#every day being the same the trees get swept up by tornados and then they grow back

[gladiatorcunt]

about to project all my beef with hyper christian southern small towns onto cowboy anakin

[rebelwrites]

When A Tornado Meets A Volcano

Jax Teller x Reader

Requested by @innerpaperexpertcloud // Ok, how about 8 and 9 with Jax please!! With prompts “You started drinking again, didn’t you?” “You promised you’d stop drinking.” “And you promised you wouldn’t hurt me! “I can’t lose you.” “You already did.”

As well as a request I am using this as my first fic for @band--psycho writing challenge, using one of my favourite songs “love the way you lie” - Eminem

You ever love somebody so much

You can barely breathe, when you're with them, you meet

And neither one of you, even know what hit 'em

Got that warm fuzzy feeling, yeah them chills, used to get 'em

Downing the remainder of the whiskey, you felt the familiar burn down your throat as you topped the glass back up. You knew you promised Your husband you would stop drinking after you landed a record for drunk driving, as well as wrapping your mustang around a tree.

Ever since the incident a year ago your relationship with Jax was on the rock. The only thing that was going through your mind was how things were at the start of the relationship.

It all happened so fast, Jax came crashing into your life and as soon as you laid eyes on the blonde bombshell you knew you were in trouble. You left life as you knew it behind, you were disowned by your family because they didn’t agree with the life Jax lived.

But you were blinded by love and left them anyway. And now a year down the line you pretty much had nothing.

Now you're getting fucking sick, of looking at 'em

You swore you've never hit 'em, never do nothing to hurt 'em

Now you're in each other's face,

Spewing venom in your words, when you spit 'em

You push, pull each other's hair, scratch, claw, bit 'em

Throw 'em down, pin 'em, so lost in the moments, when you're in 'em

After the accident the arguments started, the screaming matches, walls being punched, things said that cut.

You said you wouldn’t drink again but things were getting too much, the relationship was weighing heavy on you.

Hearing the front door slam, you sighed as you swirled the amber liquid in the glass, you knew you were half a bottle down and knew full well Jax would have something to say about you drinking.

“You started drinking again, didn’t you?” Jax’s voice boomed as he walked into the kitchen.

“Well that’s a great way to greet your wife” you scoffed taking a large gulp.

“You promised you’d stop drinking.” Jax sighed running his hand over his face. “Especially after the accident you promised.

Well this was rich coming from him. The amount of times he promised he wouldn’t hurt you but he still found ways to do it.

“And you promised you wouldn’t hurt me!” You spat “but here we are ever since the accident our relationship, our marriage has been falling apart”

“I can’t lose you.” Jax said on the verge of tears.

“You already did.” You mumbled as you stood on your feet, wrapping your fingers around the neck of the bottle.

Pushing past Jax you grabbed your smokes and headed out into the back garden, not letting him see the tears streaming down your cheeks.

Now I know we said things, did things

That we didn't mean and we fall back into the same patterns

Same routine, but your temper's just as bad, as mine is

You're the same as me, when it comes to love, you're just as blinded

Baby please come back, it wasn't you

Baby it was me, maybe our relationship isn't as crazy as it seems

Maybe that's what happens When a tornado meets a volcano

All I know is I love you too much, to walk away now

The rest of the night you and Jax didn’t speak because let’s face it, that would just make things worse. So at least there were no new holes in the walls.

The only sound in the house was your bare feet on the hardwood floor as you made your way through the house. As much as you told Jax he had already lost you, you couldn’t help but still wear his shirts.

Leaning against the door frame you saw Jax fast asleep on the sofa, using your hoodie as a pillow. He looked so peaceful as the sun beamed into the room. From day one you knew you both had a temper and every time after a fight you went back to normal either the following morning or after a couple of days. It was like nothing happened.

People who knew you and Jax always asked why you didn’t just file for divorce. But the answer was neither of you couldn’t just walk away, there was something tying you to each other.

Deciding to leave Jax sleeping you went to brew some coffee and have a smoke.

As you sat on the decking scrolling through your photos, well your wedding photos.

“I want to get back to that us” a sleepy voice appeared from behind you.

“We have a long way to go to get back to this us” you mumbled, not making eye contact. Until you felt Jax wrap his arm around your waist, resting his head on your shoulder.

“I know darlin’ and I know I am partly to blame for everything” Jax whispered.

“It’s not going to happen with a snap of our fingers Jax, there’s a lot of shit we have swept under the carpet” you whispered.

“Then we will take it step by step, day by day” Jax said kissing the top of your head “I just want my wife back”

[cyb-by-lang]

Shell Game (17/?)

Kei tries to stay within the bounds of baseline human capabilities and considers the efficiency of explosion-based propulsion.

This is probably the last daily update for a while. Need to build a buffer again.

There were more than two hundred kids on the field. There were about fifty with Quirks useful for destroying the robots from the Hero course entrance examination, concentrated heavily in 1-A and 1-B for good reason. Between Todoroki’s initial AOE ice attack and the robot roadblock, most of them were crowded together and hesitating in the face of opposition. Shinsō was one of them, but mainly because he couldn’t guarantee his or his mind-controlled “allies”’ safety without someone else acting first.

Kei strode to the front of the crowd, hands in her pockets.

There were also only about three dozen robots, in whatever configurations were left over from the school’s clearly ridiculous budget.

“Those things are considered obstacles?!” demanded whoever the hell was the fifteenth seat in 1-C. Some guy whose name Kei hadn’t learned.

Which was about when Todoroki, first on the field and still the closest to the homicidal hunks of steel, swept his arm out and turned the robot trying to crush him into the metal heart of a brand-new ice cube. Ice crystals the size of people gleamed all across the robot’s surface, icicles making the angle of Todoroki’s attack and looking like the result of a hideous midwinter storm. The robotic victim was already teetering as Todoroki ran through the gap between its legs.

Present Mic screamed, “And 1-A’s Todoroki puts the villains on ice with one cool move! He’s taken the lead!”

…Oh, that will be an actual, genuine problem. Kei’s “Quirk” stopped where Todoroki’s began, it seemed. Despite her many abilities, Kei wasn’t a waterbender and couldn’t control it in solid form. She didn’t have Ice Release as a bloodline limit, even if she’d fought someone who did during training. That wasn’t going to be a fun match.

And Todoroki, it seemed, was capable of about the same one-attack output Kei was, at least within the bounds of Quirks.

Knowing this does not change the nature of the task in front of us.

Does change how close we’ll go to him, though.

The frozen robot toppled forward, collapsing hard enough to make the ground quake and ripple beneath everyone’s feet. Kei fended off the billowing dust with her sleeve, not missing a beat as she continued to walk toward the mess.

“Excuse me, Midoriya-san,” Kei said as she passed him, the dust barely beginning to settle. “May I?”

Midoriya relaxed his defensive posture once he recognized her voice, though his expression was still pinched from stress. “Oh, Gekkō-san… Um, you don’t need to ask? What are you going to do?”

“Who fucking cares, Deku!” Bakugō snapped, his palms already shooting nitroglycerin-fueled sparks.

Kei ignored him and squared her stance as the other robots loomed. Two boys from the Hero course burst from the guts of the one destroyed robot, but that was fine. If they were busy getting out of the zero-point robot, then they were effectively clear.

Ready, Isobu?

Oh, yes.

Kei brought her hands together. Water Release: Great Waterfall Technique.

The air cracked as the vapor in the air was ripped from it, water swirling up and around Kei’s feet in a brief warning before the force of her chakra asserted itself on reality. What started as a trickle became a geyser, became a storm, and that formed a waterspout at least twice the height of the stadium. At its base, it was hardly wider than the span of Kei’s now-outstretched arms, but that didn’t matter.

And while the children behind her stared as though she was the next natural disaster looming over them, Kei turned the vortex on its side with willpower and a gesture identical to swinging a baseball bat.

Or, in her case, a sword.

The immediate cacophony was a combination of rushing water, the howl of a tornado, and hundreds of thousands of kilos of metal crashing horribly against itself and anything else it touched. Water blotted out the entire view ahead of the crowd as Kei’s ninjutsu ripped the robots to pieces exactly as she’d done in her entrance exam a few months beforehand. The debris stirred up made it impossible to tell exactly what was happening as the targets were pulverized.

“Wh-wh-what the hell is that Quirk?”

“Isn’t she supposed to be a General Studies student?!”

Kei snapped her fingers, and then it was over.

Water lapped at the ground as Kei cut her control, forming soft beach waves as it went back to being inert. The track directly where the robots had stood was noticeably scoured, leaving a half-meter-deep trench twenty meters across. The leftover water flowed off in places, into specialized drainage ditches.

Todoroki, unless Kei missed her mark, was also looking back. She’d been careful not to hurt anyone, including him, by twisting the vortex almost in on itself like an ouroboros, though it did reduce the effectiveness of her attack. Even the boys who ripped their way up through the robot were staring at her in shock.

Every zero-point robot lay shredded, but piled high in the center of the course as though shaped by massive, invisible hands. As the silence reigned, the Jenga pile of robot bits toppled exactly like the iced robot had, flattening into something more stable.

Ta-fucking-dah.

“Class 1-C’s Gekkō sweeps all the frontliners in the Robo Inferno away! That’s a wash for the robots!” Present Mic’s grin was nearly audible over the airwaves.

A ringing endorsement, really.

Kei broke into what was, for her, a sustainable run. When the one-, two-, and three-point robots came after her, in the way only truly fearless opponents did, she ducked and weaved through their grasping claws. Water trailed off her fingers more for effect than effectiveness, and she likewise kicked up spray as she dashed across the half-flooded track.

Her work here was done. The kids could take care of the rest. They’d had to in order to qualify to be hero-wannabes, after all.

Shortly thereafter, manufactured metal started to lose to vicious teenagers. Horribly.

The sound of a cannon shot told Kei the students were having fun, even before other robots behind her were torn limb from limb by enthusiastic students. Kei supposed most of the other kids were, if nothing else, practiced masters at using their Quirks. Even if Invisible Girl couldn’t punch a giant robot to death, there weren’t more robots than there were students to happily dismantle them.

It was kind of heartening, actually. Nobody with robot minions would last long against these kids.

Speaking of whom, Kei spotted the tape kid, bird-headed kid, and Bakugō careening overhead before any of them noticed her. Well, again. It was hard not to notice someone who flooded the track and tossed robots around like matchsticks once the destruction phase got underway.

“Move your ass!” Bakugō snarled as he landed near her. He threw himself into a run, explosions boosting his speed in much the same way they’d allowed him to leap over obstacles. “You’re in my way!”

Kei considered this suggestion on its merits, then decided to ignore it. Instead, she let chakra move freely through her limbs like it did during training, dug her heels solidly into the track as her feet fell, and ran.

Even if Kei hadn’t been on a team taught and operated by Namikaze Minato, she would have known how to reach supernatural speed. She wasn’t Iida with his biological engines, but she didn’t need to be. She’d been running her whole life, and one explosive brat wasn’t enough to keep up.

Kei heard, “GET BACK HERE, SEAWEED HEAD!”

Kei flipped him off as she pulled ahead, leaving him swearing furiously in her wake. And it was nearly a literal wake—kicking up water out of nowhere was one of the many ways she could subtly hint that her Quirk was responsible for her speed and strength.

The next immediate stretch of track was mundane. Between the robots and other kids, whoever organized these events clearly thought some good old-fashioned running could help people work up a sweat. For some people, like Shinsō before his training, this might’ve been the most difficult part of the race in some respects.

And then they reached what Present Mic gleefully called, “The Fall.”

“Oh, that’s pretty impressive.” Kei said aloud, eying it critically. It wasn’t like she didn’t have a hell of a jump distance, but somehow the event organizers had managed to basically stick a miniature version of the Chinese stone forest mountains in a single location. That kind of handiwork was really rather impressive. Even without the trees.

Of course, she also wanted to know what UA thought would save them from lawsuit hell if any kid actually plummeted to the bottom of the crevasse, but that was apparently one of those things she wasn’t supposed to think too hard about. Maybe Power Loader had just worked overtime to get this done?

“GOT YOU NOW, YOU ICY-HOT BASTARD!”

Bakugō didn’t even stop to land. Instead, more explosions sent him rocketing over the obstacle while Kei admired it, shouting threats both at her and at Todoroki. Mostly Todoroki, now that he thought she was out of the race. Without even being punched?

That was definitely a kid who didn’t stop to smell the roses much.

Present Mic cackled. “And class 1-A’s Bakugō surges ahead to take second place! How are the other competitors going to keep up? How’s Todoroki going to keep his lead?!”

“Do you even need me here?” Aizawa-sensei’s dry voice countered.

Kei could see Todoroki’s retreating back and the crumbling remnants of the ice he’d left all over the ropes to cross. It would’ve made for an unfortunate fall if Kei took that route. She did, however, have a plan that did not involve putting herself at risk quite like that.

On a good day, this particular obstacle also reminded her of a certain nasty, spike-filled crevasse in Konoha. And on a good day, Kei would have avoided the problem or flown over it with Tsuruya’s help. But, well…

Isobu chuckled in the depths of her mind. Desperate times?

Desperate measures, Kei joked back.

Chakra flooded into her limbs and, once she’d made the correct hand seals, she thought, Water Dragon Bullet. And then she leapt onto the nearest intact rope and hurled herself into the air.

Once again, the force of her power slapped water vapor from the air in a massive burst, drenching everyone within twenty meters in a sudden rainstorm, Bakugō and his explosively-propelled self included. Directly behind her, a miniature waterspout twisted out of the air and formed a gaping dragon’s maw. As it threw itself between her and Bakugō, shoving him aside with the mass concentrated in its swirling coils, Kei stuck her arm directly into the side of its head.

Liquid fangs bit deep into her gym uniform sleeve, jerked her off her feet, and surged over the massive pitfall at more than forty kilometers per hour. She and her construct—which she called “Haku” on a whim—practically flew across each gap in the ground, pausing only so Kei could land for a split second and gather more water without having to split her attention. It wasn’t gliding in the least—instead, the sheer force of the water she was keeping in the air were tugging her along like a banner ad behind an airplane.

You hardly seem to need the crane, now.

Say that again when we’re actually trying to travel somewhere!

“WATCH WHERE YOU’RE GOING!” shrieked Bakugō, having to redouble his efforts to stay in the air.

Kei didn’t so much as spare him a glance, with her dragon hauling her by her collar toward Todoroki.

“What’s this? Gekkō from 1-C and Bakugō from 1-A are neck and neck, neither giving up second place! Todoroki better watch his back with these two destructive competitors gunning for him!”

I can’t decide if Present Mic makes it worse. The Chūnin Exams didn’t have announcers.

He makes it worse.

Another lazy curve emerged from the other side of the horrible drop-off, and both Kei and Bakugō landed within seconds of each other. While Bakugō stumbled for a second longer as Kei’s Water Dragon Bullet clipped him on its way to dispersal, Kei dashed after Todoroki with…somewhat less energy than the other competitors were showing off.

It had nothing to do with the spirit of competition. Kei just didn’t want to get her feet iced to the ground this close to the endgame. Especially while her clothes were still wet.

Dirt and rock gave way to cement as Kei ran onward, following the curving track around the bend even as Bakugō trailed her, screaming constantly about something and exploding so much she couldn’t really hear him. Nonetheless, she kept just far enough ahead of him to avoid either backlash or a silly comment from Present Mic.

It was about that point where Todoroki must’ve reached the third obstacle, because Present Mic’s voice blared loud and clear: “And now, we’re finally approaching the last obstacle!”

Great.

It had better be interesting—

“Everyone had better tread carefully!” Present Mic went on, while Kei kept pace with Bakugō. “You’re stepping onto a minefield!”

Are you shitting me right now?

It appears not. Look.

Stretching out for another long dirt stretch about as wide as the rope-lined Fall had been was, of course, a literal minefield. The ground was dotted with raised lumps Kei presumed were the mines, badly disguised and clearly designed for a high school competition.

Kei knew better than most what an actual minefield looked like: Nothing, until the first explosions started tearing the earth apart.

“If you look carefully, you can see where those little bombs are buried, so keep your eyes on the ground, folks! By the way, those landmines were specially designed for our competition, so while they’re loud and flashy…they’re not very powerful.”

Kei totally understood the disappointment in Mic’s voice.

“JUST ENOUGH TO MAKE YOU WET YOUR PANTS!”

She understood that a little less.

“Get a hold of yourself,” Aizawa-sensei said, truly embodying the spirit of the times.

What do people even do if there is no one with a running commentary of events? Let them pass in confusion?

Hell if I know. Kei ducked an explosion from Bakugō and slapped his hand away as he tried to pass her by force, and nearly got a second blast to the face before she made half a hand seal and spat a gob of water the size of his head to engulf it.

It didn’t last, but sputtering meant Bakugō had to let her go on ahead, just for a little. Certainly it made him stumble far enough away that she could think.

Minefield, minefield… It wouldn’t make it that much better if she just flooded the area, would it? Besides, the mines themselves were relatively harmless. And obvious.

Bakugō chose that moment to rocket past, apparently trusting that being able to make explosions basically made him immune to those caused by others. That wasn’t an assumption Kei was willing to make, for reasons mainly pertaining to how many limbs one could lose that way. But, hell, Bakugō was already yelling at Todoroki as though Kei didn’t exist, so what did she know?

Other students started to trickle in, and by that point Kei just shrugged to herself and darted into explosion hell. Another Water Dragon Bullet had her shooting through the air above the competition, one arm locked in its jaws and her other hand balanced against the curve above its eye. At the same time, the end of the dragon’s coils slammed down on the course, triggering extra mines and swamping anyone caught in the blast.

Bakugō and Todoroki, meanwhile, were trying to get each other killed. Explosions and ice flew, and Kei commanded her construct to curve wide around their little conflict.

“Just like that, a new student takes the lead! The media here is going wild! There’s nothing they love more than an upset!”

Sounded about right.

Iida raced forward, trusting his sheer speed to get him past the mines. Other students were avoiding mines, detonating them under their opponents, or what-have-you. Kei didn’t much care.

Right up until the moment a massive pink explosion went off at the start of the minefield, disrupting Haku-chan’s liquid tail. Todoroki and Bakugō looked up, spotting Kei—which annoyed her, because she’d been planning on using the sun’s position better than that—and a rapidly arcing Midoriya, surfing the blast wave with a piece of robot as his woefully inadequate vehicle.  

Kei probably could have reached out to help him land. But he did have a plan, right? He had to.

Midoriya fell past her, toppling slowly forward.

Um.

He does not have a plan.

Below, and now behind, Todoroki and Bakugō set aside their differences to chase the two students now in the lead. Bakugō, at least, had a plan. It was explosions.

And Todoroki iced the fucking minefield.

Ordinarily, this wouldn’t have been a problem. Kei wasn’t on the ground or technically in Todoroki’s line of sight. At most, he should have created a safe walkway against being launched skyward by landmines. However, he’d seen her and his frost wave arced upward, trapping Haku-chan��s tail and crawling directly up its back.

Kei ripped her arm free just as the ice reached her and coated her body from fingertip to waist on the same side. It even leapt to her leg, locking her right knee in a bent position as though in a cuff of some kind.

And she was still about ten meters above the ground.

Fuck you too, Freezer Burn.

While Bakugō and Todoroki chased Midoriya, Kei used her free left hand to make hand seals against her frost-coated right.

Water Release: Water Trumpet. Turning her head, Kei blasted her frosted arm with water before moving it out of the line of fire, and aimed all the rest at the minefield below as soon as she could move her fingers again.

She didn’t bother being cute about it. When she hit the water feet-first, the ice coating her knee burst under the force. Kei’s water blast had dampened the field to little effect, but Todoroki’s ice path was still there. And since water was the only thing that made ice slippery at all, Kei tore after the three new pack leaders without hesitation.

Ahead, she saw Midoriya plummeting to earth to land head first and started to wince. That wouldn’t be pretty.

At which point there was another massive pink explosion, because Midoriya took his metal surfboard and slammed it down like a fucking sledgehammer into the nearest mines, using Todoroki and Bakugō as stepping stones for leverage.

Kei bit back a laugh. Someone had definitely turned their self-preservation instincts off.

I knew I liked that kid.

I can see why.

Kei got third place out of the pack of four that entered the stadium in those first few seconds, edging out Splodey by a nose. She spent the cooldown period laughing too hard at the irony of beating him only to lose to rocket-propelled Midoriya to even listen to Bakugō’s threats. In the end, explosions really had made the difference. Just not the way she’d thought.

While the other competitors trickled in—scorched, muddy, and various levels of exhausted—Kei congratulated Midoriya with as much enthusiasm as his classmates couldn’t muster. Todoroki and Bakugō went ignored. She didn’t stop chatting with him until Iida and Uraraka had both arrived, looking happy to see friends around.

And when Shinsō made it, in twenty-seventh place, Kei gave him a fist-bump. Checking the leaderboards over her shoulder, he reciprocated.

“I almost didn’t believe your Quirk was that strong,” Shinsō remarked, shaking his head slowly. “Shows me, I guess.”

“And now you know how I got in.” Kei said. “Robot-killing powers and nothing else.”

“Sure you did.” Shinsō rolled his eyes. In a comically threatening tone, he added, “I will get the literature unit through your head if it kills me.”

Kei laughed.

[mondregen]

 “Have you used a portal before?”  Minchan asks the question like he doesn’t care much about the answer. The click of his heels on the pavement is distracting, a staccato in bright pink. He’s a lot to handle in the group chat, but even more of a handful in real life. Glittery eyeshadow and perfectly manicured nails, he’s a living doll, making mock kissy faces at every person walking by who dares to stare. A force of nature if Lysander ever saw one.  “Hello? Are you listening?”

 Minchan snapping his fingers in his face brings Lysander back to reality. “Um, what? Sorry, I wasn’t… “  With a huff and a quick wave of his hand, Minchan dismisses his reply. “It doesn’t matter, does it. I’m not walking all the way to Rei’s stupid forest. I’m not going to let my baby witch do it, either.”  As always when Minchan uses this nickname of his, Lysander’s heart skips a beat. It’s one thing to read it, yet another entirely to hear it. And maybe it’s imagination, but something fond colors it, something soft. Lysander fights a smile, biting his lower lip hard. It’s somehow endearing, that particular brand of a handful Minchan is.  He drags him into some alley, its dead end around a brickwalled corner. From his jacket’s pocket he pulls a piece of white chalk, and promptly begins to draw a circle lined and filled with odd symbols on the wall closest to him. Lysander watches in awe and confusion both.  “Oh,” Minchan says, shooting him a grin over his shoulder. “It’s for the portal. You see, for some magic, we need preparation. Magic circles, sometimes little sacrifices, that sort of thing. It’s too advanced for you right now.”  Instead of dampening his mood, this revelation makes Lysander’s stomach flip in joy. “I’ll… learn this, too?”  “Of course!” Minchan finishes his work off and takes a step back, pocketing the chalk again. “You’ll learn this, and how to make potions, and, if Hiroki doesn’t tell me not to, I might just teach you some conjuring, too. Just… don’t go trying to summon some demon, yes? That never goes well.”  Once again, Lysander only half listens, too entranced by the casualness of Minchan going about his business. He squares his shoulders and places an outstretched hand into the very center of the circle. As soon as his fingers touch the chalk, it springs to life, glowing a gentle white. Minchan pulls his hand back slowly. The circle lifts off the wall, sticking to his skin like a spiderweb. It hangs in the air, still connected to Minchan’s hand. Lysander’s jaw falls open.  Of course, Minchan notices. “Neat, isn’t it? Wait until you see Qiaomeng doing it. He doesn’t even need a surface, just draws the thing in the air right away. Talented bastard.”  He falls silent, eyes closed. The glow of the circle brightens. Around it, the air flimmers like it does in the hot summer sun. Lysander inhales, catching the slightest whiff of ozone.  Minchan balls his hand into a loose fist, only his forefinger sticking out. He drags the pad of it down the length of the circle, and, little by little, it breaks open in the wake of his touch. When Minchan reaches the end, the chalk peels back in its entirety, revealing a swirl of muted purples and greens dispersed in a sea of endless black. It takes over the circle, stretching to about Minchan’s height. It stops as soon as it touches the ground.  Lysander’s heart flutters in his chest. His arms break out in goose-flesh. “Wow,” is all he manages to press out.  Minchan hums. “This is a portal. It’s like… a door, except it leads into someone’s home if that someone allows it. Rei isn’t a fan of it, but he lets us use one, anyhow.”  “Why doesn’t he like it?”  “A talented witch could trace this magic back to him. I’ll have Parfait erase as much of it after we’re done as she can, but there’ll always be some leftover in places spells were used. Rei’s mostly worried someone might have the idea to murder him in his sleep, really.” Lowering his voice, Minchan adds, “He’s got a bit of a reputation. The plants he grows are highly sought after, some impossible to get around these parts unless you want to pay a hefty sum. He has all reason to be cautious.”  Lysander makes a little noise of understanding. All he knows about Rei is that he lives in a forest -- magical and weird, as Qiaomeng had put it -- and that he’s powerful, too. He should have asked more questions.  “Anyway.” Minchan grasps him gently by the shoulders and steers him towards the portal. “It’s best if you close your eyes and keep your limbs pressed to your body until you’re back on solid ground. Got it? I’ll be right behind you.”  Before Lysander gets another word in, Minchan pushes him.  Everything goes dark.  His stomach swoops again, but not at all in joy this time. He finds himself hovering in nothingness before he’s swept away. Like a tornado toying with a skinny branch, he’s scooped up and tossed about, a deafening roar in his ears. Static sticks to his skin, crawling across it in a numbing tingle. Lysander opens his mouth to scream, but no sound makes it out.  A flash of green breaks through the dark. Lysander slams face first into a tree, its leaves shivering with the impact.  “Oh. Oh, no,” a voice close to him says. Someone places a hand on his shoulder in cadence to a wave of nausea flooding through him. Lysander retches, hunching over. The hand moves to pat his back, all gentle. “There, there. Travelling with portals is never fun, I’m afraid. He should have told you.”  He chances a look to his right, to where the voice is coming from, and is met with bare feet on mossy forest floor. Pressing the back of his hand to his mouth, he straightens slowly.  Miles and miles of forest stretch out around him, trees and bushes and a little creek gently running its course. Birdsong fills the space, lined with the rustle of leaves overhead.  Rei lives in a forest. This forest.  “Is everything alright again?” the voice asks, and the hand disappears. Lysander nods absently.  “Sorry, I… oh.”  A young man steps into his view -- the one those bare feet belong to -- and gives him an encouraging, but small smile. He’s taller than Lysander is, his hair a warm shade of blond reminiscent of honey. Something about him is… off. His skin is too perfect, his movements just shy of oily. There’s a startling darkness to his eyes. Not human, his instincts scream at him, though he passes as one well enough.  The portal buzzes. Minchan emerges with grace, touching his feet to the ground as though he were a cat leaping off the sofa. He beams at the both of them, the definition of cheeky.  “I see you’ve already met our hermit.”  The not-quite-human huffs, crossing his arms. A few heads of flowers peek through his hair, all varying shades of red. “Why did you let him go through it like this? It’s dangerous.”  “Oh, relax. Don’t talk to me about dangerous. You grow flesh-eating plants.”  “ -- that never harm anyone unless I tell them to --”  “Right. That makes it better.”  The puzzle pieces click belatedly. “Oh!” Lysander says, clutching at his chest. “You’re Rei!”  Rei turns toward him, wearing the same smile as before. “And you’re Lysander. I’ll get you something for the queasiness. Portals get to everyone the first time, especially if you’re not fully prepared.” He shoots Minchan a weighty look at his last few words. Minchan retaliates by sticking out his tongue. Rei ignores him. “Come, I’ll show you inside.”  “Inside”, as it turns out, is a little hut hidden behind layers of what Minchan calls “glamour”. After a simple wave of Rei’s hand, it appears out of thin air, flimmering at the edges like Minchan’s circle had done. It sits in the middle of a fenced in, lush garden, a plethora of brightly colored flowers and plants. Some, Lysander recognizes, but others he’s never seen in his life. A walkway of grey stones leads to the entrance door, heavy looking and wooden.  The door swings open on its own, or so it appears. Rei bends down to pick something up, cupping it ever so gently in his palms.  It’s a tiny, albino hedgehog.  “Thank you, Lilac.” Rei presses a kiss to the hedgehog’s forehead. The hedgehog makes a noise that sounds suspiciously flustered. “This is my familiar,” Rei follows it up with, showing Lilac to Lysander. “Say hello. Try to be friends. I’d hate for you two to not get along.”  Lysander wrings his hands, staring at Lilac. Lilac doesn’t move, either, staring right back.  “Um. H-hello. It’s nice to meet you.”  Lilac raises his little snout into the air, and Rei frowns down at him.  “What did I just say? Play nice.”  Still, Lilac doesn’t look very impressed. He turns around in Rei’s palms before he vanishes in a shimmery flash of light. Rei shakes his head.  “Don’t mind him. He needs a bit to warm up to someone.”  Minchan mutters something about it being Rei’s own fault for never socializing. He goes ignored again.  The inside of Rei’s hut is surprisingly normal. All his furniture is wooden or partly wooden, from the round table in the kitchen to the sofa lined with the plushest cushions and pillows to the TV stand. Herbs and flowers hang from every wall, both dried and fresh. The most outlandish item is the big cauldron in the middle of the kitchen, a fire lit underneath it. Whatever’s inside it bubbles gently, filling the air with a sweet, herby scent.  Of all the cliched witch-things Lysander expected to see, this is the most accurate to his imaginations.  Upon closer inspection, however, he finds that the TV and the kitchen itself are both highly modern. Rei even owns a gaming console. How and where is he getting his electricity from? Something tells him the answer will either be magic, or so mundane that he would have never considered it. A question for another day.  Rei gathers them together in the middle of the living room and has them sit on the floor after pushing the coffee table aside. He hands Lysander a small pill and a glass of water instead of the potion he’d expected, and Lysander gulps both down. Apparently, even witches have a need for regular medicine. Perhaps solving everything with magic is against the rules. If there are any rules.  He has so much to learn.  “Did you bring the salves?” Rei asks, seated cross-legged next to Lysander.  A few days earlier, Rei instructed him to prepare a couple of standard salves to put on wounds, ones that his job as a nurse has long familiarized him with. He’d told him to make them with the intent to heal, to concentrate on and visualize the process of a wound closing. So Lysander had done exactly that. And though he’d found himself tempted to test them, himself, he thought it more prudent to wait until both Minchan and Rei could ascertain their capabilities. If they had any special ones, anyhow.  Lysander gives a quick nod, taking the two small, rotund plastic containers out of his sling bag. They used to be filled with store-bought skin care, serving this purpose just fine. Rei takes them with a grateful nod. One he hands Minchan, the other he keeps, unscrewing the lid. He tilts it gently in his palm so the light catches in the creaminess of the salve, making it glisten. He brings it up to his face to smell it, humming as he does. Whether or not it’s a satisfied noise, Lysander can’t tell.  “They smell nice,” Minchan comments, tilting his container every which way like Rei had done. “Why’d you make him make these?”  Rei smiles, that same, small smile, but there’s an edge to it. Smug. “Because I asked him what he’s interested in. Have you done the same?”  Minchan sputters. “I -- you know, it’s not like we can just jump into what he likes. He needs basics. That’s what I’m concerned about.”  This playful back and forth is just as endearing as Minchan’s whirlwind persona. Lysander can’t stop himself from giggling, which earns him a wider smile from Rei and a noise from Minchan like he’s terribly martyred. But he’s smiling, too, unable to hide it even behind that huffy facade.  “Well,” Rei says after a moment of comfortable silence, “I suppose we’ll need to test these.”  He gets up and walks over to the kitchen to rummage in a drawer. What he pulls out glints silvery in his palm, and only when he sits back down, it becomes clear what it is. A knife. Vines snake around its handle, deep green in color. The blade itself is simple and two-edged, a small symbol etched into the very tip of it.  Rei reaches out, takes one of Minchan’s hands and quickly drags the knife from one side of his palm to the other. Minchan yelps.  “What the fuck?! Have you lost your --”  Minchan struggles, but Rei tightens his grasp on his hand, keeping him in place. Blood wells up from the cut, beading along the surface.  “As I said, we need to test his salves,” Rei says, his voice unaffected. He turns his attention towards Lysander, who has since frozen in his spot. His heart hammers in his chest, a new wave of sickness sloshing in his stomach. As used as he is to seeing blood, a warning would have been nice.  Minchan struggles again, but it’s still in vain. He goes slack a moment after, averting his eyes. “I’m going to be sick.”  Rei hums vaguely, still looking at Lysander. “Which one of them would you use for a cut like this?”  “Um.” Lysander slowly inches forward to take a closer look at the cut. It’s not deep, something that would heal just fine on its own once its dressed. He picks up one of his salves, offering it to Rei. “This one.”  “Well, go on then. Put it on.”  Lysander blinks at him. None of this is what he’d expected of this get-together, but he doesn’t have the luxury to complain. Hesitating, he asks Rei for something to clean the blood up with, and Rei disappears again only to return with a damp washcloth. Lysander wipes the cut down, careful not to hurt Minchan too much, before he dips a finger into the salve, coating the pad of it with the thinnest layer.  “This… might sting a little,” he warns as he gently rubs the salve along the cut.  Even before he manages to reach the end of it, the cut begins to close.  He and Minchan both gape at it, at the way the skin knits together on its own right in front of their eyes. Lysander finishes his job to watch the rest of it close, too, leaving Minchan’s palm pristine as if nothing ever happened. No scab, no scar. Nothing.  “Holy shit,” Minchan whispers in awe, inspecting his hand up close. Next to him, Rei chuckles.  “I knew it would work the moment you handed it to me. You must have felt that, too, Minchan.”  Minchan, rubbing his thumb along the spot where the cut used to be, nods dumbly. “I… felt something, sure. But I’m not good at healing magic. I couldn’t tell it was going to be like this.”  Rei wipes his knife down with the damp washcloth. It’s all a little much to take in -- Rei being so casual, Minchan so shocked, this place and Lysander’s salve actually working. His head spins with this slew of information. Judging by the softness of Rei’s face, he’s noticed. He puts a hand on Lysander’s shoulder, squeezing gently.  “You have a talent. Very potent magic. You’ll make a great healer one day, baby witch.”  For the umpteenth time, Lysander’s heart skips a beat.

