#anyway. deep into that darkness peering something stood i hoping fearing / doubting?? dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before

[lotrmusical]

My high school did a yearly poetry recitation contest (Poetry Out Loud), so Oh Boy do I know some poems. My favorites are Ozymandias and "the world is about to end and my grandparents are in love," by Kara Jackson. Also in 8th grade we had a Poe unit and had a class contest to make the best music video of the Raven, so I still know a good chunk of that.

i hadn't heard of the kara jackson one! just read through it and enjoyed it, particularly these lines > 'grandma returns to her love like a hymn, marks it with a color. // when the world ends will it suck the earth of all its love? /will i go taking somebody’s hand, / my skin becoming their skin?'

[mooncustafer]

Recover, Regroup, Roadtrip

Agent Dale Cooper disappeared in March 1989. The case is still open. Agent Dale Cooper disappeared in October 2016. The case is still open.

for @laughingpinecone  /

/ @countdowntotwinpeaks​‘ WONDERFULXSTRANGE 2021

“Diane, I am uncertain of the date and time, or indeed if such concepts have any meaning in this place. Nor do I have my recorder, but I find verbalizing my thoughts helps me to resist the confusion and lethargy. As for addressing my words to you, even though you’ll never hear them— well, old habits die hard.”

It pleased Wally Brando on a profound level to discover that a few pay-phones remained in Philadelphia, that reaching out was not yet the prerogative only of those who could afford a landline or a mobile. He could also have checked his email on a terminal at one of the city’s Public Libraries, and indeed, made a note to do so within the day so that he might catch up on the news of parents and former school friends. The pay phone was also blessed with both the yellow and the white pages, and the number he sought appeared under “F.” Getting transferred to Dr. Albert Rosenfield was a more complex quest, but he was persistent as well as polite, and after a few minutes he was able to speak to Dr. Rosenfield’s voice mail, if not the man himself.

He introduced himself with salutations, and was about the explain the nature of his request when a beep signalled that the allotted time had run out.

“To listen to your message, press one. To re-record your message, press two,” said the voice of the machine.

Silently cursing his volubility, Wally pressed two. This time he simplified the introduction, and asked if Dr. Rosenfield would be good enough to meet him that evening at the Morimoto Japanese restaurant not far from the FBI offices, to discuss a matter of deep concern connected, he believed, with the little town of Twin Peaks. When the beep came this time, he listened to his message and then, satisfied, hung up. The restaurant he’d named was slightly above his means, but he was meeting a friend of his godfather, and wanted to do justice to the occasion, even if the reason for it was one of peculiar anxiety to himself.

“Diane, I have tried so many times to escape— on the last attempt I really did get out into the world, but my plans, I fear, had dire repercussions for you, and to no end— my course still led me back to the Black Lodge. Some flaw in my own nature keeps trapping me in this loop; perhaps it’s what they sometimes call Saṃsāra.”

It was Agent Tammy Preston’s custom, when scraping the internet for information relevant to one or more recent cases, to check her email inbox every seven minutes— to do so every five minutes would disrupt the flow of her work, but ten-minute gaps might let something important go unanswered for too long. Just now the inbox was due another glance, and switching tabs she saw that two minutes earlier Director Bryson had replied to Tammy’s email of that morning with an invitation to come by her desk at her earliest possible convenience.

Tammy locked her screen, paused ‘Soft Fuzzy Man’ on her playlist and removed her headphones. Picking up the folder marked Missing Persons, 1989– Palmer, she slipped back into her pumps and made for Bryson’s office. The door was open but Tammy stopped at the threshold and rapped on the wall.

“Come in,” said Director Bryson, looking up from a folder. Bossa nova music played softly in the background as Tammy entered and pulled up a chair. It sometimes puzzled Tammy that apart from herself and Director Gordon Cole, no one in this particular division of the FBI seemed to have any interest in music recorded after 1979. (The first few times she’d heard ‘Du Hast’ pounding through the walls of Cole’s office, she’d wondered if this taste for metal was the result, or perhaps the cause, of his hearing loss; but after he’d joked to an unamused Agent Rosenfield about how these were difficult times and difficult times called for Dave Brubeck, she’d looked up the reference in case it was a coded message, and then the next day had overheard Gordon whistling ‘Mister Sandman,’ a song she knew primarily from an internet meme, at which point she concluded that the ear wants what it wants, regardless of demographic.)

“You told me you’d found some serious inconsistencies in the records surrounding Twin Peaks and the Palmer case?”

Tammy nodded, hesitated:

“I believe there may be inconsistencies as well in my own perceptions of the case.”

“Well now, that I find a little harder to believe.” Bryson smiled, but then her voice grew serious: “I’ve looked over the notes you made, and it confirms my own doubts about events.”

“Worse yet— the fact that I truly left the Lodge and then returned to it, will enable the beings that inhabit this place to take another twenty-five year turn in my likeness, unleashing even more evil on the world. The only thing stalling them is the doppelgänger I had MIKE make for the Jones family, but I don’t know if he’s still under the White Lodge’s protection.”

After all these months it still surprised Harry Truman there was so little physical pain, and so much boredom, to dying. Oh there’d been pain at the beginning, when he’d started treatment and had had to stop drinking; the memory of detoxing still made him shudder. But now he only felt a tiredness too huge for sleep to make any dent in it; and since he couldn’t sleep all the time, there were a great many hours during which all he could do was lie in the hospice bed or sit in one of the hospice chairs, and think.

At this point dying didn’t even sound so bad— it wasn’t like the past three decades had been all that great. He imagined going to sleep, just filling up a big bowl of silence and darkness and sinking into it, and then he felt bad for thinking that because Frank had already lost enough people without Harry lighting out too. Anyways, with the things he’d seen over the years he’d be a damn fool to think there was anything peaceful about death and whatever came after. So he’d lie awake trying to find some other topic to ponder, and that’s generally when the boredom set in.

Right now, courtesy of the nap he’d had in the afternoon after today’s treatment had left him especially exhausted, he was lying awake in the wee small hours. 3:52 am, said the clock on his bedside table beside the stack of paperbacks Frank had brought him on his visits— Harry wasn’t afraid of e-readers the way Lucy was of cellular phones, but he found the smell of paper comforting. It reminded him of the Bookhouse. The hospice tended to smell of disinfectants and sweat and soup. The food actually wasn’t as bad as the food at the hospital in Twin Peaks used to be, not that any food could be as bad as the hospital food in Twin Peaks used to be, but it made no difference to Harry, whose appetite had been gone for months. Frank always brought a slice of Norma’s pie too, carefully sealed in an old cookie tin to keep it fresh, but Harry could never manage more than a couple of bites, and they didn’t always stay down.

Being awake in the middle of the night in a hospice wasn’t as bad as being awake in the middle of the night when you were alone at home— the occasional voices or footsteps from the corridors beyond were reminders that whatever might be happening to Harry, life went on for the staff; and the lights from the city outside showed that life went on for others outside the hospice walls. When he’d first arrived, those city lights had made it hard to sleep, but now they substituted for the starry sky above Twin Peaks. There were fewer birds to watch in the city, though sparrows, pigeons or a starling sometimes lit on the ledge outside his window and peered in at him, or maybe at their own reflections. The frequent rain pattering against the glass— well, that sounded the same here as it did in a cabin.

Frank had called to tell him about Margaret Lanterman. Harry sometimes wondered if he should have stayed in Twin Peaks and died in his own home like her, instead of lingering in this hospice like the doomed heroine of some nineteenth-century novel. Or like Annie Blackburn. Or Audrey Horne.

The rain was spattering now against Harry’s window, bending the light from the Japanese stone lantern in the pocket-sized garden below. Harry couldn’t remember what the hospice building looked like from the outside, but he guessed it was similar in style to the mid-century one next door where the day-patients came for their treatments. A flash silhouetted the roofline; five seconds later came the thunder-crack. Harry settled back and closed his eyes.

Sleep pulled him into dreams of an espresso machine, like the one in the coffee place down in the lobby next to the gift shop for visitors. This machine filled a whole room, metal pipes feeding back on themselves like some kind of espressouroboros, neither steam nor coffee escaping from the grotesque contraption. Agent Cooper stood wearily before it with two empty coffee-cups. Harry was just wondering who the second cup was for, when Coop looked up and met his eyes:

“What year is this?!”

Harry sat up in bed, listened intently for two full minutes, but he didn’t hear Coop’s voice again. He sighed. Sometimes the mind pulls imaginary sounds out of the background noise. False pattern recognition or something— Coop would have known a word for it. Harry had little hope left they’d ever find Cooper, or if they did, that he’d still be the man he’d known. Yet he’d carried on, more (he told himself) out of habit than any real hope. He’d kept in touch with Agent Rosenfield, even when it meant letting him know about the cancer— not that Albert would blab the secret to anyone in Twin Peaks.

“Hello?”

“Good, you’re still alive.” Albert’s personality hadn’t mellowed with the years, exactly, but familiarity had worn the edges off his jibes.

“Shut up, Albert. So what have you found?” Albert’s calls generally came every three months, but never at nine in the morning, and he’d last spoken to Harry only two weeks back. Something important must have happened.

“Actually, Sheriff Truman, I’m the one coming to you for information.”

“If you hadn’t noticed, it’s not easy to do investigations from a hospital bed. What can I tell you that you can’t get from other sources?”

