets, the door guard flies back, a shocked expression frozen forever on his face.
Brody gives the other barrel to the group by the window. One of them pitches out, he caught the most shot, the other are in various states of injury. They begin to turn around, Brody drops the sawed off as he gives it to the first one with his pistol. He fans the hammer with his other hand, managing to finish off the rest in a hail of terrible shooting. Footsteps behind him. Brody dives forward, his left hand at his back, he takes the force of the fall on his right, pistol in hand, and rolls over as he brings up the borrowed pistol in his left. He gives it to an Olander, the guy staggered and went down.
*-
Brody was back down to street level. Sadie had gotten to a rooftop, and was laying down a good line of fire. That gave the rest cover to move. Old Wang was outside the sheriff's office. He tossed a stick of dynamite in. The guys inside didn't know it was a dud, and ran out frantically. Moccasin Joe and Sadie picked them off as they emerged, Wang scooped up the keys to the jail to free the townspeople after the shooting was over. Hall was making his way towards the church, a shadow that wafted along in the stillness on invisible currents.
He worked with intense calm and reserve, like a master gambler sitting in on a penny ante game. It had come down to the church. Hall standing in front of it.
"Jarvis Olander. It's time to settle up." Hall's voice isn't loud, but it cuts right through stone. It's almost as if his voice wormed into the building, seeped around through the boards and sought out it's audience, having found him, the voice noosed him and drug him out.
Jarvis Olander walked out in his priest suit, offering up the devil's bargain. "Hall, " he says, coming out of the church with another man, younger shifty eyes, "I trained this boy how to shoot. He's quick as a rattlesnake and twice as deadly. You beat him, you can take me away live, Hall. But, if he puts a nice hole in you, me and what's left of my boys get to walk out of here clean."
"Come here Smoke." Hall calls to Brody. "They call him the Smoking Gun." Hall conferred to Olander and his boy.
Jed walked up, shaking his gun hand. He comes up and stand beside Hall. He puts his gun in the holster, shaking so bad he has to guide the barrel in with his left.
Olander's gunman is laughing hard. "You want me to out shoot that?"
"It's a fair deal. Jarvis taught you, I taught him." Hall said, "You agree, Olander?"
"Of course, Hall." Jarvis Olander was laughing. "But, if your boy looses, I want you to shoot yourself with his gun. Deal?"
"Sure, but only if when your boy looses, I shoot off your trigger finger with his gun." Hall smiled. Olander had no worries, he looked at Brody's shaking hand and the look in his eyes. It was going to be too easy.
"Deal. Now, call you're people all off."
-
All of Hall's people came in to Prosperity's limits. The two other men Olander had left, plus one wounded Indian and Jarvis himself came out of the church. Hall's crew stood on one side of the street, Olander's crew on the other.
In the street, Brody and the Olander Gun, named Cliff were faced off. The tense stand off, two gunmen there facing each other at a distance of ten feet. Brody held up a hand.
"Hold on, I have to smoke before I duel." He says, and goes into his pocket for a cigarette. Cliff stands there suddenly annoyed, hands on his hips. He has himself psyched for a duel and some asshole wants to smoke first? He smiled, like an execution victim. He smokes his last one.
Jarvis Olander himself lights up Jed's smoke. Brody stands there, smoking slowly. His eyes are scanning his opponent. He is envisioning how it will go down. He sees his gun come out of the holster clean, up on target, hammer falls, Cliff goes over. He watches it play over and over in his mind until it's almost as if he has already done it and is merely living in a flashback. He sees Cliff become a bit nervous as Brody puts on the act of his gun hand becoming more and more steady. He doesn't see a living body ahead of him, merely a corpse no one has clued in yet.
Still, he knows things could go wrong, the gun could misfire, anything was possible. He swept his eyes over the small crowd. He smiles as his eyes pass over Sadie. When he comes to Hall, he winks and nods. He finished his cigarette, dropped his hand to rest beside the butt of his pistol, lets the stub fall from his fingers. It smolders beside his boot. His hand is still as death.
"Ready now?" Cliff demands.
Brody nods.
The stand off. Cliff's fingertips brush the grip of his 45. He's nervous now, Brody's hand is still. Seconds tick by like tense hours, days. It comes in a blur. Cliff calls out "Draw",and closes his hand around the butt of his pistol. Brody's draw is smooth, coming up on target, pistol cocked. Cliff is coming up on target, ready to fire. The two guns fired in a quick question answer session that took place in less then a tenth of a second. It was over. Cliff staggered and went down, Brody was still standing. Cliff's gun had discharged in the spasm that took him as Jed's bullet hammered home, and the bullet had flown through the air to chip away at the side of a building some twenty yards behind and to Brody's left. Jed calmly pulled out the spent casing and slid a fresh bullet home. He gave the cylinder a spin and returned the gun to his holster.
Hall walked over to Cliff's body, and picked up his gun. Four minutes later, with Olander's remaining men tied up, the final scene played out in the hotel lobby. Jarvis Olander confessed he thought dressing as a priest would protect him, it didn't. Hands were tied. He was sat in a chair across the table from Hall. Moccasin Joe stood by with one of his twin pistols pressed to Jarvis' temple. Hall was holding Cliff's gun.
Olander lays his hands up on the table, they are tied at the wrist. His right hand is palm down. Hall puts the barrel of Cliff's 45 down on Jarvis's hand. He stands up, and slides the barrel along the back of Olander's hand, bringing it to rest just past the knuckle that connects his first finger to his hand. Hall looked straight into Olander's eyes and cocked the hammer. The job was over. Hall's pack had done without a casualty. Brody proved himself, but that weakness for the woman, Hall still didn't like that. Maybe I can use him again, Hall thinks to himself. Brody had to do the work, but it was Hall's hand who penned the first chapter in the life of the Smoking Gun. It was Hall's hand that tightened close around the 45's grips. It was Hall's finger that pulled the trigger.