[forevermizu]

The Midwest has always had chaotic weather being stuck where the cold from the north, dry from the southwest, and warm and moist air from the southeast all collide, trapped by the Rockies. We have always gotten the really random weather systems but historically it has never been like this.

Growing up, they were short, but we definitely had spring and fall for at least a month. Now, summer and winter play such a hardcore game of tug of war that we barely get a week of either. Days of close to or below freezing in May which should be the start of 70-80 degree weather and the signal for Tornado season. Then there are the days of 70+ temps in February when historically that's when we get some of our worst snow storms.

The plants have no idea what is going on. Some come out way too early and some come out late. Some don't come at all. I'm allergic to the Cottonwood family of trees and just a decade ago, I could easily, EASILY tell you when they were going to bloom. Now? Unless I see the cotton in the air, I haven't got the foggiest. One year it was almost twice as bad as normal. This year there was NOTHING. And it is messing with the animals as well. Migratory birds coming through at strange times. Summer birds coming back expecting to feast on things like JUNE bugs but the bugs don't come out until AIGUST that year. Cougars, that haven't been spotted on the Plains for like half a century, are suddenly being spotted in towns. Ever since we drove their population down like every other native animal out here, the biggest land predators out here were coyotes, vultures for the avain ones. But cougars coming back means that something is driving them back into territories they had to abandon. And my money is on food.

Same as someone else said, we used to have creeks running everywhere. Can't say I've seen them filled too often lately. The town I grew up in has only had water FLOWING through it's river ONCE in my lifetime because of dams built upstream by other states that have cut it off it's natural source and all the "spring" melt water from the mountains. Apparently, it used to be an annual thing for them to release water from their dams and reservoirs because THEY HAD TOO MUCH and it wouldn't get all used up by the farmers on it's way to us. And this used to be a BIG river. Like on the main map kind of big.

We've been in a drought almost my entire life. The Ogallala Aquifer is damn near drained of all her water. Wildfires used to be rare and control burns weren't as perilous of a risk. Dust storms are becoming common occurrences again so our top soil is once again at risk.

Let me repeat that. DUST STORMS are starting to happen more and more frequently because the ground is so dry and we keep trying to farm like we have since the end of the Dirty Thirties and our crops, planting rotations, and tree wind breaks aren't enough to do jack now. And as a side tangent, people get mad about all the "bad GMOs" but what else are we supposed to do when what would have just been a bad year with little rain is now the norm and we need to have more drought resistant crops? We have to adapt and we are being limited by politics and fake science that we, a species where being able to adapt IS ONE OF OUR ADAPTATIONS, can't keep up.

And when it does rain?? Torrential downpours. No more spring showers. No, just everything all at once so the ground can't absorb any of it and it all just runs off the top. Remember how I said that I have never seen the river in my hometown with flowing water. In that very same breath, when I moved to the opposite end of the state for college, I saw FLOODING for the first time. I saw for the first time in my life a river so full that water was level with the banks and bridges and swept out into town and fields. Hell, my mom is from the east coast and she finally took my sister and I with her back to her hometown and that was the first time I had seen large and wide rivers with actual water in them and do you know what my mom said? They were lower than she could ever remember seeing. I still have trouble imagining growing up next to a river that flowed year round. One that you don't take four wheelers and horses down into and race for miles.

Quite honestly one of the hardest things for me to relate to when reading any story because I do not know what it's like to sit on the bank and fish. Or sail boats or catch turtles or just follow it knowing you would eventually reach some kind of town.

I literally could keep going forever on all the changes to the land, the weather, the local CLIMATE. But these experiences are common place now. We hear these same stories all the time. And we will both hear and tell them until our and probably the next generation are long gone. The bare absolute minimum we can do is strive to make these stories just that for our grandkids and those after them.

The previous generations chose to destroy the climate. We need to be the ones that repairing that damage.

truthfully dont understand how people can still deny climate change when like. you can See it happening. things are so much different 20 years ago when i was kid then they are now. ive seen it all happening slowly but surely before my very eyes and if other people cant they truthfully are just turning a blind eye 

[jae-bummer]

Swept Away

Request: Can I have a Jaehyun from NCT request for the holidays where you and your idol spend Christmas Eve at the fair. I feel like with Jaehyun this would just be the cutest imagine ever! :D

Member: NCT’s Jaehyun x Reader

Type: Fluff

“What do you mean we’re going to the studio?” you croaked, looking up from your phone screen with wide eyes. You had been sitting beside Jaehyun in silence up until this point, quietly snuggled together in the backseat of one of the company’s cars. 

“I’m...I’m not sure what other meaning that sentence could possibly have, babe,” Jaehyun hummed, looking up in confusion at the sound of your surprised tone.  

“When I got into your van, you told me there would be food involved,” you whined. “When I go anywhere with you, there is ALWAYS food involved...unless it’s the studio.” 

“Okay, one,” he sighed, setting his own phone down and glancing up at you through his lashes. “You make me sound like a creep when you say you got into my van. This is an SM vehicle. A SUV to be exact, not a van. And two, we keep snacks at the studio.” 

“Yeah, Mark’s granola bars that have lived in the filing cabinet for like twenty years,” you grumbled. 

“Mark hasn’t even been alive for twen-”

“I don’t understand why you aren’t more upset about this situation!” you interrupted with a gasp. “For Santa’s sake, it is Christmas Eve and you are going to work...

...and holding me hostage...

in your van...

Jeffery.” 

Jaehyun shook his head as the inevitable smile grew on his lips, highlighting the deep dimples on the edges of his cheeks. Bless his heart, he always seemed to humor you whenever you were beginning to be dramatic. Easing forward, he set his head on your shoulder, and nuzzled your neck. “You aren’t being held hostage.” 

“I’m hungry,” you pouted. “And it’s Christmas.” 

“So a special kind of hungry?” he nodded, his face understanding. The smile never left his lips as he spoke to you. “A holiday type of hungry?”

“A festive type of hungry,” you corrected. “Holly and jolly, but also empty and gurgley.” 

“Well, that just won’t do,” he clucked, wrapping his arm around you, and pulling you in close. “We’ll get food then...

...after I work for a little bit.” 

“I find this entire situation to be offensive,” you grumbled, pulling your body from his. His face fell with your action, causing you to think better of the abrupt motion. 

“I find your lack of caring offensive,” he pouted. Crossing his arms, he began to stare out of the window, a frown now on his face as well.

“Babe,” you sighed, reaching over and tugging at the knit of his sweater. “Baaaaabe.” 

“Sorry, I can’t hear you over the sound of my sadness,” he hummed, shaking his head. 

“You don’t get to be the one to pout!” you moaned. “I was pouting! This was my time to pout!” 

“Pouting is not exclusive to just you!” he sighed, glancing back toward you. He batted his lashes a bit before a smile found his face again. “But you are a lot cuter than me when you do it.” 

He leaned back toward you and snaked his arm around your lower back. Setting his chin on your shoulder, he blew a mouthful of warm air toward your neck, causing a shiver to cascade across your collar bone and down your spine. Without a certain level of affection, you were convinced that Jaehyun would probably just explode. You were sure that one day in the future, you would refuse him a kiss, and would only be left hearing a small *pfft* as he disappeared into a cloud of smoke and heart-shaped glitter. 

“Nonsense,” you whispered, tilting your head to place a light kiss on his cheek. “No one is cuter than you. Ever.” 

Jaehyun made a small chirp of contentment and nuzzled his face into your coat. You shimmied a bit with his motion, basking in the happiness of his attention. So maybe he wasn’t the only one who needed a certain amount of affection to survive...

Feeling the SUV begin to slow, you knew the inevitable stop outside of the SM building was to follow. You tried to keep a groan from escaping you, but it was difficult. 

“So who’s great idea was this?” you sighed. “Working over the holiday? Was it Taeyong? I bet it was Taeyong.” 

“It wasn’t Taeyong,” Jaehyun chuckled, pulling away from you and beginning to gather his things. “It was me.” 

“...I’m sorry, did I not hear you correctly?” you hissed. “Are you saying you’re going to the studio on your own accord?” 

“That is correct,” he chimed. “WE’RE going to the studio on OUR own accord. It’ll take no time, I promise.” 

“...but...but...” you whispered, furrowing your brows. “Christmas...and...lights...and baked goods.” 

“I’m sorry, love,” he sighed, placing his hand lightly onto your knee. He gave it a gentle squeeze before smiling. “If we don’t make it out on time, there’s always next year.” 

“Next year!” you screeched, yanking open the door and nearly knocking over the SM driver who was waiting to pull it open for you. “At the rate you’re going, you won’t have to worry about me next-” 

Your words faltered and began to trail as you caught sight of your surroundings. Glancing past the car door and to the destination immediately flooding your vision, you had a hard time catching your breath. It was as if Christmas had erupted into the world in this very spot. Lights glittered in the air accompanied by the sound of carols and smells of street food. 

Looking back to Jaehyun with wide eyes, a smirk tugged at the corners of your lips. You were in complete and utter disbelief. 

“Did you honestly think I was going to choose work...over you...and food?”

Jaehyun’s fingers were laced tightly between yours as you shuffled above the snow covered ground. He had taken you to the Winter Fair that you had begged him to bring you to every time you had driven past. Holding a skewer of ddeokggochi in his free hand, he munched happily beside you, the sauce from the fried rice cake thick on his lips. 

You looked toward your opposite hand as well, taking a sip of your hot chocolate. The warm liquid made it’s way down your throat and filled your chest with warmth. You were convinced that there was nothing better than that feeling. It was familiar and comforting...and almost exactly the same way Jaehyun made your chest feel on a daily basis. Jahyun’s entire presence in your life was similar to having a cup of hot chocolate on stand by. He never ceased to make you feel anything less than appreciated. 

“I still can’t believe you had me thinking I was going to sit up in the studio all night,” you muttered. “Looking at your cute, little ass sing behind a glass window.” 

“At least you acknowledge you still would have thought I was cute,” he grinned. “But you should know better. Especially when I told you I hadn’t eaten all day.” 

“I’m not good with context clues apparently,” you sighed. “To be fair, the Winter Fair is awfully close to the SM building, so the surroundings were familiar.” 

Jaehyun located a trash bin nearby and tucked his ddeokggochi stick into the flap. Licking his lips clean of any sauces, he took a shortened step and let loose of your hand, swiveling in a fluid motion to walk behind you. He wrapped his arms carefully around your waist before beginning to waddle behind you in an attempt to walk while embracing in a back hug. 

“Aren’t those lights pretty?” you sighed, pausing for a moment to glance up at the ice sickle style lights cascading from one of the nearby trees. You took a deep breath and watched as the air emerged from your mouth in a puff of vapor when you exhaled again. The whole feeling of the evening had been magical. From the lights, to the food, to simply spending much needed time with your boyfriend, you could hardly contain the joy rising in your heart. 

“Not nearly as pretty as the person in my arms,” Jaehyun hummed, tilting his face to kiss yours from behind. You spun around in his hold, facing him directly for the first time since you had arrived at the fair. 

“Why are you like this?” you grinned. “Hm?”

“Why am I like what?” he asked, lifting his brows. 

“Don’t play dumb with me,” you muttered. Your eyes searched his handsome face, trying to take in every feature absorbing the shine of the twinkling lights around the two of you. “Why are you so amazing?” 

“I am far from amazing,” he chuckled, reaching up and tucking a loose strand of hair behind your ear. He let his fingers linger down the side of your face and across your jaw line, stopping to rest on your chin. He shook your face back and forth playfully and smiled. “I keep good company and hope to reflect the traits around me.” 

“Kiss ass,” you chirped, standing on your tip toes to rub the tip of your nose against his. 

“There is nothing but truth in this heart,” he whispered, his grin growing wider. 

“You know,” you sighed. “You don’t have to try so hard. With all of your lines. You have me, there’s no trying to entice me to be yours anymore.” 

Sometimes interactions with your boyfriend made you feel as if you almost didn’t deserve the attention he was directing your way. Something so good and so pure shouldn’t belong to you. You were unworthy. 

“Pfft,” he scoffed, shaking his head quickly in disagreement. “I will never stop trying hard, Y/N. And you know why?”

“Hm?”

“Because you deserve to be swept off your feet everyday,” he nodded. “You deserve to be loved and appreciated for the amazing person you are. If I get lazy, someone else won’t be, and I’ll have to worry about you being enticed by someone else. And I can’t stand that thought.” 

“Yeah right,” you chuckled. “I think the Christmas spirit has hit someone a little hard tonight.” 

“Well, maybe it hasn’t hit you hard enough,” he grinned. He kissed your lips gently, sending a tingle all the way down to your knee caps with it’s sincerity. “Merry Christmas my love. Let’s look forward to another year of wonder. Now...I believe there is a carousel and some potato tornadoes we need to attend to.” 

[unsettlingshortstories]

Nightcrawlers

Robert McCammon (1984)

1

“Hard rain coming down,” Cheryl said, and I nodded in agreement.

Through the diner’s plate-glass windows, a dense curtain of rain flapped across the Gulf gas pumps and continued across the parking lot. It hit Big Bob’s with a force that made the glass rattle like uneasy bones. The red neon sign that said BIG BOB’S! DIESEL FUEL! EATS! sat on top of a high steel pole above the diner so the truckers on the interstate could see it. Out in the night, the red-tinted rain thrashed in torrents across my old pickup truck and Cheryl’s baby-blue Volkswagen.

“Well,” I said, “I suppose that storm’ll either wash some folks in off the interstate or we can just about hang it up.” The curtain of rain parted for an instant, and I could see the treetops whipping back and forth in the woods on the other side of Highway 47. Wind whined around the front door like an animal trying to claw its way in. I glanced at the electric clock on the wall behind the counter. Twenty minutes before nine. We usually closed up at ten, but tonight—with tornado warnings in the weather forecast—I was tempted to turn the lock a little early. “Tell you what,” I said. “If we’re empty at nine, we skedaddle. ’Kay?”

“No argument here,” she said. She watched the storm for a moment longer, then continued putting newly washed coffee cups, saucers, and plates away on the stainless-steel shelves.

Lightning flared from west to east like the strike of a burning bullwhip. The diner’s lights flickered, then came back to normal. A shudder of thunder seemed to come right up through my shoes. Late March is the beginning of tornado season in south Alabama, and we’ve had some whoppers spin past here in the last few years. I knew that Alma was at home, and she understood to get into the root cellar right quick if she spotted a twister, like that one we saw in ’82 dancing through the woods about two miles from our farm.

“You got any love-ins planned this weekend, hippie?” I asked Cheryl, mostly to get my mind off the storm and to rib her too.

She was in her late thirties, but I swear that when she grinned she could’ve passed for a kid. “Wouldn’t you like to know, redneck?” she answered; she replied the same way to all my digs at her. Cheryl Lovesong—and I know that couldn’t have been her real name—was a mighty able waitress, and she had hands that were no strangers to hard work. But I didn’t care that she wore her long silvery-blond hair in Indian braids with hippie headbands, or came to work in tie-dyed overalls. She was the best waitress who’d ever worked for me, and she got along with everybody just fine—even us rednecks. That’s what I am, and proud of it: I drink Rebel Yell whiskey straight, and my favorite songs are about good women gone bad and trains on the long track to nowhere. I keep my wife happy. I’ve raised my two boys to pray to God and to salute the flag, and if anybody don’t like it he can go a few rounds with Big Bob Clayton.

Cheryl would come right out and tell you she used to live in San Francisco in the late sixties, and that she went to love-ins and peace marches and all that stuff. When I reminded her it was 1984 and Ronnie Reagan was president, she’d look at me like I was walking cow-flop. I always figured she’d start thinking straight when all that hippie-dust blew out of her head.

Alma said my tail was going to get burnt if I ever took a shine to Cheryl, but I’m a fifty-five-year-old redneck who stopped sowing his wild seed when he met the woman he married, more than thirty years ago.

Lightning crisscrossed the turbulent sky, followed by a boom of thunder. Cheryl said, “Wow! Look at that light show!”

“Light show, my ass,” I muttered. The diner was as solid as the Good Book, so I wasn’t too worried about the storm. But on a wild night like this, stuck out in the countryside like Big Bob’s was, you had a feeling of being a long way off from civilization—though Mobile was only twenty-seven miles south. On a wild night like this, you had a feeling that anything could happen, as quick as a streak of lightning out of the darkness. I picked up a copy of the Mobile Press-Register that the last customer—a trucker on his way to Texas—had left on the counter a half-hour before, and I started plowing through the news, most of it bad: those A-rab countries were still squabbling like Hatfields and McCoys in white robes; two men had robbed a Qwik-Mart in Mobile and been killed by the police in a shoot-out; cops were investigating a massacre at a motel near Daytona Beach; an infant had been stolen from a maternity ward in Birmingham. The only good things on the front page were stories that said the economy was up and that Reagan swore we’d show the Commies who was boss in El Salvador and Lebanon.

The diner shook under a blast of thunder, and I looked up from the paper as a pair of headlights emerged from the rain into my parking lot.

2

The headlights were attached to an Alabama state-trooper car.

“Half-alive, hold the onion, extra brown the buns.” Cheryl was already writing on her pad in expectation of the order. I pushed the paper aside and went to the fridge for the hamburger meat.

When the door opened, a windblown spray of rain swept in and stung like buckshot. “Howdy, folks!” Dennis Wells peeled off his gray rain slicker and hung it on the rack next to the door. Over his Smokey the Bear trooper hat was a protective plastic covering, beaded with raindrops. He took off his hat, exposing the thinning blond hair on his pale scalp, as he approached the counter and sat on his usual stool, right next to the cash register. “Cup of black coffee and a rare—” Cheryl was already sliding the coffee in front of him, and the burger sizzled on the griddle. “Ya’ll are on the ball tonight!” Dennis said; he said the same thing when he came in, which was almost every night. Funny the kind of habits you fall into, without realizing it.

“Kinda wild out there, ain’t it?” I asked as I flipped the burger over.

“Lordy, yes! Wind just about flipped my car over three, four miles down the interstate. Thought I was gonna be eatin’ a little pavement tonight.” Dennis was a husky young man in his early thirties, with thick blond brows over deep-set light brown eyes. He had a wife and three kids, and he was fast to flash a walletful of their pictures. “Don’t reckon I’ll be chasin’ any speeders tonight, but there’ll probably be a load of accidents. Cheryl, you sure look pretty this evenin’.”

“Still the same old me.” Cheryl never wore a speck of makeup, though one day she’d come to work with glitter on her cheeks. She had a place a few miles away, and I guessed she was farming that funny weed up there. “Any trucks moving?”

“Seen a few, but not many. Truckers ain’t fools. Gonna get worse before it gets better, the radio says.” He sipped at his coffee and grimaced. “Lordy, that’s strong enough to jump out of the cup and dance a jig, darlin’!”

I fixed the burger the way Dennis liked it, put it on a platter with some fries, and served it. “Bobby, how’s the wife treatin’ you?” he asked.

“No complaints.”

“Good to hear. I’ll tell you, a fine woman is worth her weight in gold. Hey, Cheryl! How’d you like a handsome young man for a husband?”

Cheryl smiled, knowing what was coming. “The man I’m looking for hasn’t been made yet.”

“Yeah, but you ain’t met Cecil yet, either! He asks me about you every time I see him, and I keep tellin’ him I’m doin’ everything I can to get you two together.” Cecil was Dennis’ brother-in-law and owned a Chevy dealership in Bay Minette. Dennis had been ribbing Cheryl about going on a date with Cecil for the past four months. “You’d like him,” Dennis promised. “He’s got a lot of my qualities.”

“Well, that’s different. In that case, I’m certain I don’t want to meet him.”

Dennis winced. “Oh, you’re a cruel woman! That’s what smokin’ banana peels does to you—turns you mean. Anybody readin’ this rag?” He reached over for the newspaper.

“Waitin’ here just for you,” I said. Thunder rumbled, closer to the diner. The lights flickered briefly once … then again before they returned to normal. Cheryl busied herself by fixing a fresh pot of coffee, and I watched the rain whipping against the windows. When the lightning flashed, I could see the trees swaying so hard they looked about to snap.

Dennis read and ate his hamburger. “Boy,” he said after a few minutes, “the world’s in some shape, huh? Those A-rab pig-stickers are itchin’ for war. Mobile metro boys had a little gunplay last night. Good for them.” He paused and frowned, then tapped the paper with one thick finger. “This I can’t figure.”

“What’s that?”

“Thing in Florida couple of nights ago. Six people killed at the Pines Haven Motor Inn, near Daytona Beach. Motel was set off in the woods. Only a couple of cinder-block houses in the area, and nobody heard any gunshots. Says here one old man saw what he thought was a bright white star falling over the motel, and that was it. Funny, huh?”

“A UFO,” Cheryl offered. “Maybe he saw a UFO.”

“Yeah, and I’m a little green man from Mars,” Dennis scoffed. “I’m serious. This is weird. The motel was so blown full of holes it looked like a war had been going on. Everybody was dead—even a dog and a canary that belonged to the manager. The cars out in front of the rooms were blasted to pieces. The sound of one of them explodin’ was what woke up the people in those houses, I reckon.” He skimmed the story again. “Two bodies were out in the parkin’ lot, one was holed up in a bathroom, one had crawled under a bed, and two had dragged every piece of furniture in the room over to block the door. Didn’t seem to help ’em any, though.”

I grunted. “Guess not.”

“No motive, no witnesses. You better believe those Florida cops are shakin’ the bushes for some kind of dangerous maniac—or maybe more than one, it says here.” He shoved the paper away and patted the service revolver holstered at his hip. “If I ever got hold of him—or them—he’d find out not to mess with a ’Bama trooper.” He glanced quickly over at Cheryl and smiled mischievously. “Probably some crazy hippie who’d been smokin’ his tennis shoes.”

“Don’t knock it,” she said sweetly, “until you’ve tried it.” She looked past him, out the window into the storm. “Car’s pullin’ in, Bobby.”

Headlights glared briefly off the wet windows. It was a station wagon with wood-grained panels on the sides; it veered around the gas pumps and parked next to Dennis’ trooper car. On the front bumper was a personalized license plate that said: Ray & Lindy. The headlights died, and all the doors opened at once. Out of the wagon came a whole family: a man and woman, a little girl and boy about eight or nine. Dennis got up and opened the diner door as they hurried inside from the rain.

All of them had gotten pretty well soaked between the station wagon and the diner, and they wore the dazed expressions of people who’d been on the road a long time. The man wore glasses and had curly gray hair, the woman was slim and dark-haired and pretty. The kids were sleepy-eyed. All of them were well-dressed, the man in a yellow sweater with one of those alligators on the chest. They had vacation tans, and I figured they were tourists heading north from the beach after spring break.

“Come on in and take a seat,” I said.

“Thank you,” the man said. They squeezed into one of the booths near the windows. “We saw your sign from the interstate.”

“Bad night to be on the highway,” Dennis told them. “Tornado warnings are out all over the place.”

“We heard it on the radio,” the woman—Lindy, if the license was right—said. “We’re on our way to Birmingham, and we thought we could drive right through the storm. We should’ve stopped at that Holiday Inn we passed about fifteen miles ago.”

“That would’ve been smart,” Dennis agreed. “No sense in pushin’ your luck.” He returned to his stool.

The new arrivals ordered hamburgers, fries, and Cokes. Cheryl and I went to work. Lightning made the diner’s lights flicker again, and the sound of thunder caused the kids to jump. When the food was ready and Cheryl served them, Dennis said, “Tell you what. You folks finish your dinners and I’ll escort you back to the Holiday Inn. Then you can head out in the morning. How about that?”

“Fine,” Ray said gratefully. “I don’t think we could’ve gotten very much further, anyway.” He turned his attention to his food.

“Well,” Cheryl said quietly, standing beside me, “I don’t guess we get home early, do we?”

“I guess not. Sorry.”

She shrugged. “Goes with the job, right? Anyway, I can think of worse places to be stuck.”

I figured that Alma might be worried about me, so I went over to the pay phone to call her. I dropped a quarter in—and the dial tone sounded like a cat being stepped on. I hung up and tried again. The cat scream continued. “Damn!” I muttered. “Lines must be screwed up.”

“Ought to get yourself a place closer to town, Bobby,” Dennis said. “Never could figure out why you wanted a joint in the sticks. At least you’d get better phone service and good lights if you were nearer to Mo—”

He was interrupted by the sound of wet and shrieking brakes, and he swiveled around on his stool.