“I need you to summarize the Laura Palmer case back in 1989, and the actions of Agent Cooper in Twin Peaks at that time.”

“Albert, is this one of your damn cognitive tests? You already know—”

“We’re both too tired to argue, just humor me.”

“How detailed do you want?”

“An outline will suffice.”

Harry took a deep breath and briefly listed the finding of Laura’s body, and the living but dazed and injured Ronnette, and the arrival of Agent Dale Cooper to lead the investigation. He skimmed over the crimes of Jacques Reneault and some of the other peripheral drama that had occurred in the town around that time, noted that Leland Palmer had murdered his own daughter, albeit while not fully himself, and was beginning to recount Cooper’s temporary suspension and Windom Earle’s campaign of terror, when Albert interrupted:

“You’ve still got the unofficial version, then.”

“Unofficial?”

“According to FBI records and your colleagues at the Twin Peaks Sheriff’s Office, Laura Palmer is an unsolved missing-person case.”

Harry began to feel sick.

“Goddammit, Albert, you did the autopsy. I punched you and you fell across her body. You found a broken poker chip in her stomach—” Albert broke in:

“I hadn’t disclosed that detail to anybody I’ve questioned about this.” His voice was a little shaky. “Listen, Harry,” he continued. “Last Friday I was contacted by a young man wearing motorcycle leathers and talking like Jack Kerouac on quaaludes.”

“Wally.”

“Naturally I supposed him to be from your iodine-deficient neck of the woods even before he introduced himself as your godson and the offspring of those lieutenants of yours. He told me he’d come because he wasn’t sure where else to turn. Apparently he keeps in touch with his parents as he rides across the continent, but in their most recent conversation he’d noticed their memories of certain events had become confused. I was about to tell him I wasn’t the least bit surprised, when he added that he’d checked with other townsfolk, including your brother, and they all seemed to have had the same— how’d he put it? ‘The walls of their memory painted over like a childhood bedroom converted to a study.’”

”That sounds like Wally, all right.”

”Eventually he got round to explaining why he’d come to me. The message that had prompted him to call home was from Lucy; she said she’d shot a suspect who was attacking your brother Frank. She’d also mentioned some FBI agents arriving a few minutes later.”

Harry swallowed. He tried to imagine Lucy shooting anyone:

“Frank never said anything about this.”

“And when Wally called home, Andy and Lucy not only denied it had happened, they had no idea what he was talking about, not that I’d guess that to be an unusual state of affairs. Anyway, after I sent your godson away, I began to have contradictory memories myself of what Cooper had told me about the case. I remembered the poker chip after waking in the middle of the night from the worst dreams I’d had since medical school. I’ve been telling myself it was a false memory, maybe a composite of all the young female murder victims I’ve had to examine in my career, but I told myself I’d make one more phone call, just to check. And now you confirm it. Also, in my recall you knocked me across Leo Johnson’s body. Thanks for the correction. Are you still there?”

“Yes,” Harry answered, glad he was already sitting on his bed.

“Now that that’s established,” said Albert’s voice on the other end of the phone: “here’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question: when do you remember Agent Cooper disappearing?”

“March 1989.” Harry tried to keep his voice steady, as though he was giving evidence in court. He briefly explained about the Black Lodge and Coop’s reappearance and unsettling behaviour and how he’d checked himself out of the hospital and was never heard from again. There was a long silence on the other end of the phone. “Are you still there, Albert?”

“According to FBI records and, up until two days ago, my own memories: Coop disappeared this past October while driving to Odessa, Texas for a case. The last record of him was a credit-card charge at a motel just outside the city.”

“What was he investigating in Odessa?”

“Missing person. I’ve tried looking into that case, but it seems to be a dead end, especially since Coop never seems to have arrived at the diner where the man he was looking for had allegedly been running drugs.”

“Sounds like the kind of establishment where nobody’d admit anything. Maybe Coop did get to the diner.”

“Gee, you’ve cracked it Sheriff, we would never have thought of that. The diner was old-school, but not so old-school they didn’t have a security camera trained on the front counter. We went over three days worth of footage. I admit we can’t be sure he didn’t slip in through the back for some reason; but you knew Coop— can you honestly picture him entering a diner and not ordering a coffee?”

“Not the Coop I knew, but— I already told you he was acting pretty erratically just before he took off.”

Harry heard Albert sigh.

“I’ve been checking with a few of my colleagues who were involved in the original Palmer investigation. I think Gordon knows something, but being Gordon he’s saying nothing, and as loudly as possible. Denise— Director Bryson, now— remembers the unofficial version, and according to her so does Agent Preston— oh right, you never met Agent Tammy Preston, the poker-faced glamazon computer hacker— I’m not sure she was even born yet in 1989, but she was on a case in Twin Peaks in October 2016, and during the course of the subsequent paperwork, she started noticing a lot of records and statements didn’t match up, and then she realized her own memories didn’t match up. Which brings up another problem with trying to reason this out by conventional methods: something in that Salem’s Pacific-Northwest Lot of yours is rewriting memories, documents, maybe the facts themselves. But so far it’s predominantly affected the people who were on the spot this past October.” Albert’s voice rasped a little from the long phone call, and he paused to clear his throat. “Unfortunately, that also means the people most likely to remember the original version of events are people who weren’t in the Sheriff’s Office during the incident that seems to have triggered the change. At the risk of sounding like one of those bullshit shows on the History Channel, we may never know exactly what happened that night.”

“Wait, what even was the case that brought you all back in 2016?”

“That’s the problem— I’m one of the people who was there, and I only have vague and disconnected memories of a British man with a gardening glove, the chorus of Guys and Dolls, Agent Cooper leaving the room with Diane, his secretary who quit the FBI decades ago, and Gordon, and only Gordon coming back.” Albert paused again. “It goes against my personal feelings and medical opinions, but would you be willing to let me visit you in person? I’ve some vacation time and enough frequent-flyer miles that the trip will probably cost less than the long-distance charges if we continue this conversation.”

Harry opened the drawer of his bedside table and took out the key to Coop’s old hotel room:

“Yeah, come by.”

“Diane, I am currently alone. I realize that statement implies that I’m not always alone here, and indeed I sometimes have a companion, who I still think of as Laura Palmer, though I don’t know if that’s her identity anymore; I’d hoped, after my last attempt, that Laura would no longer be in this place at all. She comes and goes, or perhaps we both come and go and our orbits occasionally intersect. I’ve tried to find some pattern to it, but with no reliable way to measure time, I’ve had little success.

The last time we met she told me about a room she hadn’t seen before, all white walls, in which a dark-haired woman was contemplating a mirror with a puzzled look. I can’t help but feel this parallels my own situation.”

“Frank sent me this last month. But when I thanked him the next time he called, he didn’t seem to know what I was talking about.” Albert hesitated before taking the room key:

“Great Northern Hotel,” he read, turning it over. “Twin Peaks. Isn’t the front desk going to want this back?”

“Unless I miss my guess, it’s from 1989 when Coop was staying there.”

Albert’s ears stuck out more noticeably, or perhaps it was his face that was thinner. He’d spent the first part of his visit scrutinizing Harry and questioning him about his case and what the doctors were doing for it, until Harry told him to quit it or he’d run out of time to discuss Coop’s disappearance before visiting hours ended, and anyway weren’t Albert’s patients usually dead to begin with?

The trouble with the subsequent discussion was that it went in a circle— the people who’d been present for the 2016 Unknown Event had uncertain memories of what had actually happened; and the people who clearly recalled the 1989 Palmer case as a murder hadn’t been present for the Unknown Event. The one thing that seemed likely was that there was some connection between the 1989 case and the 2016 case, particularly since both had been followed by the unsolved disappearance of one Agent Dale Cooper.

“I hate to say it, Albert, but I’ve given up hope on ever finding Coop.”

“What’s hope got to do with it?” Albert asked. His tone was not sarcastic.

“Diane, I’ve decided that, if only to keep my mind occupied, I will go looking for the white room and the woman with the mirror. I’d feel happier if I had a ball of twine or some breadcrumbs to leave as a trail back to the waiting room, but I’m coming to terms with the idea that’s there’s no advantage to remaining or returning here— it’s not as if I need food or drink in this place, and I cannot be any more lost than I already am.

So far, I believe I’ve walked down five identical red-curtained hallways, and turned left five times. It therefore seems likely that I’m following a counterclockwise, roughly spiral path, although I’m uncertain if I’m proceeding inwards or outwards.”

“If this search is going to require juggling two sets of memories, then I’d better come along so you don’t get brainwashed again.”

“Sheriff Truman, if you haven’t noticed by now, you’re in a cancer hospice.”

“I just finished a round of treatments, I’ve got a couple of weeks free.” Albert snorted and Harry added: “You can monitor my health while we’re on the road.”

“I’m already thinking of your health. You’re immunocompromised, travel is too risky.”

“We’re crossing a few state lines, not going to the other side of the world.”

Albert pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Fine. I’m driving. Which also means I get to choose the music.”

In fact, they went most of the way by plane, after Albert weighed the odds and decided five hours in a tube of recycled air would still be easier on Harry than a two-day road trip. Some of the passengers threw suspicious looks at Harry’s N95 mask, but they’d cleared it in advance with the airline, and Harry had briefly removed it when he went through TSA, and Albert was prepared to flash his FBI badge, but the flight crew were understanding.