-----------------------------
I know, the tense is all over the place, but at the time I tried to use present tense to make the scenes feel like they were happening "now." Some things happened faster than others, so the shifting sort of made sense to me. I always felt funny reading action where it seemed like everything had already happened. I like the feeling that whatever I'm reading is happening as I cross each word.
To me, it almost feels like an extrapolation of the slow motion technique used (and now abused)in film. Maybe that is just me.
Besides being a story about a young farmhand's transition into a gunfighter, it was a story about my own entrance into the writing game. The Brody/Hall relationship mirrors something of an imagined apprenticeship on my behalf. I'd always liked the idea of writing, but it wasn't until I began reading the works of William S. Burroughs that I ever took the enterprise seriously.
Of course, my early work was heavily influenced by Burroughs. I remember that one of my professors jokingly accused me of channeling the old man on a couple of my free form essays. He also suggested that I should work to find my own style, and that if I were alive in a different era he could have easily seen me suffering from tuberculosis as it would be a very chic illness for a tortured author.
He stayed on the farm for three days, resting most of the time, and then going for long walks at twilight. Pistol shots in the distance. Jed followed the old man one night, careful to keep his feet in the old man's tracks, because where the old man moved there seemed to be no brush to crackle underfoot. Jed's trip brought him to what the old man was using for a shooting range. The old man was standing there, a pistol in his hand facing a butte some distance away. Jed crouched down and watched the old man put a few rounds into an old can down range. After six shots, the old man spoke.
"You make more noise then rutting moose." The older man said. As the undertaker, his voice was a reserved and measured tone, reeking of proper training and time spent with various tutors of his wealthy family's cost, but on the pistol range his voice was like a serrated knife that slowly cut across the distance, leaving the very atmosphere rent apart where the words passed through.
Jed stood up, he'd been made. Was the old man going to shoot him? The old man reloaded his pistol, his slim fingers working fast, dropping old shells into a pocket in his vest, sliding the new ones home in the cylinder. The time of judgment, the old man turned and Jed was looking at a pistol from a new perspective for the first time in his life. A fear like he'd never felt crept over him, suddenly he felt all the mistakes of his past and would have prayed for the chance to endure his pain again in the future, anything so long as he made it through the night.
"Why don't you give it a try." The old man says, flipping the gun around in his hand, offering it to Jed butt first.
Brody slowly walked over to where the old man stood, he reached out slowly with a shaking hand and clasped it around the gun butt, the old man held the barrel still.
"Christ, try to shoot with a shake like that you'd be lucky to hit a barn from a distance you could piss across." The old man pulled the gun away, stuffed it into the waist line of his trousers. His slim fingers went into another pocket in his vest, came up with a pouch of tobacco.
The old man sat down on a wide flat rock, Jed walked over to where he was sitting. As the old undertaker rolled a cigarette, he spoke in his signature voice.
"Didn't your father teach you how to shoot?"
"I never knew my father, sir." Jed said, in nineteen years he'd never seen nor heard from anyone in his family.
"That's a shame, young man." The old man said slowly, "Here." The old man handed Jed Brody his first cigarette. The old man lit it for him and watched him smoke it, coughing like all young initiates do. "You feel that now?" The old man said haltingly as Brody finished his smoke "You feel that light calm settling over you?"
Jed nodded.
"Okay, now try it again." The old man said, pulling out the pistol, offering it to Brody who took it with a steady hand. "Now for your lesson, young man."
The old man stands up and walks to where he was standing at first, Brody walks beside him. He sets the gun up in his hand, holding it in a rather odd way.
"You really don't know your way around one of these, do you?" The old man asks, he gave him directions on how to hold the gun then continued. "Different methods for different men. The fastest draw in the whole world isn't worth a shithouse if he isn't accurate. Accuracy takes time, young man. Time in practice, and time on target."
Brody made a certain effort to listen to the old man, but he reasoned that the voice would have cut into his subconscious had he been trying to ignore it, he felt the words being written on his mind for all time. He followed the old man's instructions to the letter. About to fire, pulling the trigger he squinted an eye down as the light began to wane.
"Hold it. Get your eyes open! How the hell are you going to know what's going on around you with one closed? Are you behind a rifle? No this is a pistol, an extension of your arm, young man. You hold it the way I showed you, lesson one hit your target. Take in a breath, feel it go down inside you, that's what you're gonna shoot with tonight. As you breath back out, let half out and hold it. That's when you pull the trigger, and chase it towards your target by letting out the rest of the breath."
Brody followed his directions and went through the process. The hammer fell, the flash in the dying light, the sound. Down range, the can jumped as Brody's bullet went through. Brody was ready to fire again when the old man's hand was on his arm.
"If it hits right, you only need one shot." He said.
That night on the shooting range changed things for Jed Brody. The old man was only under the cover of an undertaker, he was a trigger man known for his skill, but not his appearance. As he maneuvered through society, he was capable of invisibility, people simply looked at him and saw nothing there that warranted a second look. The undertaker bit was only one of many covers he had used, others included a magician and a doctor.
Perhaps he saw potential in Brody, he left him with a small allowance. A small chip off the iceberg of loot the old man had pulled down for a job cleaning up after a sloppy bunch of outlaws. In the bag with the money, he left a small card with his name and how a letter could be gotten to him. The name: Lincoln Hall, wasn't familiar. But the place he was hanging his hat was. It was the name of a place that Brody stumbled across in research on his father's whereabouts at the time of Jed's conception. With some of the money, Brody bought a pistol , a small number, worn grips, chipped metal. He bought bullets.