I looked up as a car hurtled into the parking lot, the tires swerving, throwing up plumes of water. For a few seconds I thought it was going to keep coming, right through the window into the diner—but then the brakes caught and the car almost grazed the side of my pickup as it jerked to a stop. In the neon’s red glow I could tell it was a beat-up old Ford Fairlane, either gray or a dingy beige. Steam was rising off the crumpled hood. The headlights stayed on for perhaps a minute before they winked off. A figure got out of the car and walked slowly—with a limp—toward the diner.

We watched the figure approach. Dennis’ body looked like a coiled spring ready to be triggered. “We got us a live one, Bobby boy,” he said.

The door opened, and in a stinging gust of wind and rain a man who looked like walking death stepped into my diner.

3

He was so wet he might well have been driving with his windows down. He was a skinny guy, maybe weighed all of a hundred and twenty pounds, even soaking wet. His unruly dark hair was plastered to his head, and he had gone a week or more without a shave. In his gaunt, pallid face his eyes were startlingly blue; his gaze flicked around the diner, lingered for a few seconds on Dennis. Then he limped on down to the far end of the counter and took a seat. He wiped the rain out of his eyes as Cheryl took a menu to him.

Dennis stared at the man. When he spoke, his voice bristled with authority. “Hey, fella.” The man didn’t look up from the menu. “Hey, I’m talkin’ to you.”

The man pushed the menu away and pulled a damp packet of Kools out of the breast pocket of his patched Army fatigue jacket. “I can hear you,” he said; his voice was deep and husky, and didn’t go with his less-than-robust physical appearance.

“Drivin’ kinda fast in this weather, don’t you think?”

The man flicked a cigarette lighter a few times before he got a flame, then lit one of his smokes and inhaled deeply. “Yeah,” he replied. “I was. Sorry. I saw the sign, and I was in a hurry to get here. Miss? I’d just like a cup of coffee, please. Hot and real strong, okay?”

Cheryl nodded and turned away from him, almost bumping into me as I strolled down behind the counter to check him out.

“That kind of hurry’ll get you killed,” Dennis cautioned.

“Right. Sorry.” He shivered and pushed the tangled hair back from his forehead with one hand. Up close, I could see deep cracks around his mouth and the corners of his eyes and I figured him to be in his late thirties or early forties. His wrists were as thin as a woman’s; he looked like he hadn’t eaten a good meal for more than a month. He stared at his hands through bloodshot eyes. Probably on drugs, I thought. The fella gave me the creeps. Then he looked at me with those eyes—so pale blue they were almost white—and I felt like I’d been nailed to the floor. “Something wrong?” he asked—not rudely, just curiously.

“Nope.” I shook my head. Cheryl gave him his coffee and then went over to give Ray and Lindy their check.

The man didn’t use either cream or sugar. The coffee was steaming, but he drank half of it down like mother’s milk. “That’s good,” he said. “Keep me awake, won’t it?”

“More than likely.” Over the breast pocket of his jacket was the faint outline of the name that had been sewn there once. I think it was Price, but I could’ve been wrong.

“That’s what I want. To stay awake as long as I can.” He finished the coffee. “Can I have another cup, please?”

I poured it for him. He drank that one down just as fast,” then rubbed his eyes wearily.

“Been on the road a long time, huh?”

Price nodded. “Day and night. I don’t know which is more tired, my mind or my butt.” He lifted his gaze to me again. “Have you got anything else to drink? How about beer?”

“No, sorry. Couldn’t get a liquor license.”

He sighed. “Just as well. It might make me sleepy. But I sure could go for a beer right now. One sip, to clean my mouth out.”

He picked up his coffee cup, and I smiled and started to turn away.

But then he wasn’t holding a cup. He was holding a Budweiser can, and for an instant I could smell the tang of a newly popped beer.

The mirage was there for only maybe two seconds. I blinked, and Price was holding a cup again. “Just as well,” he said, and put it down.

I glanced over at Cheryl, then at Dennis. Neither one was paying attention. Damn! I thought. I’m too young to be losin’ either my eyesight or my senses! “Uh …” I said, or some other stupid noise.

“One more cup?” Price asked. “Then I’d better hit the road again.”

My hand was shaking as I picked it up, but if Price noticed, he didn’t say anything.

“Want anything to eat?” Cheryl asked him. “How about a bowl of beef stew?”

He shook his head. “No, thanks. The sooner I get back on the road, the better it’ll be.”

Suddenly Dennis swiveled toward him, giving him a cold stare that only cops and drill sergeants can muster. “Back on the road?” He snorted. “Fella, you ever been in a tornado before? I’m gonna escort those nice people to the Holiday Inn about fifteen miles back. If you’re smart, that’s where you’ll spend the night too. No use in tryin’ to—”

“No.” Price’s voice was rock-steady. “I’ll be spending the night behind the wheel.”

Dennis’ eyes narrowed. “How come you’re in such a hurry? Not runnin’ from anybody, are you?”

“Nightcrawlers,” Cheryl said.

Price turned toward her like he’d been slapped across the face, and I saw what might’ve been a spark of fear in his eyes.

Cheryl motioned toward the lighter Price had laid on the counter, beside the pack of Kools. It was a beat-up silver Zippo, and inscribed across it was NIGHTCRAWLERS with the symbol of two crossed rifles beneath it. “Sorry,” she said. “I just noticed that, and I wondered what it was.”

Price put the lighter away. “I was in ’Nam,” he told her. “Everybody in my unit got one.”

“Hey.” There was suddenly new respect in Dennis’ voice. “You a vet?”

Price paused so long I didn’t think he was going to answer. In the quiet, I heard the little girl tell her mother that the fries were “ucky.” Price said, “Yes.”

“How about that! Hey, I wanted to go myself, but I got a high number and things were windin’ down about that time anyway. Did you see any action?”

A faint, bitter smile passed over Price’s mouth. “Too much.”

“What? Infantry? Marines? Rangers?”

Price picked up his third cup of coffee, swallowed some, and put it down. He closed his eyes for a few seconds, and when they opened they were vacant and fixed on nothing. “Nightcrawlers,” he said quietly. “Special unit. Deployed to recon Charlie positions in questionable villages.” He said it like he was reciting from a manual. “We did a lot of crawling through rice paddies and jungles in the dark.”

“Bet you laid a few of them Vietcong out, didn’t you?” Dennis got up and came over to sit a few places away from the man. “Man, I was behind you guys all the way. I wanted you to stay in there and fight it out!”

Price was silent. Thunder echoed over the diner. The lights weakened for a few seconds; when they came back on, they seemed to have lost some of their wattage. The place was dimmer than before. Price’s head slowly turned toward Dennis, with the inexorable motion of a machine. I was thankful I didn’t have to take the full force of Price’s dead blue eyes, and I saw Dennis wince. “I should’ve stayed,” he said. “I should be there right now, buried in the mud of a rice paddy with the eight other men in my patrol.”

“Oh.” Dennis blinked. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

“I came home,” Price continued calmly, “by stepping on the bodies of my friends. Do you want to know what that’s like, Mr. Trooper?”

“The war’s over,” I told him. “No need to bring it back.” Price smiled grimly, but his gaze remained fixed on Dennis. “Some say it’s over. I say it came back with the men who were there. Like me. Especially like me.” Price paused. The wind howled around the door, and the lightning illuminated for an instant the thrashing woods across the highway. “The mud was up to our knees, Mr. Trooper,” he said. “We were moving across a rice paddy in the dark, being real careful not to step on the bamboo stakes we figured were planted there. Then the first shots started: pop pop pop—like firecrackers going off. One of the Nightcrawlers fired off a flare, and we saw the Cong ringing us. We’d walked right into hell, Mr. Trooper. Somebody shouted, ‘Charlie’s in the light!’ and we started firing, trying to punch a hole through them. But they were everywhere. As soon as one went down, three more took his place. Grenades were going off, and more flares, and people were screaming as they got hit. I took a bullet in the thigh and another through the hand. I lost my rifle, and somebody fell on top of me with half his head missing.”

“Uh … listen,” I said. “You don’t have to—”

“I want to, friend.” He glanced quickly at me, then back to Dennis. I think I cringed when his gaze pierced me. “I want to tell it all. They were fighting and screaming and dying all around me, and I felt the bullets tug at my clothes as they passed through. I know I was screaming too, but what was coming out of my mouth sounded bestial. I ran. The only way I could save my own life was to step on their bodies and drive them down into the mud. I heard some of them choke and blubber as I put my boot on their faces. I knew all those guys like brothers … but at that moment they were only pieces of meat. I ran. A gunship chopper came over the paddy and laid down some fire, and that’s how I got out. Alone.” He bent his face closer toward the other man’s. “And you’d better believe I’m in that rice paddy in ’Nam every time I close my eyes. You’d better believe the men I left back there don’t rest easy. So you keep your opinions about ’Nam and being ‘behind you guys’ to yourself, Mr. Trooper. I don’t want to hear that bullshit. Got it?”

Dennis sat very still. He wasn’t used to being talked to like that, not even from a ’Nam vet, and I saw the shadow of anger pass over his face.

Price’s hands were trembling as he brought a little bottle out of his jeans pocket. He shook two blue-and-orange capsules out onto the counter, took them both with a swallow of coffee, and then recapped the bottle and put it away. The flesh of his face looked almost ashen in the dim light.

“I know you boys had a rough time,” Dennis said, “but that’s no call to show disrespect to the law.”

“The law,” Price repeated. “Yeah. Right. Bullshit.”

“There are women and children present,” I reminded him. “Watch your language.”

Price rose from his seat. He looked like a skeleton with just a little extra skin on the bones. “Mister, I haven’t slept for more than thirty-six hours. My nerves are shot. I don’t mean to cause trouble, but when some fool says he understands, I feel like kicking his teeth down his throat—because no one who wasn’t there can pretend to understand.” He glanced at Ray, Lindy, and the kids. “Sorry, folks. Don’t mean to disturb you. Friend, how much do I owe?” He started digging for his wallet.

Dennis slid slowly from his seat and stood with his hands on his hips. “Hold it.” He used his trooper’s voice again. “If you think I’m lettin’ you walk out of here high on pills and needin’ sleep, you’re crazy. I don’t want to be scrapin’ you off the highway.”

Price paid him no attention. He took a couple of dollars from his wallet and put them on the counter. I didn’t touch them. “Those pills will help keep me awake,” Price said. “Once I get on the road, I’ll be fine.”

“Fella, I wouldn’t let you go if it was high noon and not a cloud in the sky. I sure as hell don’t want to clean up after the accident you’re gonna have. Now, why don’t you come along to the Holiday Inn and—”

Price laughed grimly. “Mr. Trooper, the last place you want me staying is at a motel.” He cocked his head to one side. “I was in a motel in Florida a couple of nights ago, and I think I left my room a little untidy. Step aside and let me pass.”

“A motel in Florida?” Dennis nervously licked his lower lip. “What the hell you talkin’ about?”

“Nightmares and reality, Mr. Trooper. The point where they cross. A couple of nights ago, they crossed at a motel. I wasn’t going to let myself sleep. I was just going to rest for a little while, but I didn’t know they’d come so fast.” A mocking smile played at the edges of his mouth, but his eyes were tortured. “You don’t want me staying at that Holiday Inn, Mr. Trooper. You really don’t. Now, step aside.”

I saw Dennis’ hand settle on the butt of his revolver. His fingers unsnapped the fold of leather that secured the gun in the holster. I stared at him numbly. My God, I thought. What’s goin’ on? My heart had started pounding so hard I was sure everybody could hear it. Ray and Lindy were watching, and Cheryl was backing away behind the counter.

Price and Dennis faced each other for a moment, as the rain whipped against the windows and thunder boomed like shellfire. Then Price sighed, as if resigning himself to something. He said, “I think I want a T-bone steak. Extra rare. How ’bout it?” He looked at me.

“A steak?” My voice was shaking. “We don’t have any T-bone—”

Price’s gaze shifted to the counter right in front of me. I heard a sizzle. The aroma of cooking meat drifted up to me.

“Oh … wow,” Cheryl whispered.

A large T-bone steak lay on the countertop, pink and oozing blood. You could’ve fanned a menu in my face and I would’ve keeled over. Wisps of smoke were rising from the steak.

The steak began to fade, until it was only an outline on the counter. The lines of oozing blood vanished. After the mirage was gone, I could still smell the meat—and that’s how I knew I wasn’t crazy.

Dennis’ mouth hung open. Ray had stood up from the booth to look, and his wife’s face was the color of spoiled milk. The whole world seemed to be balanced on a point of silence—until the wail of the wind jarred me back to my senses.

“I’m getting good at it,” Price said softly. “I’m getting very, very good. Didn’t start happening to me until about a year ago. I’ve found four other ’Nam vets who can do the same thing. What’s in your head comes true—as simple as that. Of course, the images only last for a few seconds—as long as I’m awake, I mean. I’ve found out that those other men were drenched by a chemical spray we called Howdy Doody—because it made you stiffen up and jerk like you were hanging on strings. I got hit with it near Khe Sahn. That shit almost suffocated me. It felt like black tar, and it burned the land down to a paved parking lot.” He stared at Dennis. “You don’t want me around here, Mr. Trooper. Not with the body count I’ve still got in my head.”

“You … were at … that motel, near Daytona Beach?”

Price closed his eyes. A vein had begun beating at his right temple, royal blue against the pallor of his flesh. “Oh, Jesus,” he whispered. “I fell asleep, and I couldn’t wake myself up. I was having the nightmare. The same one. I was locked in it, and I was trying to scream myself awake.” He shuddered, and two tears ran slowly down his cheeks. “Oh,” he said, and flinched as if remembering something horrible. “They … they were coming through the door when I woke up. Tearing the door right off its hinges. I woke up … just as one of them was pointing his rifle at me. And I saw his face. I saw his muddy, misshapen face.” His eyes suddenly jerked open. “I didn’t know they’d come so fast.”

“Who?” I asked him. “Who came so fast?”

“The Nightcrawlers,” Price said, his face devoid of expression, masklike. “Dear God … maybe if I’d stayed asleep a second more. But I ran again, and I left those people dead in that motel.”

“You’re gonna come with me.” Dennis started pulling his gun from the holster. Price’s head snapped toward him. “I don’t know what kinda fool game you’re—”

He stopped, staring at the gun he held.

It wasn’t a gun anymore. It was an oozing mass of hot rubber. Dennis cried out and slung the thing from his hand. The molten mess hit the floor with a pulpy splat.

“I’m leaving now.” Price’s voice was calm. “Thank you for the coffee.” He walked past Dennis, toward the door.

Dennis grasped a bottle of ketchup from the counter. Cheryl cried out, “Don’t!” but it was too late. Dennis was already swinging the bottle. It hit the back of Price’s skull and burst open, spewing ketchup everywhere. Price staggered forward, his knees buckling. When he went down, his skull hit the floor with a noise like a watermelon being dropped. His body began jerking involuntarily.

“Got him!” Dennis shouted triumphantly. “Got that crazy bastard, didn’t I?”

Lindy was holding the little girl in her arms. The boy craned his neck to see. Ray said nervously, “You didn’t kill him, did you?”

“He’s not dead,” I told him. I looked over at the gun; it was solid again. Dennis scooped it up and aimed it at Price, whose body continued to jerk. Just like Howdy Doody, I thought. Then Price stopped moving.

“He’s dead!” Cheryl’s voice was near-frantic. “Oh God, you killed him, Dennis!”

Dennis prodded the body with the toe of his boot, then bent down. “Naw. His eyes are movin’ back and forth behind the lids.” Dennis touched his wrist to check the pulse, then abruptly pulled his own hand away. “Jesus Christ! He’s as cold as a meat locker!” He took Price’s pulse and whistled. “Goin’ like a racehorse at the Derby.”

I touched the place on the counter where the mirage steak had been. My fingers came away slightly greasy, and I could smell the cooked meat on them. At that instant Price twitched. Dennis scuttled away from him like a crab. Price made a gasping, choking noise.

“What’d he say?” Cheryl asked. “He said something!”

“No he didn’t.” Dennis stuck him in the ribs with his pistol. “Come on. Get up.”

“Get him out of here,” I said. “I don’t want him—”

Cheryl shushed me. “Listen. Can you hear that?”

I heard only the roar and crash of the storm.

“Don’t you hear it?” she asked me. Her eyes were getting scared and glassy.

“Yes!” Ray said. “Yes! Listen!”

Then I did hear something, over the noise of the keening wind. It was a distant chuk-chuk-chuk, steadily growing louder and closer. The wind covered the noise for a minute, then it came back: CHUK-CHUK-CHUK, almost overhead.

“It’s a helicopter!” Ray peered through the window. “Somebody’s got a helicopter out there!”

“Ain’t nobody can fly a chopper in a storm!” Dennis told him. The noise of rotors swelled and faded, swelled and faded … and stopped.

On the floor, Price shivered and began to contort into a fetal position. His mouth opened; his face twisted in what appeared to be agony.

Thunder spoke. A red fireball rose up from the woods across the road and hung lazily in the sky for a few seconds before it descended toward the diner. As it fell, the fireball exploded soundlessly into a white, glaring eye of light that almost blinded me.

Price said something in a garbled, panicked voice. His eyes were tightly closed, and he had squeezed up with his arms around his knees.

Dennis rose to his feet; he squinted as the eye of light fell toward the parking lot and winked out in a puddle of water. Another fireball floated up from the woods, and again blossomed into painful glare.

Dennis turned toward me. “I heard him.” His voice was raspy. “He said . . . ‘Charlie’s in the light.’”

As the second flare fell to the ground and illuminated the parking lot, I thought I saw figures crossing the road. They walked stiff-legged, in an eerie cadence. The flare went out.

“Wake him up,” I heard myself whisper. “Dennis … dear God … wake him up.”

4

Dennis stared stupidly at me, and I started to jump across the counter to get to Price myself.

A gout of flame leapt in the parking lot. Sparks marched across the concrete. I shouted, “Get down!” and twisted around to push Cheryl back behind the shelter of the counter.

“What the hell—” Dennis said.

He didn’t finish. There was the metallic thumping of bullets hitting the gas pumps and the cars. I knew if that gas blew we were all dead. My truck shuddered with the impact of slugs, and I saw the whole thing explode as I ducked behind the counter. Then the windows blew inward with a god-awful crash, and the diner was full of flying glass, swirling wind, and sheets of rain. I heard Lindy scream, and both the kids were crying, and I think I was shouting something myself.

The lights had gone out, and the only illumination was the reflection of red neon off the concrete and the glow of the fluorescents over the gas pumps. Bullets whacked into the wall, and crockery shattered as if it had been hit with a hammer. Napkins and sugar packets were flying everywhere.

Cheryl was holding on to me as if her fingers were nails sunk to my bones. Her eyes were wide and dazed, and she kept trying to speak. Her mouth was working, but nothing came out.

There was another explosion as one of the other cars blew. The whole place shook, and I almost puked with fear.

Another hail of bullets hit the wall. They were tracers, and they jumped and ricocheted like white-hot cigarette butts. One of them sang off the edge of a shelf and fell to the floor about three feet away from me. The glowing slug began to fade, like the beer can and the mirage steak. I put my hand out to find it, but all I felt was splinters of glass and crockery. A phantom bullet, I thought. Real enough to cause damage and death—and then gone.

You don’t want me around here, Mr. Trooper, Price had warned. Not with the body count I’ve got in my head.

The firing stopped. I got free of Cheryl and said, “You stay right here.” Then I looked up over the counter and saw my truck and the station wagon on fire, the flames being whipped by the wind. Rain slapped me across the face as it swept in where the window glass used to be. I saw Price lying still huddled on the floor, with pieces of glass all around him. His hands were clawing the air, and in the flickering red neon his face was contorted, his eyes still closed. The pool of ketchup around his head made him look like his skull had been split open. He was peering into hell, and I averted my eyes before I lost my own mind.

Ray and Lindy and the two children had huddled under the table of their booth. The woman was sobbing brokenly. I looked at Dennis, lying a few feet from Price: he was sprawled on his face, and there were four holes punched through his back. It was not ketchup that ran in rivulets around Dennis’ body. His right arm was outflung, and the fingers twitched around the gun he gripped.

Another flare sailed up from the woods like a Fourth of July sparkler.

When the light brightened, I saw them: at least five figures, maybe more. They were crouched over, coming across the parking lot—but slowly, the speed of nightmares. Their clothes flapped and hung around them, and the flare’s light glanced off their helmets. They were carrying weapons—rifles, I guessed. I couldn’t see their faces, and that was for the best.

On the floor, Price moaned. I heard him say “light … in the light …”

The flare hung right over the diner. And then I knew what was going on. We were in the light. We were all caught in Price’s nightmare, and the Nightcrawlers that Price had left in the mud were fighting the battle again—the same way it had been fought at the Pines Haven Motor Inn. The Nightcrawlers had come back to life, powered by Price’s guilt and whatever that Howdy Doody shit had done to him.

And we were in the light, where Charlie had been out in that rice paddy.

There was a noise like castanets clicking. Dots of fire arced through the broken windows and thudded into the counter. The stools squealed as they were hit and spun. The cash register rang and the drawer popped open, and then the entire register blew apart and bills and coins scattered. I ducked my head, but a wasp of fire—I don’t, know what, a bit of metal or glass maybe—sliced my left cheek open from ear to upper lip. I fell to the floor behind the counter with blood running down my face.

A blast shook the rest of the cups, saucers, plates, and glasses off the shelves. The whole roof buckled inward, throwing loose ceiling tiles, light fixtures, and pieces of metal framework.

We were all going to die. I knew it, right then. Those things were going to destroy us. But I thought of the pistol in Dennis’ hand, and of Price lying near the door. If we were caught in Price’s nightmare and the blow from the ketchup bottle had broken something in his skull, then the only way to stop his dream was to kill him.

I’m no hero. I was about to piss in my pants, but I knew I was the only one who could move. I jumped up and scrambled over the counter, falling beside Dennis and wrenching at that pistol. Even in death, Dennis had a strong grip. Another blast came, along the wall to my right. The heat of it scorched me, and the shock wave skidded me across the floor through glass and rain and blood.

But I had that pistol in my hand.

I heard Ray shout, “Look out!”

In the doorway, silhouetted by flames, was a skeletal thing wearing muddy green rags. It wore a dented-in helmet and carried a corroded, slime-covered rifle. Its face was gaunt and shadowy, the features hidden behind a scum of rice-paddy muck. It began to lift the rifle to fire at me—slowly, slowly …

I got the safety off the pistol and fired twice, without aiming. A spark leapt off the helmet as one of the bullets was deflected, but the figure staggered backward and into the conflagration of the station wagon, where it seemed to melt into ooze before it vanished.

More tracers were coming in. Cheryl’s Volkswagen shuddered, the tires blowing out almost in unison. The state-trooper car was already bullet-riddled and sitting on flats.

Another Nightcrawler, this one without a helmet and with slime covering the skull where the hair had been, rose up beyond the window and fired its rifle. I heard the bullet whine past my ear, and as I took aim I saw its bony finger tightening on the trigger again.

A skillet flew over my head and hit the thing’s shoulder, spoiling its aim. For an instant the skillet stuck in the Nightcrawler’s body, as if the figure itself was made out of mud. I fired once … twice … and saw pieces of matter fly from the thing’s chest. What might’ve been a mouth opened in a soundless scream, and the thing slithered out of sight.

I looked around. Cheryl was standing behind the counter, weaving on her feet, her face white with shock. “Get down!” I shouted, and she ducked for cover.

I crawled to Price, shook him hard. His eyes would not open. “Wake up!” I begged him. “Wake up, damn you!” And then I pressed the barrel of the pistol against Price’s head. Dear God, I didn’t want to kill anybody, but I knew I was going to have to blow the Nightcrawlers right out of his brain. I hesitated—too long.

Something smashed into my left collarbone. I heard the bone snap like a broomstick being broken. The force of the shot slid me back against the counter and jammed me between two bullet-pocked stools. I lost the gun, and there was a roaring in my head that deafened me.

I don’t know how long I was out. My left arm felt like dead meat. All the cars in the lot were burning, and there was a hole in the diner’s roof that a tractor-trailer truck could’ve dropped through. Rain was sweeping into my face, and when I wiped my eyes clear I saw them, standing over Price.

There were eight of them. The two I thought I’d killed were back. They trailed weeds, and their boots and ragged clothes were covered with mud. They stood in silence, staring down at their living comrade.

I was too tired to scream. I couldn’t even whimper. I just watched.

Price’s hands lifted into the air. He reached for the Nightcrawlers, and then his eyes opened. His pupils were dead white, surrounded by scarlet.

“End it,” he whispered. “End it …”

One of the Nightcrawlers aimed its rifle and fired. Price jerked. Another Nightcrawler fired, and then they were all firing point-blank into Price’s body. Price thrashed and clutched at his head, but there was no blood; the phantom bullets weren’t hitting him.

The Nightcrawlers began to ripple and fade. I saw the flames of the burning cars through their bodies. The figures became transparent, floating in vague outlines. Price had awakened too fast at the Pines Haven Motor Inn, I realized; if he had remained asleep, the creatures of his nightmares would’ve ended it there, at that Florida motel. They were killing him in front of me—or he was allowing them to end it, and I think that’s what he must’ve wanted for a long, long time.

He shuddered, his mouth releasing a half-moan, half-sigh.

It sounded almost like relief.

The Nightcrawlers vanished. Price didn’t move anymore.

I saw his face. His eyes were closed, and I think he must’ve found peace at last.

5

A trucker hauling lumber from Mobile to Birmingham saw the burning cars. I don’t even remember what he looked like.

Ray was cut up by glass, but his wife and the kids were okay. Physically, I mean. Mentally, I couldn’t say.

Cheryl went into the hospital for a while. I got a postcard from her with the Golden Gate Bridge on the front. She promised she’d write and let me know how she was doing, but I doubt if I’ll ever hear from her. She was the best waitress I ever had, and I wish her luck.

The police asked me a thousand questions, and I told the story the same way every time. I found out later that no bullets or shrapnel were ever dug out of the walls or the cars or Dennis’ body—just like in the case of that motel massacre. There was no bullet in me, though my collarbone was snapped clean in two.

Price had died of a massive brain hemorrhage. It looked, the police told me, as if it had exploded in his skull.

I closed the diner. Farm life is fine. Alma understands, and we don’t talk about it.

But I never showed the police what I found, and I don’t know exactly why not.

I picked up Price’s wallet in the mess. Behind a picture of a smiling young woman holding a baby there was a folded piece of paper. On that paper were the names of four men.

Beside one name, Price had written “Dangerous.”

I’ve found four other ’Nam vets who can do the same thing, Price had said.

I sit up at night a lot, thinking about that and looking at those names. Those men had gotten a dose of that Howdy Doody shit in a foreign place they hadn’t wanted to be, fighting a war that turned out to be one of those crossroads of nightmare and reality. I’ve changed my mind about ’Nam because I understand now that the worst of the fighting is still going on, in the battlefields of memory.

A Yankee who called himself Tompkins came to my house one May morning and flashed me an ID that said he worked for a veterans’ association. He was very soft-spoken and polite, but he had deep-set eyes that were almost black, and he never blinked. He asked me all about Price, seemed real interested in picking my brain of every detail. I told him the police had the story, and I couldn’t add any more to it. Then I turned the tables and asked him about Howdy Doody. He smiled in a puzzled kind of way and said he’d never heard of any chemical defoliant called that. No such thing, he said. Like I say, he was very polite.

But I know the shape of a gun tucked into a shoulder holster. Tompkins was wearing one under his seersucker coat. I never could find any veterans’ association that knew anything about him, either.

Maybe I should give that list of names to the police. Maybe I will. Or maybe I’ll try to find those four men myself, and try to make some sense out of what’s being hidden.

I don’t think Price was evil. No. He was just scared, and who can blame a man for running from his own nightmares? I like to believe that, in the end, Price had the courage to face the Nightcrawlers, and in committing suicide he saved our lives.

The newspapers, of course, never got the real story. They called Price a ’Nam vet who’d gone crazy, killed six people in a Florida motel, and then killed a state trooper in a shoot-out at Big Bob’s diner and gas stop.

But I know where Price is buried. They sell little American flags at the five-and-dime in Mobile. I’m alive, and I can spare the change.

And then I’ve got to find out how much courage I have.

[cecesf06]

Inconsolable (Part 1)

Anon: hi, can I get 68 and 74 with Liam and can it be angsty as anything, thank you!

A/N: No, thank you for requesting! This one is very long, I got kind of carried away., So I split it into two parts. P.S. angst is a specialty of mine.. If you don’t like it or wanted something else feel free to tell me!

(Oops, I deleted this prompt list, and have had all of the requests just sitting there, so I’m so sorry everyone, but I already this one done, so yolo.)

(NOT MY GIF!)

68. “I don’t need help! I just want the pain to stop!”

74. “I can’t take the loneliness anymore.”

Warnings: mentions and brief descriptions of blood and death, major character death, minuscule blink and you’ll miss it depression.

Word count: hella long- 20k both parts oml.

____________________________________________________

She wasn’t like them.

Y/N has seen them cope with the loss of a significant other; Scott, Isaac, Lydia- all in the same day, they lost the person who mattered most to them. They felt that primal terrible grief that swallowed them whole, and the shredded agony in their hearts where something had been savagely ripped out, leaving a void that wouldn’t- couldn’t- be filled. They survived the crushing despair, the same despair you were living through now, and the one you will always feel, because according to them, as time passes it’ll be easier to cope with.

But she wasn’t like them.

She can’t live without him.