They picked up a car at Midland International. Someone, presumably an employee of the car-rental company, had left a bundle of tourist-attraction pamphlets on the front passenger seat.

“According to these, Odessa has replicas of the Globe Theatre and Stonehenge,” Harry observed once he’d got himself settled.

“Why?” Albert asked.

“Got me there. The pamphlets don’t explain the motivation.”

Albert reached up and pulled down the car’s sunshade on Harry’s side, though the Sheriff insisted his cowboy hat was protection enough for his pale scalp:

“We’re not in the northwest where it rains every fifteen minutes,” he muttered, “and I’ve been looking up the side effects of your meds— you sunburn easily now.” Albert’s driving skirted the city, and they did not pass the Globe or Stonehenge.

The Pearblossom Motel, last recorded location of Agent Cooper, proved to be closed down. They’d noticed the papered-over windows as they pulled up, the sign unlit, not even to say NO VACANCY, but Albert got out to knock anyway. Harry watched him from the car; eventually he clambered out and slowly walked over to join him.

Albert was peering through a spot where the paper had torn away behind the window-glass. He stepped aside for Harry, and the sheriff took a look into the motel’s dim interior. He saw an ordinary, rather old-fashioned registration office, wood-grain panelling on the walls along with a few faded posters for local attractions. Rows of keys still hung on a board behind the desk, and a daily calendar read October 15, presumably the date the motel had closed, or the approximate date— Harry could imagine a concierge might not bother to keep tearing off the pages if they knew it was their last week on the job.

“I now realize that despite everything, I’ve still been harbouring hopes of finding my way back to the waiting room, hence my continual choosing of left-hand turns, as if attempting to mathematically navigate a maze. I must make a true leap of faith if intuition is to guide me, so I’ve closed my eyes and spun around several times in this corridor, first clockwise and then counterclockwise.

Now that I no longer can tell which direction I’ve come from… Diane, can you hear that? Of course you can’t, I don’t really have my tape recorder. I’m going to fall silent and listen for a bit.”

There seemed little else of interest at the motel (Harry, feeling a bit silly, had even tried the Great Northern’s room key on all the doors), so they turned back towards Odessa to look for the diner Cooper had been investigating. The motel was only a mile behind when they saw, ahead of them, a tall woman walking along the highway, her fire-engine-red hair, black t-shirt and pencil skirt out of place in a locale that was rural to the point of emptiness. Albert swore under his breath.

“This can’t be a coincidence,” he told Harry. “Roll down your window, I’m pulling over.” But the woman only threw a glance at the car as it slowed, flipped them the bird, and kept walking, though she stepped gingerly and Harry noticed she was barefoot on the asphalt. Albert leant across him and stuck his head out the window:

“Diane!”

“Fuck off, guys. I’m not Diane, and whoever she is I bet she’d tell you the same.” Harry gently pushed Albert back and leant out the window himself:

“Sorry, ma’am, mistaken identity. Are you all right though? I see you’ve mislaid your shoes.”

“Looks like somebody ran off with them,” the woman answered, her tone mocking despite the tired set of her shoulders. “I haven’t been up to anything illegal, officer. Just a bit of fooling around.”

“We can give you a ride into town,” Harry offered. “If it helps, you’ll be alone in the back seat— means you can get the drop on us if you start to feel nervous.”

The woman narrowed her eyes at the offer, then abruptly barked out a laugh and opened the back door of the car, took a seat and folded her long legs in after her. “Only because I need a lift,” she insisted, rubbing her bare feet. “I knew office romances were a bad idea, but he didn’t have to be a dick about it. Nothing to do now but go home and drown my sorrows in Hallowe’en candy.”

“You’ve still got candy left over from Hallowe’en?” In the mirror above the dashboard, Harry saw Albert raise an eyebrow and the woman in the back seat frowned, insulted:

“No! I may not have a maternal bone in my body, but I’m not going to give the trick-or-treaters candy that’s a year old.”

“Ma’am,” Harry asked, thinking about the calendar back in the Pearblossom Motel office, “what date d’you think it is?”

“Mid-October,” she began. Harry saw her reach into her purse with her black-and-white nails and pull out a mobile phone. Her eyes widened at the date: “No, it’s March. The fuck?—” She ran a hand through her scarlet hair. Harry wondered if it was dyed or a wig. Perhaps she was bald too. “Must be losing it. I was so sure it was October. And it’s not like I’ve could’ve been wandering around this desert for five months.” She tapped her phone screen. “5,230 messages?!” She looked frightened now, raising her head to meet their gaze in the mirror. “Where the hell have I been? And you guys— you’re feds, aren’t you?”

“No,” Harry began.

“I am,” said Albert. “He’s not.”

“Well, can you tell me what’s going on? Or is it classified? God, it’s not aliens, is it? I always assumed alien conspiracies were bullshit to cover up real conspiracies.”

“It’s probably not aliens,” Harry answered, unable to keep doubt from his voice as he remembered Major Briggs, “but I afraid it’s not going to sound any less weird.”

“To start with, we’re in the area investigating a colleague who disappeared in October,” began Albert, “and then you turn up, apparently amnesiac since that date.”

“And with my messages unchecked since then.”

“Yes, but there’s another detail— you look exactly like a former colleague of mine who was close to our missing man. That’s why I called you Diane when I slowed down.”

“I need a smoke.”

“No.”

“Albert,” Harry interrupted, “I’ve already got cancer, what’s the worst that can happen?”

“Do you want me to answer that in detail?”

“No I don’t.” Harry turned to look over his shoulder at the woman in the back: “Just roll down your window first.”

“We’ll pull over and she can step away from the car,” said Albert.

He stopped on a shoulder, and their passenger got out and lit a cigarette. Examining the packet, she called to them:

“Three left. That’s fewer than I remember having on me in October, but not by much.” Albert, meanwhile, had pulled a shopping bag from the back seat:

“You should eat something,” he said to Harry, producing a sealed cup of applesauce and a box of plastic spoons. Between rounds of treatment, Harry’s nausea receded, but his appetite was still pretty weak. “There’s saltine crackers, too.” Harry chuckled in spite of himself as he tore the foil off the applesauce:

“This all makes me feel like I’m home from school with the ‘flu.”

“You’ll have to watch Roadrunner cartoons on your own phone, I’m not paying for the data,” Albert snapped.

“I’m surprised we even get reception out here.” The red-haired woman had strolled back to the car with her cigarette, though she took care to stay downwind from Harry’s rolled-down window. “Guys, is it just me or is this highway really deserted— like, Rod-Serling-voiceover deserted?”

“We were just thinking Roadrunner cartoons.”

“Can’t be, there’s no weird rocks.” She flicked ash onto the pavement, “Though it does feel like if someone painted a tunnel entrance on a wall around here, you might be able to drive into it. If you weren’t a coyote.” She took another drag and glanced at the power lines humming above their heads. “Maybe it’s the hum from those wires that’s giving us brain cancer— oh sorry, dude.” She broke off and looked at Harry in apology.

“It’s all right, ma’am,” he said when he’d finished swallowing his mouthful of applesauce. “I’ve got leukaemia, not brain cancer. And the sound from those lines is unpleasant. Like the whine of mosquitoes in the woods.” As he spoke the hum intensified, becoming a loud crackle. Albert glanced up as a shadow fell over the three travellers and their car.

In the sky a dark, nebulous shape twisted, circled, formed a comma or an apostrophe, and dove towards them.

The first few grackles, out of thousands, came down on the roof and hood of the car. Harry could see one pecking at the windscreen and glaring at him with hard yellow eyes. He suddenly remembered Coop had been afraid of birds; until now, he’d never been able to imagine why. He turned and pushed open the back door as the woman dove inside the vehicle. Around them, the flock blotted out the landscape.

“Hope they don’t scratch up the finish,” Albert shouted over the sound of wing-beats, “or I’m not getting my deposit back.”

“Is this nesting season? I mean, are the grackles round here normally this—”

“Oh fuck, one got in!” came a yell from the back seat. Eardrums ringing, Harry turned to see a small black shape ricocheting around the car’s interior as the woman flailed her long, bare arms. The grackle made for the gap between Albert’s seat and headrest.

And got stuck, its beak not quite touching the back of Albert’s neck.

Harry reached for the little feathered body, thinking of how to pin the wings against the bird’s sides to avoid injury to it or the surrounding humans, but the moment his fingers touched it, it crumbled. At the same time the din outside the car ceased.

“That— that’s not natural.” Their passenger was covering her mouth with her hand. Even Albert looked shocked. Harry stared at the palmful of ash that was all that was left of the grackle.

“Let me get a sample bag,” Albert muttered. He pulled out a small clear plastic bag, and held it out while Harry poured the remains in. Then he handed him a packet of wet wipes. “You all right, Diane?” The woman in the back seat did not correct him on the name this time.

“Couple of scratches,” she said, examining her right arm. Albert passed her a mini first-aid kit. Got to give him his dues, he prepares for everything, thought Harry, adjusting the brim of his cowboy hat.

“Y’know,” he said, “This could be a good sign. In that it’s any kind of sign. There’s nothing worse than working in the dark, waiting for some hint you’re getting warmer or colder— that’s the kind of thing makes you wonder if the thing you’re looking for is even out there at all. But this—”

“Someone tipped their hand, you mean, when they tried throwing a Hitchcock movie in our faces,” Albert cut in. “But what exactly did we do to worry them?” His glance, and Harry’s, moved to the dashboard mirror’s reflection of their passenger.

