www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnFxgFFajz4

Update: Paranormal Romance Bestseller, Lynn Viehl, posted her actual royalty statement for Twilight Fall. Her novel has sold over 89,142 copies, and she is straddling the povery line.

For most this might not be any news. To some, perhaps you’ve just read On Writing, by Stephen King this might be a bit of shock. Then you’ll want to sit down first. I’ll wait a minute while you find a chair.

The literary magazine is dead.

The first thing you might be asking, who done it? Was it Colonel Mustard? Or the Internet in the Parlor with the noose? Actually, this is more of a plant homicide. We forgot to water the short story industry. For like a decade.

I’m not going to list any names, mostly because I have forgotten them, but several magazines I have queried later sent a request for donations along with my form rejections. The problem is that literary magazines are incestous. Short stories are only being published in magazines to promote the house’s books and are only read by other authors.

Need proof? To quote Stephen King in On Writing, “Most literary magazines require that you already have a subscription.” This seems like a prime example of shitting where you eat to me. John Updike on recent episode of PRI’s Selected Shorts expressed his concern that no author could make a living on short stories like he did.

(Maybe Fitzgerald drank that option away for the rest of us.)

Magazines who were once the top of the fiction game like Playboy or GQ no longer publish short fiction. At least not on a regular basis. And only if your name is Neil Gaiman or Stephen King. Not that I feel this is unjust. No one else sells issues, but it would not surprise me at all if Playboy still pays King the same per word rate as it did in the ’70s.

But that is not to say short stories are pointless. No matter what You Look Nice Today says. As a career path, no, but there is the networking aspect of the short story market. If the audience are all writers it stands to reason at least one of them may have connections. Think of short stories as something akin to the Olympics.

There are groups and online magazines that are a little better like Vicious Writers and their Key Publications social network. Of course, fan fiction is also a favorite online. But once again the audience are all writers. Nothing about these sites bring in the average reader.

Now the publishing industry is constantly mining for the next tween romance messiah. All while the struggling writers of today pine for Stephen King’s ebook revolution. Douglas Adams was always annoyed that Stephen King beat him to the punch of putting out a story entirely in an Adobe PDF no one wanted to read. It’s the same reason that book piracy really isn’t a problem. Reading a story in a .PDF format on your computer monitor is a nuisance.

Now that the Kindle and the Nook are here both camps believe their Kwisatz Haderach has arrived. That has yet to be seen. These e-readers are not ubiquitous, and who knows if they ever will. In all honesty the Kindle iPhone app shows more promise. (Note: as of this writing the Apple Tablet is still a myth that has yet to be birthed from Steve Job’s brow.) Could there be an easier way to distribute and consume books online?

Now I present to you the real e-book revolution.

Download audio file (Revelry.mp3)

Maybe not this audio short story per se, but the audio book is an enjoyable way to read a book and is easy to distribute online. All on a device so many people already have in their pockets. Just go check out Audible.com. Get the trial (please make me a sponsor).

Though really the heart of distribution in the e-book revolution is creator control. A huge publisher like Harper may not be the best thing for a budding author. Sure, publishers are great for cover art and distribution, but it’s a dirty little secret of the biz that they don’t do marketing. That’s up to the author and their publicity firm.

For the little guy controlling every aspect of sales would enable the author to make a living with a much smaller audience. A book sold via a huge publisher would make back one to two percent of cover price back. Then deduct fifteen percent for your agent. Not to mention various fees from your publisher and the agency, hiring a publicist, etc.

But with over head kept down a book distributed by yourself could rope you fifty percent of cover price and that’s being conservative. Of course, if you’re sales figures are in the millions then the system above is great, but if your selling only one thousand units its not even a drop in the bucket.

Creators just have to divorce themselves from the stigma that self-publishing is not legitimate and shameful. With success in creator owned content distribution like the comic Penny Arcade or musician Jonathan Coulton. They’re doing pretty good for themselves. The successes in new media continues to climb exponentially compared to old media. `

]]> http://thehometowntourist.com/the-real-e-book-revolution/feed/ 1 http://thehometowntourist.com/victoria/ http://thehometowntourist.com/victoria/#comments Tue, 11 Aug 2009 15:47:09 +0000 Chase http://thehometowntourist.com/?p=214

The favorite urban legend of the Mortuary School was the drunken student in the morgue. Either a student or a local boy– depending on the version. He and some friends go rabble rousing in the town. They get back to the campus completely sloshed. There is a dare to streak through campus and go into the morgue. His friends bar the door, and he passes out on the slab unable to get back out.

A class comes in early the next morning to perform an autopsy or an embalming on a cadaver. They find the boy naked on the slab. Sure it’s odd he has no tags, but what the hell it’s not like we have an over abundance of cadavers. There are many variations on the ending. In some he wakes up right before the first incision. Or during. In the funny ones he’s ousted by the gasps and pointing of female students at his erect penis. In the dark ones no one ever notices…

Victoria felt the ridges of the staples in the in the cadavers through the fingers of her latex gloves. A big cross on the man’s chest. One of the problems with the myth is that a school has no problem with reusing a cadaver on the newbies. Were these staples from the original autopsy or a subsequent? Hard to tell. The students observe one, but they never actually perform. The man’s toe tag reads Robin Smith. Must have died from embarrassment of his name.

She jabbed him in the chest with her index finger. The flesh was cold and spongy. It lacked the smooth elasticity of her own. Or the rigid stone of Rigor Mortis. She could have poked straight through him if she had a mind to. Victoria was always fascinated with death. She always watched it with an academic eye. It was something that only happened to grandparents and pets. It changed from hobby to career when a Pinkerton ran a Charger through a coal picket line.

Electricity jumped from her fingertips. All the air rushed from her lips. The hands on the clock lurched forward.

Another hand wrapped in latex wretched her hand away from the body. There was an audible pop like a circuit at been broken. Victoria felt her blood rush from her head. Her fingertips exploded. She clenched her hand and crumbled into the other man in scrubs.

She recovered in seconds and remembered propriety.

“What the hell was that?”

“N-Nothing,” Victoria replied. “It was just…the smell. Yeah, how long has this stiff been lying out?”

The pathologist cocked a perfectly manicured eyebrow at her. He shook his head and took the hedge clippers from the tray. She never did like how mundane the tools were. The everyday implements that could dismantle a human in minute. She thought that maybe the tools were more specialized in a County Coroner with a budget. Then again a Coroner with a budget wouldn’t be looking for a pair of hands out of Mortuary school.

He nodded towards the other side of the room. Maybe it was a charitable act. Get her away from the cadaver when he first plunged the tip of the snipers right above the groin. They would bite along the line of stitches swiftly chomping through sinew and the rib cage. She pondered if there was even anything recognizable left inside. If the cadaver’s internals were pulped from the frequent demonstrations. She hit play on the docked Ipod. Mozart streamed from the speakers.

While her back was turned he took the first plunge. She heard the blade slurp when he swung open the maw. Victoria whirled on the balls of her feet when she heard the Pathologist’s bagged shoes slosh back from the table. A vermillion line dripped down from his goggles, spotted his face mask, and splattered his apron.  His eyes were just whites, and the bare spots on his forehead between splotches of blood were ashen.

The blood on the floor soaked through the baggies right down to her socks when she approached the body. The scent of formaldehyde danced in her nostrils – that new corpse smell. The cadaver was rapidly draining its fluids that should have been long gone by now. Victoria approached as if in a dream. She laid her hands on the great wooden handle of the shears. The Pathologist stood frozen in place.