It became painfully obvious only two months after he di- left- that moving on wasn’t an option, at least not for Y/N. The rest of the pack had grieved, and mourned, but they ultimately accepted it, although they were used to it- they were used to people they love leaving, but not her, she wasn’t at all, she wasn’t part of the pack until he was bitten, and everything about it was too surreal, but the denial was over but she can’t do it, she can’t-

The funny thing about being in Y/N’s family was that although sheltered to its cruelty, she wasn’t oblivious to the supernatural world. The Y/L/N family- convent- was well-known, prestigious, and a force to be reckoned with. Feared and respected, her family had raised generations upon generations of mages, and witches, men and women alike, Y/N being one of them.

Before her freshman year of high school, Y/N was home schooled, and trained until she gained full control over her powers. All children did this in her family, it usually took about five or so years, and therefore only elementary schooling, but her power was stronger than the rest, and control was a concept to her as compatible as gasoline to a flame. But she was not only strong, she was determined and gifted, and sooner, or in her case later, she began her freshman year, and first year of public schooling, at Beacon Hills High.

It was there she met her soon to be pack, and after an incident involving duct tape and orange peels, along with a few accidental spells, she met him.

He was the water to her flames, the baby blue eyed werewolf bitten by a true alpha. Control for him was as difficult for him as it was for her- power was something they shared along with a similar liking to dark chocolate, and his strength was his biggest foe. A foe that Y/N easily defeated.

Of course there were issues, threats from both enemies and eventually her family, but after much consideration, she was able to discharge from the convent, where she was nothing more than a burden and loose thread to them with her ever increasing strength, to a place to call her own among the True alpha’s mismatch pack, and with him- until she lost him.

Burying the memories, Y/N hitched her bag higher to settle on her shoulders, picking up her pace. Leaves crunched under her shoes, and trees shuddered in the wind, the full moon occasionally peeking through the clouds. Y/N shivered in the wind, regretting not bringing a coat, or even his sweatshirt- the one she never left home without.

She couldn’t have brought it tonight, though, not if she wanted her spell at the McCall’s, where she has been living, to work.

Scott was going to notice she was missing, though.

Scott has always been there for her in more ways than one- the whole pack has. Going behind their backs like this dropped a heavy weight in her stomach, and a lump in her throat.

But the feeling of his still body in her arms,and the image of his lifeless blue eyes she adored so much trumped the guilt, steeling her resolve.

Y/N could feel the buzzing, the sick yet powerful hum of the Nemeton. Y/N had a love/hate relationship with the tree stump, but if all went according to plan tonight, she’d be indebted to it forever.

The stump was her alter, her table, her desk, and Y/N unpacked her bag on it, ignoring the shift from the tree. Of course it objected, it recognized the herbs, the ones only used for one spell. They weren’t easy to procure, but they were easier to get than the rest of the ritual required.

The knife was a kitchen knife from the McCall’s house, and the runes were from ancient Latin Americans for renewal and rebirth during the vast wasteland after Noah’s arc, and the flood that destroyed the earth. Carving them into the thick decaying wood of the Nemeton was an arduous task, but well worth the reprimanding nosebleed she received in return.

The herbs, the runes carved in the stump, his blood, and then her blood. The Latin spell, long and complicated, and rehearsed for days before tonight, and even more effective on a full moon, only to be cast no longer than two months after passing. It was tonight or never; he’s been gone for two months today.

“Y/N!!”

She paused mid sentence, fear clutching her abdomen. They knew. They were going to stop her, and if they did, there’d be no going back, because after tonight, she’d never have another chance, and she’d have to face it.

The idea occurred days after he left. Several days brought the spell and ritual in fine print off a library computer. A few weeks after, she began gathering the supplies, and by three weeks, Y/N had everything she needed. And by one month, she’d make the trip, set up the supplies, carve the runes, and sit in silence, alone, pondering exactly what would happen if she went through with it. Him back and whole, in her arms again where he belongs, and not gone.

Not gone because of her. Because they got in her head, and eliminated the one thing- person- who could keep her in check. Of course that backfired when she burned them to the ground and their children and their grandchildren.

But he was gone by her hand, Y/N’s hand.

She remembers that day. It haunts her every night. Waking up that morning, her sixteenth birthday, nonetheless tragic, getting sick, and passing out in the bathroom at the McCall’s. The next thing she’s conscious of is the dark, and cold warehouse, empty albeit one small thing- his lifeless body.

They made him suffer, all while she was out and helpless while they manipulated her like a puppet, and he meant the world to her. He is the world to her- Y/N can’t be in it without him, she can’t cope like they do, and they don’t understand. They don’t understand the confusion that swept her when she was back to herself. They don’t understand the panic she felt when she saw him crumpled on the cement. They don’t understand the sorrow and pain, and fear, and horror, and absolute agony when she realized he was gone. They don’t understand how long she stayed there, crying on her knees with him in her arms, screaming and sobbing to the heavens to bring him back. To wake up.

And she was awake. And she’s going to bring him back, even if it’s the last thing she does.

Dead or alive, she’ll be with him again tonight.

“Y/N!”

Y/N ignored their pleas, chanting the words, feeling blood trickle down her face from her nose, and mouth, like it did when a witch pushed their limits.

This spell was one to be cast by a whole convent. The power needed was ungodly, and she had to believe that the rumors about her unnatural power were true, and that she was strong enough to do it.

Y/N couldn’t go another day without him, and if she didn’t succeed tonight, he was officially gone.

“Y/N!!!”

The voices of the pack were closer but she didn’t care. Her ears were ringing, her head fuzzy, and the buzzing power she was drawing from the Nemeton was coursing through her veins. The last words were pronounced. There was no going back.

It must’ve been a sight to see, Y/N on her knees by the Nemeton, the strongest source of power in Beacon Hills, blood covering the bottom half of her face, her eyes flashing from her usual stunning Y/e/c to a deep dark maleficent purple, darker since he left.

It certainly scared Scott, Lydia, Malia, Kira and Stiles when they finally found her.

Scott was the first to react. “Y/N, stop!” The panic is his voice caught her attention, freezing her in the act as she prepared to let the blood drop from her sliced palm, the last step before the spell was complete.

“It’s too late.” Her voice was trance like, almost monotone, like it’d been since he left. “It’s already been done.”

The wind had picked up considerably, leaves swirling and surrounding her like a tornado. Y/N’s gaze lifted to the moon again, the power gathering, and grinding her to her very core, draining as much as it could, from her, the Nemeton, the full moon.

There wasn’t a more powerful force. If this didn’t work, nothing would.

“Y/N,” Lydia was trembling, and Stiles put a comforting hand on her shoulder, brows creased. Lydia’s voice was weak and quivering, horrified. “What have you done?”

Y/N’s eyes were unblinking at the banshee, and she knew Lydia could feel the disruption in the balance between the living and the dead. “What I had to.”

Scott bit his lip to hold back tears, and not for the first time, sharing her thoughts and emotions. “Y/N, we could’ve helped you, we know how you feel, we lost him too-”

“I don’t need help!” Her voice was a roar, deeper than usual, the wind swirling quicker, her fist clenched, stopping the blood that’s ready to be spilled, that will bring him back. Her voice dropped to a moan. “I just want the pain to stop..”

“It will be alright.” Scott replied somberly, struck with grief anew for both the boy they just lost, and his first love long ago. “It may not feel like it now, but it will get easier- and we’re here for you, we understand how you feel-”

Her eyes were alighted with fury. “No! None of you understand how I feel!”

“We do, Y/N,” It’s Mason’s voice now, the human completely over looked in her wrath. The boy shamelessly had tears running down his face. “We loved him, too.”

Y/N was still at his words, the rage and currents slowing a bit, her fist lowering from where it has been poised above the herbs. The pack was beginning to feel as though they were getting through.

They weren’t. His words only poured alcohol into her gasoline fueled fire, no water to quench the flames.

“NO! Not like I did.” Her voice dropped a few octaves, which was progress in Stiles’s book. “I killed him. I killed the only person I truly loved.”

Scott had taken a step toward her, only to recede when a current lashed out a warning. “That wasn’t you. That was them.”

Y/N shook her head, disbelieving. “No, no, I killed him.”

Stiles had a pained expression, reaching a hand toward the younger, a pang throbbing in his chest where it never fully healed after Allison. “ No, they were controlling you, Y/N!”

She shook her head, blood beginning to pour from her ears as the wind picked up profusely. She didn’t believe them. She’d never believe them.

“I can’t take the loneliness anymore…”

Alarmed, Malia began to take a step toward her, but Scott held her back. “Don’t.”

The six were forced to watch helpless as she let the blood fall, his name on her lips, helpless as the power was extracted from the three sources, helpless to watch Y/N scream, Lydia screaming with her. Once the roaring of wind, and ear piercing screams died out, everything became painfully still.

Lydia was shaking as she recovered in Stiles’s arms, a look of horror on her face. Y/N was unmoving, flat on the stump, and silent.

Malia and Scott reached Y/N first, panicky as they inspected her, almost collapsing with relief as they found her breathing. Mason and Kira were by their side next, the kitsune sinking next to her boyfriend, a hand over her mouth in shock. Corey appeared out of nowhere, where he was probably skulking and watching as usual.

Stiles helped a shaky Lydia approach, the banshee trembling and mumbling his name.

“Is Y/N okay?” Stiles’s voice broke, fearful they lost yet another part of their family, the girl who is like a sister to him.

“Yeah, she’s breathing, just unconscious. We should take her Deaton’s though.” Scott supplied, lifting Y/N into his arms with ease while Malia frowned at her limp figure with concern, using her sleeve to wipe some of the blood that covered her face. Stiles nodded, relieved.

Scott furrowed his brows at Lydia, who was staring off in a daze, almost comatose, now mumbling a sporadic mix of Y/N’s and his name. “ We should bring her to him, too.”

Stiles nodded, a flicker of fear at the thought that Lydia could be comatose again, as Malia takes her other side, and they follow Scott to the clinic. Mason trails behind, but not after snapping pictures of the runes and blood and herbs still strewn across the Nemeton.

Deaton better have answers.

Well this was nerve wracking to post let me know if you want part 2!

[everdreamts-blog]

  “Have you used a portal before?”   Minchan asks the question like he doesn’t care much about the answer. The click of his heels on the pavement is distracting, a staccato in bright pink. He’s a lot to handle in the group chat, but even more of a handful in real life. Glittery eyeshadow and perfectly manicured nails, he’s a living doll, making mock kissy faces at every person walking by who dares to stare. A force of nature if Lysander ever saw one.   “Hello? Are you listening?”

  Minchan snapping his fingers in his face brings Lysander back to reality. “Um, what? Sorry, I wasn’t… “   With a huff and a quick wave of his hand, Minchan dismisses his reply. “It doesn’t matter, does it. I’m not walking all the way to Rei’s stupid forest. I’m not going to let my baby witch do it, either.”   As always when Minchan uses this nickname of his, Lysander’s heart skips a beat. It’s one thing to read it, yet another entirely to hear it. And maybe it’s imagination, but something fond colors it, something soft. Lysander fights a smile, biting his lower lip hard. It’s somehow endearing, that particular brand of a handful Minchan is.   He drags him into some alley, its dead end around a brickwalled corner. From his jacket’s pocket he pulls a piece of white chalk, and promptly begins to draw a circle lined and filled with odd symbols on the wall closest to him. Lysander watches in awe and confusion both.   “Oh,” Minchan says, shooting him a grin over his shoulder. “It’s for the portal. You see, for some magic, we need preparation. Magic circles, sometimes little sacrifices, that sort of thing. It’s too advanced for you right now.”   Instead of dampening his mood, this revelation makes Lysander’s stomach flip in joy. “I’ll… learn this, too?”   “Of course!” Minchan finishes his work off and takes a step back, pocketing the chalk again. “You’ll learn this, and how to make potions… I might just teach you some conjuring, too. Just don’t go trying to summon some demon, yes? That never goes well.”   Once again, Lysander only half listens, too entranced by the casualness of Minchan going about his business. He squares his shoulders and places an outstretched hand into the very center of the circle. As soon as his fingers touch the chalk, it springs to life, glowing a gentle white. Minchan pulls his hand back slowly. The circle lifts off the wall, sticking to his skin like a spiderweb. It hangs in the air, still connected to Minchan’s hand. Lysander’s jaw falls open.   Of course, Minchan notices. “Neat, isn’t it? Wait until you see Qiaomeng doing it. He doesn’t even need a surface, just draws the thing in the air right away. Talented bastard.”   He falls silent, eyes closed. The glow of the circle brightens. Around it, the air flimmers like it does in the hot summer sun. Lysander inhales, catching the slightest whiff of ozone.   Minchan balls his hand into a loose fist, only his forefinger sticking out. He drags the pad of it down the length of the circle, and, little by little, it breaks open in the wake of his touch. When Minchan reaches the end, the chalk peels back in its entirety, revealing a swirl of muted purples and greens dispersed in a sea of endless black. It takes over the circle, stretching to about Minchan’s height. It stops as soon as it touches the ground.   Lysander’s heart flutters in his chest. His arms break out in goose-flesh. “Wow,” is all he manages to press out.   Minchan hums. “This is a portal. It’s like… a door, except it leads into someone’s home if that someone allows it. Rei isn’t a fan of it, but he lets us use one, anyhow.”   “Why doesn’t he like it?”   “A talented witch could trace this magic back to him. I’ll have Parfait erase as much of it after we’re done as she can, but there’ll always be some leftover in places spells were used. Rei’s mostly worried someone might have the idea to murder him in his sleep, really.” Lowering his voice, Minchan adds, “He’s got a bit of a reputation. The plants he grows are highly sought after, some impossible to get around these parts unless you want to pay a hefty sum. He has all reason to be cautious.”   Lysander makes a little noise of understanding. All he knows about Rei is that he lives in a forest – magical and weird, as Qiaomeng had put it – and that he’s powerful, too. He should have asked more questions.   “Anyway.” Minchan grasps him gently by the shoulders and steers him towards the portal. “It’s best if you close your eyes and keep your limbs pressed to your body until you’re back on solid ground. Got it? I’ll be right behind you.”   Before Lysander gets another word in, Minchan pushes him.   Everything around him goes dark.   His stomach swoops again, but not at all in joy this time. He finds himself hovering in nothingness before he’s swept away. Like a tornado toying with a skinny branch, he’s scooped up and tossed about, a deafening roar in his ears. Static sticks to his skin, crawling across it in a numbing tingle. Lysander opens his mouth to scream, but no sound makes it out.   A flash of green breaks through the dark. Lysander slams face first into a tree, its leaves shivering with the impact.   “Oh. Oh, no,” a voice close to him says. Someone places a hand on his shoulder in cadence to a wave of nausea flooding through him. Lysander retches, hunching over. The hand moves to pat his back, all gentle. “There, there. Travelling with portals is never fun, I’m afraid. He should have told you.”   He chances a look to his right, to where the voice is coming from, and is met with bare feet on mossy forest floor. Pressing the back of his hand to his mouth, he straightens slowly.   Miles and miles of forest stretch out around him, trees and bushes and a little creek gently running its course. Birdsong fills the space, lined with the rustle of leaves overhead.   Rei lives in a forest. This forest.   “Is everything alright again?” the voice asks, and the hand disappears.   Lysander nods absently. “Sorry, I… oh.”   A young man steps into his view – the one those bare feet belong to – and gives him an encouraging, but small smile. He’s taller than Lysander is, his hair a strangely warm shade of black. Something about him is… off. His skin is too perfect, his movements just shy of oily. There’s a startling darkness to his eyes. Not human, his instincts scream at him, though he passes as one well enough.   The portal buzzes. Minchan emerges with grace, touching his feet to the ground as though he were a cat leaping off the sofa. He beams at the both of them, the definition of cheeky.   “I see you’ve already met our hermit.”   The not-quite-human huffs, crossing his arms. A few heads of flowers peek through his hair, all varying shades of red. “Why did you let him go through it like this? It’s dangerous.”   “Oh, relax. Don’t talk to me about dangerous. You grow flesh-eating plants.”   “ – that never harm anyone unless I tell them to –”   “Right. That makes it better.”   The puzzle pieces click belatedly. “Oh!” Lysander says, clutching at his chest. “You’re Rei!” Rei turns toward him, wearing the same smile as before. “And you’re Lysander. I’ll get you something for the queasiness. Portals get to everyone the first time, especially if you’re not fully prepared.” He shoots Minchan a weighty look at his last few words. Minchan retaliates by sticking out his tongue. Rei ignores him. “Come, I’ll show you inside.”   “Inside”, as it turns out, is a little hut hidden behind layers of what Minchan calls “glamour”. After a simple wave of Rei’s hand, it appears out of thin air, flimmering at the edges like Minchan’s circle had done. It sits in the middle of a fenced in, lush garden, a plethora of brightly colored flowers and plants. Some, Lysander recognizes, but others he’s never seen in his life. A walkway of grey stones leads to the entrance door, heavy looking and wooden.   The door swings open on its own, or so it appears. Rei bends down to pick something up, cupping it ever so gently in his palms.   It’s a tiny, albino hedgehog.   “Thank you, Lilac.” Rei presses a kiss to the hedgehog’s forehead. The hedgehog makes a noise that sounds suspiciously flustered. “This is my familiar,” Rei follows it up with, showing Lilac to Lysander. “Say hello. Try to be friends. I’d hate for you two to not get along.”   Lysander wrings his hands, staring at Lilac. Lilac doesn’t move, either, staring right back.   “Um. H-hello. It’s nice to meet you.”   Lilac raises his little snout into the air, and Rei frowns down at him.   “What did I just say? Play nice.”   Still, Lilac doesn’t look very impressed. He turns around in Rei’s palms before he vanishes in a shimmery flash of light. Rei shakes his head.   “Don’t mind him. He needs a bit to warm up to someone.”   Minchan mutters something about it being Rei’s own fault for never socializing. He goes ignored again.   The inside of Rei’s hut is surprisingly normal. All his furniture is wooden or partly wooden, from the round table in the kitchen to the sofa lined with the plushest cushions and pillows to the TV stand. Herbs and flowers hang from every wall, both dried and fresh. The most outlandish item is the big cauldron in the middle of the kitchen, a fire lit underneath it. Whatever’s inside it bubbles gently, filling the air with a sweet, herby scent.   Of all the cliched witch-things Lysander expected to see, this is the most accurate to his imaginations.   Upon closer inspection, however, he finds that the TV and the kitchen itself are both highly modern. Rei even owns a gaming console. How and where is he getting his electricity from? Something tells him the answer will either be magic, or so mundane that he would have never considered it. A question for another day.   Rei gathers them together in the middle of the living room and has them sit on the floor after pushing the coffee table aside. He hands Lysander a small pill and a glass of water instead of the potion he’d expected, and Lysander gulps both down. Apparently, even witches have a need for regular medicine. Perhaps solving everything with magic is against the rules. If there are any rules.   He has so much to learn.   “Did you bring the salves?” Rei asks, seated cross-legged next to Lysander.   A few days earlier, Rei instructed him to prepare a couple of standard salves to put on wounds, ones that his job as a nurse has long familiarized him with. He’d told him to make them with the intent to heal, to concentrate on and visualize the process of a wound closing. So Lysander had done exactly that. And though he’d found himself tempted to test them, himself, he thought it more prudent to wait until both Minchan and Rei could ascertain their capabilities. If they had any special ones, anyhow.   Lysander gives a quick nod, taking the two small, rotund plastic containers out of his sling bag. They used to be filled with store-bought skin care, serving this purpose just fine. Rei takes them with a grateful nod. One he hands Minchan, the other he keeps, unscrewing the lid. He tilts it gently in his palm so the light catches in the creaminess of the salve, making it glisten. He brings it up to his face to smell it, humming as he does. Whether or not it’s a satisfied noise, Lysander can’t tell.   “They smell nice,” Minchan comments, tilting his container every which way like Rei had done. “Why’d you make him make these?”   Rei smiles, that same, small smile, but there’s an edge to it. Smug. “Because I asked him what he’s interested in. Have you done the same?”   Minchan sputters. “I – you know, it’s not like we can just jump into what he likes. He needs basics. That’s what I’m concerned about.”   This playful back and forth is just as endearing as Minchan’s whirlwind persona. Lysander can’t stop himself from giggling, which earns him a wider smile from Rei and a noise from Minchan like he’s terribly martyred. But he’s smiling, too, unable to hide it even behind that huffy facade.   “Well,” Rei says after a moment of comfortable silence, “I suppose we’ll need to test these.”   He gets up and walks over to the kitchen to rummage in a drawer. What he pulls out glints silvery in his palm, and only when he sits back down, it becomes clear what it is. A knife. Vines snake around its handle, deep green in color. The blade itself is simple and two-edged, a small symbol etched into the very tip of it.   Rei reaches out, takes one of Minchan’s hands and quickly drags the knife from one side of his palm to the other. Minchan yelps.   “What the fuck?! Have you lost your –”   Minchan struggles, but Rei tightens his grasp on his hand, keeping him in place. Blood wells up from the cut, beading along the surface.   “As I said, we need to test his salves,” Rei says, his voice unaffected. He turns his attention towards Lysander, who has since frozen in his spot. His heart hammers in his chest, a new wave of sickness sloshing in his stomach. As used as he is to seeing blood, a warning would have been nice.   Minchan struggles again, but it’s still in vain. He goes slack a moment after, averting his eyes. “I’m going to be sick.”   Rei hums vaguely, still looking at Lysander. “Which one of them would you use for a cut like this?”   “Um.” Lysander slowly inches forward to take a closer look at the cut. It’s not deep, something that would heal just fine on its own once its dressed. He picks up one of his salves, offering it to Rei. “This one.”   “Well, go on then. Put it on.”   Lysander blinks at him. None of this is what he’d expected of this get-together, but he doesn’t have the luxury to complain. Hesitating, he asks Rei for something to clean the blood up with, and Rei disappears again only to return with a damp washcloth. Lysander wipes the cut down, careful not to hurt Minchan too much, before he dips a finger into the salve, coating the pad of it with the thinnest layer.   “This… might sting a little,” he warns as he gently rubs the salve along the cut.   Even before he manages to reach the end of it, the cut begins to close.   He and Minchan both gape at it, at the way the skin knits together on its own right in front of their eyes. Lysander finishes his job to watch the rest of it close, too, leaving Minchan’s palm pristine as if nothing ever happened. No scab, no scar. Nothing.   “Holy shit,” Minchan whispers in awe, inspecting his hand up close. Next to him, Rei chuckles.   “I knew it would work the moment you handed it to me. You must have felt that, too, Minchan.”   Minchan, rubbing his thumb along the spot where the cut used to be, nods dumbly. “I… felt something, sure. But I’m not good at healing magic. I couldn’t tell it was going to be like this.”   Rei wipes his knife down with the damp washcloth. It’s all a little much to take in – Rei being so casual, Minchan so shocked, this place and Lysander’s salve actually working. His head spins with this slew of information. Judging by the softness of Rei’s face, he’s noticed. He puts a hand on Lysander’s shoulder, squeezing gently.   “You have a talent. Very potent magic. You’ll make a great healer one day, baby witch.”   For the umpteenth time, Lysander’s heart skips a beat.

[browniefox]

Pro No Evens - YOLMT 7

Pro No Evens - You Only Live Multiple Times 7

Memories can be stressful and hard to deal with, training happens, lost things are found, and someone who was trying to find herself returns.

Against All Odds is created by the lovely folks @royalflushstories and Royal Expectations is made by the stunning @trulymightypotato

Felix couldn’t sleep.

Marzia was curled up against his side, one arm lazy strewn across his chest as her head sat almost between his shoulder and head. He could feel her breath tickling his neck with every inhale and exhale. And he could hear her heart beat.

It took just a small pressing and he could hear it loud and clear, like his head was lying on her. The slow pound, the th-thump of Marzia heart beneath her ribcage was almost enough to lull him to sleep.

Almost.

Things were going well. He had Cry by his side where he could keep the faceless safe, he had Marzia with him and sending quiet, content vibes even now, he even had Ken supporting him and helping to keep the whole ‘practicing magic’ thing unnoticed by the public. He had everything he wanted.

So why couldn’t he sleep.

He cast his powers down to the floor, where Edgar and Maya were lying. They were curled in on themselves, their backs touching. Their heart beats should’ve helped too, they were his dogs, so innocent and free from the hardships of living.

But he remained awake.

He was being haunted again.

It had become so much smoother after getting the other three involved. Thoughts had stuck with him instead of flying off into the wind. He was seeing things clearly again, less of double-image overlap. He had almost forgotten what being lost in that tornado of Realms, the Loop consuming him.

It wasn’t quite the Loop, wasn’t the double-image problems. But it was Realms pressing down on him, smothering Felix the Alcohol Manufacturer, the owner of Pewd’s Booze, and shoving Felix the Protector into his place. Everytime he blinked, the darkness that greeted him was the inside of a building where statues of people he knew stared at him. He stared at himself, his own stone face, and reached to touch the cold replica of himself. His hand stopped right before it touched for fear of slipping right through and being faced with his own end.

He looked at the golden disc.

It was like an actual hole in him. Physically there now.

He opened his eyes back up and was greeted by his ceiling.

Felix sighed.

And blinked again.

Ethan desperately drew in air.

He was going to be so sore in the morning.

“Ethan you need to be a bit quicker with your scales.”

Virid offered Ethan a hand up and the younger took it. Claws gently tapped against Ethan’s wrist before they faded back into fingernails. Ethan’s had already disappeared long ago when he lost focus and ended up on the ground, arms raised to block any blows that Virid might deliver while he was down. Of course, Virid had never hurt Ethan after he had obviously lost the match. At least, so far they hadn’t. Who was to say for when they got farther in the training.

“I know.”

Ethan sighed, rubbing at the bruises on his arms. As he did he coaxed the scales to appear. They were a nice blue color, and every time he saw them they reminded him of something. Of the freedom of being in the sky and others with scales and wings and sharp teeth. Of being pulled close and hugged and loved. They weren’t his parents, and yet… they were. In a strange way.

He got  the same warm feeling being around Virid.

“So, again?” Ethan rolled his shoulders, putting his fists back up and covering them with scales. He’d always been rather agile, but man was Virid fast.

But they didn’t get into a fighting position. Instead, Virid walked over to a patch of grass and sat down. They patted the ground next to them and Ethan, after a moment's hesitation, sat down next to them.

“I’ve missed this.”

Their training ground was a spot in the woods, the best area where no one would question what they were doing and they weren’t encroaching in mob territory. Ethan had had to ask the day off of work (though he would probably end up going to Freddy’s tonight) and of course Mark had been all too happy to give it to him. It had taken a while to get out here, and now the sun was on its way down.

“Missed what?”

Ethan ran his fingers through the untrimmed blades of grass. He knew why, sitting here, but he wanted to hear somebody else say. Know that somebody else thought it.

“The trees, the nature, the small little life everywhere.” An ant ran across Virid’s hand, inspecting it for food. “You lose some of that in the city. Maybe that’s why Hibiscus left. She was looking for home, and home was never in cramped places with so many people. Home was a small place in the middle of the woods helping raise children into warriors.”

“Wherever Mark is, I feel home.” Ethan leaned into Virid, almost subconsciously. Their hand came up and ran through his hair.

“You’re doing well, by the way.” Virid hummed. “I’m proud of you. This thing going on, it isn’t easy, it drove Hibiscus away and made me fear for my own sanity. Every moment I spend with you, Ethan, I feel a bit better, a bit more like I’m myself. I’m who I’m supposed to be.”

They sat together like that for far more than a moment.

“Hey Gar.”

Gar almost leapt to his feet, almost reached for a weapon he didn’t have, and a cold breeze suddenly swept through the area around him.

Wade just stood there.

Gar relaxed minutely. He looked away.

Ever since his last break down, he’d been avoiding, well, everything.

He hadn’t gone to another meeting for the Realms.

He’d called in sick to the police office.

He’d even avoided the faceless. His dad was probably worried, but what was Gar going to tell him? That he thinks he may be a demon from another life?

“Hello Wade.” Gar fought the urge to run away. He avoided looking Wade in the eye.

“Gar, it’s okay.” Wade sad down next to Gar on the park bench. Gar continued to look at what he had been looking at for a while. Wade followed his gaze to Mark, leaning up against a tree, probably asleep. A bunch of squirrels had surrounded him, making nests of his hairs and curling up in his jacket.

“I wish I never remembered.” Gar said in little more than a mumble. Lucky Mark, so free of this weight that Gar had on him. “Should we ever remember? Should we push this forward, try harder to remember? Maybe we shouldn’t, maybe we should leave this all in the past or different world or whatever. We’re here now, we’re who we are. How does remembering help us in the now, the present?”

“The others were talking about that.” Wade continued to watched the distant Mark. There was a squirrel wrapped around his neck like a scarf, several of them in fact. “After you didn’t show up the second time, they got to thinking why we were doing so much in our power to find out who we once were, whether or not it’s real. For hours we sat in Dan’s apartment, thinking about where to go after the revelation of you and the Demon Prince?”

“What did you decide?” Gar swore he could feel cold hand on his back, rubbing in circles, attempting to comfort him.

“We decided to keep figuring this out. And we want you to keep helping us.”

“Why?” Gar hand clenched into a fist. Cold enveloped it.

“Because of what you’ve done for us Gar.” Wade was looking at Gar now, eyes burning. “Gar, you saved Molly and me from the demon camp. You didn’t kill Molly after being ordered to. You fixed the magic of the Realms. Gar, you’re so much more than the Demon Prince. You’re one of my best friends.”