“You think the birds were after me, or wanted to break up our merry band?” She raised an eyebrow. “Trouble is I know a token effort when I see one.”

“Or a warning.”

“We found the Pearblossom Motel;” Harry thought he saw the woman flinch at the name. “And then left it, to head for Odessa.”

“Are you suggesting we drive around in circles and see if they attack again?” Albert muttered.

“I think that’d be a little unfair to our passenger.” Harry turned to her: “Ma’am, I believe Albert when he says he knows you; but I also believe you when you say you don’t remember him. We can drop you anywhere you like— your call.”

“Give me a few minutes, fellas. Given all the weird shit I’ve just been through, I’ve got to think about whether I’m safer away from you two, or sticking close by. Plus I’ve got messages to check.” She took her phone out again. Without taking his eyes off the road, Albert pulled his own phone from his suit jacket, passing it to Harry:

“You’d better check mine. Maybe Tammy’s got some news—she’s been looking up everyone connected with events in Twin Peaks, but not living in the area. She even emailed some couple in Japan, though I’m still not sure what they’ve got to do with this.”

Harry peered at Albert’s phone screen, occasionally commenting if something looked to be of interest:

“Gordon’s sent a grudging OK, tells you to be careful. Also tells you to look after me. I’d always imagined he’d type in uppercase— didn’t realize it was him at first. Hm. Do you know a coroner?”

“I know lots of coroners, we get together for an annual poker tournament and lucky draw. And when I say draw…”

“Do you know a Dr. Talbot in Buckhorn?” Harry interrupted. “Autopsied a headless body last September that turned out to be Major— wait, he— is this one of those revised timeline things?”

“Not exactly.” Albert brought Harry up to date as best he could on Major Briggs’ disappearance and decades-later reappearance. “I certainly remember meeting Constance,” he added, after a pause, and cleared his throat again. “According to Tammy, I made a favourable impression on her, which is… unusual among my acquaintances, even those who share my profession. So what does she have to say?”

“Something about a wedding ring and Schrödinger’s Cat?” Harry looked at the message again. “She says Tammy spoke to her, and was going to contact you too… a gold ring they found on Briggs… sorry, in Briggs… keeps disappearing from her office’s records and the FBI’s evidence files, then coming back again?”

Albert frowned in thought as he drove: “Does it have anything engraved on it?” Harry tapped a message on the phone screen, CC-ing Constance and Tammy.

Outside the car, suburbs, or at least car dealerships and big-box stores, were beginning to sprout up along the highway.

Albert’s phone pinged and Harry read the message from Constance:

“Yes, scribbled it down last time I could find the record. This ring any (wedding) bells? TO DOUGIE, WITH LOVE, JANEY-E”

“Janey-E,” said Diane from the back seat, and Harry heard her drop her phone. Turning around he saw her wringing her hands, the nails now robin’s-egg blue. “Albert,” she gasped, “Oh, Albert, I was almost lost again.”

“I believe the change in method may have led to a breakthrough: I haven’t found any rooms leading off of the corridor I’m following, but the decor has gradually changed from black-and-white flooring and red curtains, to dark brown linoleum flooring and institutional green walls hung with large relief maps of different parts of the world. The maps appear to have been manufactured some time between 1954 and 1965, as they show North and South Vietnam as separate nations. I’m just passing the continent of Antarctica, now, and… oh. I think there might be…

Diane, I found the white room, and when I call it that, I’m not simply echoing Laura’s name for it. It was like a cross between a sanatorium and a snow cave, if a snow cave had furniture. There was a bed with white blankets and a white metal frame like a hospital bed. Audrey was sitting on one end of it, wrapped in a white bathrobe and looking at a round mirror that stood on a little white table. She turned as I entered, and her face was older, drawn and, for a moment, frightened. Then she looked at me again and relaxed, saying ‘Oh, it’s really you.’ I fear she must have met one of my nastier doppelgängers at some point.”

At Diane’s request, they stopped to eat at a fast-food chain before approaching the diner Coop had been investigating in at least one timeline.

“I’m hungry, but I’d be too nervous to eat at the place where Dale might have… well, if they’re a front for something, then the food’s either spectacular or terrible, and I’m not feeling lucky right now. I want to be someplace as bland and mundane as possible for a while, so I can regroup.”

“Well this place has a twenty-minute limit.” Albert jerked his thumb at the sign.

“That’ll do.” Diane curled up beside Harry in the booth as Albert went up to the counter to place their orders. She still wore her pencil skirt, but on on of their stops she’d purchased tennis shoes and a couple of fresh t-shirts— the one she was wearing at the moment read NOT TODAY in flowery letters. “Now he’s got two of us to worry about,” she said under her breath. Harry decided to reply:

“Someone needs to worry about him.” Diane nodded, and Harry offered his hand: “Sorry, we never did the proper introductions did we? Harry S. Truman.”

“I know.” Her expression relaxed slightly. “I see why he likes you.”

“Not sure Albert likes anybody, exactly—”

“That’s not who I was talking about.”

Albert returned with a eye-searingly-orange plastic tray:

“Mushroom burger, cheeseburger, buttered biscuit for you, Harry, because they can’t just serve toast like a real restaurant and those things they claim are bagels are made out of lies.”

“Don’t worry Albert, I’ll survive a biscuit.” Harry picked up one half of the baked item and took a bite. It wasn’t too bad, actually.

“Diane, the ring that jogged your memory—”

“My half-sister and her husband. Don’t ask me how they’d be mixed up in this though, Janey-E’s aggressively normal.”

“And her husband?”

“Never actually met him. Janey-E and I don’t talk much,” she explained. “But from her comments he’s… passively normal. Works for an insurance company, drinks too much sometimes, the whole man-in-the-gray-flannel-suit thing.”

“I’ve been talking with Audrey, or the version of her that existed in the white room. You’ll notice I use the past tense. Still sitting on the bed, she raised a finger and pointed to the mirror in front of her, saying:

‘The other me— she ran away from home, like she thought Laura had done. I’m amazed she survived her first year in the big city, but look:’

Diane, I saw Audrey searching records online, tailing suspects, testifying in civil and sometimes criminal courts. It’s a life that can make a cynic of the kindest soul, but there are situations the police don’t or can’t investigate, and those were— are, I suppose— Audrey’s bread and butter, in that mirror world. And they seem to pay well enough she can afford to do some pro bono cases.

‘I wish I were out there,’ she said, and the mirror clouded and shifted. She  patted the bedspread, and I sat down beside her. ‘You know how,’ she began, ‘when you’re a kid, and you’re reading your favourite book, and a little after the halfway point, you start to think ‘I’m getting near the end of the book?’ And really, you’re not— there are pages and pages left of scenes and pictures. You’re always surprised just how much more there is. But it’s not enough to shake the feeling it’s putting off the inevitable. Dawdling before bedtime.’ She stood up suddenly, bent and kissed me on the brow. ‘Say hello to the other me, if you ever run into her.’ And then she was gone, Diane. Not in flame or fadeout, just gone.”

I look up, and Laura is beside me.

The diner, when they found it, was not what Harry’d pictured. Instead of a lonely Edward Hopper tableau, or a grimy spoon where toughs whispered to each other along the lunch counter and cast knowing glances in the direction of the men’s room, “Wispy Dreams Cafe” was a blandly cheerful donut shop, the logo rather obviously altered from that of a national chain.

“Looks like they’re under new management.” Diane observed as they got out of the car. “Or else they got tired of paying for the franchise?” The three of them made their way across the parking lot the cafe shared with the landscaping company next door. Inside, the sound of chattering customers and a hum from the coffee machine both soothed and overwhelmed. Harry steadied himself against a gleaming, cream-colored formica counter. The woman on the other side— not a fresh-faced high-school senior or a kindly-faced matron, just a woman with her hair in a ponytail and circles under her eyes, doing her best to smile— threw him a glance and Harry nodded.

“I’m ok. Albert, Diane, what do you two want?”

A couple of minutes later, they sat by the window, feigning interest in their donuts and coffee.

“Well, we’re living the cop cliché,” whispered Albert. “So, what do you think? Soulless suburban hangout, or den of villainy?”

Harry gingerly sipped the brew in his cardboard cup and eyed the other customers. You couldn’t say the place wasn’t busy; the woman at the counter had already served a family of four in the time it had taken Harry, Albert and Diane to seat themselves with their coffees, and another customer had just come in the door.

“That counter’s been installed recently. Deep-fat fryer’s been replaced too.”

“And they don’t know how to use it yet. You could wax skis with these donuts. That’s hardly a crime, though.” Diane looked around at the blue and yellow walls painted with large trompe l’oeil sprinkles. “Doesn’t seem to be anything else funny about the place— I hate to say it but this place might be legit.”

Harry watched the new customer lean in to the counter. Harry couldn’t quite make out what he was saying— presumably the man was placing his order, but it seemed to be taking a while and there was something tense in the woman’s expression. Beside him he heard Diane swear under her breath, and faster than he could turn his head, his peripheral vision took in that she was getting up. She strode towards the counter and Harry had a glimpse of the angry red scratch on her arm as he struggled to his feet.

Diane was leaning on the counter now, trying to insert herself between the customer and the worker.