She could have sworn she saw the slight heave the cadaver’s chest. A rookie mistake. Every teacher had to remind the Morgue virgins that it was just their imagination. She plunged the blade further. The blood kept coming. The cadaver’s eyes flashed open. He lurched forward and took her wrists in his hand. Victoria furrowed her blood spattered brow and closed the scissors. The cadaver was split down the middle.

He wouldn’t stop screaming.

It’s alive! It’s alive!

She thrust the blade deeper into the even softer tissue. The hedge clippers continued gnashing its teeth until he stopped.  The Pathologist laid a dripping red hand on her shoulder. She knocked him flat on the ground when she withdrew the scissors. She was suffocating. She tore her face mask loose and shredded her apron. She widened the neck line on her scrubs. She still couldn’t breath. She clawed at her bare white neck before collapsing on the slab.

Spooky Story by paurian

The old man watched the red and blue lights blaze through his window. He sat on the edge of the bed and pondered which of his friends would be missing from breakfast tomorrow. It was a nightly event for the Goodwill Fire Department to be pulled up in front of the New Haven Rest Home. He shambled to the window.

Three squad cars painted with the GPD shield and one more wearing the Mason County Sheriff’s. The whole department is out tonight…There was a wailing of sirens as an Ambulance pulled in. They were pulling into the dirt track behind the old Lakin Hospital.

The old man turned away from the window. His attention was grabbed by the concave mirror hung above the sink. He stared into that black void every morning. One of the volunteers from the offices downstairs gave him a quick tour when the State dropped him off here.

“This whole building used to be a town house owned by Jonathon Thomas,” he had said. “He was rumored to be head of a cult. Kept them all here before the town died. Must have been some truth to it, though. All the mirrors in the house are made of black glass. We’d take them down, but New Haven said that’d ‘disturb the history’.” He made air quotes. He noticed the old man was just staring into the corner and backed out the room.

The old man made a mental note to check the papers for what happened last night, but knew he’d forget. He glanced in the mirror again. His heart fluttered and his knees failed him. He tumbled backwards into the bed.

There was another face in the mirror. Except…except for the blue eyes. They were identical. They glanced in the direction of the old man’s simple twin bed. He clenched his chest and heaved. Reason started clicking in his head. Had to be a trick of the light…these God damn mirrors.

Then he had a far more disturbing thought. Far more disturbing than a different face in the mirror. Far more troublesome than an unfamiliar man peering at him from another world. Did I forget my own face?

He scratched at the gray stubble on his cheek. No, no. It was far too young. He looked for his wall clock closing his eyes to skip over the mirror. The hands were on eleven and ten. The news was already on; maybe they’d have a breaking new segment. Christ, am I really this old?

The floorboards creaked when he leaned forward for the remote. He looked down to see his slipper punch through the floor. He withdrew his foot and the board came clattering back down. He got to his hands and knees to push the board back in place. No, better leave it. Then I’ll never remember to tell housekeeping. He caught sight of something in the gap. He plunged his hands into the crevasse and pulled out a leather bound volume.

2

Jonathan sat on a bench in Olympic Park and sketched the wildlife as it passed. A man galloped past on all fours doing a crab walk. The man’s skin was gray and papery. It was tearing apart at the seams. It came to a stop in front of Jonathan’s bench, stretched his neck, and tucked its head behind its shoulders.

Jonathan recoiled when a red tongue slipped from behind its teeth and raked the side walk. He did a quick calculation in his head as to just how many germs would be teeming, how many passing children have dropped food, and how many dogs raised their legs.

“Look at that man, Mommy,” a little girl laughed.

He dropped his pen and looked up. Could she see it? She was wrapped in a wool coat and tugged at her mom’s sleeve.

“Mommy? Why is he crying?”

The mother’s hand covered in a red leather glove covered her mouth. Jonathan reached his hand to his eye. It tapped the dark lens of his sunglasses, and his finger dabbed at the warmth trickling down his cheek. He saw the splotches of crimson on the ends of his fingers. Shit. I’ve been out here too long.

The creature at his feet jerked and scampered away when Jonathan rose. He tucked the leather binder under his arm and bolted without a word.

3

The old man woke up in bed still wearing yesterday’s clothes and perspiration. A leather binder was spread across his lap. The page was open to a sketch in ink of a man on all fours. His tongue dangled over his upside down face.

He flipped back to the beginning of the book. The pages were cracked and yellow just like him, but unlike him these pages would never forget. Each one was devoted to preserving a singular thought and would hold it until the day it was destroyed. A pile of white lichen. A tall black figure without a face dragging a sledgehammer in its wake. A nude woman standing in waist deep water – a human heart in her hand.

Each page was more disturbing than the last, but the old man couldn’t help but feel a twinge of admiration for them as well. A jealousy crept through his heart, and he pushed the volume to the floor. He pulled his cane from the night stand.

The old man hobbled downstairs to the front desk. The nurse chatted on the phone. Her long purple claws clicked away at the keyboard.

“Did someone visit me this morning?” he said.

She paid no attention.

“Excuse me!” he repeated. “Did someone visit me this morning?”

The nurse sighed. “Can I put you on hold for a moment?” She looked up at him and never bothered taking the receiver from her ear. “What?”

“Did someone visit me this morning? Like my family or something?” He wasn’t sure if he had a family.

“Name?”

He searched, but it didn’t come to him. He stood there with his index finger and middle finger pressed against his lower lip. The nurse let out a monstrous sigh.

“Room number?”

He pulled a key from his pocket and checked the tag hanging from the ring. “634.”

She spun the clipboard on the desk in her direction and scanned it. “No visitors today. Or this week. Are you expecting anyone?”

“Never,” he sighed. Some kind of task for housekeeping tickled the bottom of his brain. Failing that he came up with something that would get them up there and fast. “I shat the bed.”

The nurse rolled her eyes and pressed the intercom button. “We have a code brown in room 634.”

The old man hobbled back to the elevator. He was intent on beating housekeeping there before he was confined to bed pan only. Hopefully what he actually needed was obvious enough.

He stepped back into his room. The binder was lying in the sink. Did I leave it there? There was a subtle difference between having Alzheimer’s and simply forgetting. It was a simple litmus test. Someone with Alzheimer’s cannot remember that they forgot – no matter how many reminders.

He picked up the binder. A folded sheet of paper slipped from its pages. He picked up the sheet and unfolded it.

A pair of black eyes stared back at him from the pages without even a hint of white. They belonged to a shriveled gray man that took up the whole page. His head was devoid of any hair.

4

“Here,” Jonathan said. “It’s weakest here.” The obsidian arrowhead spun in a furious clockwise motion from the end of its silver chain. He tucked the arrowhead back into the pouch hanging from his neck. He motioned to the men behind him and pointed towards the ground.

The men in black cloaks placed the massive black mirror on the ground. Jonathan pulled the compass in its gold case from the pouch and mimicked the direction it pointed. A figure bearing a black banner plunged it into the ground. Three more planted banners in a clockwise formation around the mirror.

A woman with raven hair brought him the Sword. She pulled the hood back over her head and knelt before the mirror. The two that were carrying their mirrors circled laying the protective circle. The four corners cried their Invocations.

Jonathan began the ritual proper. He beseeched the spirit Lam to appear for them in the mirror. Lam the famous Saturn spirit that communed with Aleister Crowley. Wishing to create the Moonchild, L Ron Hubbard conspired with this creature in his OTO days. This was only an experiment to reach out to creatures from another world. No motives.

“Nothing,” the Oracle whispered. Jonathan fought the urge to touch his eye patch. He did not have consistent Sight without the needle and it had been exhausted. He relied on his Oracle to be his eyes. His mind must stay on the Evocation.