Gar’s hand clenched tighter. Dammit, he wasn’t breaking down again.

“I… I did that?” All he’d remembered was killing people, causing chaos, burning down towns and enjoying it.

“We’ve made a lot of progress since you’ve been gone.” Wade conceded. “We’re fairly sure that PJ has some kind of magic that helps that out, and whatever Mat has keeps things in an order.”

A squirrel peeked out of the bottom of mark’s pants.

“Gar, do you really not want to know who you are?”

The squirrel retreated back into the Fischbach’s clothes.

“No.”

Another squirrel was pawing at his glasses.

“Let’s go wake Mark up.”

“So, what else have you found out?”

Stephanie took the offered cup of tea and gently blew on it.

She’d been having regular meeting with Madam Foxglove for a while now, though she had started calling her Molly. There was just something nicer about it.

Together, the two of them had been figuring out what their significant other had been figuring out about the weird dreams. Neither Molly nor Stephanie had had much of them, just one here or there, but it would seem Wade and Mat were remembering a lot.

“Nothing too new, but, well, I found this on my way over here.”

Stephanie held out a golden disc.

“I think it’s a medallion.”

She stepped off the train and breathed in a deep breath of the polluted city air.

She missed the west already.

But if Virid had contacted her, it must be important.

Hibiscus tightened her grip on her suitcase and entered the streets of the bustling city.

[radiantgardenprince]

It’s funny how a completely different natural disaster that's not even near you will send you into a panic attack about one you experienced. 

I always joke about it now but it was a horrible experience. And hearing about the devastation, the damage, the homes and irreplaceable things lost.. I guess it's triggering something akin to PTSD? I just need to type it out because I'm afraid to call anyone

In May of 2003 (May was a record breaking month for tornadoes in the US), a category F4 tornado passed through my town and destroyed my home. 20 people were injured and one elderly man was killed.  (Edit: I believe the confirmed death for this tornado was 7, but the one was in my town alone)

Everything was fine that day. The sky was a crystal clear blue, the most beautiful blue I had ever seen. I think it was the last time I could look at the color and for sure say it was blue and not grey or green or purple. No wind, n clouds, just a bright sun in the sky while I cleaned out mom's car. Being the bratty kid I was I slammed everything I took out onto the counter inside our house and stomped back outside.

I thought I had gone blind.

There was nothing but black. Clouds came out of nowhere in a span of minutes. Lightning was striking so close and we could see it. It wasn't the first tornado I've seen but it was the first one that was directly coming towards me. It was the biggest. We moved fast to grab the animals and get our neighbors. They opened the gate so their  cattle could go, and put the puppies in a shelter (except the runt we couldn't find). There was nothing else they could do. We couldn't get one of my cats and had to leave him behind as we took his mom and our two dogs down into our small shelter with us. We had food and water down there we would be fine.

My neighbor and I were panicked about his oldest son, who was with his girlfriend in her trailer. They were lucky, the tornado just barely missed them.  My step-dad and our neighbor held down the trap door over the shelter, really struggling as the tornado passed over us. It could've ripped right off. The hail was huge and loud as it pelted down on us.

It was over in a matter of minutes, maybe even seconds, but the damage was immense. The shed that was over the shelter had collapsed. Our neighbor and his youngest son were thin enough to get out and help get all the debris off so we could get out.

Everything was gone.

What was left of my house was just the foundation, making my beloved home look so much smaller. Our garage was gone. Same with my neighbor's. My step-dad's truck and jeep were thrown into the field across from us, mangled into each other. It was hard to believe they were separate at one point. Mom's tiny car moved three feet but suffered serious damage, it would never run again. The only structure that really stood was what was left of the shed, which only stayed because a dead tree had it's branches wrapped around the walls, keeping it all firm. Keeping the door from being ripped off and us being taken away. Two arcade games that my step-dad built kept a lot of the roof from completely falling onto us, allowing us to get out once it was done.

A train had been derailed from the tracks right next to us. The engine and the cars across the road, spilling coal into my yard. Because of this it took emergency services twice as long to reach us, having to go the long way around to get vehicles to get us out. I think one cop parked to wait and walk over to make sure we were okay while they called people to come move the train.

The air was so calm it was like it never happened. But so thick I thought I was going to die. My entire life had been swept away, just like that. Photographs, important documents, family things.. Gone. Our clothes, my cat, our entire livelihood.

Our neighbor's pups didn't make it, and neither did the adult dogs he had to let loose. We found the runt in the ditch in front of my house and we named her Miracle, she's still with them to this day I think. Getting on in her old age..

It was maybe an hour before the train was moved and emergency vechicles could get through. We were allowed to grab a few things nearby but had to get out fast. I'm glad we grabbed what we could because looters had already gone through the next day when we came back. In a hole, created by lightning, I found a sheet of mine. Soaked and heavy with mud, but otherwise okay. I still have it to this day and I will not sleep without it. Even now it's wrapped around me.

We were helped into the back of a truck once everyone was sure that none of us were badly injured. Cuts and scrapes, but nothing that required immediate attention. We passed by a field that held horses. My mom initially started sobbing because none of them were moving. Then they snapped out of their shock and started to kick and try to get out of their paddock, since there was nothing but heavy trees and iron pieces in their area. I think someone stopped to open the gate, they were branded. They would be found. It was best to let them run than to have them get hurt.

It was a little bit before we found a place to stay, my grandmother letting us be in one of her rented trailers while we looked for a house to rent.

I was still in school. It was hard, going back for those last two weeks. But my teachers were very supportive of me and let me have space. I spent a lot of time in the counselor's room to get caught up on what I missed and to have someone keep an eye on me. She and some of the teachers got some money for me to go get some new clothes, as I only had the sweats I left at my grandma's. I'll never forget their kindness or the care my counselor gave me. It was so weird, having her tell me we were going shopping after lunchtime. And then given a small bag to take to mom which had a bunch of toiletries and food for us.

Mom went through a serious depression. Her and step-dad's fighting got worse. I think right around then was when I really started to hate him and started to seclude myself from everyone. It was the tipping point into my depression and thoughts of suicide. The real start of my explosive anger, not just my weird quirks.

We tried to build a new house and start a new life. But a family friend swindled us and stole a lot of money while 'building' the place. That and the kids in the area we were building were vandalizing the place every day, doing irreversible damage. We should have hired an inspector, as it wasn't something that the city automatically sent out in this area. We trusted him and he ruined our family.  He has the gall to come up and try to speak with me about a decade later. He knows my step-dad will kill him, and he was very lucky I was at work. All I could do was tell him to leave or I'll get someone to make him leave.

We've just now sold the property we tried to build on. I believe mom gave up on the property in Mulberry.

Every year I think I'm fine. Tornado watches don't bother me, and I'm calm-ish when the sirens go off. I've even had to go to the back of my work during one warning, more annoyed than scared. I joke about it, make stupid jokes. But in the back of my mind I know this was going to happen.

I'm going to be older and I won't have any photos of me as a child. They're all gone. I had an argument with an art teacher of why I couldn't do an art thing of me with childhood photos. They were all blown away. I don't remember what I wore, what I looked like, or who I spent holidays with. And I won't.

This put my family into serious debt, even without the thieving 'friend'. We fought constantly and I would often not like to ask for new clothes. I could find something that I like and actually fits (which was rare ) and then I would immediately put it back when I saw the price. That lead to fights as my step-dad yells at my mom for turning me int this.  That lead to more tears in the fitting room. That lead to me feeling guilty for buying things or having to ask for help.

So, now, here I am. 14 years later having a freak out as these stories send me back to what was probably the worst day of my life.

I've finally searched that day in Google, looking up the damage and even finding videos of it. From an outside perspective.. It's amazing. The shear size of the thing.. But living through what I have? I know I'm lucky to be alive.

[penguinsweetest]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Gotham (TV) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Oswald Cobblepot/Edward Nygma Characters: Edward Nygma Additional Tags: Angst Series: Part 1 of Distortion Summary: Oswald was right when he said that it would change Edward.

part two coming soon!

The Abyss Also Gazes

The water opened before him, taking in his body and closed over his face, the welcoming embrace that quickly turned into the last goodbye. The soft plashing was replaced by the low hum that silenced every sound coming from above the surface of the water. He didn't inhale enough air before diving in and now felt his chest tightening as his lungs, it seemed, were growing bigger and bigger with each second, demanding more and more space behind his ribs. Would they explode eventually if he wouldn't take a breath? His heart was racing and its beating had already been louder than the humming in his ears. His lungs hurt badly and he imagined them as two pink pieces of meat squeezed by the hard rib cage. Would they explode sooner or later, crushing his bones and his anxiously beating heart?

Scientifically, this seemed unlikely to happen.

His throat was sore, contracting painfully with the need to inhale. The water above veiled his vision, a great colorless mass, ever moving and ever still at the same time. It surrounded his whole body, probing the way into it, awaiting the final desperate breath. He imagined it rushing down his throat, flowing into his nostrils, filling his lungs instead of the air he needed so badly. The water was as tasteless as the air, yet it would kill him instead. A fraud in liquid form. He let out into the water a weird bubbling sound and before drawing the last fatal breath he rose above the water and coughed and coughed and coughed, choking at each inhale.

As he stopped coughing, Edward leaned back to the edge of the bathtub, breathing deeper and calmer this time. The light was too bright for his eyes. The noises were too loud for his ears. He felt like a dead man, brought back to life suddenly during his funeral. He had already forgotten what the life was feeling like in his dreamless slumber with no feelings at all. He longed for going back into his coffin - the bathtub, and the water was a shroud.

Except he wasn't dead at all and there was no funeral for him. There had been no funeral at all.

the whole pier was the coffin and the whole river was the shroud

But no funeral at all. No gravestone either, no place to visit except the bottom of the river. Underwater.

This time Edward inhaled properly, involuntarily blowing out his cheeks in a funny manner and dove again, facedown this time. There was, of course, a huge difference between being in the bathtub and being in the river. The river waters were cold and dark. He could make the water colder next time. Turn off the lights. There still would a huge difference between it and the black abyss he pushed Oswald into.

Ed touched the bottom of the bathtub with his face. There was the small plughole the water went into when the bath was over, for now plugged safely. A tiny peephole into another unknown abyss. Were the abysses connected in some way or another?

Or was it the same one all along?

The air came out of his nostrils in two threads of bubbles, floating up around his head. Ed reached out and unplugged the bathtub, letting the water rush down into the pipe. The abyss sucked it up greedily with satisfied gurgling sounds. Edward peered into the small water tornado, whirling wildly and disappearing in the plughole.

Is it the very same abyss?

He thought he could see an eye peering back at him from the hole, from the abyss, the eye that once was blue but the water turned it pale and grey.

That, of course, was nothing but the trick of his mind.

brilliant

With a great effort Ed shifted his gaze and got up awkwardly, blinking the water out of his eyes.

***

Grey clouds were gathering above, big and full, scraping their fat bellies over high trees. The rain started slowly - separate single drops fell here and there, each making a soft noise. Thud. Thud. Thud. The ground was stained with dark wet dots. The big empty house amplified each “thud” in a disturbing way.

Ed couldn't help just standing and listening to it, blinking with each new sound, the goal of his visit to former Oswald's house completely forgotten.

Quickly this drizzle turned into a downpour and its noise swallowed every other sound. As if the rain was trying to hide that someone was circling around the house, unseen, unheard, watching with eyes that should be able to watch anything at all no more. He was coming closer and closer, pacing back and forth, touching the walls, his fingerprints invisible on the wet paint, probing the safety of the closed doors, knocking at the windows. Edward listened, hypnotized by the ordinary noises the ordinary rain was making that suddenly acquired a new meaning. The water became a veil that was hiding a human shape. Or not human at all anymore?

he thrives in deep waters

Ed forced himself to wake up and pinched the bridge of his nose to get hold of himself.

It was all because of this damn house, so dark and lonely. He had never liked it, he hated it since he first arrived here. It was too big for the small number of people that lived there, too old-fashioned, too dusty and too cold. Oswald looked so happy when he was chatting with Edward about this house and when Ed finally saw it for himself for the first time he was surprised in the most unpleasant way. It was so grotesquely, unnecessarily, stupidly obscure that it just looked like a very bad joke after everything he had heard from Oswald about it. It was a tasteless parody of a classic haunted house. Only that there certainly was something gaunt about it. The real deaths, for example. Not the ghosts that were haunting the house as Oswald once told him to his own disadvantage, of course. Ed couldn't quite get a grip of what it was for real.

Partly of his inability to solve the puzzle of this house Ed hated it. Everything about it. The windows that turned the brightest daylight into the dull grey mist. The walls that radiated wet coldness. The air inside the house that was stale and dry and the air coming from the outside that smelt of freshly dug soil. His own bed, so low he felt he was descending somewhere deep down each time he went to sleep. The sounds the old house was making. There was nothing supernaturally scary about them, but the way they were echoing inside this vast empty space and then died out, drowning in silence made them quite disturbing. It was the same kind of noisy silence Ed had to live with in the asylum at nights, with all these moans, mumbling and whispering the other inmates were making. He was slowly fading away with nothing to do at all there. He associated this silence with the dumb, gnawing kind of boredom. And that was what he hated about this house the most.

“Memories”, the right word he had been searching for suddenly flashed through his mind. That was the thing that made this house unlivable and terrifying. It had a weird aura that brought back the worst memories of its inhabitants. The more puzzling was Oswald's intention to stay in this house, where the life of his beloved father had come to the cruel end. The old man himself, perhaps, would be glad to move out of here, although Ed had never had a chance to ask his opinion. At least his remains were now somewhere else.

He hoped the thought would help him to focus and concentrate, but it did little good.

The rain was getting weaker now, the unsteady rhythm of the single drops falling on the windowsills was coming back. Knock knock knock, and the one lurking around was still there, knocking on windows, scratching the window frames, urging to be let in. Not only into the house as a rightful owner. Into Ed’s head.

It was tree branches scratching the frames, of course.

And he had already been there.

Knock knock knock, from the deep waters of his mind as a delicate reminder.

Ed took a deep breath of the dry and dusty air, concentrated. The water ran down the windows, making the world outside seem grey and ethereal, as if he was looking up from the bottom of the river.

He didn't want to go very far into the house but so demanded the goal of his visit. He walked through the rooms in a quick pace without glancing around. Finally he reached it - the painting, a rectangle-shaped dark spot, the details of it swept away by the gloom. Which was nice. Ed didn't want to see any.

Quickly he reached for the spray and drew a green question mark upon the canvas, trying to hold his hand steadily. He would be happy to paint it all green, to cover everything, erase the faces completely, but it didn't go along with his plan. Ed stepped back as he finished, squeezing his eyes tightly, but anyway involuntarily catching a glimpse of Oswald's painted face with one eye hidden behind the curve of the green line. The other one continued to stare at him, unblinkingly and lifelessly. The gloom mixed the dark colors of the painting in one black void surrounding that stare.

Suddenly Ed jerked up his head, afraid that he could have been standing before the painting longer that he should. He didn't pay much attention to the track of the time and when he glanced around, he was ready to see the light of another day, another month, another year. The police could have come searching for him.

Ed had a feeling that he could stand under that stare for a very long time as if turned to stone. For a day. A decade. A lifetime. Time could run as quickly as water ran through fingers.

He pinched the bridge of his nose again, rather painfully this time and turned away, focusing on the rain that had finally stopped. Its dripping sounds were gone.

The one that was lurking and watching was not.

***

The water was gurgling in pipes. The smells of the river were leaking into the room, gentle and oozy. The air was wet and it felt like the whole room was entangled in a giant cobweb, soaked with the rain.

The abyss that were gazing at him was now everywhere. And nowhere. It wasn't on the outside, it was dwelling in his mind, affecting and transforming everything he saw. It was gazing with his own eyes.

He was.

Oswald was right when he said that it would change Edward. He didn't push Oswald into the river to drown and be gone forever, for he was still there. Oswald didn't left a trace of him in Edward's mind after he went underwater with a wound in his chest - more like he took Edward with him. The abyss swallowed both of them.

For that he could kill Oswald twice. He could beg for forgiveness. He could slap him again, again and again until the grey slimy skin, sticky, corroded by the water, gave away, tearing under his palm. Ed sobbed, making a sound that barely resembled a giggle and fell onto his side, on the sheets that were soaked with his sweat.

the flesh underwater becomes soft and squishy

the skin grows pale and transparent

the eyes turn white, nothing than whites, no eyelids, no pupils, no irises

if they don't find the body quickly, creatures from the bottom of the river will eat everything to their likeness, everything vulnerable, soft and squishy and slimy

He could tell Oswald that he managed to drive him insane just as effectively as he had driven Oswald. He could ask Oswald to let him go.

Deep waters, only you can thrive there! The life on this Earth came out of the water, a thousand things with twice as many limbs, new and improved to live on the ground. The waters that took you in once as the servant let out the king! You came out as the king and went there as the beggar, you drowned as the friend and came back as an enemy...

Deep waters, ever transforming, ever changing.

Changing you.

At the bottom of the abyss he was looking above and seeing Oswald before him - an image as fragile and trembling as ripples on water. River sludge was wrapped in his hair, snails crawled upon his cheeks, leaving dark oily trails beneath his eyes, greenish dirty water ran down his body, pale and cold, not able to get warm anymore. It flowed upon the wound on his chest, washing it grey and bleak, gushing from the hole the bullet left. The blood, the heat of which Ed was still feeling on his hands from time to time, had long dissolved in the water.

Ed tried to say something to him, but the only sounds he managed to make were nothing but choking and bubbling. The hum ran down his ears, his vision narrowed to one small dot of white light that disappeared in blackness. He reached out to Oswald, hoping to grab his hand, to hold on it and get out, but there was no one. His hand clutched the empty air and fell limply on the bed. Ed raised it to pinch the bridge of his nose, but his own skin was so cold and sweaty he couldn't force himself to touch it.

His temples ached badly, the pressure of the pain was so intense his teeth hurt. As if he had inhaled too much air before diving in and now it was threatening to destroy him. The silence stood still, unbreakable, unbearable. Ed longed to hear something, someone, anyone to prove he wasn't alone here, but he certainly wasn't, was he? Oswald was close, always close, so close he could smell the scent on his skin and hair and feel his heart beating fast and anxiously as he hugged him. So close he remembered how his body looked under the fancy clothes. So close he couldn’t help thinking of what it would be like to push forward, beyond the limits of simple hugging, why had he never done that? So close he knew how the silky bathrobe caressed his skin when he put it on.

So close he could hear his limping footsteps behind his door. Ed raised his head, staring blindly at the door through the twilight of his new room (was it evening or night already?), ready to face another trick of his

brilliant, brilliant, brilliant

mind. He stared and the one behind the door stared back, the dark shape shutting in the light behind the peephole. His own sweat stung his eyes and he blinked, the salty liquid was flowing into his eyes or so was the water leaking everywhere, from the cracks in the ceiling, from under the bed, was it flowing from the peephole too? The pressure in his head made everything sound painfully louder - the knocking at the door, the impatient screech of the doorknob turning.

He could ask him for the act of mercy.

Edward stood up and went to the door, swaying from side to side. Slowly and carefully as if he was moving underwater.

[evercharmed-a]

“Have you used a portal before?” Minchan asks the question like he doesn’t care much about the answer. The click of his heels on the pavement is distracting, a staccato in bright pink. He’s a lot to handle in the group chat, but even more of a handful in real life. Glittery eyeshadow and perfectly manicured nails, he’s a living doll, making mock kissy faces at every person walking by who dares to stare. A force of nature if Lysander ever saw one. “Hello? Are you listening?”

Minchan snapping his fingers in his face brings Lysander back to reality. “Um, what? Sorry, I wasn’t… “ With a huff and a quick wave of his hand, Minchan dismisses his reply. “It doesn’t matter, does it. I’m not walking all the way to Rei’s stupid forest. I’m not going to let my baby witch do it, either.” As always when Minchan uses this nickname of his, Lysander’s heart skips a beat. It’s one thing to read it, yet another entirely to hear it. And maybe it’s imagination, but something fond colors it, something soft. Lysander fights a smile, biting his lower lip hard. It’s somehow endearing, that particular brand of a handful Minchan is. He drags him into some alley, its dead end around a brickwalled corner. From his jacket’s pocket he pulls a piece of white chalk, and promptly begins to draw a circle lined and filled with odd symbols on the wall closest to him. Lysander watches in awe and confusion both. “Oh,” Minchan says, shooting him a grin over his shoulder. “It’s for the portal. You see, for some magic, we need preparation. Magic circles, sometimes little sacrifices, that sort of thing. It’s too advanced for you right now.” Instead of dampening his mood, this revelation makes Lysander’s stomach flip in joy. “I’ll… learn this, too?” “Of course!” Minchan finishes his work off and takes a step back, pocketing the chalk again. “You’ll learn this, and how to make potions... I might just teach you some conjuring, too. Just don’t go trying to summon some demon, yes? That never goes well.” Once again, Lysander only half listens, too entranced by the casualness of Minchan going about his business. He squares his shoulders and places an outstretched hand into the very center of the circle. As soon as his fingers touch the chalk, it springs to life, glowing a gentle white. Minchan pulls his hand back slowly. The circle lifts off the wall, sticking to his skin like a spiderweb. It hangs in the air, still connected to Minchan’s hand. Lysander’s jaw falls open. Of course, Minchan notices. “Neat, isn’t it? Wait until you see Qiaomeng doing it. He doesn’t even need a surface, just draws the thing in the air right away. Talented bastard.” He falls silent, eyes closed. The glow of the circle brightens. Around it, the air flimmers like it does in the hot summer sun. Lysander inhales, catching the slightest whiff of ozone. Minchan balls his hand into a loose fist, only his forefinger sticking out. He drags the pad of it down the length of the circle, and, little by little, it breaks open in the wake of his touch. When Minchan reaches the end, the chalk peels back in its entirety, revealing a swirl of muted purples and greens dispersed in a sea of endless black. It takes over the circle, stretching to about Minchan’s height. It stops as soon as it touches the ground. Lysander’s heart flutters in his chest. His arms break out in goose-flesh. “Wow,” is all he manages to press out. Minchan hums. “This is a portal. It’s like… a door, except it leads into someone’s home if that someone allows it. Rei isn’t a fan of it, but he lets us use one, anyhow.” “Why doesn’t he like it?” “A talented witch could trace this magic back to him. I’ll have Parfait erase as much of it after we’re done as she can, but there’ll always be some leftover in places spells were used. Rei’s mostly worried someone might have the idea to murder him in his sleep, really.” Lowering his voice, Minchan adds, “He’s got a bit of a reputation. The plants he grows are highly sought after, some impossible to get around these parts unless you want to pay a hefty sum. He has all reason to be cautious.” Lysander makes a little noise of understanding. All he knows about Rei is that he lives in a forest – magical and weird, as Qiaomeng had put it – and that he’s powerful, too. He should have asked more questions. “Anyway.” Minchan grasps him gently by the shoulders and steers him towards the portal. “It’s best if you close your eyes and keep your limbs pressed to your body until you’re back on solid ground. Got it? I’ll be right behind you.” Before Lysander gets another word in, Minchan pushes him. Everything goes dark. His stomach swoops again, but not at all in joy this time. He finds himself hovering in nothingness before he’s swept away. Like a tornado toying with a skinny branch, he’s scooped up and tossed about, a deafening roar in his ears. Static sticks to his skin, crawling across it in a numbing tingle. Lysander opens his mouth to scream, but no sound makes it out. A flash of green breaks through the dark. Lysander slams face first into a tree, its leaves shivering with the impact. “Oh. Oh, no,” a voice close to him says. Someone places a hand on his shoulder in cadence to a wave of nausea flooding through him. Lysander retches, hunching over. The hand moves to pat his back, all gentle. “There, there. Travelling with portals is never fun, I’m afraid. He should have told you.” He chances a look to his right, to where the voice is coming from, and is met with bare feet on mossy forest floor. Pressing the back of his hand to his mouth, he straightens slowly. Miles and miles of forest stretch out around him, trees and bushes and a little creek gently running its course. Birdsong fills the space, lined with the rustle of leaves overhead. Rei lives in a forest. This forest. “Is everything alright again?” the voice asks, and the hand disappears. Lysander nods absently. “Sorry, I… oh.” A young man steps into his view – the one those bare feet belong to – and gives him an encouraging, but small smile. He’s taller than Lysander is, his hair a warm shade of blond reminiscent of honey. Something about him is… off. His skin is too perfect, his movements just shy of oily. There’s a startling darkness to his eyes. Not human, his instincts scream at him, though he passes as one well enough. The portal buzzes. Minchan emerges with grace, touching his feet to the ground as though he were a cat leaping off the sofa. He beams at the both of them, the definition of cheeky. “I see you’ve already met our hermit.” The not-quite-human huffs, crossing his arms. A few heads of flowers peek through his hair, all varying shades of red. “Why did you let him go through it like this? It’s dangerous.” “Oh, relax. Don’t talk to me about dangerous. You grow flesh-eating plants.” “ – that never harm anyone unless I tell them to –” “Right. That makes it better.” The puzzle pieces click belatedly. “Oh!” Lysander says, clutching at his chest. “You’re Rei!” Rei turns toward him, wearing the same smile as before. “And you’re Lysander. I’ll get you something for the queasiness. Portals get to everyone the first time, especially if you’re not fully prepared.” He shoots Minchan a weighty look at his last few words. Minchan retaliates by sticking out his tongue. Rei ignores him. “Come, I’ll show you inside.” “Inside”, as it turns out, is a little hut hidden behind layers of what Minchan calls “glamour”. After a simple wave of Rei’s hand, it appears out of thin air, flimmering at the edges like Minchan’s circle had done. It sits in the middle of a fenced in, lush garden, a plethora of brightly colored flowers and plants. Some, Lysander recognizes, but others he’s never seen in his life. A walkway of grey stones leads to the entrance door, heavy looking and wooden. The door swings open on its own, or so it appears. Rei bends down to pick something up, cupping it ever so gently in his palms. It’s a tiny, albino hedgehog. “Thank you, Lilac.” Rei presses a kiss to the hedgehog’s forehead. The hedgehog makes a noise that sounds suspiciously flustered. “This is my familiar,” Rei follows it up with, showing Lilac to Lysander. “Say hello. Try to be friends. I’d hate for you two to not get along.” Lysander wrings his hands, staring at Lilac. Lilac doesn’t move, either, staring right back. “Um. H-hello. It’s nice to meet you.” Lilac raises his little snout into the air, and Rei frowns down at him. “What did I just say? Play nice.” Still, Lilac doesn’t look very impressed. He turns around in Rei’s palms before he vanishes in a shimmery flash of light. Rei shakes his head. “Don’t mind him. He needs a bit to warm up to someone.” Minchan mutters something about it being Rei’s own fault for never socializing. He goes ignored again. The inside of Rei’s hut is surprisingly normal. All his furniture is wooden or partly wooden, from the round table in the kitchen to the sofa lined with the plushest cushions and pillows to the TV stand. Herbs and flowers hang from every wall, both dried and fresh. The most outlandish item is the big cauldron in the middle of the kitchen, a fire lit underneath it. Whatever’s inside it bubbles gently, filling the air with a sweet, herby scent. Of all the cliched witch-things Lysander expected to see, this is the most accurate to his imaginations. Upon closer inspection, however, he finds that the TV and the kitchen itself are both highly modern. Rei even owns a gaming console. How and where is he getting his electricity from? Something tells him the answer will either be magic, or so mundane that he would have never considered it. A question for another day. Rei gathers them together in the middle of the living room and has them sit on the floor after pushing the coffee table aside. He hands Lysander a small pill and a glass of water instead of the potion he’d expected, and Lysander gulps both down. Apparently, even witches have a need for regular medicine. Perhaps solving everything with magic is against the rules. If there are any rules. He has so much to learn. “Did you bring the salves?” Rei asks, seated cross-legged next to Lysander. A few days earlier, Rei instructed him to prepare a couple of standard salves to put on wounds, ones that his job as a nurse has long familiarized him with. He’d told him to make them with the intent to heal, to concentrate on and visualize the process of a wound closing. So Lysander had done exactly that. And though he’d found himself tempted to test them, himself, he thought it more prudent to wait until both Minchan and Rei could ascertain their capabilities. If they had any special ones, anyhow. Lysander gives a quick nod, taking the two small, rotund plastic containers out of his sling bag. They used to be filled with store-bought skin care, serving this purpose just fine. Rei takes them with a grateful nod. One he hands Minchan, the other he keeps, unscrewing the lid. He tilts it gently in his palm so the light catches in the creaminess of the salve, making it glisten. He brings it up to his face to smell it, humming as he does. Whether or not it’s a satisfied noise, Lysander can’t tell. “They smell nice,” Minchan comments, tilting his container every which way like Rei had done. “Why’d you make him make these?” Rei smiles, that same, small smile, but there’s an edge to it. Smug. “Because I asked him what he’s interested in. Have you done the same?” Minchan sputters. “I – you know, it’s not like we can just jump into what he likes. He needs basics. That’s what I’m concerned about.” This playful back and forth is just as endearing as Minchan’s whirlwind persona. Lysander can’t stop himself from giggling, which earns him a wider smile from Rei and a noise from Minchan like he’s terribly martyred. But he’s smiling, too, unable to hide it even behind that huffy facade. “Well,” Rei says after a moment of comfortable silence, “I suppose we’ll need to test these.” He gets up and walks over to the kitchen to rummage in a drawer. What he pulls out glints silvery in his palm, and only when he sits back down, it becomes clear what it is. A knife. Vines snake around its handle, deep green in color. The blade itself is simple and two-edged, a small symbol etched into the very tip of it. Rei reaches out, takes one of Minchan’s hands and quickly drags the knife from one side of his palm to the other. Minchan yelps. “What the fuck?! Have you lost your –” Minchan struggles, but Rei tightens his grasp on his hand, keeping him in place. Blood wells up from the cut, beading along the surface. “As I said, we need to test his salves,” Rei says, his voice unaffected. He turns his attention towards Lysander, who has since frozen in his spot. His heart hammers in his chest, a new wave of sickness sloshing in his stomach. As used as he is to seeing blood, a warning would have been nice. Minchan struggles again, but it’s still in vain. He goes slack a moment after, averting his eyes. “I’m going to be sick.” Rei hums vaguely, still looking at Lysander. “Which one of them would you use for a cut like this?” “Um.” Lysander slowly inches forward to take a closer look at the cut. It’s not deep, something that would heal just fine on its own once its dressed. He picks up one of his salves, offering it to Rei. “This one.” “Well, go on then. Put it on.” Lysander blinks at him. None of this is what he’d expected of this get-together, but he doesn’t have the luxury to complain. Hesitating, he asks Rei for something to clean the blood up with, and Rei disappears again only to return with a damp washcloth. Lysander wipes the cut down, careful not to hurt Minchan too much, before he dips a finger into the salve, coating the pad of it with the thinnest layer. “This… might sting a little,” he warns as he gently rubs the salve along the cut. Even before he manages to reach the end of it, the cut begins to close. He and Minchan both gape at it, at the way the skin knits together on its own right in front of their eyes. Lysander finishes his job to watch the rest of it close, too, leaving Minchan’s palm pristine as if nothing ever happened. No scab, no scar. Nothing. “Holy shit,” Minchan whispers in awe, inspecting his hand up close. Next to him, Rei chuckles. “I knew it would work the moment you handed it to me. You must have felt that, too, Minchan.” Minchan, rubbing his thumb along the spot where the cut used to be, nods dumbly. “I… felt something, sure. But I’m not good at healing magic. I couldn’t tell it was going to be like this.” Rei wipes his knife down with the damp washcloth. It’s all a little much to take in – Rei being so casual, Minchan so shocked, this place and Lysander’s salve actually working. His head spins with this slew of information. Judging by the softness of Rei’s face, he’s noticed. He puts a hand on Lysander’s shoulder, squeezing gently. “You have a talent. Very potent magic. You’ll make a great healer one day, baby witch.” For the umpteenth time, Lysander’s heart skips a beat.