“What did you just say to her?” she was asking.

“Look, I come in here all the time, we joke around. What makes you think it’s your fucking business?”

“What seems to be the trouble?” Harry loomed up behind the customer— he might have only half his usual strength but he was still a good six inches taller than the other man. Behind him, he guessed, Albert was approaching. Harry knew the agent was unwilling to use physical force and not exactly skilled at defusing situations through diplomacy, so he turned his gaze on the customer with all the quiet confidence he’d used as Sheriff. In his ear Diane hissed:

“It’s nothing to do with the case, this asshole’s just creeping on the staff.” She must’ve locked eyes with the man too, for he was staring at her now, his bland pink features shifting expression from anger to terrified fascination.

Rather an unimpressive face, thought Harry, and then, what’s Diane doing? He turned to look at her sharp, smiling profile, and saw a tear slide from her eye.

“No,” she said loudly and abruptly, and blinked hard. “Do you want us to escort him out?” she asked the woman behind the counter; but the man was already out the door and running for his car.

“Diane,” Harry whispered.

“Diane,” whispered Albert. Diane was passing one hand across her eyes.

“I could have fried him. Just now. Something wanted me to; but I just wanted him to back off.” She beamed at them as Albert held out an arm for her to steady herself. “I think I’m back to normal. Well, normal for me.”

“Are we the only two left here now?”

“I’m not even here anymore.”

“I don’t know how to get back to the waiting room.”

“It doesn’t matter, the coffee’s cold.”

Somehow, the white room has become even more featureless, despite that being both a logical and a grammatical impossibility. Only the bed, the table and Audrey’s mirror remain. A moment in the glass catches my eye, and I look to see— oh Diane, I’m so glad you escaped! I see you travelling with Albert, and… oh, Harry…

…the cafe’s fluorescent lights flickered as the background hum, noticeable since their arrival, now rose to an ear-splitting volume then died away just as suddenly. As the three of them looked on, an old-fashioned hospital bed, its steel frame painted white, materialized between the counter and the booths, replacing two unoccupied tables. At one end of it sat Agent Dale Cooper, fully dressed in his suit and tie, a look on his face of mild surprise that turned to the familiar joy as his gaze met theirs. Coop had grown older like the rest of them, sharper angles in his face, but he looked hale and well, and his eyes did not have the cruel gleam that chilled Harry’s memories of their last meeting.

“Harry,” he said, as though a quarter-century hadn’t passed. In response Harry silently doffed his cowboy hat, revealing his pallor, his naked scalp. Coop’s smiled wavered a little. “I’m sorry I was gone so long,” he whispered, and rose from the white bed. In the background, the cafe staff and patrons continued to chat and serve and drink and eat coffee and donuts as if nothing out of the ordinary was going on right in front of them. Albert made a hesitant noise in his throat and Coop raised his hand in that just a moment gesture he always used to make, and in that moment Harry knew his friend really was back from wherever he’d been all those years.

“Apologies for being brusque,” Coop said, “but there’s a family in Las Vegas who I’ve reason to believe are in danger right now—”

“Janey-E?” Diane asked.

“Right on the button. For personal reasons which I’ll explain later, I can’t get in touch with them myself. The Mitchell brothers might be able to help, but I don’t know how much they’ll be able to recall of our last meeting.”

“Tammy and Constance are already on it.”

“Good,” Coop looked relieved, and Harry stepped forward, shaking a little in spite of himself, and as if the motion had at last given him permission, Coop sailed forward and embraced him— very gently, as if he feared Harry might break. He’s gauging by touch how much weight I’ve lost, thought Harry, but it’s all right. He’d forgotten how warm Coop was. He became aware of Albert and Diane joining in, arms circling his shoulders and Coop’s. If I died right here and now, it’d be all right.

But this embrace was not an epitaph, or an epilogue. Outside, somewhere else in the city, was an imitation of an ancient stone monument; and a copy of an old theatre where real audiences watched real actors. Somewhere the forces that had sent the dark cloud of grackles prepared another attack, and somewhere Tammy Preston was moving to protect Janey-E and Dougie Jones. Elsewhere Audrey Horne walked the mean streets and was not herself mean. This was an interlude, but let them have it for a while.

A couple of patrons turned their heads to smile at the reunion going in their midst.

[devhak22]

Asylum

Written by Madeleine Roux

ISBN: 978-0-06-222097-4

This is a dark, gripping novel, and a quick read. A group of students are taking pre-college summer courses near a small town in New Hampshire. The main campus is closed down for renovations so their summer is spent in the dormatories of an old psychiatric hospital, where the situation gradually becomes increasily creepy, bizarre, and dangerous.

This is my first time reading any work by this author, and I definitely want to continue reading the series. I had accurately guessed the perpetrator around 3/4 into the story, but it is written well enough that I still questioned my own suspicion. And, somewhat ironically, this book found its way into my possession in a strange way as well. I found it in a patch of hedges which I was trimming during a lightly rainy work day....

Notable quotations:

"Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there,

Wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams

No mortal ever dreamed before"

~Edgar Allen Poe, p. 3.

"Listen, I'm not much of a wingman. You might have better luck chasing girls on your own." ~ Dan Crawford, p. 20.

"Can you imagine doing this every day?" Dan said.

"Picking classes? No, it's exhausting." Abby slipped her course catalog back into her patchwork messenger bag.

"No, I mean 'this'. Walking around campus on a nice day with kids who actually want to be here, going to classes you actually want to take."

~ Abby & Dan, p. 57.

"Fresh air always clears my thoughts. I hope it does the same for you." ~ Felix, p. 62.

"Dan got a weird email, but when he went to read it, it was gone. Doctor stuff, patient report or something like that."

Dan bristled.

"Maybe it's a data ghost," Jordan said.

"What's a data ghost?" Dan asked.

"It's like a fragment of human consciousness that gets stuck in a piece of technology even after the person's dead . . . a bit of soul trying to reach out before it's gone for good. It can communicate, but only for a little while before it starts going haywire and degrading."

~ Abby, Jordan, and Dan, p. 95-6.

'In a mad world, only the mad are sane' ~ p. 212.

"I can walk there myself."

'Here we go again'. . . . Dan braced himself for the blowup.

But Abby ignored the tone. "I know you can, stupid, you've got legs. But let's go together anyway. Nobody should be alone tonight."

~ Abby & Dan, p. 227.

[kclenhartnovels]

Monsters and Abominations

[Content warning for a lot of gore. Werewolves ahead. Previous ]

For the first time in almost 150 years, the Monster of Morbach was awake.

He stepped over the broken glass, pacing towards the edge of the city filled with sleeping promise. The forests of Germany had been dark and deep, but here the city lights pooled, spreading to erase every corner he may use as his haunt. It was too much like the torches kept burning in hunting lodges, too much like a mimic of the beckoning full moon. He stood under the first pale street lamp he came across, and with a growl the shadows twisted off of his rough fur, curling around the bulb until it sparked and popped. Like a ricochet off a silver bullet, the street lights all down the strip burst, fizzling the road into complete darkness. He looked up the curve of one tall building to his right, and one by one the lights blinked out, arching up all ten floors. The moon hung lower over the city, the blackout rolled, and for the first time in years the stars hung so bright overhead they seemed close enough to touch. The silken stretch of the milky way yawned, car engines died in the middle of the street, cell phones refused to light, all back-up batteries failed, and the city hung suspended in the absolute night.

The Monster of Morbach was ready to hunt.

Gone were the wooden doors and thick-paned windows the monster was used to, gone were the men with swords and silver-tipped arrows, but what remained was the acrid scent of fear. People woke and cowed at the impossible dark, hair prickling at the backs of their necks, instincts long-sleeping jerking to high alert. The darkness brought moonlight and monsters.

The darkness brought howling death.

The pop of the streetlights woke Eve first, startled from restless dreams and sending Prince spilling to the floor with a yowl. She jerked upright, holding her face in one hand and listening to the dull crackle of the electric death rippling down the street. She swore under her breath, flinging off the blankets. What was it this time? A mage losing control of his magic, a demon with a revenge plan, or Michael throwing another temper tantrum?

Or, with the way her feathers prickled, and Prince's tail puffed to twice its normal size, was this something far worse?

She threw on clothes enough to combat the chill of early fall, pausing a long moment in front of her cabinet of weaponry. Not knowing what lay in the yawning dark, she probably should have loaded up, but there was nothing that could do better than her bare palms anyway. She tucked a knife into her belt, slung an oversized coat over her back, and stepped outside.

The air still crackled with anticipation, and here and there down the street she could see others stepping to the threshold, peering out of their door frames but hardly daring to step onto the streets made so unfamiliar by the moonlight. She shut the pawn shop door behind her, the usual neon sign giving no light, and even the little bell above the door refusing to chime.

The air crackled, and smelled of blood.

“Go back inside,” she snapped at a neighbor in passing, walking as briskly as she dared towards where the smell was stronger, where even the moon and starlight didn't seem to reach.

“What is it, Miss Eve?”

“Go back inside!”

The slam of a door promised at least someone listened to her. Tension shot down her back, and she broke into a run within a block. Each ragged breath brought the scent of more blood, blood and old earth, blood and moonlight, blood and iron and the promise of salvation, or the promise of death. It smelled like the monastery in France, both before and after the war leveled it to ruin.