He shouted incantations demanding that the spirit appear to them in the mirror. He poised the tip of the Sword over Lam’s sigil. There would be repercussions if it did not appear now.

“I see it now,” the Oracle whispered.

“Spirit!” Jonathan said. “I command you in the name of YHVH to speak only truth and identify yourself!”

“Something’s wrong…” the Oracle gasped. “There…there’s hundreds of them. They are dragging themselves through. There’s a tear in the window. They’re…They’re slipping through!”

“Everyone concentrate on the Circle! Don’t let them out!” Jonathan raised the Sword over his head. He began the Banishings. The Oracle gibbered and shrieked. He stopped mid-incantation. He could see the spirits now. One was through. It hovered over the mirror. A tiny and shriveled thing devoid of sex and hair. Its eyes were black, scrying mirrors.

Sirens wailed. Red lights flashed over the Ritual. Deputies shouted at them through megaphones from their Mason County cruisers. The color drained from the tiny man. Its eyes flashed red, and bat wings sprouted from its back. They beat against the ground and the thing took off. A myriad of tiny hands pushed through the mirror. Its black glass clung to their papery skin like film.

“Scatter! Leave the equipment!” Jonathan shouted. The men in cloaks ran. The Oracle convulsed on the ground. Two deputies leapt from the cruiser. Jonathan drove the Sword through the mirror and stuffed the parchment bearing Lam’s sigil into his mouth. He hooked the Oracle under her arm pits and scurried with her into the fog.

5

“How are you feeling today?” the red head asked. The old man looked at her sitting in the chair on the other side of the room. He sat on the edge of his bed. Adult Protective Services sent him a looker this time. Of course, he would have rather the State sent him a hooker instead of a Social Worker.

“Do I have a family?”

“I’m sorry to say no Mr. Thomas,” she said. “Technically, the State put you here.”

“Guessed as much. Um…is the feeling that you’re being watched and followed at all times normal?”

“No, that’s paranoia. How long have you been feeling this way?”

The old man shrugged. “I think I might also be seeing things. Out of the corner of my eyes. Can’t look directly at them before they slip away.”

“I’ll make an appointment with the physician for next week.” She made a note on her clipboard. “Please be candid- sexual encounters included. Syphilis has a high rate of occurrence in nursing homes.”

The old man shrugged. “I wouldn’t know if I’m getting any or not. Be news to me either way.”

“Right.” She made another note on her clipboard. “Is there anything you need? That the facilities are not providing?”

“Well, while we’re on the subject and before I forget.” He scratched his chin. “I could use some porno. I could use a hobby, and I’m pretty sure I can’t misplace my dick.”

One more note. “Anything else?”

He closed his eyes, ran his thumb and index finger over his cheeks, then his eyelids, and pinched the ridge of his nose between two thumbs. “Some smokes.”

“I’m required to mention that smoking has a proven link to lung cancer and encourage you to join one of the facility’s many programs.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he muttered and rubbed his forehead. “But I’m pretty sure you’d say no if I asked for a gun.”

“Have you been having suicidal thoughts?”

The old man threw up his hands. “I forgot.”

6

Years later they regained their strength and found another weak point. A spot away from the highway. Down in TNT behind the Lakin Sanitarium – close to home. His Oboth urged him on in tiny whispers. Jonathan was still not blessed with the Sight, but his other senses were sharpening. He dragged the Sword along behind him returned to him via police auction.

“Here,” his familiar said in a rasp. Tiny invisible hands pressed against his chest. Not enough force to push him back, but tiny pin pricks like his chest had gone asleep. He raised the Sword and the procession behind him stopped. He gestured towards the ground and they placed the Mirror.

He peered at his reflection in the abyss. The Oracle was useless to him. She saw demons in every shadow and elementals under every stone. He took responsibility for her, paid her hospital bills, and kept his distance in hopes that one day she would forget.

A tiny silver glint danced on the point of the pin he withdrew from the inside of his glove. He clenched his right eye shut and forced his left wider with thumb and forefinger. The other hooded men milled around him tending to their various rituals and implements. The tip of the needle passed as if his pupil were a void.

He did not flinch. Crimson spread across the iris like the sun eclipsing. His Oboth appeared beside him. It took his visage. His blue, curious eyes took in the scene around him.

Jonathan Thomas began his incantations.

A woman hovered over the mirror now. She clenched a bundle in her arms. Her grey dress now in tatters swirled around her uncovered feet.

“Identify yourself!” he barked. “Draw your sigil, spirit!”

The spirit opened her eyes. They were pure black within black. He observed him passively and pushed the bundle forward. His stomach sank and saliva pooled under his tongue. His familiar turned into a wisp and hovered behind him.

“I command you in the name of Adonai to identify yourself!”

The shredded gray cloth unfurled around the bundle. The gleaming white head of an infant stared back at him. It seemed to stare straight right through Jonathan. Its very sight repulsed him and of all the otherworldly creatures he’d spied this one was the first that truly unsettled him.

The baby grinned.

“Spirit! I command you to withdraw from this world!” He bellowed the dismissals. The static in the mirror faded, but the Spirit remained. She stepped forward her feet held aloft. Jonathan took Lam’s sigil and dropped it on the black candle of the Circle.

Its center turned orange and the black spread gangrene over the parchment. It crumbled into dusk and scattered around the candle. She took another step and raised the baby overhead. The threadbare blanked spilled on to the ground and vanished.

Jonathan shielded his eye. The baby was too bright. It cast its own silver light over the ritual. He sprung to his feet and drew the Sword. The woman halted before the tip.

“Draw your Weapons and form on me!” The other hooded men gathered behind him. They bore their weapons Athame, Wand, Pentacle, and Chalice. He took a step back, and they followed his example. The woman took a step forward.

They continued this way back to their home. They picked up their pace over the highway. The man in the back unlocked their door, and they crossed the threshold. Jonathan slammed the door.

They took a step back. Nothing. Then another – still nothing.

They let loose a pained and collected sigh.

The black eyes of the woman glared at them through the tiny glass window set in the door. Silver light peeked under it.

7

“Three days.”

The old man sat up in his bed. His hands went to his left eye. The lights were still on. He looked down and found the leather volume in his lap- the sketch of a woman and child. The infant was constructed with only three simple lines. It reminded him of staring into the sun. The dogs of panic dug at the edges of his sanity.

He got to his feet and dropped the book from the window. He cut the cold air off with his guillotine window. He saw a sea of rodents pour from the woods. They dashed across the highway, and like lemmings half their number was cut down by passing cars. The survivors dashed across the lawn and vanished in a hole on the corner of the rest home.

The old man turned from the window. A pair of stolen, blue eyes watched him from the mirror hanging from above the sink. The young man that haunted his dreams was watching him. A voice boomed from all around the room.

“Three days!”

The old man fell back into the chair. He looked across the room and spotted the leather bound volume resting in his bed. He pressed his face into his hands and wept. In the morning he would request a room change, but probably forget.

8

“Three days.”

Jonathan’s chin rose from his chest.

“Three days! Three days! Three days!” his Oboth droned on.

He cussed and crawled to his feet. The Sword tumbled to the ground. He was cradling it in his sleep again. Rats scampered over his path. They were the first ones to figure out that that this ground was warded.

He twisted the key of his can opener and released the aroma of Chef Boyardee. He shoveled the cold macaroni and tiny meat balls into his mouth with his fingers. He licked his fingers clean and unfurled the map of Goodwill he swiped from Town Hall. The pendulum hung from his fingertips, and he held it over the map.