[andya-j]

“Hard rain coming down,” Cheryl said, and I nodded in agreement. Through the diner’s plate-glass windows, a dense curtain of rain flapped across the Gulf gas pumps and continued across the parking lot. It hit Big Bob’s with a force that made the glass rattle like uneasy bones. The red neon sign that said BIG BOB’S! DIESEL FUEL! EATS! sat on top of a high steel pole above the diner so the truckers on the interstate could see it. Out in the night, the red-tinted rain thrashed in torrents across my old pickup truck and Cheryl’s baby-blue Volkswagen. “Well,” I said, ���I suppose that storm’ll either wash some folks in off the interstate or we can just about hang it up.” The curtain of rain parted for an instant, and I could see the treetops whipping back and forth in the woods on the other side of Highway 47. Wind whined around the front door like an animal trying to claw its way in. I glanced at the electric clock on the wall behind the counter. Twenty minutes before nine. We usually closed up at ten, but tonight—with tornado warnings in the weather forecast—I was tempted to turn the lock a little early. “Tell you what,” I said. “If we’re empty at nine, we skedaddle. ’Kay?” “No argument here,” she said. She watched the storm for a moment longer, then continued putting newly washed coffee cups, saucers, and plates away on the stainless-steel shelves. Lightning flared from west to east like the strike of a burning bullwhip. The diner’s lights flickered, then came back to normal. A shudder of thunder seemed to come right up through my shoes. Late March is the beginning of tornado season in south Alabama, and we’ve had some whoppers spin past here in the last few years. I knew that Alma was at home, and she understood to get into the root cellar right quick if she spotted a twister, like that one we saw in ’82 dancing through the woods about two miles from our farm. “You got any love-ins planned this weekend, hippie?” I asked Cheryl, mostly to get my mind off the storm and to rib her too. She was in her late thirties, but I swear that when she grinned she could’ve passed for a kid. “Wouldn’t you like to know, redneck?” she answered; she replied the same way to all my digs at her. Cheryl Lovesong—and I know that couldn’t have been her real name—was a mighty able waitress, and she had hands that were no strangers to hard work. But I didn’t care that she wore her long silvery-blond hair in Indian braids with hippie headbands, or came to work in tie-dyed overalls. She was the best waitress who’d ever worked for me, and she got along with everybody just fine—even us rednecks. That’s what I am, and proud of it: I drink Rebel Yell whiskey straight, and my favorite songs are about good women gone bad and trains on the long track to nowhere. I keep my wife happy. I’ve raised my two boys to pray to God and to salute the flag, and if anybody don’t like it he can go a few rounds with Big Bob Clayton. Cheryl would come right out and tell you she used to live in San Francisco in the late sixties, and that she went to love-ins and peace marches and all that stuff. When I reminded her it was 1984 and Ronnie Reagan was president, she’d look at me like I was walking cow-flop. I always figured she’d start thinking straight when all that hippie-dust blew out of her head. Alma said my tail was going to get burnt if I ever took a shine to Cheryl, but I’m a fifty-five-year-old redneck who stopped sowing his wild seed when he met the woman he married, more than thirty years ago. Lightning crisscrossed the turbulent sky, followed by a boom of thunder. Cheryl said, “Wow! Look at that light show!” “Light show, my ass,” I muttered. The diner was as solid as the Good Book, so I wasn’t too worried about the storm. But on a wild night like this, stuck out in the countryside like Big Bob’s was, you had a feeling of being a long way off from civilization—though Mobile was only twenty-seven miles south. On a wild night like this, you had a feeling that anything could happen, as quick as a streak of lightning out of the darkness. I picked up a copy of the Mobile Press-Register that the last customer—a trucker on his way to Texas—had left on the counter a half-hour before, and I started plowing through the news, most of it bad: those A-rab countries were still squabbling like Hatfields and McCoys in white robes; two men had robbed a Qwik-Mart in Mobile and been killed by the police in a shoot-out; cops were investigating a massacre at a motel near Daytona Beach; an infant had been stolen from a maternity ward in Birmingham. The only good things on the front page were stories that said the economy was up and that Reagan swore we’d show the Commies who was boss in El Salvador and Lebanon. The diner shook under a blast of thunder, and I looked up from the paper as a pair of headlights emerged from the rain into my parking lot. 2 The headlights were attached to an Alabama state-trooper car. “Half-alive, hold the onion, extra brown the buns.” Cheryl was already writing on her pad in expectation of the order. I pushed the paper aside and went to the fridge for the hamburger meat. When the door opened, a windblown spray of rain swept in and stung like buckshot. “Howdy, folks!” Dennis Wells peeled off his gray rain slicker and hung it on the rack next to the door. Over his Smokey the Bear trooper hat was a protective plastic covering, beaded with raindrops. He took off his hat, exposing the thinning blond hair on his pale scalp, as he approached the counter and sat on his usual stool, right next to the cash register. “Cup of black coffee and a rare—” Cheryl was already sliding the coffee in front of him, and the burger sizzled on the griddle. “Ya’ll are on the ball tonight!” Dennis said; he said the same thing when he came in, which was almost every night. Funny the kind of habits you fall into, without realizing it. “Kinda wild out there, ain’t it?” I asked as I flipped the burger over. “Lordy, yes! Wind just about flipped my car over three, four miles down the interstate. Thought I was gonna be eatin’ a little pavement tonight.” Dennis was a husky young man in his early thirties, with thick blond brows over deep-set light brown eyes. He had a wife and three kids, and he was fast to flash a walletful of their pictures. “Don’t reckon I’ll be chasin’ any speeders tonight, but there’ll probably be a load of accidents. Cheryl, you sure look pretty this evenin’.” “Still the same old me.” Cheryl never wore a speck of makeup, though one day she’d come to work with glitter on her cheeks. She had a place a few miles away, and I guessed she was farming that funny weed up there. “Any trucks moving?” “Seen a few, but not many. Truckers ain’t fools. Gonna get worse before it gets better, the radio says.” He sipped at his coffee and grimaced. “Lordy, that’s strong enough to jump out of the cup and dance a jig, darlin’!” I fixed the burger the way Dennis liked it, put it on a platter with some fries, and served it. “Bobby, how’s the wife treatin’ you?” he asked. “No complaints.” “Good to hear. I’ll tell you, a fine woman is worth her weight in gold. Hey, Cheryl! How’d you like a handsome young man for a husband?” Cheryl smiled, knowing what was coming. “The man I’m looking for hasn’t been made yet.” “Yeah, but you ain’t met Cecil yet, either! He asks me about you every time I see him, and I keep tellin’ him I’m doin’ everything I can to get you two together.” Cecil was Dennis’ brother-in-law and owned a Chevy dealership in Bay Minette. Dennis had been ribbing Cheryl about going on a date with Cecil for the past four months. “You’d like him,” Dennis promised. “He’s got a lot of my qualities.” “Well, that’s different. In that case, I’m certain I don’t want to meet him.” Dennis winced. “Oh, you’re a cruel woman! That’s what smokin’ banana peels does to you—turns you mean. Anybody readin’ this rag?” He reached over for the newspaper. “Waitin’ here just for you,” I said. Thunder rumbled, closer to the diner. The lights flickered briefly once … then again before they returned to normal. Cheryl busied herself by fixing a fresh pot of coffee, and I watched the rain whipping against the windows. When the lightning flashed, I could see the trees swaying so hard they looked about to snap. Dennis read and ate his hamburger. “Boy,” he said after a few minutes, “the world’s in some shape, huh? Those A-rab pig-stickers are itchin’ for war. Mobile metro boys had a little gunplay last night. Good for them.” He paused and frowned, then tapped the paper with one thick finger. “This I can’t figure.” “What’s that?” “Thing in Florida couple of nights ago. Six people killed at the Pines Haven Motor Inn, near Daytona Beach. Motel was set off in the woods. Only a couple of cinder-block houses in the area, and nobody heard any gunshots. Says here one old man saw what he thought was a bright white star falling over the motel, and that was it. Funny, huh?” “A UFO,” Cheryl offered. “Maybe he saw a UFO.” “Yeah, and I’m a little green man from Mars,” Dennis scoffed. “I’m serious. This is weird. The motel was so blown full of holes it looked like a war had been going on. Everybody was dead—even a dog and a canary that belonged to the manager. The cars out in front of the rooms were blasted to pieces. The sound of one of them explodin’ was what woke up the people in those houses, I reckon.” He skimmed the story again. “Two bodies were out in the parkin’ lot, one was holed up in a bathroom, one had crawled under a bed, and two had dragged every piece of furniture in the room over to block the door. Didn’t seem to help ’em any, though.” I grunted. “Guess not.” “No motive, no witnesses. You better believe those Florida cops are shakin’ the bushes for some kind of dangerous maniac—or maybe more than one, it says here.” He shoved the paper away and patted the service revolver holstered at his hip. “If I ever got hold of him—or them—he’d find out not to mess with a ’Bama trooper.” He glanced quickly over at Cheryl and smiled mischievously. “Probably some crazy hippie who’d been smokin’ his tennis shoes.” “Don’t knock it,” she said sweetly, “until you’ve tried it.” She looked past him, out the window into the storm. “Car’s pullin’ in, Bobby.” Headlights glared briefly off the wet windows. It was a station wagon with wood-grained panels on the sides; it veered around the gas pumps and parked next to Dennis’ trooper car. On the front bumper was a personalized license plate that said: Ray & Lindy. The headlights died, and all the doors opened at once. Out of the wagon came a whole family: a man and woman, a little girl and boy about eight or nine. Dennis got up and opened the diner door as they hurried inside from the rain. All of them had gotten pretty well soaked between the station wagon and the diner, and they wore the dazed expressions of people who’d been on the road a long time. The man wore glasses and had curly gray hair, the woman was slim and dark-haired and pretty. The kids were sleepy-eyed. All of them were well-dressed, the man in a yellow sweater with one of those alligators on the chest. They had vacation tans, and I figured they were tourists heading north from the beach after spring break. “Come on in and take a seat,” I said. “Thank you,” the man said. They squeezed into one of the booths near the windows. “We saw your sign from the interstate.” “Bad night to be on the highway,” Dennis told them. “Tornado warnings are out all over the place.” “We heard it on the radio,” the woman—Lindy, if the license was right—said. “We’re on our way to Birmingham, and we thought we could drive right through the storm. We should’ve stopped at that Holiday Inn we passed about fifteen miles ago.” “That would’ve been smart,” Dennis agreed. “No sense in pushin’ your luck.” He returned to his stool. The new arrivals ordered hamburgers, fries, and Cokes. Cheryl and I went to work. Lightning made the diner’s lights flicker again, and the sound of thunder caused the kids to jump. When the food was ready and Cheryl served them, Dennis said, “Tell you what. You folks finish your dinners and I’ll escort you back to the Holiday Inn. Then you can head out in the morning. How about that?” “Fine,” Ray said gratefully. “I don’t think we could’ve gotten very much further, anyway.” He turned his attention to his food. “Well,” Cheryl said quietly, standing beside me, “I don’t guess we get home early, do we?” “I guess not. Sorry.” She shrugged. “Goes with the job, right? Anyway, I can think of worse places to be stuck.” I figured that Alma might be worried about me, so I went over to the pay phone to call her. I dropped a quarter in—and the dial tone sounded like a cat being stepped on. I hung up and tried again. The cat scream continued. “Damn!” I muttered. “Lines must be screwed up.” “Ought to get yourself a place closer to town, Bobby,” Dennis said. “Never could figure out why you wanted a joint in the sticks. At least you’d get better phone service and good lights if you were nearer to Mo—” He was interrupted by the sound of wet and shrieking brakes, and he swiveled around on his stool. I looked up as a car hurtled into the parking lot, the tires swerving, throwing up plumes of water. For a few seconds I thought it was going to keep coming, right through the window into the diner—but then the brakes caught and the car almost grazed the side of my pickup as it jerked to a stop. In the neon’s red glow I could tell it was a beat-up old Ford Fairlane, either gray or a dingy beige. Steam was rising off the crumpled hood. The headlights stayed on for perhaps a minute before they winked off. A figure got out of the car and walked slowly—with a limp—toward the diner. We watched the figure approach. Dennis’ body looked like a coiled spring ready to be triggered. “We got us a live one, Bobby boy,” he said. The door opened, and in a stinging gust of wind and rain a man who looked like walking death stepped into my diner. 3 He was so wet he might well have been driving with his windows down. He was a skinny guy, maybe weighed all of a hundred and twenty pounds, even soaking wet. His unruly dark hair was plastered to his head, and he had gone a week or more without a shave. In his gaunt, pallid face his eyes were startlingly blue; his gaze flicked around the diner, lingered for a few seconds on Dennis. Then he limped on down to the far end of the counter and took a seat. He wiped the rain out of his eyes as Cheryl took a menu to him. Dennis stared at the man. When he spoke, his voice bristled with authority. “Hey, fella.” The man didn’t look up from the menu. “Hey, I’m talkin’ to you.” The man pushed the menu away and pulled a damp packet of Kools out of the breast pocket of his patched Army fatigue jacket. “I can hear you,” he said; his voice was deep and husky, and didn’t go with his less-than-robust physical appearance. “Drivin’ kinda fast in this weather, don’t you think?” The man flicked a cigarette lighter a few times before he got a flame, then lit one of his smokes and inhaled deeply. “Yeah,” he replied. “I was. Sorry. I saw the sign, and I was in a hurry to get here. Miss? I’d just like a cup of coffee, please. Hot and real strong, okay?” Cheryl nodded and turned away from him, almost bumping into me as I strolled down behind the counter to check him out. “That kind of hurry’ll get you killed,” Dennis cautioned. “Right. Sorry.” He shivered and pushed the tangled hair back from his forehead with one hand. Up close, I could see deep cracks around his mouth and the corners of his eyes and I figured him to be in his late thirties or early forties. His wrists were as thin as a woman’s; he looked like he hadn’t eaten a good meal for more than a month. He stared at his hands through bloodshot eyes. Probably on drugs, I thought. The fella gave me the creeps. Then he looked at me with those eyes—so pale blue they were almost white—and I felt like I’d been nailed to the floor. “Something wrong?” he asked—not rudely, just curiously. “Nope.” I shook my head. Cheryl gave him his coffee and then went over to give Ray and Lindy their check. The man didn’t use either cream or sugar. The coffee was steaming, but he drank half of it down like mother’s milk. “That’s good,” he said. “Keep me awake, won’t it?” “More than likely.” Over the breast pocket of his jacket was the faint outline of the name that had been sewn there once. I think it was Price, but I could’ve been wrong. “That’s what I want. To stay awake as long as I can.” He finished the coffee. “Can I have another cup, please?” I poured it for him. He drank that one down just as fast,” then rubbed his eyes wearily. “Been on the road a long time, huh?” Price nodded. “Day and night. I don’t know which is more tired, my mind or my butt.” He lifted his gaze to me again. “Have you got anything else to drink? How about beer?” “No, sorry. Couldn’t get a liquor license.” He sighed. “Just as well. It might make me sleepy. But I sure could go for a beer right now. One sip, to clean my mouth out.” He picked up his coffee cup, and I smiled and started to turn away. But then he wasn’t holding a cup. He was holding a Budweiser can, and for an instant I could smell the tang of a newly popped beer. The mirage was there for only maybe two seconds. I blinked, and Price was holding a cup again. “Just as well,” he said, and put it down. I glanced over at Cheryl, then at Dennis. Neither one was paying attention. Damn! I thought. I’m too young to be losin’ either my eyesight or my senses! “Uh …” I said, or some other stupid noise. “One more cup?” Price asked. “Then I’d better hit the road again.” My hand was shaking as I picked it up, but if Price noticed, he didn’t say anything. “Want anything to eat?” Cheryl asked him. “How about a bowl of beef stew?” He shook his head. “No, thanks. The sooner I get back on the road, the better it’ll be.” Suddenly Dennis swiveled toward him, giving him a cold stare that only cops and drill sergeants can muster. “Back on the road?” He snorted. “Fella, you ever been in a tornado before? I’m gonna escort those nice people to the Holiday Inn about fifteen miles back. If you’re smart, that’s where you’ll spend the night too. No use in tryin’ to—” “No.” Price’s voice was rock-steady. “I’ll be spending the night behind the wheel.” Dennis’ eyes narrowed. “How come you’re in such a hurry? Not runnin’ from anybody, are you?” “Nightcrawlers,” Cheryl said. Price turned toward her like he’d been slapped across the face, and I saw what might’ve been a spark of fear in his eyes. Cheryl motioned toward the lighter Price had laid on the counter, beside the pack of Kools. It was a beat-up silver Zippo, and inscribed across it was NIGHTCRAWLERS with the symbol of two crossed rifles beneath it. “Sorry,” she said. “I just noticed that, and I wondered what it was.” Price put the lighter away. “I was in ’Nam,” he told her. “Everybody in my unit got one.” “Hey.” There was suddenly new respect in Dennis’ voice. “You a vet?” Price paused so long I didn’t think he was going to answer. In the quiet, I heard the little girl tell her mother that the fries were “ucky.” Price said, “Yes.” “How about that! Hey, I wanted to go myself, but I got a high number and things were windin’ down about that time anyway. Did you see any action?” A faint, bitter smile passed over Price’s mouth. “Too much.” “What? Infantry? Marines? Rangers?” Price picked up his third cup of coffee, swallowed some, and put it down. He closed his eyes for a few seconds, and when they opened they were vacant and fixed on nothing. “Nightcrawlers,” he said quietly. “Special unit. Deployed to recon Charlie positions in questionable villages.” He said it like he was reciting from a manual. “We did a lot of crawling through rice paddies and jungles in the dark.” “Bet you laid a few of them Vietcong out, didn’t you?” Dennis got up and came over to sit a few places away from the man. “Man, I was behind you guys all the way. I wanted you to stay in there and fight it out!” Price was silent. Thunder echoed over the diner. The lights weakened for a few seconds; when they came back on, they seemed to have lost some of their wattage. The place was dimmer than before. Price’s head slowly turned toward Dennis, with the inexorable motion of a machine. I was thankful I didn’t have to take the full force of Price’s dead blue eyes, and I saw Dennis wince. “I should’ve stayed,” he said. “I should be there right now, buried in the mud of a rice paddy with the eight other men in my patrol.” “Oh.” Dennis blinked. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to—” “I came home,” Price continued calmly, “by stepping on the bodies of my friends. Do you want to know what that’s like, Mr. Trooper?” “The war’s over,” I told him. “No need to bring it back.” Price smiled grimly, but his gaze remained fixed on Dennis. “Some say it’s over. I say it came back with the men who were there. Like me. Especially like me.” Price paused. The wind howled around the door, and the lightning illuminated for an instant the thrashing woods across the highway. “The mud was up to our knees, Mr. Trooper,” he said. “We were moving across a rice paddy in the dark, being real careful not to step on the bamboo stakes we figured were planted there. Then the first shots started: pop pop pop—like firecrackers going off. One of the Nightcrawlers fired off a flare, and we saw the Cong ringing us. We’d walked right into hell, Mr. Trooper. Somebody shouted, ‘Charlie’s in the light!’ and we started firing, trying to punch a hole through them. But they were everywhere. As soon as one went down, three more took his place. Grenades were going off, and more flares, and people were screaming as they got hit. I took a bullet in the thigh and another through the hand. I lost my rifle, and somebody fell on top of me with half his head missing.” “Uh … listen,” I said. “You don’t have to—” “I want to, friend.” He glanced quickly at me, then back to Dennis. I think I cringed when his gaze pierced me. “I want to tell it all. They were fighting and screaming and dying all around me, and I felt the bullets tug at my clothes as they passed through. I know I was screaming too, but what was coming out of my mouth sounded bestial. I ran. The only way I could save my own life was to step on their bodies and drive them down into the mud. I heard some of them choke and blubber as I put my boot on their faces. I knew all those guys like brothers … but at that moment they were only pieces of meat. I ran. A gunship chopper came over the paddy and laid down some fire, and that’s how I got out. Alone.” He bent his face closer toward the other man’s. “And you’d better believe I’m in that rice paddy in ’Nam every time I close my eyes. You’d better believe the men I left back there don’t rest easy. So you keep your opinions about ’Nam and being ‘behind you guys’ to yourself, Mr. Trooper. I don’t want to hear that bullshit. Got it?” Dennis sat very still. He wasn’t used to being talked to like that, not even from a ’Nam vet, and I saw the shadow of anger pass over his face. Price’s hands were trembling as he brought a little bottle out of his jeans pocket. He shook two blue-and-orange capsules out onto the counter, took them both with a swallow of coffee, and then recapped the bottle and put it away. The flesh of his face looked almost ashen in the dim light. “I know you boys had a rough time,” Dennis said, “but that’s no call to show disrespect to the law.” “The law,” Price repeated. “Yeah. Right. Bullshit.” “There are women and children present,” I reminded him. “Watch your language.” Price rose from his seat. He looked like a skeleton with just a little extra skin on the bones. “Mister, I haven’t slept for more than thirty-six hours. My nerves are shot. I don’t mean to cause trouble, but when some fool says he understands, I feel like kicking his teeth down his throat—because no one who wasn’t there can pretend to understand.” He glanced at Ray, Lindy, and the kids. “Sorry, folks. Don’t mean to disturb you. Friend, how much do I owe?” He started digging for his wallet. Dennis slid slowly from his seat and stood with his hands on his hips. “Hold it.” He used his trooper’s voice again. “If you think I’m lettin’ you walk out of here high on pills and needin’ sleep, you’re crazy. I don’t want to be scrapin’ you off the highway.” Price paid him no attention. He took a couple of dollars from his wallet and put them on the counter. I didn’t touch them. “Those pills will help keep me awake,” Price said. “Once I get on the road, I’ll be fine.” “Fella, I wouldn’t let you go if it was high noon and not a cloud in the sky. I sure as hell don’t want to clean up after the accident you’re gonna have. Now, why don’t you come along to the Holiday Inn and—” Price laughed grimly. “Mr. Trooper, the last place you want me staying is at a motel.” He cocked his head to one side. “I was in a motel in Florida a couple of nights ago, and I think I left my room a little untidy. Step aside and let me pass.” “A motel in Florida?” Dennis nervously licked his lower lip. “What the hell you talkin’ about?” “Nightmares and reality, Mr. Trooper. The point where they cross. A couple of nights ago, they crossed at a motel. I wasn’t going to let myself sleep. I was just going to rest for a little while, but I didn’t know they’d come so fast.” A mocking smile played at the edges of his mouth, but his eyes were tortured. “You don’t want me staying at that Holiday Inn, Mr. Trooper. You really don’t. Now, step aside.” I saw Dennis’ hand settle on the butt of his revolver. His fingers unsnapped the fold of leather that secured the gun in the holster. I stared at him numbly. My God, I thought. What’s goin’ on? My heart had started pounding so hard I was sure everybody could hear it. Ray and Lindy were watching, and Cheryl was backing away behind the counter. Price and Dennis faced each other for a moment, as the rain whipped against the windows and thunder boomed like shellfire. Then Price sighed, as if resigning himself to something. He said, “I think I want a T-bone steak. Extra rare. How ’bout it?” He looked at me. “A steak?” My voice was shaking. “We don’t have any T-bone—” Price’s gaze shifted to the counter right in front of me. I heard a sizzle. The aroma of cooking meat drifted up to me. “Oh … wow,” Cheryl whispered. A large T-bone steak lay on the countertop, pink and oozing blood. You could’ve fanned a menu in my face and I would’ve keeled over. Wisps of smoke were rising from the steak. The steak began to fade, until it was only an outline on the counter. The lines of oozing blood vanished. After the mirage was gone, I could still smell the meat—and that’s how I knew I wasn’t crazy. Dennis’ mouth hung open. Ray had stood up from the booth to look, and his wife’s face was the color of spoiled milk. The whole world seemed to be balanced on a point of silence—until the wail of the wind jarred me back to my senses. “I’m getting good at it,” Price said softly. “I’m getting very, very good. Didn’t start happening to me until about a year ago. I’ve found four other ’Nam vets who can do the same thing. What’s in your head comes true—as simple as that. Of course, the images only last for a few seconds—as long as I’m awake, I mean. I’ve found out that those other men were drenched by a chemical spray we called Howdy Doody—because it made you stiffen up and jerk like you were hanging on strings. I got hit with it near Khe Sahn. That shit almost suffocated me. It felt like black tar, and it burned the land down to a paved parking lot.” He stared at Dennis. “You don’t want me around here, Mr. Trooper. Not with the body count I’ve still got in my head.” “You … were at … that motel, near Daytona Beach?” Price closed his eyes. A vein had begun beating at his right temple, royal blue against the pallor of his flesh. “Oh, Jesus,” he whispered. “I fell asleep, and I couldn’t wake myself up. I was having the nightmare. The same one. I was locked in it, and I was trying to scream myself awake.” He shuddered, and two tears ran slowly down his cheeks. “Oh,” he said, and flinched as if remembering something horrible. “They … they were coming through the door when I woke up. Tearing the door right off its hinges. I woke up … just as one of them was pointing his rifle at me. And I saw his face. I saw his muddy, misshapen face.” His eyes suddenly jerked open. “I didn’t know they’d come so fast.” “Who?” I asked him. “Who came so fast?” “The Nightcrawlers,” Price said, his face devoid of expression, masklike. “Dear God … maybe if I’d stayed asleep a second more. But I ran again, and I left those people dead in that motel.” “You’re gonna come with me.” Dennis started pulling his gun from the holster. Price’s head snapped toward him. “I don’t know what kinda fool game you’re—” He stopped, staring at the gun he held. It wasn’t a gun anymore. It was an oozing mass of hot rubber. Dennis cried out and slung the thing from his hand. The molten mess hit the floor with a pulpy splat. “I’m leaving now.” Price’s voice was calm. “Thank you for the coffee.” He walked past Dennis, toward the door. Dennis grasped a bottle of ketchup from the counter. Cheryl cried out, “Don’t!” but it was too late. Dennis was already swinging the bottle. It hit the back of Price’s skull and burst open, spewing ketchup everywhere. Price staggered forward, his knees buckling. When he went down, his skull hit the floor with a noise like a watermelon being dropped. His body began jerking involuntarily. “Got him!” Dennis shouted triumphantly. “Got that crazy bastard, didn’t I?” Lindy was holding the little girl in her arms. The boy craned his neck to see. Ray said nervously, “You didn’t kill him, did you?” “He’s not dead,” I told him. I looked over at the gun; it was solid again. Dennis scooped it up and aimed it at Price, whose body continued to jerk. Just like Howdy Doody, I thought. Then Price stopped moving. “He’s dead!” Cheryl’s voice was near-frantic. “Oh God, you killed him, Dennis!” Dennis prodded the body with the toe of his boot, then bent down. “Naw. His eyes are movin’ back and forth behind the lids.” Dennis touched his wrist to check the pulse, then abruptly pulled his own hand away. “Jesus Christ! He’s as cold as a meat locker!” He took Price’s pulse and whistled. “Goin’ like a racehorse at the Derby.” I touched the place on the counter where the mirage steak had been. My fingers came away slightly greasy, and I could smell the cooked meat on them. At that instant Price twitched. Dennis scuttled away from him like a crab. Price made a gasping, choking noise. “What’d he say?” Cheryl asked. “He said something!” “No he didn’t.” Dennis stuck him in the ribs with his pistol. “Come on. Get up.” “Get him out of here,” I said. “I don’t want him—” Cheryl shushed me. “Listen. Can you hear that?” I heard only the roar and crash of the storm. “Don’t you hear it?” she asked me. Her eyes were getting scared and glassy. “Yes!” Ray said. “Yes! Listen!” Then I did hear something, over the noise of the keening wind. It was a distant chuk-chuk-chuk, steadily growing louder and closer. The wind covered the noise for a minute, then it came back: CHUK-CHUK-CHUK, almost overhead. “It’s a helicopter!” Ray peered through the window. “Somebody’s got a helicopter out there!” “Ain’t nobody can fly a chopper in a storm!” Dennis told him. The noise of rotors swelled and faded, swelled and faded … and stopped. On the floor, Price shivered and began to contort into a fetal position. His mouth opened; his face twisted in what appeared to be agony. Thunder spoke. A red fireball rose up from the woods across the road and hung lazily in the sky for a few seconds before it descended toward the diner. As it fell, the fireball exploded soundlessly into a white, glaring eye of light that almost blinded me. Price said something in a garbled, panicked voice. His eyes were tightly closed, and he had squeezed up with his arms around his knees. Dennis rose to his feet; he squinted as the eye of light fell toward the parking lot and winked out in a puddle of water. Another fireball floated up from the woods, and again blossomed into painful glare. Dennis turned toward me. “I heard him.” His voice was raspy. “He said . . . ‘Charlie’s in the light.’” As the second flare fell to the ground and illuminated the parking lot, I thought I saw figures crossing the road. They walked stiff-legged, in an eerie cadence. The flare went out. “Wake him up,” I heard myself whisper. “Dennis … dear God … wake him up.” 4 Dennis stared stupidly at me, and I started to jump across the counter to get to Price myself. A gout of flame leapt in the parking lot. Sparks marched across the concrete. I shouted, “Get down!” and twisted around to push Cheryl back behind the shelter of the counter. “What the hell—” Dennis said. He didn’t finish. There was the metallic thumping of bullets hitting the gas pumps and the cars. I knew if that gas blew we were all dead. My truck shuddered with the impact of slugs, and I saw the whole thing explode as I ducked behind the counter. Then the windows blew inward with a god-awful crash, and the diner was full of flying glass, swirling wind, and sheets of rain. I heard Lindy scream, and both the kids were crying, and I think I was shouting something myself. The lights had gone out, and the only illumination was the reflection of red neon off the concrete and the glow of the fluorescents over the gas pumps. Bullets whacked into the wall, and crockery shattered as if it had been hit with a hammer. Napkins and sugar packets were flying everywhere. Cheryl was holding on to me as if her fingers were nails sunk to my bones. Her eyes were wide and dazed, and she kept trying to speak. Her mouth was working, but nothing came out. There was another explosion as one of the other cars blew. The whole place shook, and I almost puked with fear. Another hail of bullets hit the wall. They were tracers, and they jumped and ricocheted like white-hot cigarette butts. One of them sang off the edge of a shelf and fell to the floor about three feet away from me. The glowing slug began to fade, like the beer can and the mirage steak. I put my hand out to find it, but all I felt was splinters of glass and crockery. A phantom bullet, I thought. Real enough to cause damage and death—and then gone. You don’t want me around here, Mr. Trooper, Price had warned. Not with the body count I’ve got in my head. The firing stopped. I got free of Cheryl and said, “You stay right here.” Then I looked up over the counter and saw my truck and the station wagon on fire, the flames being whipped by the wind. Rain slapped me across the face as it swept in where the window glass used to be. I saw Price lying still huddled on the floor, with pieces of glass all around him. His hands were clawing the air, and in the flickering red neon his face was contorted, his eyes still closed. The pool of ketchup around his head made him look like his skull had been split open. He was peering into hell, and I averted my eyes before I lost my own mind. Ray and Lindy and the two children had huddled under the table of their booth. The woman was sobbing brokenly. I looked at Dennis, lying a few feet from Price: he was sprawled on his face, and there were four holes punched through his back. It was not ketchup that ran in rivulets around Dennis’ body. His right arm was outflung, and the fingers twitched around the gun he gripped. Another flare sailed up from the woods like a Fourth of July sparkler. When the light brightened, I saw them: at least five figures, maybe more. They were crouched over, coming across the parking lot—but slowly, the speed of nightmares. Their clothes flapped and hung around them, and the flare’s light glanced off their helmets. They were carrying weapons—rifles, I guessed. I couldn’t see their faces, and that was for the best. On the floor, Price moaned. I heard him say “light … in the light …” The flare hung right over the diner. And then I knew what was going on. We were in the light. We were all caught in Price’s nightmare, and the Nightcrawlers that Price had left in the mud were fighting the battle again—the same way it had been fought at the Pines Haven Motor Inn. The Nightcrawlers had come back to life, powered by Price’s guilt and whatever that Howdy Doody shit had done to him. And we were in the light, where Charlie had been out in that rice paddy. There was a noise like castanets clicking. Dots of fire arced through the broken windows and thudded into the counter. The stools squealed as they were hit and spun. The cash register rang and the drawer popped open, and then the entire register blew apart and bills and coins scattered. I ducked my head, but a wasp of fire—I don’t, know what, a bit of metal or glass maybe—sliced my left cheek open from ear to upper lip. I fell to the floor behind the counter with blood running down my face. A blast shook the rest of the cups, saucers, plates, and glasses off the shelves. The whole roof buckled inward, throwing loose ceiling tiles, light fixtures, and pieces of metal framework. We were all going to die. I knew it, right then. Those things were going to destroy us. But I thought of the pistol in Dennis’ hand, and of Price lying near the door. If we were caught in Price’s nightmare and the blow from the ketchup bottle had broken something in his skull, then the only way to stop his dream was to kill him. I’m no hero. I was about to piss in my pants, but I knew I was the only one who could move. I jumped up and scrambled over the counter, falling beside Dennis and wrenching at that pistol. Even in death, Dennis had a strong grip. Another blast came, along the wall to my right. The heat of it scorched me, and the shock wave skidded me across the floor through glass and rain and blood. But I had that pistol in my hand. I heard Ray shout, “Look out!” In the doorway, silhouetted by flames, was a skeletal thing wearing muddy green rags. It wore a dented-in helmet and carried a corroded, slime-covered rifle. Its face was gaunt and shadowy, the features hidden behind a scum of rice-paddy muck. It began to lift the rifle to fire at me—slowly, slowly … I got the safety off the pistol and fired twice, without aiming. A spark leapt off the helmet as one of the bullets was deflected, but the figure staggered backward and into the conflagration of the station wagon, where it seemed to melt into ooze before it vanished. More tracers were coming in. Cheryl’s Volkswagen shuddered, the tires blowing out almost in unison. The state-trooper car was already bullet-riddled and sitting on flats. Another Nightcrawler, this one without a helmet and with slime covering the skull where the hair had been, rose up beyond the window and fired its rifle. I heard the bullet whine past my ear, and as I took aim I saw its bony finger tightening on the trigger again. A skillet flew over my head and hit the thing’s shoulder, spoiling its aim. For an instant the skillet stuck in the Nightcrawler’s body, as if the figure itself was made out of mud. I fired once … twice … and saw pieces of matter fly from the thing’s chest. What might’ve been a mouth opened in a soundless scream, and the thing slithered out of sight. I looked around. Cheryl was standing behind the counter, weaving on her feet, her face white with shock. “Get down!” I shouted, and she ducked for cover. I crawled to Price, shook him hard. His eyes would not open. “Wake up!” I begged him. “Wake up, damn you!” And then I pressed the barrel of the pistol against Price’s head. Dear God, I didn’t want to kill anybody, but I knew I was going to have to blow the Nightcrawlers right out of his brain. I hesitated—too long. Something smashed into my left collarbone. I heard the bone snap like a broomstick being broken. The force of the shot slid me back against the counter and jammed me between two bullet-pocked stools. I lost the gun, and there was a roaring in my head that deafened me. I don’t know how long I was out. My left arm felt like dead meat. All the cars in the lot were burning, and there was a hole in the diner’s roof that a tractor-trailer truck could’ve dropped through. Rain was sweeping into my face, and when I wiped my eyes clear I saw them, standing over Price. There were eight of them. The two I thought I’d killed were back. They trailed weeds, and their boots and ragged clothes were covered with mud. They stood in silence, staring down at their living comrade. I was too tired to scream. I couldn’t even whimper. I just watched. Price’s hands lifted into the air. He reached for the Nightcrawlers, and then his eyes opened. His pupils were dead white, surrounded by scarlet. “End it,” he whispered. “End it …” One of the Nightcrawlers aimed its rifle and fired. Price jerked. Another Nightcrawler fired, and then they were all firing point-blank into Price’s body. Price thrashed and clutched at his head, but there was no blood; the phantom bullets weren’t hitting him. The Nightcrawlers began to ripple and fade. I saw the flames of the burning cars through their bodies. The figures became transparent, floating in vague outlines. Price had awakened too fast at the Pines Haven Motor Inn, I realized; if he had remained asleep, the creatures of his nightmares would’ve ended it there, at that Florida motel. They were killing him in front of me—or he was allowing them to end it, and I think that’s what he must’ve wanted for a long, long time. He shuddered, his mouth releasing a half-moan, half-sigh. It sounded almost like relief. The Nightcrawlers vanished. Price didn’t move anymore. I saw his face. His eyes were closed, and I think he must’ve found peace at last. 5 A trucker hauling lumber from Mobile to Birmingham saw the burning cars. I don’t even remember what he looked like. Ray was cut up by glass, but his wife and the kids were okay. Physically, I mean. Mentally, I couldn’t say. Cheryl went into the hospital for a while. I got a postcard from her with the Golden Gate Bridge on the front. She promised she’d write and let me know how she was doing, but I doubt if I’ll ever hear from her. She was the best waitress I ever had, and I wish her luck. The police asked me a thousand questions, and I told the story the same way every time. I found out later that no bullets or shrapnel were ever dug out of the walls or the cars or Dennis’ body—just like in the case of that motel massacre. There was no bullet in me, though my collarbone was snapped clean in two. Price had died of a massive brain hemorrhage. It looked, the police told me, as if it had exploded in his skull. I closed the diner. Farm life is fine. Alma understands, and we don’t talk about it. But I never showed the police what I found, and I don’t know exactly why not. I picked up Price’s wallet in the mess. Behind a picture of a smiling young woman holding a baby there was a folded piece of paper. On that paper were the names of four men. Beside one name, Price had written “Dangerous.” I’ve found four other ’Nam vets who can do the same thing, Price had said. I sit up at night a lot, thinking about that and looking at those names. Those men had gotten a dose of that Howdy Doody shit in a foreign place they hadn’t wanted to be, fighting a war that turned out to be one of those crossroads of nightmare and reality. I’ve changed my mind about ’Nam because I understand now that the worst of the fighting is still going on, in the battlefields of memory. A Yankee who called himself Tompkins came to my house one May morning and flashed me an ID that said he worked for a veterans’ association. He was very soft-spoken and polite, but he had deep-set eyes that were almost black, and he never blinked. He asked me all about Price, seemed real interested in picking my brain of every detail. I told him the police had the story, and I couldn’t add any more to it. Then I turned the tables and asked him about Howdy Doody. He smiled in a puzzled kind of way and said he’d never heard of any chemical defoliant called that. No such thing, he said. Like I say, he was very polite. But I know the shape of a gun tucked into a shoulder holster. Tompkins was wearing one under his seersucker coat. I never could find any veterans’ association that knew anything about him, either. Maybe I should give that list of names to the police. Maybe I will. Or maybe I’ll try to find those four men myself, and try to make some sense out of what’s being hidden. I don’t think Price was evil. No. He was just scared, and who can blame a man for running from his own nightmares? I like to believe that, in the end, Price had the courage to face the Nightcrawlers, and in committing suicide he saved our lives. The newspapers, of course, never got the real story. They called Price a ’Nam vet who’d gone crazy, killed six people in a Florida motel, and then killed a state trooper in a shoot-out at Big Bob’s diner and gas stop. But I know where Price is buried. They sell little American flags at the five-and-dime in Mobile. I’m alive, and I can spare the change. And then I’ve got to find out how much courage I have.