“Emeric.” She stopped outside of a club, absolute blackness beyond its broken door. By the cars in the adjacent lot, the club was packed, but no noise and no music spilled beyond the entrance that now yawned like a toothy mouth. A glowstick, cracked but emitting no light, splattered with blood, rolled out of the doorway, stopping only when it hit the toe of her boot.

“Emeric! Are you in there?” she called, stepping past the threshold at last, wishing she had thought to bring a flashlight at least, though she doubted it would work. The darkness growled absolute, and from somewhere in its swirling domain, she heard movement. Or, rather, she heard the wet slick and crunch of tearing flesh, of bones breaking, of a body being pulled and torn, and she could  only hope based on the quiet that they were already dead. “Emeric!”

“Abomination.” The voice that answered was not her friend, not the hunter, not even the boy that she nursed back to health time and time again. It was the deep guttural growl of a beast, though one that cooed with curiosity. “Abomination, I had been watching you from the shadows for so long. Now, I can finally see you in the flesh.”

She took another step forward, jerking her foot back as soon as it hit something soft and wet. “Let me see you, then. I don't think we've met.”

“Not like this, we have not,” the monster agreed, and the darkness shifted all around them, crawling along Eve's skin like the tickle of spider's legs. One of the lights above them flickered, then slowly faded to half its normal life, offering Eve a dim pool. Directly underneath it she could see no beast, but she could also see no dance floor, nothing but a heap of blood and bodies, so entangled and torn it was impossible to tell where one began and another ended, nothing but a decoration of viscera. Eve felt her stomach in her throat, and she clapped a hand over her mouth, bracing her legs to keep herself as steady as she could.

The beast chuckled, the sound shaking the walls, making the corpses twitch and the shadows twist. She felt the air crackle across her skin, the sensation of spider's legs deepening to the rake of teasing claws, until red lines appeared in parallel marks on her arms. When she held her ground still, the chuckle turned into a huff of approval.

“Emeric always crowed of your bravery,” the monster went on, “but I thought it as exaggerated as his normal beliefs. Belief that he was not really cursed. Belief that he could be saved. Belief that he had killed me.” At last, the darkness parted, and the beast stepped into the light. Once-gray fur was completely coated in red, dripping blood and shadows alike, and despite the claws and the mouth full of teeth and ragged bits of flesh, the wolf appeared relaxed, possibly even amused. “He may have severed the head of Thomas, but the beast will never die. It is an unbreakable curse. Just like yours, Abomination.”

“There is one way to break your curse,” she said quietly, but kept her hands tightly curled into fists, digging her fingers into her palms, threatening to break the skin even past the leather of her gloves.

“There is,” he agreed, almost purring, stepping across the pile of bodies and moving closer to her. Even at a distance he loomed, twice her breadth and at least a foot and a half taller, but he seemed to be hunching, as if he could possibly make himself less intimidating. “But you would also kill your little hunter. Are you prepared to let him go as well, Abomination? After all these years, can you kill him with your bare hands, and lay him to rest in the church beside your other lovers?” He stopped in front of her at last, his hot breath washing over her face, his smile all fangs and darkness.

“Or you could let go. Sleep again.” She tilted her chin as if she could possibly meet his eyes, the yellow heat like a burning sun. “Let me give you the medicine. Let both of you live.”

“Abomination,” the beast crooned, leaning forward to press his muzzle against her neck, breathing in deeply. Her pulse jumped, teeth scraped over her throat, and she did not move, no matter how her hands shook, refusing to uncurl from fists. “Abomination, why do you care so much for the mortals spinning at the edges of your life? You know they all will all die, one day or another. They will all fail you, disappoint you, leave you lonely and aching and wanting for a different life.” His hands cradled her arms, claws tracing over the red marks the shadows had left behind. “There is another way. Let go. Their lives are pitiful, and not worth your pain. Let me take the pain away.” He nosed against her ear, and she felt blood slide down the side of her neck, hot and dark as the swirling shadows that pulsed in closer and closer with each hitching breath. “Come with me.”

Eve lifted her hands at last, burying her fingers into the fur around his ears, her gloves protecting him from inevitable, shrieking death. She pressed her forehead against his bloody muzzle, leaning her weight on him instead of trusting her own legs to support her. “Have Emeric ask me,” she whispered.

The beast huffed a laugh. “Emeric is weak. He is a crying, sniveling little hunter who hides behind crosses. He hides behind you. He is unworthy of the love you give him.”

“Have Emeric ask me,” she repeated, firmer despite the crack in her voice. She tugged at the silky hair at the base of his ears, finding the soft fur not matted with blood. “If he asks me to leave with you, then we shall run far away from here, and you can sate your blood lust on wild creatures. We'll go where the forest is so thick, you'll never need to see the light but for the moon and the stars.”

“The moon, the stars, and your eyes, Abomination. Emeric is unworthy.” The beast smiled again, the click of his fangs still so near to her throat. “I will stalk the forests with you, but those that live near its edge shall know fear. They shall hear my howls and tremble, and they shall see you walk in the sun and think you an angel of death, an omen of doom. Abomination, beloved, I do not ask you to shirk the world. Come live as an eternal queen, watch the mortal lives flicker and fade, and be not troubled.”

“I am troubled.” She rubbed her thumbs against the outer shell of his ear, tugging his head slightly to one side. “Let me speak to Emeric.”

“Abomination,” he growled, “you are tiresome.”

“Stubborn,” she corrected. She could feel the dark slick of blood starting to seep into the leather of her boots. “But I will not go with you without speaking to him.”

His claws bit into her arms, blood welling but not spilling over. “And what if I stole you away like the wives of old?”

“You would be dead long before we were wed.”

The monster laughed, and even the shadows rippled with merriment. “Had you a womb to hold children, I would love to see the beasts of children we would make, Abomination.” His grip on her soothed, and he licked the blood from her neck with a low growl. “So you asked, so you shall receive. Have your words with the hunter, but make them brief. My hunger is not so quickly sated, not after so many years contained.”

“I shall take as many words as I like,” Eve whispered, wishing there was as much conviction in her voice as there was in her fingers, wound tightly into his fur.

For a moment, the lights all returned. The club lit up in a myriad of colors, lights dancing across the corpses that stretched from corner to corner, draped over the bar and tables, parts littered amongst the shattered glass and spilled liquor. From the narrow stage at front, the DJ was quartered across his equipment, headphones still delicately balanced despite missing half of his face. The wolf trembled, and sank into a crouch, pulling Eve down with him. She knelt on the curved spine of a young woman, the exposed bone biting into her knees.

“Eve,” Emeric whispered, his voice thin through the toothy muzzle. “Eve, I can't fight him.”

“Shhh,” she soothed, running her hands up the sides of his face, running her thumb beneath his golden eyes. “Emeric, what can I do to stop him? You have to tell me. I have more of the medicine at home, but I don't know if I can get there without leaving a trail of corpses in our wake. Can you keep him back for awhile? Can you hold him?”

A sob choked the deep chest, and he wrapped his strong arms around Eve's waist. “I can't. He's too strong. Don't let him loose, Eve. Don't go with him. Kill me. Kill him. Please.”

Eve didn't answer; the lights vanished again, and she was left in an ocean of darkness.

The beast lifted her back to her feet, steadying her on their empire of carcasses. “Well?” he crooned, hands on her hips, muzzle pressed to her cheek, as if they were dancing alone in the club, swaying slightly to the sound of the beckoning moonlight. “What did you decide, Abomination?”

Mouth dry, heart pounding, beating, breaking, she pressed her hands against the sides of his face. “I will go with you.”

[organcollecting-corvid]

i'm gonna pretend you didn't swear at/insult me in russian anyways check this out

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,

Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—

While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,

As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—

Only this and nothing more.”

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December;

And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.

Eagerly I wished the morrow;—vainly I had sought to borrow

From my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost Lenore—

For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore—

Nameless here for evermore.

And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain

Thrilled me—filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;

So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating

“’Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door—

Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door;—

This it is and nothing more.”

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,

“Sir,” said I, “or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;

But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,

And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,

That I scarce was sure I heard you”—here I opened wide the door;—

Darkness there and nothing more.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,

Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;

But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,

And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, “Lenore?”

This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, “Lenore!”—

Merely this and nothing more.

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,

Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.

“Surely,” said I, “surely that is something at my window lattice;

Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore—

Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore;—

’Tis the wind and nothing more!”

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,

In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore;

Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;

But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door—

Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door—

Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,

By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,

“Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,” I said, “art sure no craven,

Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore—

Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!”

Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,

Though its answer little meaning—little relevancy bore;

For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being

Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door—

Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,

With such name as “Nevermore.”

But the Raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only

That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.

Nothing farther then he uttered—not a feather then he fluttered—

Till I scarcely more than muttered “Other friends have flown before—

On the morrow he will leave me, as my Hopes have flown before.”

Then the bird said “Nevermore.”

Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,

“Doubtless,” said I, “what it utters is its only stock and store

Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster

Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore—

Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore

Of ‘Never—nevermore’.”

But the Raven still beguiling all my fancy into smiling,

Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust and door;

Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking

Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore—

What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore

Meant in croaking “Nevermore.”

This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing

To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom’s core;

This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining

On the cushion’s velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o’er,

But whose velvet-violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o’er,

She shall press, ah, nevermore!

Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer

Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor.