It passed over the map until the arrowhead circled a townhouse downtown. He marked the spot on the map – a new one. He pulled out his pocket watch and confirmed it was still broken. He trudged down the stairs. The blade of the Sword banged on each step.

And to think they called him a Cult leader. A cult leader wouldn’t put up with this shit. A cult leader wouldn’t have given all his followers an out. The followers of a cult wouldn’t abandon their Leader.

The occurrences were lessening after the people left. These things trying to worm their way into our world. Things that did not bow down to any Earthly god. Maybe, just maybe if they stay away, a day will come when he doesn’t have to do this anymore.

To think there was a time when he actually helped these things through.

He continued down the highway the sword dragging behind him. He caught a glimpse of something sliver from under the Lakin Sanitarium. Necessity was the invention of all things. He learned long ago how to watch things in his peripheral.

The thing hesitated and contemplated Jonathan. It could smell the wards still clinging to him from the house. He didn’t waste a second and dashed the thing’s brains out on the blunt edges of the Sword. He pushed the dented tip through the creature’s throat. He wondered when the day would come when he couldn’t lift the Sword anymore and knew it was coming soon.

9

Something dripped from the ceiling on to the old man’s face. He brushed his face and woke up. He looked down at his hands and spotted a red smear across the palm. He looked up and expected something as macabre as blood dripping from the ceiling. Nothing there.

He rubbed his forehead again and came back with nothing. He looked down and expected to find the leather bound volume. He didn’t.

Instead there was a highway atlas of West Virginia. A pin glinted silver by he lamp light. Its tip was dark and rested on an ‘X’ crossing town hall.

“One hour.”

The old man looked at himself in the mirror. He mimicked the phantoms movements. He stretched his eye lids between thumb and index finger. He slid the needle in with the ease of a contact lens. The room was transported to its decrepit state during the Exodus. He picked up the steak knife from his dinner tray and carved the Sigils down the length of his cane.

10

“Tragedy has struck again in Mason County,” reported the news Anchor, “Two injured and one dead in Goodwill today. Best known for his alleged cult activity during 1969, Jonathan Thomas beat two orderlies and killed a security guard in Town Hall. We go live to Stacy McCormick at the New Haven Rest Home.”

The image of the man was replaced with a blonde woman. Black circles of mascara run under her eyes. The caption Melissa Adkins – Nurse on Duty scrolled at the bottom of the screen.

“I knew there was something wrong when I saw him. He was wearing sunglasses, and I thought he was crying. He was heading for the door, and I called security. I’ve never seen anything like it; he downed them both with like one hit.”

The camera panned to a brunette in a smart, blue pants suit.

“He was found an hour later in Town Hall,” Stacy said. “Police found him beside the body of one security guard, Kenneth Roberts. Police stated if they had not found Thomas on the scene they would have assumed it was an animal attack. Due to his Alzheimer’s and dementia it is currently unclear whether Thomas will stand trial for this. He is currently being held in Sweetbrook Hospital’s urgent care wing due to self inflicted wounds. Back to you, Tim.”

“Our thoughts and prayers go out to the Roberts family tonight.”

11

Jonathan tumbled over the body of a security guard. The throat was slashed and eyes mashed in the sockets. Howling ripped through the air and slashed his forearm that instinctively covered his face and throat. He knocked aside the talons with his cane.

“You’re too late,” the lady in gray snarled. His younger doppelganger, his Oboth, leapt on her. Her talons reduced him to mist in an instant. Jonathan slipped the impaled tennis ball from the end of his cane. Screaming the Banishings, he lunged and drove the Sword through her heart.

Her legs melted into the mist that poured through the open door.

“How long Jonathan Thomas…” she croaked. “How long is it until you forget us?”

12

The old man thrashed against his bindings in the hospital bed. His left eye was covered, but he couldn’t remember why. Did he always live here? The machinery around him chirped in reply.

“I brought what you asked,” said a red head standing beside his bed. “Well, the other thing you asked for.”

The old man shrugged.

“But I can’t leave it here…” she said. “Bringing documents is more along the lines of your attorney’s job.” She unfurled a map in his face; it was covered with tiny black X’s that held no meaning for him. There were hundreds of the little marks. He stared at it and said nothing.

“For your sake I hope you never remember what you did,” the social worker said before leaving.

The old man thrashed. He was laying on something uncomfortable. His bedpan? The leather volume slide from under his cover and hit the floor with a plop.

“Five days,” the air whispered.

And I can’t stress that enough. Everything where in is own my JK Rowling. I’m just doing this in honor of the new film. And quite frankly there should be more Urban fantasy, crime noirs.

The sun was shining. The birds were chirping. London still reeked, but that couldn’t be helped. All in all it was a glorious day for a narcotics bust.

The peddler unrolled a blanket. The stuff was cut into green bricks piled into a neat pyramid like the high dollar Chinese tea. He mopped the sweat on his forehead with the bandana tight around his throat. The sun was beating down. A drug deal in broad daylight? It not like the Muggles would even notice this buggy anyway.

“See anything you like?” The peddler crowded the man. He wrung his hands.

“What is this?” the man sniffed at one of the bricks. “Pixie Dust?” It reeked with magic. Probably charred the hair in his nostrils. The peddler’s chin bobbed. Pixie Dust was the street name for Glamour. A highly, controlled substance. In the hands of Muggle – nothing. This was Fae magic in solid form. The Fae used this stuff as a medicine to inoculate themselves from this iron world. A wizard took this shit, and he’d be higher than a kite as the two very different kinds of magic tore through his body. The last decade of the Quidditch hall of fame should get pitched, because of this stuff.

“I’ll take fifty kilos.”

The peddler blanched. “Fi-fifty?”

“You don’t want to play in the big leagues? Because I’ve got the Galleons.” The man untied his purse. The glittering of the Gringott’s vault on the bottom of it nearly blinded the peddler. The man snapped the purse shut. “Ah, ah. Do you have the stuff?”

“Not on us…” The man scratched the base of his neck.

“…Us?”

“Well, I’m sure you could come to some kind of arrangement with the Boss? Yeah?”

“When?”

The peddler’s eyes darted back and forth. He squatted behind he buggy and knocked four times. Four knocks returned. The panel on the side slid back. The peddler gestured and ushered the buyer through the black square. There was another room inside the cart. He assumed the man in the waistcoat seated at the end of a long table was the Boss. The buyer was immediately patted down by the two thugs the flanked the doorway.

“I’m afraid I have to ask for your wand. Precautions, you know?”

“Lovely. But I seem to have left it in my other pants.” The Boss cocked an eyebrow. “What? You were just going to take it anyway.”

“Accio wand,” the Boss leveled his own wand at the buyer. Nothing. “Huh, very well. But such a dark room. Why the sunglasses?”

The buyer snorted. “Are we doing this deal or all you small fries just having me for a wank?”

The Boss nodded. One of the thugs snatched the buyer’s glasses before he could protest. The dab of make-up on the man’s forehead was smudged by the greasy thug’s thumb. Of all the Auror exams, Harry only passed disguise by the skin of his teeth. The Peddler came through the door behind with wand at the ready. What Harry did pick up during his Auror training i.e. his life from age twelve till now is that in such close quarters a wand belongs to whoever wants it the most.

The peddler reeled from the punch to the throat. Harry jabbed the pilfered ash wand between the thugs crashing down on him and gave the boss the Severus Snape special. The portly fellow crashed into the wall upside down. The room shuddered, then jerked, and all of its contents took a tumble. Somewhere in the middle of a London park, a cart fell over for no apparent reason. Harry landed smartly and was already on the balls of his feet. The thugs lost no time pulling their wands in the tumble.