“Hard rain coming down,” Cheryl said, and I nodded in agreement. Through the diner’s plate-glass windows, a dense curtain of rain flapped across the Gulf gas pumps and continued across the parking lot. It hit Big Bob’s with a force that made the glass rattle like uneasy bones. The red neon sign that said BIG BOB’S! DIESEL FUEL! EATS! sat on top of a high steel pole above the diner so the truckers on the interstate could see it. Out in the night, the red-tinted rain thrashed in torrents across my old pickup truck and Cheryl’s baby-blue Volkswagen. “Well,” I said, “I suppose that storm’ll either wash some folks in off the interstate or we can just about hang it up.” The curtain of rain parted for an instant, and I could see the treetops whipping back and forth in the woods on the other side of Highway 47. Wind whined around the front door like an animal trying to claw its way in. I glanced at the electric clock on the wall behind the counter. Twenty minutes before nine. We usually closed up at ten, but tonight—with tornado warnings in the weather forecast—I was tempted to turn the lock a little early. “Tell you what,” I said. “If we’re empty at nine, we skedaddle. ’Kay?” “No argument here,” she said. She watched the storm for a moment longer, then continued putting newly washed coffee cups, saucers, and plates away on the stainless-steel shelves. Lightning flared from west to east like the strike of a burning bullwhip. The diner’s lights flickered, then came back to normal. A shudder of thunder seemed to come right up through my shoes. Late March is the beginning of tornado season in south Alabama, and we’ve had some whoppers spin past here in the last few years. I knew that Alma was at home, and she understood to get into the root cellar right quick if she spotted a twister, like that one we saw in ’82 dancing through the woods about two miles from our farm. “You got any love-ins planned this weekend, hippie?” I asked Cheryl, mostly to get my mind off the storm and to rib her too. She was in her late thirties, but I swear that when she grinned she could’ve passed for a kid. “Wouldn’t you like to know, redneck?” she answered; she replied the same way to all my digs at her. Cheryl Lovesong—and I know that couldn’t have been her real name—was a mighty able waitress, and she had hands that were no strangers to hard work. But I didn’t care that she wore her long silvery-blond hair in Indian braids with hippie headbands, or came to work in tie-dyed overalls. She was the best waitress who’d ever worked for me, and she got along with everybody just fine—even us rednecks. That’s what I am, and proud of it: I drink Rebel Yell whiskey straight, and my favorite songs are about good women gone bad and trains on the long track to nowhere. I keep my wife happy. I’ve raised my two boys to pray to God and to salute the flag, and if anybody don’t like it he can go a few rounds with Big Bob Clayton. Cheryl would come right out and tell you she used to live in San Francisco in the late sixties, and that she went to love-ins and peace marches and all that stuff. When I reminded her it was 1984 and Ronnie Reagan was president, she’d look at me like I was walking cow-flop. I always figured she’d start thinking straight when all that hippie-dust blew out of her head. Alma said my tail was going to get burnt if I ever took a shine to Cheryl, but I’m a fifty-five-year-old redneck who stopped sowing his wild seed when he met the woman he married, more than thirty years ago. Lightning crisscrossed the turbulent sky, followed by a boom of thunder. Cheryl said, “Wow! Look at that light show!” “Light show, my ass,” I muttered. The diner was as solid as the Good Book, so I wasn’t too worried about the storm. But on a wild night like this, stuck out in the countryside like Big Bob’s was, you had a feeling of being a long way off from civilization—though Mobile was only twenty-seven miles south. On a wild night like this, you had a feeling that anything could happen, as quick as a streak of lightning out of the darkness. I picked up a copy of the Mobile Press-Register that the last customer—a trucker on his way to Texas—had left on the counter a half-hour before, and I started plowing through the news, most of it bad: those A-rab countries were still squabbling like Hatfields and McCoys in white robes; two men had robbed a Qwik-Mart in Mobile and been killed by the police in a shoot-out; cops were investigating a massacre at a motel near Daytona Beach; an infant had been stolen from a maternity ward in Birmingham. The only good things on the front page were stories that said the economy was up and that Reagan swore we’d show the Commies who was boss in El Salvador and Lebanon. The diner shook under a blast of thunder, and I looked up from the paper as a pair of headlights emerged from the rain into my parking lot. 2 The headlights were attached to an Alabama state-trooper car. “Half-alive, hold the onion, extra brown the buns.” Cheryl was already writing on her pad in expectation of the order. I pushed the paper aside and went to the fridge for the hamburger meat. When the door opened, a windblown spray of rain swept in and stung like buckshot. “Howdy, folks!” Dennis Wells peeled off his gray rain slicker and hung it on the rack next to the door. Over his Smokey the Bear trooper hat was a protective plastic covering, beaded with raindrops. He took off his hat, exposing the thinning blond hair on his pale scalp, as he approached the counter and sat on his usual stool, right next to the cash register. “Cup of black coffee and a rare—” Cheryl was already sliding the coffee in front of him, and the burger sizzled on the griddle. “Ya’ll are on the ball tonight!” Dennis said; he said the same thing when he came in, which was almost every night. Funny the kind of habits you fall into, without realizing it. “Kinda wild out there, ain’t it?” I asked as I flipped the burger over. “Lordy, yes! Wind just about flipped my car over three, four miles down the interstate. Thought I was gonna be eatin’ a little pavement tonight.” Dennis was a husky young man in his early thirties, with thick blond brows over deep-set light brown eyes. He had a wife and three kids, and he was fast to flash a walletful of their pictures. “Don’t reckon I’ll be chasin’ any speeders tonight, but there’ll probably be a load of accidents. Cheryl, you sure look pretty this evenin’.” “Still the same old me.” Cheryl never wore a speck of makeup, though one day she’d come to work with glitter on her cheeks. She had a place a few miles away, and I guessed she was farming that funny weed up there. “Any trucks moving?” “Seen a few, but not many. Truckers ain’t fools. Gonna get worse before it gets better, the radio says.” He sipped at his coffee and grimaced. “Lordy, that’s strong enough to jump out of the cup and dance a jig, darlin’!” I fixed the burger the way Dennis liked it, put it on a platter with some fries, and served it. “Bobby, how’s the wife treatin’ you?” he asked. “No complaints.” “Good to hear. I’ll tell you, a fine woman is worth her weight in gold. Hey, Cheryl! How’d you like a handsome young man for a husband?” Cheryl smiled, knowing what was coming. “The man I’m looking for hasn’t been made yet.” “Yeah, but you ain’t met Cecil yet, either! He asks me about you every time I see him, and I keep tellin’ him I’m doin’ everything I can to get you two together.” Cecil was Dennis’ brother-in-law and owned a Chevy dealership in Bay Minette. Dennis had been ribbing Cheryl about going on a date with Cecil for the past four months. “You’d like him,” Dennis promised. “He’s got a lot of my qualities.” “Well, that’s different. In that case, I’m certain I don’t want to meet him.” Dennis winced. “Oh, you’re a cruel woman! That’s what smokin’ banana peels does to you—turns you mean. Anybody readin’ this rag?” He reached over for the newspaper. “Waitin’ here just for you,” I said. Thunder rumbled, closer to the diner. The lights flickered briefly once … then again before they returned to normal. Cheryl busied herself by fixing a fresh pot of coffee, and I watched the rain whipping against the windows. When the lightning flashed, I could see the trees swaying so hard they looked about to snap. Dennis read and ate his hamburger. “Boy,” he said after a few minutes, “the world’s in some shape, huh? Those A-rab pig-stickers are itchin’ for war. Mobile metro boys had a little gunplay last night. Good for them.” He paused and frowned, then tapped the paper with one thick finger. “This I can’t figure.” “What’s that?” “Thing in Florida couple of nights ago. Six people killed at the Pines Haven Motor Inn, near Daytona Beach. Motel was set off in the woods. Only a couple of cinder-block houses in the area, and nobody heard any gunshots. Says here one old man saw what he thought was a bright white star falling over the motel, and that was it. Funny, huh?” “A UFO,” Cheryl offered. “Maybe he saw a UFO.” “Yeah, and I’m a little green man from Mars,” Dennis scoffed. “I’m serious. This is weird. The motel was so blown full of holes it looked like a war had been going on. Everybody was dead—even a dog and a canary that belonged to the manager. The cars out in front of the rooms were blasted to pieces. The sound of one of them explodin’ was what woke up the people in those houses, I reckon.” He skimmed the story again. “Two bodies were out in the parkin’ lot, one was holed up in a bathroom, one had crawled under a bed, and two had dragged every piece of furniture in the room over to block the door. Didn’t seem to help ’em any, though.” I grunted. “Guess not.” “No motive, no witnesses. You better believe those Florida cops are shakin’ the bushes for some kind of dangerous maniac—or maybe more than one, it says here.” He shoved the paper away and patted the service revolver holstered at his hip. “If I ever got hold of him—or them—he’d find out not to mess with a ’Bama trooper.” He glanced quickly over at Cheryl and smiled mischievously. “Probably some crazy hippie who’d been smokin’ his tennis shoes.” “Don’t knock it,” she said sweetly, “until you’ve tried it.” She looked past him, out the window into the storm. “Car’s pullin’ in, Bobby.” Headlights glared briefly off the wet windows. It was a station wagon with wood-grained panels on the sides; it veered around the gas pumps and parked next to Dennis’ trooper car. On the front bumper was a personalized license plate that said: Ray & Lindy. The headlights died, and all the doors opened at once. Out of the wagon came a whole family: a man and woman, a little girl and boy about eight or nine. Dennis got up and opened the diner door as they hurried inside from the rain. All of them had gotten pretty well soaked between the station wagon and the diner, and they wore the dazed expressions of people who’d been on the road a long time. The man wore glasses and had curly gray hair, the woman was slim and dark-haired and pretty. The kids were sleepy-eyed. All of them were well-dressed, the man in a yellow sweater with one of those alligators on the chest. They had vacation tans, and I figured they were tourists heading north from the beach after spring break. “Come on in and take a seat,” I said. “Thank you,” the man said. They squeezed into one of the booths near the windows. “We saw your sign from the interstate.” “Bad night to be on the highway,” Dennis told them. “Tornado warnings are out all over the place.” “We heard it on the radio,” the woman—Lindy, if the license was right—said. “We’re on our way to Birmingham, and we thought we could drive right through the storm. We should’ve stopped at that Holiday Inn we passed about fifteen miles ago.” “That would’ve been smart,” Dennis agreed. “No sense in pushin’ your luck.” He returned to his stool. The new arrivals ordered hamburgers, fries, and Cokes. Cheryl and I went to work. Lightning made the diner’s lights flicker again, and the sound of thunder caused the kids to jump. When the food was ready and Cheryl served them, Dennis said, “Tell you what. You folks finish your dinners and I’ll escort you back to the Holiday Inn. Then you can head out in the morning. How about that?” “Fine,” Ray said gratefully. “I don’t think we could’ve gotten very much further, anyway.” He turned his attention to his food. “Well,” Cheryl said quietly, standing beside me, “I don’t guess we get home early, do we?” “I guess not. Sorry.” She shrugged. “Goes with the job, right? Anyway, I can think of worse places to be stuck.” I figured that Alma might be worried about me, so I went over to the pay phone to call her. I dropped a quarter in—and the dial tone sounded like a cat being stepped on. I hung up and tried again. The cat scream continued. “Damn!” I muttered. “Lines must be screwed up.” “Ought to get yourself a place closer to town, Bobby,” Dennis said. “Never could figure out why you wanted a joint in the sticks. At least you’d get better phone service and good lights if you were nearer to Mo—” He was interrupted by the sound of wet and shrieking brakes, and he swiveled around on his stool. I looked up as a car hurtled into the parking lot, the tires swerving, throwing up plumes of water. For a few seconds I thought it was going to keep coming, right through the window into the diner—but then the brakes caught and the car almost grazed the side of my pickup as it jerked to a stop. In the neon’s red glow I could tell it was a beat-up old Ford Fairlane, either gray or a dingy beige. Steam was rising off the crumpled hood. The headlights stayed on for perhaps a minute before they winked off. A figure got out of the car and walked slowly—with a limp—toward the diner. We watched the figure approach. Dennis’ body looked like a coiled spring ready to be triggered. “We got us a live one, Bobby boy,” he said. The door opened, and in a stinging gust of wind and rain a man who looked like walking death stepped into my diner. 3 He was so wet he might well have been driving with his windows down. He was a skinny guy, maybe weighed all of a hundred and twenty pounds, even soaking wet. His unruly dark hair was plastered to his head, and he had gone a week or more without a shave. In his gaunt, pallid face his eyes were startlingly blue; his gaze flicked around the diner, lingered for a few seconds on Dennis. Then he limped on down to the far end of the counter and took a seat. He wiped the rain out of his eyes as Cheryl took a menu to him. Dennis stared at the man. When he spoke, his voice bristled with authority. “Hey, fella.” The man didn’t look up from the menu. “Hey, I’m talkin’ to you.” The man pushed the menu away and pulled a damp packet of Kools out of the breast pocket of his patched Army fatigue jacket. “I can hear you,” he said; his voice was deep and husky, and didn’t go with his less-than-robust physical appearance. “Drivin’ kinda fast in this weather, don’t you think?” The man flicked a cigarette lighter a few times before he got a flame, then lit one of his smokes and inhaled deeply. “Yeah,” he replied. “I was. Sorry. I saw the sign, and I was in a hurry to get here. Miss? I’d just like a cup of coffee, please. Hot and real strong, okay?” Cheryl nodded and turned away from him, almost bumping into me as I strolled down behind the counter to check him out. “That kind of hurry’ll get you killed,” Dennis cautioned. “Right. Sorry.” He shivered and pushed the tangled hair back from his forehead with one hand. Up close, I could see deep cracks around his mouth and the corners of his eyes and I figured him to be in his late thirties or early forties. His wrists were as thin as a woman’s; he looked like he hadn’t eaten a good meal for more than a month. He stared at his hands through bloodshot eyes. Probably on drugs, I thought. The fella gave me the creeps. Then he looked at me with those eyes—so pale blue they were almost white—and I felt like I’d been nailed to the floor. “Something wrong?” he asked—not rudely, just curiously. “Nope.” I shook my head. Cheryl gave him his coffee and then went over to give Ray and Lindy their check. The man didn’t use either cream or sugar. The coffee was steaming, but he drank half of it down like mother’s milk. “That’s good,” he said. “Keep me awake, won’t it?” “More than likely.” Over the breast pocket of his jacket was the faint outline of the name that had been sewn there once. I think it was Price, but I could’ve been wrong. “That’s what I want. To stay awake as long as I can.” He finished the coffee. “Can I have another cup, please?” I poured it for him. He drank that one down just as fast,” then rubbed his eyes wearily. “Been on the road a long time, huh?” Price nodded. “Day and night. I don’t know which is more tired, my mind or my butt.” He lifted his gaze to me again. “Have you got anything else to drink? How about beer?” “No, sorry. Couldn’t get a liquor license.” He sighed. “Just as well. It might make me sleepy. But I sure could go for a beer right now. One sip, to clean my mouth out.” He picked up his coffee cup, and I smiled and started to turn away. But then he wasn’t holding a cup. He was holding a Budweiser can, and for an instant I could smell the tang of a newly popped beer. The mirage was there for only maybe two seconds. I blinked, and Price was holding a cup again. “Just as well,” he said, and put it down. I glanced over at Cheryl, then at Dennis. Neither one was paying attention. Damn! I thought. I’m too young to be losin’ either my eyesight or my senses! “Uh …” I said, or some other stupid noise. “One more cup?” Price asked. “Then I’d better hit the road again.” My hand was shaking as I picked it up, but if Price noticed, he didn’t say anything. “Want anything to eat?” Cheryl asked him. “How about a bowl of beef stew?” He shook his head. “No, thanks. The sooner I get back on the road, the better it’ll be.” Suddenly Dennis swiveled toward him, giving him a cold stare that only cops and drill sergeants can muster. “Back on the road?” He snorted. “Fella, you ever been in a tornado before? I’m gonna escort those nice people to the Holiday Inn about fifteen miles back. If you’re smart, that’s where you’ll spend the night too. No use in tryin’ to—” “No.” Price’s voice was rock-steady. “I’ll be spending the night behind the wheel.” Dennis’ eyes narrowed. “How come you’re in such a hurry? Not runnin’ from anybody, are you?” “Nightcrawlers,” Cheryl said. Price turned toward her like he’d been slapped across the face, and I saw what might’ve been a spark of fear in his eyes. Cheryl motioned toward the lighter Price had laid on the counter, beside the pack of Kools. It was a beat-up silver Zippo, and inscribed across it was NIGHTCRAWLERS with the symbol of two crossed rifles beneath it. “Sorry,” she said. “I just noticed that, and I wondered what it was.” Price put the lighter away. “I was in ’Nam,” he told her. “Everybody in my unit got one.” “Hey.” There was suddenly new respect in Dennis’ voice. “You a vet?” Price paused so long I didn’t think he was going to answer. In the quiet, I heard the little girl tell her mother that the fries were “ucky.” Price said, “Yes.” “How about that! Hey, I wanted to go myself, but I got a high number and things were windin’ down about that time anyway. Did you see any action?” A faint, bitter smile passed over Price’s mouth. “Too much.” “What? Infantry? Marines? Rangers?” Price picked up his third cup of coffee, swallowed some, and put it down. He closed his eyes for a few seconds, and when they opened they were vacant and fixed on nothing. “Nightcrawlers,” he said quietly. “Special unit. Deployed to recon Charlie positions in questionable villages.” He said it like he was reciting from a manual. “We did a lot of crawling through rice paddies and jungles in the dark.” “Bet you laid a few of them Vietcong out, didn’t you?” Dennis got up and came over to sit a few places away from the man. “Man, I was behind you guys all the way. I wanted you to stay in there and fight it out!” Price was silent. Thunder echoed over the diner. The lights weakened for a few seconds; when they came back on, they seemed to have lost some of their wattage. The place was dimmer than before. Price’s head slowly turned toward Dennis, with the inexorable motion of a machine. I was thankful I didn’t have to take the full force of Price’s dead blue eyes, and I saw Dennis wince. “I should’ve stayed,” he said. “I should be there right now, buried in the mud of a rice paddy with the eight other men in my patrol.” “Oh.” Dennis blinked. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to—” “I came home,” Price continued calmly, “by stepping on the bodies of my friends. Do you want to know what that’s like, Mr. Trooper?” “The war’s over,” I told him. “No need to bring it back.” Price smiled grimly, but his gaze remained fixed on Dennis. “Some say it’s over. I say it came back with the men who were there. Like me. Especially like me.” Price paused. The wind howled around the door, and the lightning illuminated for an instant the thrashing woods across the highway. “The mud was up to our knees, Mr. Trooper,” he said. “We were moving across a rice paddy in the dark, being real careful not to step on the bamboo stakes we figured were planted there. Then the first shots started: pop pop pop—like firecrackers going off. One of the Nightcrawlers fired off a flare, and we saw the Cong ringing us. We’d walked right into hell, Mr. Trooper. Somebody shouted, ‘Charlie’s in the light!’ and we started firing, trying to punch a hole through them. But they were everywhere. As soon as one went down, three more took his place. Grenades were going off, and more flares, and people were screaming as they got hit. I took a bullet in the thigh and another through the hand. I lost my rifle, and somebody fell on top of me with half his head missing.” “Uh … listen,” I said. “You don’t have to—” “I want to, friend.” He glanced quickly at me, then back to Dennis. I think I cringed when his gaze pierced me. “I want to tell it all. They were fighting and screaming and dying all around me, and I felt the bullets tug at my clothes as they passed through. I know I was screaming too, but what was coming out of my mouth sounded bestial. I ran. The only way I could save my own life was to step on their bodies and drive them down into the mud. I heard some of them choke and blubber as I put my boot on their faces. I knew all those guys like brothers … but at that moment they were only pieces of meat. I ran. A gunship chopper came over the paddy and laid down some fire, and that’s how I got out. Alone.” He bent his face closer toward the other man’s. “And you’d better believe I’m in that rice paddy in ’Nam every time I close my eyes. You’d better believe the men I left back there don’t rest easy. So you keep your opinions about ’Nam and being ‘behind you guys’ to yourself, Mr. Trooper. I don’t want to hear that bullshit. Got it?” Dennis sat very still. He wasn’t used to being talked to like that, not even from a ’Nam vet, and I saw the shadow of anger pass over his face. Price’s hands were trembling as he brought a little bottle out of his jeans pocket. He shook two blue-and-orange capsules out onto the counter, took them both with a swallow of coffee, and then recapped the bottle and put it away. The flesh of his face looked almost ashen in the dim light. “I know you boys had a rough time,” Dennis said, “but that’s no call to show disrespect to the law.” “The law,” Price repeated. “Yeah. Right. Bullshit.” “There are women and children present,” I reminded him. “Watch your language.” Price rose from his seat. He looked like a skeleton with just a little extra skin on the bones. “Mister, I haven’t slept for more than thirty-six hours. My nerves are shot. I don’t mean to cause trouble, but when some fool says he understands, I feel like kicking his teeth down his throat—because no one who wasn’t there can pretend to understand.” He glanced at Ray, Lindy, and the kids. “Sorry, folks. Don’t mean to disturb you. Friend, how much do I owe?” He started digging for his wallet. Dennis slid slowly from his seat and stood with his hands on his hips. “Hold it.” He used his trooper’s voice again. “If you think I’m lettin’ you walk out of here high on pills and needin’ sleep, you’re crazy. I don’t want to be scrapin’ you off the highway.” Price paid him no attention. He took a couple of dollars from his wallet and put them on the counter. I didn’t touch them. “Those pills will help keep me awake,” Price said. “Once I get on the road, I’ll be fine.” “Fella, I wouldn’t let you go if it was high noon and not a cloud in the sky. I sure as hell don’t want to clean up after the accident you’re gonna have. Now, why don’t you come along to the Holiday Inn and—” Price laughed grimly. “Mr. Trooper, the last place you want me staying is at a motel.” He cocked his head to one side. “I was in a motel in Florida a couple of nights ago, and I think I left my room a little untidy. Step aside and let me pass.” “A motel in Florida?” Dennis nervously licked his lower lip. “What the hell you talkin’ about?” “Nightmares and reality, Mr. Trooper. The point where they cross. A couple of nights ago, they crossed at a motel. I wasn’t going to let myself sleep. I was just going to rest for a little while, but I didn’t know they’d come so fast.” A mocking smile played at the edges of his mouth, but his eyes were tortured. “You don’t want me staying at that Holiday Inn, Mr. Trooper. You really don’t. Now, step aside.” I saw Dennis’ hand settle on the butt of his revolver. His fingers unsnapped the fold of leather that secured the gun in the holster. I stared at him numbly. My God, I thought. What’s goin’ on? My heart had started pounding so hard I was sure everybody could hear it. Ray and Lindy were watching, and Cheryl was backing away behind the counter. Price and Dennis faced each other for a moment, as the rain whipped against the windows and thunder boomed like shellfire. Then Price sighed, as if resigning himself to something. He said, “I think I want a T-bone steak. Extra rare. How ’bout it?” He looked at me. “A steak?” My voice was shaking. “We don’t have any T-bone—” Price’s gaze shifted to the counter right in front of me. I heard a sizzle. The aroma of cooking meat drifted up to me. “Oh … wow,” Cheryl whispered. A large T-bone steak lay on the countertop, pink and oozing blood. You could’ve fanned a menu in my face and I would’ve keeled over. Wisps of smoke were rising from the steak. The steak began to fade, until it was only an outline on the counter. The lines of oozing blood vanished. After the mirage was gone, I could still smell the meat—and that’s how I knew I wasn’t crazy. Dennis’ mouth hung open. Ray had stood up from the booth to look, and his wife’s face was the color of spoiled milk. The whole world seemed to be balanced on a point of silence—until the wail of the wind jarred me back to my senses. “I’m getting good at it,” Price said softly. “I’m getting very, very good. Didn’t start happening to me until about a year ago. I’ve found four other ’Nam vets who can do the same thing. What’s in your head comes true—as simple as that. Of course, the images only last for a few seconds—as long as I’m awake, I mean. I’ve found out that those other men were drenched by a chemical spray we called Howdy Doody—because it made you stiffen up and jerk like you were hanging on strings. I got hit with it near Khe Sahn. That shit almost suffocated me. It felt like black tar, and it burned the land down to a paved parking lot.” He stared at Dennis. “You don’t want me around here, Mr. Trooper. Not with the body count I’ve still got in my head.” “You … were at … that motel, near Daytona Beach?” Price closed his eyes. A vein had begun beating at his right temple, royal blue against the pallor of his flesh. “Oh, Jesus,” he whispered. “I fell asleep, and I couldn’t wake myself up. I was having the nightmare. The same one. I was locked in it, and I was trying to scream myself awake.” He shuddered, and two tears ran slowly down his cheeks. “Oh,” he said, and flinched as if remembering something horrible. “They … they were coming through the door when I woke up. Tearing the door right off its hinges. I woke up … just as one of them was pointing his rifle at me. And I saw his face. I saw his muddy, misshapen face.” His eyes suddenly jerked open. “I didn’t know they’d come so fast.” “Who?” I asked him. “Who came so fast?” “The Nightcrawlers,” Price said, his face devoid of expression, masklike. “Dear God … maybe if I’d stayed asleep a second more. But I ran again, and I left those people dead in that motel.” “You’re gonna come with me.” Dennis started pulling his gun from the holster. Price’s head snapped toward him. “I don’t know what kinda fool game you’re—” He stopped, staring at the gun he held. It wasn’t a gun anymore. It was an oozing mass of hot rubber. Dennis cried out and slung the thing from his hand. The molten mess hit the floor with a pulpy splat. “I’m leaving now.” Price’s voice was calm. “Thank you for the coffee.” He walked past Dennis, toward the door. Dennis grasped a bottle of ketchup from the counter. Cheryl cried out, “Don’t!” but it was too late. Dennis was already swinging the bottle. It hit the back of Price’s skull and burst open, spewing ketchup everywhere. Price staggered forward, his knees buckling. When he went down, his skull hit the floor with a noise like a watermelon being dropped. His body began jerking involuntarily. “Got him!” Dennis shouted triumphantly. “Got that crazy bastard, didn’t I?” Lindy was holding the little girl in her arms. The boy craned his neck to see. Ray said nervously, “You didn’t kill him, did you?” “He’s not dead,” I told him. I looked over at the gun; it was solid again. Dennis scooped it up and aimed it at Price, whose body continued to jerk. Just like Howdy Doody, I thought. Then Price stopped moving. “He’s dead!” Cheryl’s voice was near-frantic. “Oh God, you killed him, Dennis!” Dennis prodded the body with the toe of his boot, then bent down. “Naw. His eyes are movin’ back and forth behind the lids.” Dennis touched his wrist to check the pulse, then abruptly pulled his own hand away. “Jesus Christ! He’s as cold as a meat locker!” He took Price’s pulse and whistled. “Goin’ like a racehorse at the Derby.” I touched the place on the counter where the mirage steak had been. My fingers came away slightly greasy, and I could smell the cooked meat on them. At that instant Price twitched. Dennis scuttled away from him like a crab. Price made a gasping, choking noise. “What’d he say?” Cheryl asked. “He said something!” “No he didn’t.” Dennis stuck him in the ribs with his pistol. “Come on. Get up.” “Get him out of here,” I said. “I don’t want him—” Cheryl shushed me. “Listen. Can you hear that?” I heard only the roar and crash of the storm. “Don’t you hear it?” she asked me. Her eyes were getting scared and glassy. “Yes!” Ray said. “Yes! Listen!” Then I did hear something, over the noise of the keening wind. It was a distant chuk-chuk-chuk, steadily growing louder and closer. The wind covered the noise for a minute, then it came back: CHUK-CHUK-CHUK, almost overhead. “It’s a helicopter!” Ray peered through the window. “Somebody’s got a helicopter out there!” “Ain’t nobody can fly a chopper in a storm!” Dennis told him. The noise of rotors swelled and faded, swelled and faded … and stopped. On the floor, Price shivered and began to contort into a fetal position. His mouth opened; his face twisted in what appeared to be agony. Thunder spoke. A red fireball rose up from the woods across the road and hung lazily in the sky for a few seconds before it descended toward the diner. As it fell, the fireball exploded soundlessly into a white, glaring eye of light that almost blinded me. Price said something in a garbled, panicked voice. His eyes were tightly closed, and he had squeezed up with his arms around his knees. Dennis rose to his feet; he squinted as the eye of light fell toward the parking lot and winked out in a puddle of water. Another fireball floated up from the woods, and again blossomed into painful glare. Dennis turned toward me. “I heard him.” His voice was raspy. “He said . . . ‘Charlie’s in the light.’” As the second flare fell to the ground and illuminated the parking lot, I thought I saw figures crossing the road. They walked stiff-legged, in an eerie cadence. The flare went out. “Wake him up,” I heard myself whisper. “Dennis … dear God … wake him up.” 4 Dennis stared stupidly at me, and I started to jump across the counter to get to Price myself. A gout of flame leapt in the parking lot. Sparks marched across the concrete. I shouted, “Get down!” and twisted around to push Cheryl back behind the shelter of the counter. “What the hell—” Dennis said. He didn’t finish. There was the metallic thumping of bullets hitting the gas pumps and the cars. I knew if that gas blew we were all dead. My truck shuddered with the impact of slugs, and I saw the whole thing explode as I ducked behind the counter. Then the windows blew inward with a god-awful crash, and the diner was full of flying glass, swirling wind, and sheets of rain. I heard Lindy scream, and both the kids were crying, and I think I was shouting something myself. The lights had gone out, and the only illumination was the reflection of red neon off the concrete and the glow of the fluorescents over the gas pumps. Bullets whacked into the wall, and crockery shattered as if it had been hit with a hammer. Napkins and sugar packets were flying everywhere. Cheryl was holding on to me as if her fingers were nails sunk to my bones. Her eyes were wide and dazed, and she kept trying to speak. Her mouth was working, but nothing came out. There was another explosion as one of the other cars blew. The whole place shook, and I almost puked with fear. Another hail of bullets hit the wall. They were tracers, and they jumped and ricocheted like white-hot cigarette butts. One of them sang off the edge of a shelf and fell to the floor about three feet away from me. The glowing slug began to fade, like the beer can and the mirage steak. I put my hand out to find it, but all I felt was splinters of glass and crockery. A phantom bullet, I thought. Real enough to cause damage and death—and then gone. You don’t want me around here, Mr. Trooper, Price had warned. Not with the body count I’ve got in my head. The firing stopped. I got free of Cheryl and said, “You stay right here.” Then I looked up over the counter and saw my truck and the station wagon on fire, the flames being whipped by the wind. Rain slapped me across the face as it swept in where the window glass used to be. I saw Price lying still huddled on the floor, with pieces of glass all around him. His hands were clawing the air, and in the flickering red neon his face was contorted, his eyes still closed. The pool of ketchup around his head made him look like his skull had been split open. He was peering into hell, and I averted my eyes before I lost my own mind. Ray and Lindy and the two children had huddled under the table of their booth. The woman was sobbing brokenly. I looked at Dennis, lying a few feet from Price: he was sprawled on his face, and there were four holes punched through his back. It was not ketchup that ran in rivulets around Dennis’ body. His right arm was outflung, and the fingers twitched around the gun he gripped. Another flare sailed up from the woods like a Fourth of July sparkler. When the light brightened, I saw them: at least five figures, maybe more. They were crouched over, coming across the parking lot—but slowly, the speed of nightmares. Their clothes flapped and hung around them, and the flare’s light glanced off their helmets. They were carrying weapons—rifles, I guessed. I couldn’t see their faces, and that was for the best. On the floor, Price moaned. I heard him say “light … in the light …” The flare hung right over the diner. And then I knew what was going on. We were in the light. We were all caught in Price’s nightmare, and the Nightcrawlers that Price had left in the mud were fighting the battle again—the same way it had been fought at the Pines Haven Motor Inn. The Nightcrawlers had come back to life, powered by Price’s guilt and whatever that Howdy Doody shit had done to him. And we were in the light, where Charlie had been out in that rice paddy. There was a noise like castanets clicking. Dots of fire arced through the broken windows and thudded into the counter. The stools squealed as they were hit and spun. The cash register rang and the drawer popped open, and then the entire register blew apart and bills and coins scattered. I ducked my head, but a wasp of fire—I don’t, know what, a bit of metal or glass maybe—sliced my left cheek open from ear to upper lip. I fell to the floor behind the counter with blood running down my face. A blast shook the rest of the cups, saucers, plates, and glasses off the shelves. The whole roof buckled inward, throwing loose ceiling tiles, light fixtures, and pieces of metal framework. We were all going to die. I knew it, right then. Those things were going to destroy us. But I thought of the pistol in Dennis’ hand, and of Price lying near the door. If we were caught in Price’s nightmare and the blow from the ketchup bottle had broken something in his skull, then the only way to stop his dream was to kill him. I’m no hero. I was about to piss in my pants, but I knew I was the only one who could move. I jumped up and scrambled over the counter, falling beside Dennis and wrenching at that pistol. Even in death, Dennis had a strong grip. Another blast came, along the wall to my right. The heat of it scorched me, and the shock wave skidded me across the floor through glass and rain and blood. But I had that pistol in my hand. I heard Ray shout, “Look out!” In the doorway, silhouetted by flames, was a skeletal thing wearing muddy green rags. It wore a dented-in helmet and carried a corroded, slime-covered rifle. Its face was gaunt and shadowy, the features hidden behind a scum of rice-paddy muck. It began to lift the rifle to fire at me—slowly, slowly … I got the safety off the pistol and fired twice, without aiming. A spark leapt off the helmet as one of the bullets was deflected, but the figure staggered backward and into the conflagration of the station wagon, where it seemed to melt into ooze before it vanished. More tracers were coming in. Cheryl’s Volkswagen shuddered, the tires blowing out almost in unison. The state-trooper car was already bullet-riddled and sitting on flats. Another Nightcrawler, this one without a helmet and with slime covering the skull where the hair had been, rose up beyond the window and fired its rifle. I heard the bullet whine past my ear, and as I took aim I saw its bony finger tightening on the trigger again. A skillet flew over my head and hit the thing’s shoulder, spoiling its aim. For an instant the skillet stuck in the Nightcrawler’s body, as if the figure itself was made out of mud. I fired once … twice … and saw pieces of matter fly from the thing’s chest. What might’ve been a mouth opened in a soundless scream, and the thing slithered out of sight. I looked around. Cheryl was standing behind the counter, weaving on her feet, her face white with shock. “Get down!” I shouted, and she ducked for cover. I crawled to Price, shook him hard. His eyes would not open. “Wake up!” I begged him. “Wake up, damn you!” And then I pressed the barrel of the pistol against Price’s head. Dear God, I didn’t want to kill anybody, but I knew I was going to have to blow the Nightcrawlers right out of his brain. I hesitated—too long. Something smashed into my left collarbone. I heard the bone snap like a broomstick being broken. The force of the shot slid me back against the counter and jammed me between two bullet-pocked stools. I lost the gun, and there was a roaring in my head that deafened me. I don’t know how long I was out. My left arm felt like dead meat. All the cars in the lot were burning, and there was a hole in the diner’s roof that a tractor-trailer truck could’ve dropped through. Rain was sweeping into my face, and when I wiped my eyes clear I saw them, standing over Price. There were eight of them. The two I thought I’d killed were back. They trailed weeds, and their boots and ragged clothes were covered with mud. They stood in silence, staring down at their living comrade. I was too tired to scream. I couldn’t even whimper. I just watched. Price’s hands lifted into the air. He reached for the Nightcrawlers, and then his eyes opened. His pupils were dead white, surrounded by scarlet. “End it,” he whispered. “End it …” One of the Nightcrawlers aimed its rifle and fired. Price jerked. Another Nightcrawler fired, and then they were all firing point-blank into Price’s body. Price thrashed and clutched at his head, but there was no blood; the phantom bullets weren’t hitting him. The Nightcrawlers began to ripple and fade. I saw the flames of the burning cars through their bodies. The figures became transparent, floating in vague outlines. Price had awakened too fast at the Pines Haven Motor Inn, I realized; if he had remained asleep, the creatures of his nightmares would’ve ended it there, at that Florida motel. They were killing him in front of me—or he was allowing them to end it, and I think that’s what he must’ve wanted for a long, long time. He shuddered, his mouth releasing a half-moan, half-sigh. It sounded almost like relief. The Nightcrawlers vanished. Price didn’t move anymore. I saw his face. His eyes were closed, and I think he must’ve found peace at last. 5 A trucker hauling lumber from Mobile to Birmingham saw the burning cars. I don’t even remember what he looked like. Ray was cut up by glass, but his wife and the kids were okay. Physically, I mean. Mentally, I couldn’t say. Cheryl went into the hospital for a while. I got a postcard from her with the Golden Gate Bridge on the front. She promised she’d write and let me know how she was doing, but I doubt if I’ll ever hear from her. She was the best waitress I ever had, and I wish her luck. The police asked me a thousand questions, and I told the story the same way every time. I found out later that no bullets or shrapnel were ever dug out of the walls or the cars or Dennis’ body—just like in the case of that motel massacre. There was no bullet in me, though my collarbone was snapped clean in two. Price had died of a massive brain hemorrhage. It looked, the police told me, as if it had exploded in his skull. I closed the diner. Farm life is fine. Alma understands, and we don’t talk about it. But I never showed the police what I found, and I don’t know exactly why not. I picked up Price’s wallet in the mess. Behind a picture of a smiling young woman holding a baby there was a folded piece of paper. On that paper were the names of four men. Beside one name, Price had written “Dangerous.” I’ve found four other ’Nam vets who can do the same thing, Price had said. I sit up at night a lot, thinking about that and looking at those names. Those men had gotten a dose of that Howdy Doody shit in a foreign place they hadn’t wanted to be, fighting a war that turned out to be one of those crossroads of nightmare and reality. I’ve changed my mind about ’Nam because I understand now that the worst of the fighting is still going on, in the battlefields of memory. A Yankee who called himself Tompkins came to my house one May morning and flashed me an ID that said he worked for a veterans’ association. He was very soft-spoken and polite, but he had deep-set eyes that were almost black, and he never blinked. He asked me all about Price, seemed real interested in picking my brain of every detail. I told him the police had the story, and I couldn’t add any more to it. Then I turned the tables and asked him about Howdy Doody. He smiled in a puzzled kind of way and said he’d never heard of any chemical defoliant called that. No such thing, he said. Like I say, he was very polite. But I know the shape of a gun tucked into a shoulder holster. Tompkins was wearing one under his seersucker coat. I never could find any veterans’ association that knew anything about him, either. Maybe I should give that list of names to the police. Maybe I will. Or maybe I’ll try to find those four men myself, and try to make some sense out of what’s being hidden. I don’t think Price was evil. No. He was just scared, and who can blame a man for running from his own nightmares? I like to believe that, in the end, Price had the courage to face the Nightcrawlers, and in committing suicide he saved our lives. The newspapers, of course, never got the real story. They called Price a ’Nam vet who’d gone crazy, killed six people in a Florida motel, and then killed a state trooper in a shoot-out at Big Bob’s diner and gas stop. But I know where Price is buried. They sell little American flags at the five-and-dime in Mobile. I’m alive, and I can spare the change. And then I’ve got to find out how much courage I have.