Brody was contemplating setting off for the address, but Hall had told him he wouldn't be around that way for a good bit yet, so Jed just waited. Nightly, he would go to the "range" and fire a single bullet at the old can, until he needed a new can which worked just as good. At dawn and dusk, after Jed upped his schedule, he began to work on his speed. He quickly found that the faster he got the gun free of his makeshift holster, the further he seemed to miss his target by. He worked on it hardcore for a while, burning quite a bit away on bullets and eventually got it to where he could hit within a fist sized target area while trying to hit the center of it.
He was about to consider heading out to Hall's place when a letter came for him.
-Brody, if you've been practicing what I told you keep reading, if not throw this in the trashbin, you'd be wasting both our time. I've got something coming down soon, not a solo this time. I'm putting together a pack. A couple of mine caught a slight case of death, so there's an opening for you.
Lincoln Hall-
Brody was on the next train he could catch out to the address on the letter. That was how the story finds him, just settling into his cabin, some of the allowance from Hall held out long enough to put him in halfway decent clothes and get him a shave and haircut, his pistol in his bag. He put the mirror away and tied the case back up. He tossed it to his bag and sat down beside it. He was feeling to alive to sleep, so he pulled out some parchment and entombed his day in ink.
-
Brody sat down in the club car, he wasn't feeling hungry. He considered rolling himself a smoke, but was saving the tobacco in case he came down with a case of nerves and needed a cure. He listened to two old women go on about rose water or something, he wasn't paying attention to them. A vision of riding into some town, part of a mismatched group of hired guns and outlaws to carry out a contract and be out before the sheriff closed in. Jed never felt his eyes get heavy.
He woke up with a weight pressed down on him, something smothering him. He isn't in his room, his gun no where in sight. He opens his eyes, staring right into a pair of frightened, frenzied, female eyes. He has a woman on top of him, putting on a good show that they are well acquainted. Jed goes to move, and he feels something push into his abdomen, hard, metal. The woman laying on top of him on the bench has a derringer buried in his gut.
He watches in her eyes as she makes a hurried check of the periphery. She puts a hand in the center of his chest and pushed herself up. She's straddling him, looking around the car. Whoever she was worried about is gone, walking off. A quick look out the window, new city, but not Jed's destination.
The woman dismounts, she hikes her dress up and stows the derringer in her garter.
"What's going on?" Jed asked, feeling much like a prop in a stage show.
"Don't worry about it. It isn't your business."
"Really?" Jed was to his feet, he grabbed her arm. "You made it my business." He shoves her down into the seat, the guitar case in her hand falls to the floor. Jed gently picks it up. "Now, would you mind telling me what's going on here?"
"Just give me the case." She says, a hand out and demanding.
"You know I used to play a little bit, do you mind?" Jed asks, sitting down next to her.
"Don't open that!" She half screams at him.
"Okay, fine." Jed laid the case out on a seat. "What's your story."
"Why should I tell you anything?"
"Because I woke up with a derringer in my stomach, put there by some woman I don't know."
"Fine, I'm trying to get away from a cheating no good fiancee. He followed me onto the train, had to make a show he'd understand. Simple as that, now my case please."
Jed didn't like being lied to. But, he did like looking at the woman. Dark hair, full lips, bright eyes. They gave the lie away. Good form, or at least as far as he could tell from waking up with her on top of him. Guitar case was heavy. Derringer in the garter. It didn't add up to a small town girl getting out of a relationship.
-
Brody didn't see her again until the late meal that night. He had his pistol in his right boot, the pants leg pulled down over it. He was wearing a different shirt, same make as the first and bought at the same time, and the vest. It gave him an heir of dignity and class, he put off as best an act as he could, and borrowed Hall's undertaker line, or he would at least if he got the chance to tell anyone. As it was, he was content not to have to put his story on someone and see if they bought it. He sat down at a table with the young woman from earlier.
"Good evening, ma'am." He said, feigning class.
"Have we met?" She asks, impassively.
"Climb on top of me and have a look from a different angle, then you tell me." Classic Brody shined through.
"Be quiet." She hissed. "I don't want to draw attention to myself."
"Well, you have my full attention." Jed said, calmly.
"Just get up and go to another table."
"Why?"
"I'm holding a gun on you under the table."
"I've got one on you too. Want to have a look?" Brody's hand had slipped down and withdrew his pistol, he held it up where the tablecloth hid it.
"Okay, so we can sit here and shoot each other. What's that going to help?" She asks.
"Nothing. I just want some answers. Straight answers, this time." Brody really didn't care about real answers, just stretching out his time with her.
"Let's put our toys away." She said, slowly. "And just eat dinner like two civilized people. Come to my cabin later, I'll give you your truth."
-
Brody walked with the young woman back to her cabin. Over dinner, they made small talk. Her name was Sadie North, singer musician dancer, whatever was paying in the town she stopped in next. Brody felt a disquieting feeling pass over him as she had said "Whatever pays."
It wasn't long after Brody was in her cabin before Sadie tried to kill him. A knife drawn from her other garter, Brody saw it coming and wrenched it out of her grip. He pushed her down onto the bench, made up as a bed for the evening.
"And we were becoming such good friends." Brody said slowly, playing with the knife in his hand. "Who are you really?"
Sadie opened the guitar case silently. Inside was what looked like the top of a guitar, it was part of a fake panel, window dressing so to speak. Sadie pulled a little latch and opened the panel. Inside she had a revolver and a rifle in the guitar case, with some old clothes packed around them.
"You're a hired killer?" Jed asked.
"Yeah, I'm going to meet up with some gunslinger named Lincoln Hall for some big manhunt or something."
Jed laughed, he reached into his vest with his left hand and brought out his own letter from Old Hall. He handed it to Sadie as she put her case back together. She read over it and looked back up at Jed.