“Accio EVERYTHING!” Harry screamed and raised the wand over his head. The thugs turned on their heels. They could only stare as all the furniture shook under the call of Harry’s spell. He tip toed over their inert bodies and approached the visage of the hanging man card that the boss had become. He pulled the hem of the Boss’s robe back over his face. Of all the things that Harry wished that Wizards would pick up from Muggles, it was pants, or at least a proper pair of knickers.

“There is a Muggle killer on the loose. We’ve found this shit. Your shit over every one of their bodies! Who have you been selling to?”

The Boss spat in reply. He couldn’t get the trajectory quite right being upside down and all. He just ended up with spittle running down his own face. “You can’t make me talk. You can’t fucking touch me!”

Temptation hissed in Harry’s ear. He could make this man talk. Harry could make this man dance on his mother’s grave. Or scream out the answers in duress. Or make him watch as everything he has every loved is blanketed in green light. Temptation’s forked tongue tickled the back of his neck, but he was better than this. He took the Boss by the hair and made him look into eyes with the shade and seriousness of a killing curse.

“I don’t think there is anything I can do to you that fate and nature hasn’t already. But I will take you to jail. Oh, I don’t think you’ll even do a dime in Az, but we’re put your picture in all the Goblin newspapers. You’ll go before a judge. He’ll just throw up his hands, set you free, and dare you to walk home. I hear Goblins take this sort of thing very seriously.”

Harry paused. A picture was not the only thing worth a thousand words.

“Now, I’m sure we could come to some kind of arrangement.”

***

Harry contemplated the green streaks across the hand mirror in the musty flat. His mobile chirped. “Yeah, Ron?”

“I haven’t seen anyone in the back.”

“Check the fire escape.”

He snapped the mobile shut and slide it back into his belt clip. Mixing Muggle tech and magic was still off limits, but under the new Ministry magic that looks like Muggle tech was kosher. He sniffed at a jumper hung over the back of a chair. The hollow eye socket of a skull watched him from the patch on the sleeve, and the snake peered out from the other. Harry immediately pounded the jumper into the table. The tip of his wand burnt through the Dark Mark. Rage boiled in his gut the same kind of rage reserved for a Swastika at a Bris.

The boy registered in his peripheral far too late. Harry took a corner of the table to the lightning bolt. The boy was standing over him with the Phoenix wand. Guess he wanted it bad. A jinx flashed from the tip. Harry threw up his hand in a panic. A pulse streamed through the air like petrol vapor. The wand clattered to the floor and rolled away from the boy. The wandless bit doesn’t always work, but Expelliarmus would always be his forte.

Harry made a dash for his wand. The toes of his right foot clenched into a wither claw. His knee refused to bed. A botched Petrificus Totalus. Still it’s amazing how much little things like that can slow a man down. His trainer dragged on the floor behind him like it was encased in concrete. The boy walked over and plucked the wand from the floor.

Merlin’s pants, this kid’s about my son’s age. He’s been using the Glamour to keep his marker from going off. The boy hovered the tip of the phoenix wand over Harry’s heart. His gaunt face grimaced.

“AVADA-”

“Harry? I’ve heard shots. Is everything ok?”

The wand flashed and the mobile went up in smoke. “Potter?” the boy hissed. This was not the nostalgia he wanted. Every year that scar faded just little bit and every year he got harder for strangers to recognize.

The boy thrust his wand forward.

“Do you think that’s such a brilliant idea, you little twat? Voldemort -” The boy cringed. “tried three times to kill me with that spell. As an infant only a mere scratch! I killed him with a fucking disarming spell. Do you really think you can do any better than your precious dark lord? Try it! You must know how that worked out for him.” Kid probably wasn’t even in diapers yet by then.

The wand shivered in his hand, but confidence returned. “Imperious, lick my boots, Potter.”

Perfect. Using every ounce of strength left Harry pulled himself to his feet. “No.”

The wand slipped from the boys hand and rolled into Harry’s inert foot. A red bolt jetted across the room. The boy sprawled over the back of the table. Ron stood in the doorway smoking wand aloft. Harry let himself fall on his ass.

“Christ, Harry, one of these days they are going to call your bluff. What then?”

Harry shrugged. “Die, I guess.”

I had an idea for a Harry Potter fanfic and this is as far as I will indulge it.

He tumbled to the ground. Footfalls pounded the ground. Each boomed in his head. Or was it his head throbbing? His numb fingers rolled the handle of his wand. Everything went black. 
The street lamps flickered on. The stars watched overhead. They faded into the brightening sky. Pink cracked the eastern skies, and the lamps extinguished. The streets were bathed in red and blue flashing lights before the sun completely peaked over the mountains. 
PC Rory leapt over the yellow tape and made a beeline for the man in specs. The man had charged past three other PCs and was going straight for the body. PC Rory threw himself in the way. 
“Oi! No lookie-loos!”
The man looked up. He was barely into his twenties – surprised that anyone stopped him. PC Rory couldn’t help, but staring at the jagged scar that split the hooligan’s forehead. The youth produced a wallet from his sports coat and flashed his credentials. 
“DCI Potter,” the youth said.

“S-sorry.” PC Rory stepped aside. “Its just the way you’re dressed.” 

“Sting operation,” Potter covered his mouth when he spoke. “At the University. I got called away.” Harry didn’t wait for the Constable’s response. He grinned. The paper was blank, of course. Very Doctor Who. 

Ron got to him first. Harry’s perplexed expression was reflected back in his aviator’s. A ginger catapillar had crawled under his nose and died there. Was that…was that a donut crumb?” 

“Does Hermione know you’ve grown that thing?” Harry rolled his head. His neck crackled in response. “What do we have, Ron?” 

“Wizard about forty years old,” Ron read from his scroll. “We think he died at o’three hundred. The Pathologists determined he’s stiff with rigor mortis not petrificus totalis.” 

“Well, that saves us forty hours. Anything else?” 

“No, that’s it. Pathologists have gone over the body with priori incantanum to well, whatever else they do, and haven’t found shit.” Ron rustled his parchment. “Ministry says not as single spell has been cast here in the last forty eight hours. We wouldn’t have known if he was a wizard if one of the constable’s didn’t mention gold coins on the scanner. Might as well just been hosting a circle jerk.” 

“Yeah, Ron, let’s compare the deceased to a biscuit. Real classy. So his purse wasn’t knicked?” Harry squatted beside the body. He struggled to stifle a guffaw. 

Copper eyebrows peeked from behind the mirrored shades. “Yeah. Real classy.”

“Turn whole thing over to the proper Muggle authorities.” Harry got up. He took off his glasses and pinched the ridge of his nose. “Have them fax any finger print results. I said fax, not owl. We’ll compare them to any half-bloods, squibs, and Muggleborns living in the neighborhood. If they don’t have any on file – get them fingerprinted.” 

“How very Slytherin of you,” Ron spat. “Been having headaches lately?” 

“Obviously, this would never occur to any pure bloods.” 

Ron cocked an eyebrow at him. “Murder? Do you remember the last, I don’t know, decade of your life?” 

“I’m paging Hermione.” Harry had already punched the speed dial on his mobile before Ron would protest. Ron turned away and took a swig from keychain flask. He then popped a couple of Mentos. By now the three of them could recognize the smell of Polyjuice potion on someone’s breath. 

The air split and popped. Hermione stood between them. Her eyes were still cracked with sleep and her blouse’s buttons askew. She glared in Ron’s direction. 