“Wretch,” I cried, “thy God hath lent thee—by these angels he hath sent thee

Respite—respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore;

Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!”

Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil!—

Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,

Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted—

On this home by Horror haunted—tell me truly, I implore—

Is there—is there balm in Gilead?—tell me—tell me, I implore!”

Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil!

By that Heaven that bends above us—by that God we both adore—

Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,

It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore—

Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore.”

Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

“Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!” I shrieked, upstarting—

“Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore!

Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!

Leave my loneliness unbroken!—quit the bust above my door!

Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!”

Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting

On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;

And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming,

And the lamp-light o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;

And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor

Shall be lifted—nevermore!

Claude said my eyes were wheezer blue

Marybeth often says she worries I have pica

[gzdude13]

The Stalker and the Closet by GZDude13

If you’re reading this then it means I’m already dead… mom, dad… I’m sorry…

Here I am rotting in a jail cell, but despite everything, I am about to admit I want you to know that I am actually not the bad guy in this story. This is not a confession to the brutal murder of Shelly, this is an explanation as to what I know but can’t say in court. I loved Shelly, even though she didn’t really know I existed. That’s why I would follow her to work every day and watch her through her window at night while hiding in the bushes. Yes, that’s creepy, yes, I watched her in her most private moments alone, and yes, I was stalking her in real life and online, but I’ll talk more on that later…

I have to make this absolutely clear… I didn’t hurt her. We first met in high school. I was getting bullied and picked on as usual. I was shorter than the average high schooler and I was a bit more socially awkward than most people, but dammit I was still a fucking person! Shelly Mary Jones was the only person that seemed to know this. She was popular, but not because she was a bitch, or because she flaunted how beautiful she was with her bright red hair and freckled skin. She was popular because she was kind. The only person that was ever kind to me. Besides my parents anyway…

She put an end to my bullying and looked at me as if I was a real person, not like something unpleasant you find under your shoe. I wasn’t very good at talking to girls, shoot I wasn’t very good at talking to people. So naturally, I had no real way I could tell her how I felt for her. So instead I resorted to stalking her. I didn’t start watching her sleep until after we graduated and I learned where she lived when she threw a graduation party at her new house. Her parents gave her a new house as a high school graduation gift. Honestly, she deserved it. She graduated top of our class, you know?

I went to the same local college she did and tried to get the same classes she did just to be close to her. I followed her on social media and found out where she worked and that she was part of a local softball team that played every summer. I attended all of her games. And then I started spying on her at her house… looking through her windows and hiding in the bushes. I know what you’re thinking. I’m a pig, I’m a creep, a disgusting little pervert. Yeah, yeah… I’ve heard it all before. I don’t deny it, but I’m not the one who killed her!

Being her stalker I can confidently say that I knew her better than most people. I noticed that during her last few weeks before… she died… that she seemed slightly off at night. I think she was having nightmares, but I wasn’t sure yet. I planned on sneaking into her house one day and reading her journal, but I never had the guts to do it even though I already knew where she kept her spare key, hidden under a flowerpot in her backyard. One night after Shelly finished her usual routine of having dinner, showering, writing in her journal, then going to bed I stayed and watched her as I always did, only this time I stayed a little bit longer.

As she finished her nightly routine I moved from one window to the next. From the kitchen window on the north side of the house where she prepared and ate dinner to the small east side bathroom window to watch her shower, then to the spare bedroom window just a bit over to watch her walk to her bedroom. All the while she would keep looking over her shoulder. I almost thought she was catching on to me, maybe suspected that someone was watching her, but that wasn’t it. I was too careful, too silent and stealthy. Something seemed off about her and I wish I could have asked her what was bothering her so much. She hadn’t posted anything on any of her social media platforms so this really stood out to me.

When I moved over to her bedroom window in the south side of her house I made sure to take my time getting there. The neighbor’s dog barks if it hears any bit of noise so stealth was absolutely crucial during that transition. The landscapers recently removed one of the bushes in her backyard so it made it easier for me to make my way over quietly. I always made sure to brush away any footprints I left in the dirt every night as I was leaving. When I reached her window I cautiously peered in as I’d done countless times before and saw her searching through her walk-in closet. This was a new part of her routine, or maybe this was something she always did but I never saw it because the bush I mentioned would slow me down too much. Either way, it was strange and out of character for her.

On her nightstand, she now had a flashlight and a kitchen knife and by her bed, there was one of her softball bats. Shelly was scared of something which made me think that maybe she suspected that someone was watching her. But she didn’t check her window, only her closet. She wrote in her journal and would stop from time to time to look up and over to the closed closet door, almost as if she expected someone to be watching her from there. Finally, she closed her journal and put it away in her bedside drawer. I longed to get my hands on it and read her most private thoughts. Maybe she had an older journal, one from high school, maybe she wrote about me in it. I really hope she did.

But that didn’t matter; I stayed by her window and watched her sleep. Usually, I called it quits after midnight or one in the morning. She usually turned out the lights at 10:00 pm sharp, but this time she left her desk lamp on. This was also out of character for her, but honestly, I was very grateful for it. The soft yellow glow of the dim light made it easier to see her beautiful red hair neatly brushed after her shower. It made it easier to snap a few pictures for my collection too. Her fair and freckled skin almost seemed to glow brighter than the light and I could see her beautiful face clearly through my camera lens as she lay there peacefully trying to sleep.

I think she drifted off into deep sleep around 11:15 and by then she had rolled over and the comforter had fallen off. Her desk lamp flickered a little just before midnight as I continued to watch her sleep. She looked so beautiful as she slept, but I could see that she wasn’t sleeping quite so well. She tossed and turned a lot and her face was slightly contorted as if she was having a bad dream. I remember wishing I could climb in through her window and comfort her as she slept, but I knew that wasn’t a good idea. As she tossed and turned her desk lamp flickered a bit more.

She settled and went back to a silent slumber up until a few minutes after 3:00 am. Her blankets now lay on the floor and the desk lamp continued to flicker. Despite the strange strobe effect that her lamp was emitting she remained sound asleep. But something seemed off, something was different in her room. Scanning the area I saw that her closet door was slightly ajar. I’m sure Shelly closed it before bed, in fact, I’m 110% sure she did because she searched it and that was really out of the ordinary for her. I watched in silence trying to find a rational explanation or ounce of doubt as to why the door was now open.

Before my mind could come up with an answer the door opened up a little wider. Even though the desk lamp was flickering on and off it still should have shined some light into her closet. I should have seen her rows of sundresses and flowery shirts from the foot wide open gap in the door. But all I saw was darkness. To my horror though, the next few seconds slowed down into ages as I watched a largely clawed appendage as black as the darkness in that closet itself grip the upper part of the door.

A tall black mass took as step out of her closet. It looked like a solid patch of black smoke with hooved legs and long clawed hands! I should have yelled, I should have taken out my phone and called the police, but instead, I stood there in horror of what I was seeing. There were no eyes on the black smoky mass, but it was obvious that it was looking at Shelly. The strobe light effect made that monster look as if it was teleporting closer and closer to Shelly’s bed. My bladder let go and I felt the warm piss trickle down my leg. It was enough to wake me from my fear paralysis, I had to do something, I had to save Shelly!

I struggled to pull my phone out of my pocket and instead only dropped my camera, then in my panic dropped my phone in the dirt as well. Finally, I did the only thing I could do, I slapped my hands on the window glass hard and Shelly finally stirred from her sleep while the black mass turned in my direction. For the first time, I could see two shiny glints like black fire glass and I knew those were it’s eyes! Eyes that were looking at me now! I think I screamed or maybe it was Shelly’s scream, I don’t know because I ran out of the bushes and around her house. I careened into her trashcans spilling their contents into the street.

I struggled to get back on my feet not caring that I made a ton of noise. The dog was barking and I didn’t know what to do. I ran back to Shelly’s window only to find that it was pitch black, like her closet. She was screaming bloody murder and all I could do was watch! A spark of crazy courage took hold of me and I attempted to open Shelly’s window. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do, but it didn’t matter. To my surprise her window budged and I was able to pull it up enough to get my hand under and get a better grip. Shelly continued to scream and I could hear an ungodly growling and ripping sound just beneath it.

Just as the window finally gave way and it was wide enough to crawl through those black eyes appeared right at the window. Two clawed arms reached out after me. It happened so fast that at the time I didn’t feel the pain as I yanked my arm away and one of the claws sliced my wrist. This time I know I screamed as I ran away. A few porch lights came on while I ran towards my waiting car at the end of the block. Later on, that very day police came to my parent’s house and raided my room. They found me hiding under my bed, but not because I was hiding from them.

They showed me pictures of the crime scene. My camera and phone were found in Shelly’s backyard just under her bedroom window where I dropped them, my fingerprints were found all over her bedroom window, my shoe prints all around the outside of her house, DNA samples just outside her bathroom window, and blood at her windowsill. I already know my DNA will be a match, but what am I supposed to tell them? I loved Shelly, I couldn’t hurt her, I’d never do anything to harm her. The pictures of the crime scene were a bloody blasphemy on Shelly’s true beauty. The police told me that witnesses saw me running away from her house.

I can’t prove that what I saw was real, but I swear I’m innocent of the crime I’m being accused of. All I did was try to help her! I loved her! You gotta believe me! Whatever it is that killed Shelly is in her closet! It was the monster in her closet! I swear it wasn’t me! I didn’t do it! I didn’t hurt Shelly!