They made it in Sadie's cabin. She was very good, Jed thought. She had ridden him harder then the girls he knew back home, perhaps hired guns in the business of death do everything with a sense of urgency like that, like it's the last chance. Brody left Sadie under the covers and pulled on his dry goods. He made a check to see if he still had everything he'd come in the room with, and then left quietly.
At some point, there had been an interlude of conversation in which he found out Sadie was wanted in the town she boarded from. The man who came on board looking for her was in fact the sheriff of that town.
Also, Sadie's dark hair was part of her act. Her natural color was blond. When she took off the wig, underneath her hair was short, just past the middle of her neck. Jed couldn't think of a better way to begin his life as a hired trigger man.
-
When Brody and North met Lincoln in a saloon in the next town, there was an immediate problem.
"You're a woman." Hall said to Sadie, as if it was the most scathing comment he could make.
"Yeah, Hall, I'm a woman, but I'm still good. Besides, you sent me the letter." Sadie said.
"Good for what, a quick roll in the hay?" Hall asked, he gauged the response on Jed's face and on Sadie's, he sighed loudly and rubbed the bridge of his nose (something Brody would also do at times that warranted it) "I sent that letter to SAM NORTH." Hall said at length.
"You mailed it to S North, it just happens my late father and I have the same initials." Sadie said.
"Well, I'm not going to watch out for you just so you can put some 'cowboy notches' on your garter belt. Go look for a whore house to set up shop in. I have things to discuss with Brody." Hall said.
Sadie fired a look over at Brody, maybe lovers' code for "help me, you aren't going to let him talk to me like that, are you?"
"Hall, "Brody began, feeling his voice in the back of his throat "I'll watch out for her. She wont be your responsibility."
"For Chrissakes, she's already got her hooks in? Fine, I don't care if you keep a harem, just keep them out of the way when the time comes." Hall was bathing Sadie in scalding looks.
"Hall, you old buzzard I hope someone gets the drop on you, and I'm the one to put him down. Then, we'll see who's the better trigger." Sadie stood up, Jed was about to make a move to follow her, but she beat Brody to the punch with more words "I'll get us a room, you two talk business and you can tell me the details later." She walked away.
"I still say you're better off dumping her." Hall said. Jed shrugged absently. "In any case, here's the deal on my pack. We (Jed was sure Hall was mentally deleting Sadie from the equation) ride out in the morning. The others are meeting up west of here, coming east. We'll ride out and meet them halfway through and then set out for business."
"How much does it take for a horse here?" Jed asked.
"Taken care of." Hall said. "If you can talk her out of coming with you I can get back the money I put down for horse and tack for Sam."
"I don't own her, Hall." Brody said.
Hall sat there silently for a while. "If you can run her off before morning its extra money to go around."
-
The next morning, Hall, Brody, and North rode out the town gates. The morning on horseback brought the trio to the described meeting place. The rest of Hall's pack was assembled.
There was Old Wang, a Chinese who was in charge of explosives and had three sticks of dynamite in his belt at all times. Moccasin Joe, who was a short thick fellow who was down right deadly with his twin pistols. Avery the Whisper, a lean man advancing in age who works at distance with his rifle. The introductions were made, that is Brody was introduced. Sadie wasn't even there as far as Hall was concerned, but the others tipped their hats a fraction to her when Hall wasn't looking.
"So, Hall, where do we go from here?" Wang spoke good English, but his accent took a little getting used to.
"North, the Olander Gang and some hired savages and are holding out in a town called Prosperity. We bring 'em down quick and clean and the town name will ring true in our ears." Hall said.
"How many?" Old Wang asked.
"Does it make a difference? Numbers don't mean a thing, just shoot until you don't see anymore Olander boys, and hope there aren't any Indians holed up in Prosperity on lawful terms." Moccasin Joe stated.
"We'll find out when we get there." Hall said, "Let's ride."
-
It was a good piece out there. It was seven days hard riding, Hall didn't want to leave any openings for others who might have picked up on the contract, undercutting his estimate. The days passed relentlessly, under a burning sun. The nights were calm and quiet, spent out under the moon.
Every day at the end of the ride, Hall would walk off with Brody, teaching him the mechanics of being a shootist. Jed's piece was a single action.
"The trick is you gotta cock the trigger with your thumb as you draw. Some folks hold the trigger down so that as soon as they line up with their prey, they drop their thumb off the hammer and the gun goes off. Of course that ain't the most accurate way. " Old Hall instructed Jed to unload his pistol. "There, now you've got a dead man's your draw, get smooth as that silk shirt you wore two days ago."
Jed was going through the steps. Making good progress too. His speed was itmproving, and Hall seemed pleased with his progression.
"Now, remember the first shot doesn't mean shit. The first shot that hits is slightly more important. The first shot that kills is what you focus on, young man. And keep both eyes open, intent on your target you see all of him, from the top of his hat to the toes behind the front of his boots. I think you've got good instincts though, kid. " Hall pulled up a cigarette, lit it, "You still get the jitters?"
"On the target range, I got myself calmed down pretty good. Haven't smoked much, if that's what you mean." Jed reloaded his gun and returned it to it's holster.
"Well, everyone needs a gimmick, a distraction. Understand?" Hall pauses, "When you're in public, make sure your gun hand shakes like a tumbleweed in a twister, make a show of calming yourself down with a quick smoke. You wont seem like a threat, till someone calls you out. Walk into the duel with a lit cigarette, if the situation permits drag out the process of rolling it as long as possible. Make the other guy wait, get him jittery. You getting all this?"
"Yes." Brody said, practicing an unsteady hand.