The use of Polyjuice potion is technically illegal. Technically, but those laws were written about someone trying to impersonate someone else. Not someone trying to impersonate themselves before they grew a terrible mustache. 

“I almost made it to bed.”

“Sorry,” Harry said,”but this will really only take five minutes. Ron you know how much she hates any pro-Blood, but even she will have to admit a Pureblood couldn’t have done this.” 

“But the Pathologists couldn’t find anything-”

Hermione snorted so hard stray bangs flew in every direction. “Victim died of blunt force trauma to the back of the head.”

“The stunning charm!” Ron quipped,”But how did they get past detection…”

“With this brick,” she replied. “That one splattered with blood and laying beside his head.”

(photo: by c@rljones)

It always surprised people to find out that there even was an IT industry in West Virginia. Half of the state was still on AOL assuming they had Internet at all. Hospitals even the size of Meadowbrook was wired. There were no actual paper trails with medical records thanks to Bill Clinton and HIPPA. Some nurse left a senator’s STD screen in the break room one too many times.

The real issue here is that prior to 1998 Meadowbrook Hospital has no records.

Victor pulled his truck into the dirt lot in front of the New Haven Aslyum. Ramir whistled when he dropped out of the passenger side. Victor couldn’t blame him even at high noon it was creepy as hell. Even without the fog…might actually help the old folks in the New Haven Rest Home right across the hospital. Wouldn’t have to look at the thing.

“Shit!” Ramir spat. Victor looked behind him. Ramir was spread out on his stomach. His laptop case was just out of reach. “Tripped over something. A rock. Someone carved nineteen thirty-two on it.”

“That’s a grave, Ramir.” One they actually marked, anyway.

He jumped to his feet and snatched the case. “There are a thousand tortures I would rather endure than being here.”

Can’t blame him…I’d rather have Mary rip out my heart again. Their badges may have read Meadowbrook Memorial Information Services, but their paychecks read New Alliance Technology Solutions. A subsidiary of the New Alliance group recruited all across the state, but they didn’t have to look very hard to find Victor. He’d always been here. With one big exception.

NATS contracted full time to Meadowbrook and the mines. That fact always caught people by surprise. Victor guessed that when people pictured coal miners they still pictured blackened men with pickaxes attacking a seam of coal illuminated only by a tiny, dripping candle on the front of their hardhat.

They stood in the doorway. Or rather a hole in the wall. Could have just parked the truck in here. Victor clicked on his flashlight. No windows. The walls were stained gray. Any furniture or equipment had long been stolen or rusted away by now. The doors weren’t even left. The walls were dripping with graffiti. During the summer this place was quite a happening hangout for students of Goodwill High. His spotlight fell on red words Marcy Was Fucked Here an arrow lead down.

John Denver’s Country Roads rang off the stark walls.

He pulled his phone from the belt clip. It was illuminated by Mary’s photo. She wore an exasperated smile and black threads of hair hung over her face. This was the first photo he snapped on the phone. She had just woken up from a nap.

Victor sucked on his lower lip. His thumb hung over the big red Decline button. He walked over to the window behind his desk. The phone reported no bars and the call disconnected. He clipped the phone back to his belt and his hand went instinctively to the white band around his finger. He twisted the skin between his thumb and forefinger. His personal worry stone.

An e-mail dropped into Victor’s inbox from the higher ups the week before. New Alliance wanted a site survey of New Haven before starting renovations. They didn’t want to repeat the same mistakes – this time they wanted a paper trail that could outlast the town. They wanted to resurrect this building that started life as New Haven Industrial School for Colored Boys in 1906.

Victor crossed from the yellowed grass to the stone floor. The call disconnected. Ramir raised an eyebrow.

“No bars,” Victor said. He clipped his cell phone back to his belt. For a moment the screen illuminated Jenny Loves Mothman in blue.

“And they criticize arranged marriages,” Ramir said. “The key is we lead separate lives.” Ramir was the cliché Indian Admin and in Goodwill of all places. The only one Victor had ever met. “Well, we gave it our best. Let’s go for drinks.”

“Means nothing. I get one bar tops by my desk.” Victor unzipped his laptop case. He bit down on his flashlight and pulled a Dell notebook out. He retrieved a tiny Linksys box from a side compartment. LEDs sparkled like little, green stars. “Start from the basement. Work our way up.”

They turned into a stair well following the yellow spotlights. One eye following the light, the other on their instruments. MacGuyver in green. Seriously? Spelled it wrong to boot.

Victor’s stomach collapsed. He wanted to turn and run. Just to flee this building that blossomed after an awkward puberty into the New Haven Colored Sanitarium in 1927. Desegragated in ’58. Closed in ’79. They say the doctors lobotomized the lot of them for the hell of it and chucked their bodies out the back. Not all of them from the hospital days. Of course, they say that about any old asylum.

Except the New Alliance bulldozers unearthed the mass grave in 1995. Delayed the project for over a decade. The Sentinel reported that there were remains from fifty-seven bodies in all.

“No signal,” Ramir said.

“No surprise there.” Victor’s nostrils flared. His nose hairs now cinders.

“You smell that?” Ramir dashed the spotlight around the room. The black fell away from a table like a cloak dropping to the floor. It was burdened by an array of brown bottles ranging in all sizes. A blue, steel still towered over the bottles as the table’s centerpiece. Plastic tubes ran down from the still to the propane tank tucked under the table haphazard like an exposed circulatory system. “What is that?”

“We need to get out of here,” Victor said in a harsh whisper. “Right now.” They turned on their heels back towards the staircase. A grinning skull stood in their way.

“What are you doing in my house?” Except it came out “mah hawse.” His hand scratched over his stubbly face. In this light the man’s rotten teeth looked like they were filed to points. Please, please, please just be a trick of the light.

“We were just leaving,” Victor said. “Saw nothing.”

“What are you boys? Ghost hunters?” he said. “A little early for that, ain’tit?”

There was a soft click and the sun blossomed in the center of the universe. Ramir and Victor held up their hands like they could hold back the flood light if they just applied themselves.

“Got a fancy laptop,” another voice called.

“You..you can have it,” Ramir said. He placed the laptop on the ground and slid it towards the light. He had no idea if it got anywhere close.

“Looks like we’ve got ourselves a sand nigger.”

“Bet you don’t even have a green card!” the other vagrant said. The spotlight fell on Ramir’s face. “First Nine-Won-Won…”

“Look! My family is from India. I don’t have a green card because I was born in this country-” Ramir pleaded. He stood frozen like a deer in the headlights.

“Then my baby Mama lost her phone job!”

“And now we have a got damn A-rab president.” The meth skeleton shook his head. He made the motion of flicking a tear from his yellow eye. “Ain’t it just a fucking, crying shame? What has the world come to? Our boys go off to die, but we still got the enemy right here in Goodwill.”

“I suppose the retired Navy plates on my truck don’t mean a God damn thing to you?” Victor said.

The skeleton shrugged. “Stockholm? I’d a thought you’d known better, Beenadick.”

The vagrant set his floodlight on the ground. He swaggered towards Ramir the light flashed silver off his cleaver. Ramir’s lower lip trembled. “Should I cut his head off like they did to our boys? But on account of you’re a veteran…just castrate ‘em.”

Victor closed his eyes and shut off the flash light. His eyes popped back open – he could make the faint figure of the skeleton by the flood light. He threw his forearm over the skeleton’s neck and pulled the pen knife from his pocket.

The flash light clicked back on, and the skeleton clenched his eyes out of reflex. He felt a pressure against his eye lid and his eye push back into the socket. A tiny pearl of warmth was already forming against the lid.