I think I can see those same black glints of evil in the shadows now. I made a noose from my blankets and I plan on ending my life before it comes for me too. I’m sorry mom and dad. I know I’m a disappointment to you both…

[pocketfulofshards]

Dream Writing Exercise

Because sometimes my dreams make for a crazy story.

I woke up, lying on a cold floor, and almost immediately a sharp pain seared through my skull. I tentatively reached a hand to the back of my head to touch the offending area, and I flinched when I felt the hair matted by blood around what felt like a rapidly swelling goose egg. I pulled myself to a sitting position, taking in my surroundings. Black plastic sacks, metal drums, and cold gray walls surrounded me, the only light streaming in from a small circular window. A porthole? I wondered, slowly rising to my feet. I was instantly yanked down to the floor again. A young woman with fearful brown eyes was grasping my hand, her light brown skin cast with a sickly pallor.

"They will see you!" she hissed, but even as she spoke her words were a weak whisper.

She dropped her hand to her side, clearly exhausted. I scanned her body. There were no signs of outward injury, but her eyes were ringed with dark circles, and a few tendrils of brown hair had escaped a messy ponytail to cling to her sweaty brow.

"What happened to you? Where am I?" I whispered to her, taking her cue to not alert whoever it was that had her so terrified.

"We're still on the military ship, Raven...we got captured. They injected all of us with the experimental serum, but you fought back and they struck you over the head and left you to die. Don't you remember?"

I shook my head. She had called me Raven, and she had rested her hand on my forearm with a friendly familiarity.

"I'm sorry," I began slowly, taking a deep breath, "but do I know you?" Her eyes widened, lips parting as she gasped. "Raven, it's me. Priya. We've been friends, served together in the rebellion…for years."

I shook my head slightly, my mind spinning as I tried to recall her face.

"I'm sorry…perhaps the injury…" I gestured to the lump on my skull.

"You may have lost your memories," she finished, shoulders drooping.

"I –” I stopped. I didn't know what to say. I now had more questions than answers, and wasn't sure where to start. Luckily, Priya spoke first.

"Listen, Raven. I'm dying. The others have already succumbed." She gestured to the black plastic sacks - not sacks at all, I realized. Body bags.

"Who….who were they?" I choked out.

"The rest of our team. You need to get out of here and complete our mission."

"What mission?" I asked, bewildered. The throbbing in my head was growing worse.

"Long story, one that I don't have time to tell," she panted, pausing for a moment as footsteps were heard passing by. Once they had faded into silence, she turned to me, pressing a small vial and a packet of folded papers into my hand.

"Your name is Raven. I don't know your last name - safety precaution, we don't use last names in our faction. We are with the rebellion. We infiltrated this military ship to get these crucial pieces of information, so that we have a hope of winning the war. You need to escape, get to shore and get back to our commander. There will be a crowd on the docks – look for Diego.”

“Diego?” The name didn't spark any memories.

“Dark hair, short beard, brown skin, brown eyes - has a tattoo like this."

She pushed up her sleeve to reveal the image of a rising sun, inked onto her forearm. Her breathing had become more laborious, her skin ashen, as if the very movement exhausted her. I looked at my bare arm – I had a tattoo to match.

"He will be looking for you – maybe...maybe you'll remember him. Give the vial and papers to him."

I was frozen, trying to absorb her words.

"Raven, do you understand? You must finish what we started."

Her eyes were pleading as she slumped back against the wall. I could almost see the life leaving her body. I looked down at the floor. I did not have much choice - I was clearly in danger. And whatever this rebellion was, if it was against someone who would inject an experimental serum into unwilling people, it sounded like it was on the right side of history.

"I'll do it," I told her, squeezing her hand.

She bobbed her head once in acknowledgment.

"Out the door, up the stairs, and turn right once you reach the deck. This ship has been moored here for years so I'm sure you will find some way to get to shore. It's not more than a hundred yards from the docks. "

"What about you?"

She lifted a blanket at her side, revealing a homemade bomb.

"Someone has to set this off. When the horn blares to signal the shift change, I'll set the one minute countdown. You have until then to get off the ship. It's not much time, but - "

She coughed. Her eyes were growing bloodshot.

"Priya…" "I'm dying anyway, remember?"

We took a shaky breath in unison. I tucked the vial and the papers into a pouch on my cargo pants, and zipped it shut. She took my hand in both of hers and squeezed gently.

"You've been a good friend to me, Raven. Now go. Save us all."

I rose to my feet, taking one last look at my friend, a woman I didn't even remember, and headed for the door. It was unlocked, and it struck me that they had thought us all dead and unable to escape. I crept up to the small window on the door and peered through to check the hallway. Empty. With one last glance at Priya, who waved a silent farewell, I slipped through and closed the door behind me.

The stairs were only a few feet away, clear daylight pouring down from the open exit above. I swiftly reached the top, ducking as I crept up the last few steps, and noticed three uniformed men about twenty feet away - all facing the opposite direction. I dared to poke my head around the right side of the doorway. More men stood there, much closer, but engrossed in conversation. Between us was a series of crates and barrels. Now or never, I told myself, and with a quick glance to be sure none of the other men had turned around, I dropped into  a crouch and sprinted behind a barrel. Safe. My heart was pounding in my chest. As I scanned the deck for my next move, I patted the pocket that apparently held our salvation, reassured by its presence somehow.

I took another look to the prow of the ship, where most of the uniformed people had gathered to hear someone speak; someone with a harsh sneer on his face, someone whose voice drove chills down my spine, though I couldn't draw up any memories of him. I tucked myself behind the barrels again, and considered. I was nearly fifty feet from the edge of the ship, and too far away to determine an escape route. Several crates and tubs of food, kitchen wares, and folded laundry were stacked near a massive wooden pole and a large supply truck – no doubt supplies confiscated from local residents. Before I could think, I found myself sprinting to hide there next, somehow undetected. My adrenaline was running the show now. I crouched beside the truck, taking in my new surroundings. Directly in front of me was the low railing of the ship, and off a steep edge, a five story drop directly into the murky bay. I considered my options. There was a stairwell further down the ship – though far away, it led down to a narrow lower deck. My drop would then be significantly smaller, perhaps only thirty feet, and then I could swim to shore -

A piercing horn blast cut into my thoughts, and I reflexively threw my hands over my ears.

Shit, I realized. I'm out of time.

I would never make it to the stairwell and down to other deck in time, and just throwing myself from so high up would likely kill me. I frantically searched for Plan B.

Priya said this ship had been moored for years, I considered. There has to be something connecting it to shore. I looked across to the docks, and noticed several fat power lines anchored to low buildings near the dock. One of them ran directly up to the pole that I crouched under, with a pile of crates stacked high beside it. As my mind raced, my heart beating to such a rapid cadence that I half expected it to explode, my eye caught on a pile of bedsheets, draping from a box. I snatched one up and scrambled with it to the top of the pile of crates, working it into a long, bulky rope of sorts.

"Hey, you!"

"Shit, shit, shit," I muttered. I'd been spotted. Without casting a glance at the commotion I had raised, I tossed one end of the sheet over the power cable, gripped one end in each hand, and wrapped the ends around each wrist a few times. As the nearest would-be captor reached the bottom of the pile of crates, I leaped from my refuge and threw my entire weight down the power line. Within seconds I was fleeing the ship, zipping rapidly down the gentle slope of the cable. I made the mistake of looking down at the murky water, and my hands instinctively gripped the sheet harder. If the bedsheet didn't hold, it was a long drop. Gasping and yelling erupted from the crowd of civilians gathered at the docks, pointing at me even as I flew over their heads. I had nearly reached the building at the end of my flight when an ear-splitting, thunderous boom filled the air.

Priya, you did it, I thought.

The power line went slack just as I released my hold on the sheets. I aimed for a soft patch of grass in front of the looming building, and shut my eyes for impact. The air was struck from my lungs, and I had the vague sense that I was rolling. When I finally came to a stop on my back, I gasped for air, opening my eyes slowly. Faces swarmed above me, an incoherent buzz of conversation eventually giving way to – applause? The faces were becoming more clear, and all of them wore a smile. Someone – a man – knelt down next to me.

"Anything broken?" he asked, his demeanor calm.

I wiggled my feet, my arms, my head…

"I don't think so," I said, accepting his help to reach a seated position. The crowd began to disperse. As I grabbed his offered hand, I noticed a tattoo on his forearm – a rising sun. I gasped, whipping my head to look at him. Dark hair, a beard -

"Are you Diego?"

He knit his brow together in confusion.

"Have been for the last 32 years, Raven. What's gotten into you?"

I sighed, gesturing to the injury on the back of my head.

"Got hit on the head. I don't remember anything before waking up on the ship."

A shadow crossed his features, but he waited until I was standing steadily on my own two feet before continuing.

"Do you remember anything about the mission?"

I reached into my pocket, pulling out the papers and the vial, and passing them to him. He turned them over in his hands, nodding encouragingly.

"I'm so sorry, but…the others didn’t make it. Priya….Priya was the one who set off the bomb...helped me escape." I shut my eyes and balled my hands up into fists.

A gentle hand on my shoulder.

"We can go over this later," Diego said quietly. "For now, let's get that head wound looked at."

I followed him down the street, feeling as though my ordeal was just getting started.