"Alright, it'll make you famous. Guy can't even hold a drink steady in his right hand...actually use the right hand as little as possible...can you make due with your left?" Jed nodded, "Good, now once you start to put notches on the ole gunbelt, you put on a show. A duel with a renowned triggerman and you light two cigarettes at the same time. Judge your opponents in terms of how many cigarettes it takes to calm you down. People will start calling you the Smoking Gun. Nice name eh? Well, the real reason is one:you've got something for the other guy to focus on in an encounter other then his shooting. And two: if someone ever gets it in their pants to confront you someplace, they're cocky, cause you don't have time to calm down with a smoke. They think they've got you dead bang, bang they turn up dead."
"Makes sense, thanks." Jed said, absorbing the information permanently.
"Let me give you the formulae for survival. My formula. I take a team of good individuals, good at shooting I don't care whether they're good, bad, or ugly as people. Anyway, I take a team of lone wolves in with me. Everyone watches their own back, does their own job. No concern for someone else slowing them up. Nobody is counting on someone else to save their ass, so they don't get sloppy." Hall finished his cigarette and ground the stub out with his fingers. He put it in a pocket. He was truly a shadow on the plains, leaving no evidence of his passing through a place. "Now, you take some time to talk to Wang. Get him to show you how to breath like they do in the east. The damndest thing I ever saw. This guy was strangling Wang, before I met him personally, and Wang is just sitting there calm. The guy gave up, couldn't do it at all. Wang just sat there and watched him walk out the door. You spend some time with Wang, besides the breathing, get him to show you some of the stuff he can do with his hands, in case you ever get caught short without your pistol."
-
And so was the way Brody spent the traveling time. Riding during the day, any time there was a stop made, he spent time getting thrown around by Old Wang. At nights, it was time for quick draw practice, and lessons on surviving a gunfight, then off to Old Wang to learn how to breathe. Then, at the end of his curriculum for the day, Jed wrapped up in his bedroll.
He hadn't made it again with Sadie until the fourth night, when he followed her down to the stream where they had all washed up earlier. (Minus Sadie of course, Hall wouldn't let her anywhere near his crew during bathing hours) Brody and Sadie made it on the bank of the stream and took a swim to clean off. They dressed and walked back to the camp, Hall was sitting up, smoking, catching his ashes in the cup of his hand.
"Evening, kids." He said.
"Good night Hall." Sadie said, walking past him and setting up her bedroll for the night.
"When the time comes, kid, are you going to be able to do your job? Or are you going to think with your crotch, and get your brains blasted out trying to save her." He said 'her' like one would say the name of a hated foe. "Think about that the next time you two coil up like rattlesnakes." Hall stood up, pouring the ashes into a pocket. He walked off to his own bedroll.
They came to a ridge, the horses tied up in a grove of trees some way back, Hall judged they would have kicked up to much dust. The last night, there hadn't even been a campfire allowed, and everyone who talked, talked in a whisper. Over the ridge, they could see Prosperity, a quaint little town surrounded by a somewhat low wall, Brody knew he could take it easy.
Sadie was in her working clothes, laid flat on her stomach looking through her scope at the layout. When she tried to tell Hall the layout, Hall merely had Avery the Whisper scan it out through his own scope.
Prosperity looked like an average town, but no one was on the streets. The Whisper passed his rifle to Hall who scanned the area for himself. He saw a faint stirring in the window of a shop. Then he looks around, they're all inside the buildings. He picks out a few sniper posts in second story windows. He caught someone in a priest suit outside the church. It was Jarvis Olander, Hall knew him right off. Olander walked back into the church.
"Alright, they're holed up good. The townsfolk are in the jail, the ones that ain't dead and laid out in the doorways for us to trip over. Jarvis Olander is in the church in the center, I'm putting about ten in there with him, a ready made ambush for us to walk into." Hall passed the rifle back to Avery the Whisper. "Avery, you see right over there?" Hall is pointing to another position, closer to Prosperity with a better vantage to shoot from. "We may have to blast them out of the church, and we might have to do a little demolition to make some breathing room. You ready to show us your magic, Wang? I want you to approach, and come up on the east side."
Avery the Whisper was already making his way to his post, Old man Wang disappeared over the edge of the ridge, making his way down nimbly and quickly for one of his age, or any age for that matter. Sadie gave Brody a wink and went to walk off after The Whisper for the sniper spot.
"Where do you think you're going?" Hall demands.
"I was going to the rifle post, Hall." Sadie said.
"Only one person at that spot." Hall says "Who said I'm going to trust you up here with a rifle once I turn my back on you?"
"You're not touching my things." Sadie said.
"I wouldn't want to." Hall dripped menace from his voice, "I guess I've got to keep you close. You come down with Brody, Joe, and me. Once we're through the town gates and the shooting starts, feel free to hide out wherever you want."
-
As Hall, Moccasin Joe, Brody and Sadie entered the town, there was a sudden stillness, like nature was loath to disturb the scene. The calm before the storm. Sadie disobeyed Hall's orders to wait for the first shot before acting, she caught a glint off a gun barrel from a second story window up ahead, a few buildings away. She has her rifle to her shoulder, looks through her scope at the ugly face nestled in behind it's owner's rifle. She put a bullet through that face.
Like glass shattering, silence cracked and fell all around. Doors on both sides of the street slammed open, Moccasin Joe hadn't even drawn yet as an Olander with a shotgun and an Indian with a rifle emerged right up ahead of him. In one smooth motion, he had his pistols drawn and put a bullet through each. Old Hall casually picked off a man with a pistol who was trying to get a good vantage. Brody's gun felt heavy in his hand for the first few moments.
A cloud of dirt kicked up, a bad shot at him from elevation, he spins, see's someone on a rooftop. Brody put a bullet in him as Avery the Whisper did the same from his vantage. The body jerked first one way, then the other, finally rolling down the roof and landing on the dirt. Jed Brody had his first kill, or at least his first assist.