“Move one more step!” Victor said. “And I put his eye out.”

The vagrant glanced back for a second and a silver crescent flared. Ramir gurgled and stumbled forward before collapsing outside the stream of light. The smell of iron and shit pierced Victor like a bullet. All of Victor’s air escaped his mouth and his muscles slacked. The vagrant buried his elbow into Victor’s gut. Victor thrust his knife, but missed the mark.

The knife skittered out of sight like a cockroach. The skeleton turned around glaring at him a yellow eye through a lanced eye lid. Victor brought the flashlight down in a fury of blows. The light extinguished and plastic shattered on the skeleton’s hands and forearms. His heel slipped on the blood blossoming from Ramir’s crumpled body. The skeleton tumbled into the vagrant.

Victor bolted for the stairs. The graffiti streamed past. He raced out of the Asylum and into the fog. He turned the corner around the asylum and charged further into the white void. Where is my truck? He could hear boots pounding against the soft earth. Black figures formed in front of him. Then the crooked forest of TNT sprung up around him. He curved his route. I can circle back around.

The footpads were closing in. He could hear the breath burning in their throats. Victor tumbled over a root. He ran his hands over a white dome. An igloo. One of the munitions bunkers left dotted all over Mason County during WWII. The door was unlocked. He pushed it open and propped it closed with his body. It was black and damp inside. He twisted his ring finger.

The stomping ceased. He braced himself and stopped breathing. It felt like hours passed before they moved on. He exhaled slowly and deliberately. His thoughts finally caught up with him slicing through the adrenaline buzz.

His chest heaved. What the hell are you doing? Pulling this kind of shit…it’s been a long time since Desert Storm. Who are you kidding? It’s been a long time since basic training. You were an engineer in Canada for fuck’s sake.

This is what crying would feel like.

There was shifting outside the door. The crunch of brown leaves under steel toes.

Your little stunt got Ramir turned into a Pez Dispenser. He actually had something to live for. Now all he has to look forward to is spending all eternity filled to the chin with shitty candies.

Then the stomping continued on until it was a faint whisper in the dark. Victor allowed himself to breath again. Why didn’t they look inside? Of course…He had to ram right into the igloo to even see it. He thought of checking his pulse. That’s what runners do, right? He jabbed his two fingers to his throat. Then chuckled and shook his head.

The door scrapped the ground and swung open once his body was lifted from it. He surged forward. Didn’t know how long he had before the meth necks circled back around. That little, haunting slice of Palin’s real America.

There was the rattle of chains. His right leg whipped from under him. Victor would later say that it all went black, but to be honest, it already was.

3

Victor saw himself riding a raft of logs drifting down the Ohio. Not so much Huckleberry Finn as lumberjack. The logs were flanked by grey boats from the Company. Goodwill was in the grips of its second boon. The timber payload was en route to the steel mills of Pittsburgh. Victor knew this in the same way we all know our dreams.

He lost his balance. Nothing-new there. The lumber vibrated from under him. His ears were ringing. The Ohio was violent today. He opened his eyes. A cloud of black soot billowed over him. The timber rattled apart and the ground fell out from under him.

He plunged into the black Ohio waters like forty-three more souls would in December, 1961. He broke the surface only once. He caught a glimpse of the ship. Orange light danced across its bow. The name New Alliance blazed in red paint stood out on the stern.

Then like those Christmas shoppers dumped from the Silver Bridge the cold seized him. His muscles were frozen. He descended into the black as smoothly as a knife through your only friend’s throat.

His legs dug into the bottom of the river. A blue light spread across the bottom. Something was moving. A school of fish? No, the Ohio was littered with corpses. They writhed and danced with the tide. He saw one blue face staring at him from the driver’s side of a sunken car.

Beside him Ramir stood. Victor spun his head in his friend’s direction. Ramir was bound in chains. He looked as if he died while trying to protect his privates. Maybe he was.

Then there was Mary.

Mary was the only vibrant and living creature on the bottom of the Ohio. She glided without effort through the icy waters towards him. Her skin was cast green in the light. Her tangle of hair darker than the water.

She pressed herself against him. Her naked body resurrected his dead muscles. Heat spread over his body. She pressed her lips against his and put breathe back in his lungs.

There it would stay trapped his lungs for all eternity. He knew this because it was a dream. Her hand pressed against his breast.

The pain roused him awake.

4

Moonlight crept through the door ajar. The Goodwill’s breath hung overhead. Victor pulled himself upright. His back drenched in stagnant water. His ankle throbbed. He unbound it from the chain that wrapped around it once, maybe twice. He propped himself against the wall. He limped out of the Igloo.

He staggered in the direction moss grew. He knew north would take him to Point Pleasant eventually. Might even lead him back into the Goodwill. God alone knew where he was. TNT – that could mean anywhere. Might as well just say Timbuktu.

His phone chirped. He unclipped it and found he still had no bars. It chirped again and the screen went black. He considered chucking it before clipping it back to his belt.

The sound of engines running pricked up Victor’s ears. He closed his eyes and listened. Trying to discern the direction of the road. Stumble out onto to route 79 waving like a madman. Hope to God no new Mothman stories sprouted as a result.

Then the low rumble was closing in on him. Victor half ran and half stumbled forward. Light flashed through the trees and Victor took a dive. He slid on his belly behind a lichen flicked stump.

Hunters. He was sure of that. Maybe they won’t be the same ones.

“We know you’re still out here, Beenadick!” cried a man mounted on an ATV.

“Your got damn Ching Chong truck never left,” the other hunter roared over his ATV’s engine. Victor pretended he was a Neanderthal trapped in ice. A static man trapped within the same silent second for all eternity. They would lose him again one inch at a time.

A techno beat of Hava Negila chirped from the pager at his hip. Even out here the Hospital could call him. Always at the wrong time!

The stump burst and thunder clapped through the trees. Victor hurled his pager. The meth necks threw their ATVs into reverse. Did they think I had a grenade? Victor made a run for it.

Thunder clapped again. Victor’s body crumbled. A black rose blossomed over his breast. He slid on his side through the muddy creek bed and fell face first into the water.

The meth necks pulled their ATVs up to the creek’s edge. Their rasping laughter hung over him when they cut the engines. Their flood lights danced over him.

Victor laughed and the men stopped. Because they didn’t get the joke. He hurt all over, he still laughed. “You missed!” Victor laughed and dabbed his fingers against his oozing wound.

Another slug tore through him. Victor slipped and landed on his ass. He laughed even more. Like many of the creeks running through the TNT this one was fed by the Ohio. The meth necks plunged up to the ankles in their filthy boots. They were in his domain.

A bubble surfaced and popped. Mary burst through dripping from head to toe. Her skin was gooseflesh. Her nipples were hard lentils. The hunters could only stare.

A correction. This was her domain, but unlike these men he was allowed here. They were little fish and they had no idea just how big the pond really was. The bigger fish always ate the little fish. It’s just the way of the world. 

photo: (criagCloutier)

Darkness descended on Avery like waves. She watched it danced and shift on the walls of her bedroom. Growing darker and dark the longer she watched. The shapes undulated and swam never keeping a form for longer than a second. Sometimes she could recognize the shape. A person. A bat. Other. 

People recognize patterns. That’s the eyes’ job. That is what makes art something more than just a series and lines of colors. A television show more than a splattering of dots. The patterns are everywhere. A fluffy bunny floating down a lazy path in the sky. A face in wooden paneling. Nothing new. Nothing strange. Just something the brain does to make sense of the world and to comfort itself.
But what was ever comforting and sensical about the shapes on the wall?