The others were moving forward, he seemed pinned to his spot. He turned to his right and dropped to one knee, he put a bullet into an Indian gunman who was coming around the building. Brody got to his feet and advanced as Hall and Moccasin Joe fanned out, their six shooters spewing death. Sadie was picking off gunmen who were completely out of pistol range, one of them casually stepped out of the bank, a rifle ready in his hands as one of Sadie's bullets pulped his skull. A thunderous roar as one of Old Wang's sticks of dynamite went off.
Hall was as fast at reloading as he was at shooting, dumping his spent casings into a pocket, Brody half wondered if he'd dig the bullets out of the dead bodies to completely erase his hand in things. Moccasin Joe covered Hall, then reloaded his own pieces. Sadie still had about three of her sixteen cartridges left. Brody was on his second cylinder of bullets, he had no idea how Wang was doing.
Another explosion, bodies hurtle out the front window of a shop. Old Wang's hand at work. A barrage of fire, six Olander gunmen loosing streams of lead down from their place in the second story of a hotel. The group scatters, Hall makes an entrance into a building and puts a round through the surprised door gaurd. Moccasin Joe barely avoids a hail of bullets, ducking behind a water trough, he trades shots, but the gunmen in the window have the advantage. Even so, one of them clutches his stomach and falls. Sadie ran sideways for cover behind a building, and Brody dove into what constituted an alley between two close set buildings. Bullets ricochet, and whine by, chips of the walls vanishing a haze of dust.
Brody found Hall's voice in his mind, telling him to do his job and forget the others. If he wastes time worrying about them, he'll get himself killed, and that didn't help anyone. He even put Sadie out of his mind as he moved on. What should he do? Jed Brody makes up his mind, he's going into the hotel to clean it out from the inside. Only as a means of self preservation he reminds himself.
Brody was thinking only of himself as he dropped an Indian who was quite surprised to see him coming around the corner. Brody scooped up the Indian's sawed off shotgun, a double barrel weapon. He didn't have time to search the body for any more ammunition, a bullet missed him by a breath of air and a bit of luck. Brody's return shot was true, the gunman went down.
Keeping his head low, Brody maneuvered around so he had a straight shot at the front door of the hotel. He crosses the distance, aware of covering fire from Moccasin Joe, but only because he'd been engaging the gunmen who had turned their attention to Brody's charge. Brody caught the door with a boot with all his weight behind it. Into the hotel, his first opposition was a man halfway up the stairs, Brody ducked and put a bullet an inch and a half above the man's belt. The gunman clutched at his stomach and fell down the stairs with no less then fifteen "clunks".
Brody lifted the dead man's pistol and took the time to replace the rounds in his own piece. He felt like a walking arsenal, the sawed off in his left, the extra piece shoved in his pants at the back. He made his way up the stairs cautiously. He came to the room the shooting was coming out of. He knocked on the door.
"What's the signal?" The one on the other side asks and Brody puts the sawed off up to the door and gives it the left barrel. In a hail of splinters and shot pellets, the door guard flies back, a shocked expression frozen forever on his face.
Brody gives the other barrel to the group by the window. One of them pitches out, he caught the most shot, the other are in various states of injury. They begin to turn around, Brody drops the sawed off as he gives it to the first one with his pistol. He fans the hammer with his other hand, managing to finish off the rest in a hail of terrible shooting. Footsteps behind him. Brody dives forward, his left hand at his back, he takes the force of the fall on his right, pistol in hand, and rolls over as he brings up the borrowed pistol in his left. He gives it to an Olander, the guy staggered and went down.
*-
Brody was back down to street level. Sadie had gotten to a rooftop, and was laying down a good line of fire. That gave the rest cover to move. Old Wang was outside the sheriff's office. He tossed a stick of dynamite in. The guys inside didn't know it was a dud, and ran out frantically. Moccasin Joe and Sadie picked them off as they emerged, Wang scooped up the keys to the jail to free the townspeople after the shooting was over. Hall was making his way towards the church, a shadow that wafted along in the stillness on invisible currents.
He worked with intense calm and reserve, like a master gambler sitting in on a penny ante game. It had come down to the church. Hall standing in front of it.
"Jarvis Olander. It's time to settle up." Hall's voice isn't loud, but it cuts right through stone. It's almost as if his voice wormed into the building, seeped around through the boards and sought out it's audience, having found him, the voice noosed him and drug him out.
Jarvis Olander walked out in his priest suit, offering up the devil's bargain. "Hall, " he says, coming out of the church with another man, younger shifty eyes, "I trained this boy how to shoot. He's quick as a rattlesnake and twice as deadly. You beat him, you can take me away live, Hall. But, if he puts a nice hole in you, me and what's left of my boys get to walk out of here clean."
"Come here Smoke." Hall calls to Brody. "They call him the Smoking Gun." Hall conferred to Olander and his boy.
Jed walked up, shaking his gun hand. He comes up and stand beside Hall. He puts his gun in the holster, shaking so bad he has to guide the barrel in with his left.
Olander's gunman is laughing hard. "You want me to out shoot that?"
"It's a fair deal. Jarvis taught you, I taught him." Hall said, "You agree, Olander?"
"Of course, Hall." Jarvis Olander was laughing. "But, if your boy looses, I want you to shoot yourself with his gun. Deal?"
"Sure, but only if when your boy looses, I shoot off your trigger finger with his gun." Hall smiled. Olander had no worries, he looked at Brody's shaking hand and the look in his eyes. It was going to be too easy.
"Deal. Now, call you're people all off."
-
All of Hall's people came in to Prosperity's limits. The two other men Olander had left, plus one wounded Indian and Jarvis himself came out of the church. Hall's crew stood on one side of the street, Olander's crew on the other.
In the street, Brody and the Olander Gun, named Cliff were faced off. The tense stand off, two gunmen there facing each other at a distance of ten feet. Brody held up a hand.
"Hold on, I have to smoke before I duel." He says, and goes into his pocket for a cigarette. Cliff stands there suddenly annoyed, hands on his hips. He has himself psyched for a duel and some asshole wants to smoke first? He smiled, like an execution victim. He smokes his last one.
Jarvis Olander himself lights up Jed's smoke. Brody stands there, smoking slowly. His eyes are scanning his opponent. He is envisioning how it will go down. He sees his gun come out of the holster clean, up on target, hammer falls, Cliff goes over. He watches it play over and over in his mind until it's almost as if he has already done it and is merely living in a flashback. He sees Cliff become a bit nervous as Brody puts on the act of his gun hand becoming more and more steady. He doesn't see a living body ahead of him, merely a corpse no one has clued in yet.
Still, he knows things could go wrong, the gun could misfire, anything was possible. He swept his eyes over the small crowd. He smiles as his eyes pass over Sadie. When he comes to Hall, he winks and nods. He finished his cigarette, dropped his hand to rest beside the butt of his pistol, lets the stub fall from his fingers. It smolders beside his boot. His hand is still as death.
"Ready now?" Cliff demands.
Brody nods.
The stand off. Cliff's fingertips brush the grip of his 45. He's nervous now, Brody's hand is still. Seconds tick by like tense hours, days. It comes in a blur. Cliff calls out "Draw",and closes his hand around the butt of his pistol. Brody's draw is smooth, coming up on target, pistol cocked. Cliff is coming up on target, ready to fire. The two guns fired in a quick question answer session that took place in less then a tenth of a second. It was over. Cliff staggered and went down, Brody was still standing. Cliff's gun had discharged in the spasm that took him as Jed's bullet hammered home, and the bullet had flown through the air to chip away at the side of a building some twenty yards behind and to Brody's left. Jed calmly pulled out the spent casing and slid a fresh bullet home. He gave the cylinder a spin and returned the gun to his holster.
Hall walked over to Cliff's body, and picked up his gun. Four minutes later, with Olander's remaining men tied up, the final scene played out in the hotel lobby. Jarvis Olander confessed he thought dressing as a priest would protect him, it didn't. Hands were tied. He was sat in a chair across the table from Hall. Moccasin Joe stood by with one of his twin pistols pressed to Jarvis' temple. Hall was holding Cliff's gun.
Olander lays his hands up on the table, they are tied at the wrist. His right hand is palm down. Hall puts the barrel of Cliff's 45 down on Jarvis's hand. He stands up, and slides the barrel along the back of Olander's hand, bringing it to rest just past the knuckle that connects his first finger to his hand. Hall looked straight into Olander's eyes and cocked the hammer. The job was over. Hall's pack had done without a casualty. Brody proved himself, but that weakness for the woman, Hall still didn't like that. Maybe I can use him again, Hall thinks to himself. Brody had to do the work, but it was Hall's hand who penned the first chapter in the life of the Smoking Gun. It was Hall's hand that tightened close around the 45's grips. It was Hall's finger that pulled the trigger.
-----------------------------
I know, the tense is all over the place, but at the time I tried to use present tense to make the scenes feel like they were happening "now." Some things happened faster than others, so the shifting sort of made sense to me. I always felt funny reading action where it seemed like everything had already happened. I like the feeling that whatever I'm reading is happening as I cross each word.
To me, it almost feels like an extrapolation of the slow motion technique used (and now abused)in film. Maybe that is just me.
Besides being a story about a young farmhand's transition into a gunfighter, it was a story about my own entrance into the writing game. The Brody/Hall relationship mirrors something of an imagined apprenticeship on my behalf. I'd always liked the idea of writing, but it wasn't until I began reading the works of William S. Burroughs that I ever took the enterprise seriously.
Of course, my early work was heavily influenced by Burroughs. I remember that one of my professors jokingly accused me of channeling the old man on a couple of my free form essays. He also suggested that I should work to find my own style, and that if I were alive in a different era he could have easily seen me suffering from tuberculosis as it would be a very chic illness for a tortured author.
Is modular story based game content the way to go?
An idea occurred to me this afternoon as I was blocking out a section of my game's story for demo purposes. Instead of just starting the player off at the beginning of the game, I was planning on introducing a self contained story that featured characters who were a little more advanced in terms of their skills and abilities, so that the demo could be engaging both plot and gameplay wise.
I wanted to put the best foot forward, not a starting area full of hand holding, fetching, and tons of conversation.
Then I thought, why not just build a game around the best moments it has to offer, instead of all the filler that we've come to expect?
My recent experience with Dragon Age 2 also worked into the mix. The mass produced dungeon approach sort of worked in Mass Effect, where you could easily believe that most of the facilities you ended up traipsing through on "unknown" world missions were just prefabs sold by the same company. Having ten different quests drop you into the same section of real estate, re-purposed to be whatever lair is called for at the moment, in a fantasy setting where it isn't logical to expect someone was selling build-your-own cave kits didn't feel as natural.
I started thinking about how difficult it is for me to generate my own resources. I'm not suggesting I should be able to get away with building one dungeon and just setting up different entry points and treasure drops and call it a game, but that there is no rule saying that more than one story couldn't take place in the same areas. That way, I could get more use out of every resource I produce.
The basic idea is to come up with a number of possible adventures that make use of the resources. Instead of making one overarching game story, I could produce several smaller campaigns. By restricting their scope, I could focus on populating them with (hopefully) more memorable moments and characters.