Avery rolled over and pressed against her boyfriend’s naked back. She hated the feel of it. She had heard once before that we pick our mates by scent. His smell nauseated her. She wondered if she should wake him up before her mom got home. She wondered if she even cared anymore.

She closed her eyes, and the shapes kept dancing on the back of her eye lids.

2

Her mother didn’t care about Mike staying over. Or didn’t notice. Or just never came home. Wouldn’t be the first time.

They walked hand in hand through Point Pleasant, because that seemed like the thing to do. The eyes are the window of the soul. Also the first thing to decay. She had always thought Main Street was the eyes of the Point.

He produced a tiny baggie from his black jeans. He dropped a couple of the pills into his palm.

“Is it even noon?”

Mike looked at his wrist and shrugged. “Somewhere.”

“Do you think I’ll ever get out of Point Pleasant?”

“Maybe Athens this weekend,” he said. “They have a great hookah bar up there. Don’t card.”

In Point Pleasant going out on the town meant taking the hour long drive to Huntington or Athens. Now that’s saying something. There only things to do in Point Pleasant are vandalize, get stoned, or fuck. Hence, Mike, King of the Romantics, who’s idea of a great night is rolling over and watching Quantum Leap after sex.

Can’t afford college or nursing school. Could probably get a scholarship to the mortuary school outside of town – best case scenario. It’s typically where the kids who have good ACT scores and no money goes. Barring an accident or Mayor Barrett shutting down the women’s clinic, that is. Otherwise, she could see herself in a trailer with Mike and his grandma on the outskirts of town.

“Aren’t you going to take those?” Mike said. She looked down and registered the shrooms lying in her palm. She searched her mind for a reason not. Something involving Scott Bakula so Mike would understand. Failing to find one she popped them in her mouth.

3

Avery couldn’t count the number of times that she’s walked through TNT tripping balls. She could count the number of times she’s walked through stone sober. Once. It was so unsettling she swore to never do it again. She couldn’t remember what upset her. Something to do with the angles of the trees. The drugs forced her brain to make sense of them. For once she was thankful for the fog so she didn’t have to see those God damn trees.

A blue light danced in her peripheral vision. She jumped expecting to see an officer trailing behind them. Will o’ Wisps pulsed in the fog. The pounding of her heart was replaced with bass thumping. She rammed her elbow into Mike’s gut.

“Is that..is that really there?”

“The blue lights? The music?” Mike said. “I see it. Doesn’t mean much.” She grabbed Mike by the wrist and they charged into the fog. He dug his feet into ground. “Whoa, whoa! The only thing over there are some bathrooms.”

“Well, maybe I need to go.”

“Probably better off behind a tree…” They tumbled over one another through the fog giggling all the way. The mists cleared and there sat a squat concrete building. Blue Christmas lights were strung over the Men’s and Women’s doors. The bass thumped the structure’s heartbeat. The high whine of a violin gave it all a very old world feel.

A broad man watched the doors. He worked his fingers under his red cap and considered their approach.

“There’s a cover to get in.”

“He’ll handle it.” Avery gestured at Mike and charged through the Women’s room door before he could protest. She fell back against the door. The room stretched forever. The stalls were replaced with a mahogany bar with no end in sight. Paper lanterns cast red, blue, and green lights over the rave. A jukebox belted out a hybrid of techno dance beats and Victorian formals.

Her lunch bubbled in her stomach and threatened to resurface. She couldn’t remember eating any. Saliva pooled in her mouth.

An Asian girl cupped the back of Avery’s pixie cut and titled Avery’s head back. She drained the contents of a red Dixie cup down Avery’s throat. It was frothy and sweet. Reminded Avery of honey suckles. She studied how the highlights in the girl’s hair matched the cup. The room stopped spinning, but it didn’t come into focus. It blurred around the edges. The bile sloshed back to the pit of her stomach.

The girl took Avery by the hand and led her to the bar. She had never seen the girl before. Probably the same age as her too. Private school, most likely. It had been a fad for the rich to adopt Chinese children. That was until the middle class started.

She had not realized how crowded the bar was. From the door it was bare, but up close it was teeming with unfamiliar faces. In the Point it might have been an oddity to meet one person, but a room of them…Avery looked back over her shoulder. She couldn’t spot Mike or the door.

A pale boy eyed her beside the jukebox. The purple half moons under his eyes hide his irises. He reached from across the room and pulled her towards him. He might have been a little heroine chic, but she danced with him anyway.
4

Another drink.

It might have mattered if she noticed before, but it certainly didn’t matter now. The boy was white as the driven snow. His hair was translucent– the light sparkled off each dread like icicles.

The techno beat had dropped from the music. A haunting fiddle melody howled from a live band. She wasn’t sure, but the song might have been Danse Macabre. Icy fingers danced under her shirt on the small of her back. She shoved against the boy’s bar chest, slick with perspiration and burning cold.

She combed the crowd again for familiar faces. Disproportioned bodies contorted on the dance floor. In the very center was just a jumble of arms and legs. A gray skinned man with a scar running from lips to cheek ate raw hamburger from a plastic bag. He flashed a toothy grin that stretched beyond his face.

She ran frantically for the exit. The room was spinning again. She felt like a drowning swimmer. The water was far too black to tell in what direction she was swimming. Towards the surface or deeper into a watery grave.

She spotted a ray of light streaming through the water. Her BFF, Sarah.

“Sarah!” She embraced the girl so hard she lifted Sarah from the crowd. Her skin was clammy. “Thank God, you’re here! I’m freaking the fuck out. I’m too fucked up to find the exit.”

Sarah stared back with hollow eyes. She worked her mouth to speak, but only sewage bubbled out. It streamed from her mouth and down the front of her swelling belly. It hung out from under her decaying shirt. Black veins contrasted the pale flesh. She’s more shitfaced than me!

Avery spun on her heels and spotted Mike. He was cutting a Dancing with the Stars caliber rug with the Asian girl. Her face was coming off in flakes. It reminded Avery of the town hall’s edifice. Pale blue flesh glistened through the tears. His knee wasn’t stopping him today.

Another Dixie cup found its way into Avery’s hands. She marched back across the dance floor and locked lips with the pale boy.

5

She came to propped up in a corner of the room. She couldn’t make out any details of the party goers. The music was now nothing more than a tribal beat.

Sarah was shaking her and screaming. Black bubbles were the only things to escape. They popped one by one. Avery could have sworn she heard Sarah calling to her from across the room.
“You’ve got to leave! Don’t drink their drink or eat their food! It all has a price!”

“I can’t hear you!” Avery shouted. “Speak up!” Her chin rested on her chest and her eyes fluttered shut. She remembered something about a friend of hers being drowned by her boyfriend in the Ohio. Her and her unborn child. Tragic.

6

A black creature lumbered through the party. A sledgehammer dragged in its wake. Its inhalations shook the room. Its head scanned to and through. A shriveled man at height with the creature’s knees pointed towards people in the crowd. The creature nodded at each gesture.

Avery cowered under a table. The black thing pointed the business end of its sledgehammer at the table. The shriveled man took off his monocle and wiped it on his shirt. An empty eye socket continued to examine her. He replaced the monocle and the painted on eye blinked.

After an eternity he shook his head. They moved on. She fell over and melted into the coolness of the floor. Every thing slipped back into the haze of sleep.

7

Avery jerked awake and bolted up right. Her brain sloshed in a sea of hangover. She grunted and looked around. Mike was nowhere in sight. Most considerate thing he’s ever done.

She lay back down. The mists were too thick to see the sky, but it felt like morning. She watched the shadows dance on the foundation of the burned out house.

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