I could offer the player the chance to "recruit" from stock party member builds, or custom tailor their own party, sort of like how you were able to assemble your teams at the beginning of older games, like the original Pool of Radiance (the one D&D game I actually played on my old Tandy).
The campaign/modules could have assigned difficulty levels and recommended parties. The player would be able to either start new builds at the recommended stat level for the section, and/or import some/all of their existing characters from another module. Modules could be written to favor various approaches, and in the "selection" screen (or whatever I come up with), there could be a brief description, so that the player has the option before hand whether or not they want to start up a campaign that will be heavy on conversation and trade, as opposed to ones that are more focused on combat and action. I could even add in an estimated average time of completion for the modules. I like the idea of focusing on stronger content, and giving the prospective player the option to digest it at their own pace as opposed to just saying "here is a story, play through all of it."
So, does this vignette approach to game making sound like a cop out, or a valid approach?
I wanted to put the best foot forward, not a starting area full of hand holding, fetching, and tons of conversation.
Then I thought, why not just build a game around the best moments it has to offer, instead of all the filler that we've come to expect?
My recent experience with Dragon Age 2 also worked into the mix. The mass produced dungeon approach sort of worked in Mass Effect, where you could easily believe that most of the facilities you ended up traipsing through on "unknown" world missions were just prefabs sold by the same company. Having ten different quests drop you into the same section of real estate, re-purposed to be whatever lair is called for at the moment, in a fantasy setting where it isn't logical to expect someone was selling build-your-own cave kits didn't feel as natural.
I started thinking about how difficult it is for me to generate my own resources. I'm not suggesting I should be able to get away with building one dungeon and just setting up different entry points and treasure drops and call it a game, but that there is no rule saying that more than one story couldn't take place in the same areas. That way, I could get more use out of every resource I produce.
The basic idea is to come up with a number of possible adventures that make use of the resources. Instead of making one overarching game story, I could produce several smaller campaigns. By restricting their scope, I could focus on populating them with (hopefully) more memorable moments and characters.
I could offer the player the chance to "recruit" from stock party member builds, or custom tailor their own party, sort of like how you were able to assemble your teams at the beginning of older games, like the original Pool of Radiance (the one D&D game I actually played on my old Tandy).
The campaign/modules could have assigned difficulty levels and recommended parties. The player would be able to either start new builds at the recommended stat level for the section, and/or import some/all of their existing characters from another module. Modules could be written to favor various approaches, and in the "selection" screen (or whatever I come up with), there could be a brief description, so that the player has the option before hand whether or not they want to start up a campaign that will be heavy on conversation and trade, as opposed to ones that are more focused on combat and action. I could even add in an estimated average time of completion for the modules. I like the idea of focusing on stronger content, and giving the prospective player the option to digest it at their own pace as opposed to just saying "here is a story, play through all of it."
So, does this vignette approach to game making sound like a cop out, or a valid approach?
Looking for a Tileset artist for my Star Wars themed project.
I really hate to do this, but I'm tired of running into the same roadblock every time I try to work on this project. I am not very good at making tile-sets. From generating decent looking ground tiles, to stitching the sheet together properly, to getting things to look just right... I'm about equally terrible at all of it.
This is what I have so far.
I think my objects (the computer kiosks, the door, and the two types of plasteel item containers) are pretty decent, but the rest of the geometry is severely lacking, with the floor being downright ugly.
Right now, I'm looking for tile-sets to make the first area of the game so I can put a demo together and get some playtesting done on the project before I sink a whole boatload of time and effort into the resource generation for the full game.
I need tiles that would work for:
A run down looking space station with some tiles for a bazaar included.
A decent looking cantina with that Star Wars vibe.
An underworks section with catwalks, and a feeling of overall dis-repair.
If possible, I'd like something that my characters and objects would look good against, so it would almost lean to a more cartoony/outlined aesthetic.
Some characters for reference:
If someone wants to help me out, credit will of course be given, but I am not in a position to pay for resources for a not-for-profit game at this time.
Anyone interested should feel free to PM me if they need/want more details about the project/story/setting. I understand that as deep as the pool of talent runs around here, I'm still likely to have a hard time finding someone to help generate original resources for what boils down to a "fan-game", but I'm giving it a try anyway.
Thank you for your time!
This is what I have so far.
I think my objects (the computer kiosks, the door, and the two types of plasteel item containers) are pretty decent, but the rest of the geometry is severely lacking, with the floor being downright ugly.
Right now, I'm looking for tile-sets to make the first area of the game so I can put a demo together and get some playtesting done on the project before I sink a whole boatload of time and effort into the resource generation for the full game.
I need tiles that would work for:
A run down looking space station with some tiles for a bazaar included.
A decent looking cantina with that Star Wars vibe.
An underworks section with catwalks, and a feeling of overall dis-repair.
If possible, I'd like something that my characters and objects would look good against, so it would almost lean to a more cartoony/outlined aesthetic.
Some characters for reference:
If someone wants to help me out, credit will of course be given, but I am not in a position to pay for resources for a not-for-profit game at this time.
Anyone interested should feel free to PM me if they need/want more details about the project/story/setting. I understand that as deep as the pool of talent runs around here, I'm still likely to have a hard time finding someone to help generate original resources for what boils down to a "fan-game", but I'm giving it a try anyway.
Thank you for your time!
Anyone up for proof-reading a book/pointing out areas of suck for me to edit
Two years ago, I finished a 50,000 word novel for NaNoWriMo and had every intention of releasing it on Amazon via the create space thing. The problem is that I wrote it in about six days, and I would like to get some extra eyes on it before I attempt to self publish it.
If anyone has some time to kill, and is interested in helping me out, feel free to PM me.
Thank you, in advance.
If anyone has some time to kill, and is interested in helping me out, feel free to PM me.
Thank you, in advance.
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