From Horror photos & videos June 23, 2018 at 08:00PM

[wku]

John Gordon, Meteorologist in Charge at the National Weather Service in Louisville, briefed WKU meteorology students before a March 2 survey of storm damage in Warren County.

On March 1, a powerful storm system swept across the region, which produced 11 tornado, 590 high wind and 108 severe hail reports. Among the 11 reported tornadoes, one touched down just 10 miles southeast of WKU at 7:24 a.m. and produced a swath of property and tree damage along the 12000 block of Cemetery Road.

“Any severe weather event that produces reports of damages or causalities, the National Weather Service will attempt to arrive at the location of these incidents relatively quick to conduct a forensic survey to determine specific meteorological causes of the given outcomes,” said Dr. Josh Durkee, Associate Professor of Meteorology and Climate Science and Director of White Squirrel Weather.

John Gordon, Meteorologist in Charge at the National Weather Service in Louisville, coordinated a storm damage survey effort with the Warren County Emergency Management office, meteorology colleagues at WKU, and WxOrNotBG on March 2.

“The Meteorology Program at WKU has a fantastic working relationship with the NWS-Louisville office,” Dr. Durkee said. “When I realized the NWS was visiting Bowling Green to conduct field research on a tornado event on the same day I teach my two upper-level meteorology courses, I knew I had to get my students involved. Thankfully, John Gordon was excited to have us on board.”

WKU meteorology students observed a broken piece of wood that penetrated the ground during the March 1 storm.

Trees heavily damaged from the tornado.

A heavily damaged cedar tree with a tractor door and other belongings wrapped up inside the canopy.

Melissa Moore from Warren County Emergency Management highlighted the placement of a shed before the tornado toppled a large tree and tossed the shed.

Dr. Durkee rounded up his 17 meteorology students, along with staff at White Squirrel Weather, and together they were able to successfully spend the day learning how to conduct professional storm surveys, handle emergency management affairs, verification of meteorological forecast and real-time data, communication and ethics.

WKU meteorology major Pierce Larkin of Lawrenceburg said: “Being able to participate with the National Weather Service in this exercise was a valuable learning experience for me. I am happy that our Meteorology Program continues to provide invaluable hands-on learning opportunities, particularly with potential employers.”

To conclude the investigation, based on the observed damages, the NWS determined the storm that struck Warren County on March 1 produced an EF-1 tornado with winds estimated at 110 mph and traveled 3 miles in just 4 minutes with an estimated width of 125 yards.

“With the widespread property loss in mind, fortunately this event unfolded in a sparsely-populated area where no one was seriously injured or killed,” said Jonathan Oglesby, Visual Design and Science Communicator for WKU White Squirrel Weather and the Department of Environmental Health and Safety. “Events such as this motivate us to stay proactive in severe weather preparedness and awareness at WKU in the unforeseen circumstance a hazardous event hits much closer to campus where population density and structures pose much greater risk of loss.”

With the tornado on March 1, Warren County is on track for an average of one tornado occurrence inside the county every other year since 2000. Coincidentally, March 1 marked the start of the so-called meteorological spring and consequently, the expected increase in severe weather across the region.

“I think we are all well-aware of the usually warm winter we experienced this season,” Dr. Durkee said. “However, it is too early to tell what this odd seasonality means for the start of the warm season and the overall expectation for severe weather. Regardless, spring is our primary thunderstorm season so stay weather aware and have a severe weather plan of action.”

Contact: Josh Durkee, (270) 745-8777

WKU meteorology students, @WKUweather staff survey tornado damage. @WkuOgden @NWSLouisville Read more on WKU News at On March 1, a powerful storm system swept across the region, which produced 11 tornado, 590 high wind and 108 severe hail reports.

[chamele0nb0y]

Not A Real World Scenario

This girl named Dorothy causes a ruckus about a dog. She runs away from home to get the dog out of trouble only to find a kind old guy that gets her thinking about how important her family is to her. She races home only to get swept up in a tornado where she promptly lands on a witch. She then goes off on an adventure with three other folks where they sing some songs and learn a few lessons. Eventually she ends up back home and realizes it was all a dream.

Sounds familiar right? You know the story. The question I have is once she figured out it was a dream did the experience become any less real? She learned a few lessons about courage, love, and friendship which we hope she hung on to after she realized it was just a dream. If the experience was only a dream and never happened so why would she hang on to the lessons? The point I am trying to make here is that although it wasn’t real, it was real to her. In her perception she believed it and so it was true. The lessons carried forward because they were true to her.

This is the whole perception vs reality thing. Something experienced is interpreted through all kinds of filters as it is put into our memory. Those filters are all based on how we perceived the event at that time. I would bet that none of us ever know exactly what happened during any experience of our life.  For the most part the differences between reality and perception are subtle. The taste of chocolate cake made you happy so from then forward you are always happy when you have chocolate cake. The experience was nothing more than a reaction of your body to the food. Your perception was that it made you happy.

This is happening over and over with every experience that you have. It is an automatic response so you can’t trick yourself into tasting sardines and believing it makes you happy (unless you are into sardines that is). Your reaction was a negative one because the taste didn’t make you happy. Since this is happening over and over without your control there is a lot of room for mistakes in your perception. Let’s think about eating at a particular restaurant.  You like the restaurant and go there often. One time, unfortunately, you end up getting sick. Here an incorrect emotion is inserted into the experience. It isn’t that the emotion of being unhappy from getting sick is incorrect. What is wrong is that the experience makes eating at the restaurant something you don’t want to do again. It overwrites the happiness you once felt eating there and instead inserts a new feeling based on one bad experience.

I also just realized that I am making a lot of food references. Maybe I should take a break and eat lunch. 

That break turned into a couple of days.  You’ve got to love how busy life can be.  Now getting back on topic…

Do you remember that time you told your parents about the great thing you did?  Do you remember how bad it felt when they just said, “That’s nice, go clean your room”? Do you remember how you cleaned your room hurt by how they treated you? You got angry and felt mistreated right?  You don’t remember this? Ok, maybe it’s only me.  There was this time I remember being proud about climbing a tree.  This particular tree was very tall and in order to get from one part to the other I had to jump and catch a branch.  Every time I tried I would miss the branch and fall out of the tree.  I had hurt myself several times trying.  I remember finally catching the branch and climbing the tree.  I would fall but I persevered.  This was what Dad was always telling me to do.  Keep working at it until you figure it out.  Don’t give up.  Trouble is he was talking about math while I was talking about a tree.  I imagined coming home to him and telling him.  He would celebrate with me and be proud that I followed his advice and kept at it.  Sure I was late coming home but it wouldn’t matter because I conquered the tree.  Triumphant I went home to spread the great news. 

“Dad, I made it up the tree.”

“The tree you keep hurting yourself on and we told you to quit climbing.”

“Umm… yeah that tree, but I stuck to it and made it to the top.” Little alarm bells were going off in my head. Something was wrong here.

“So, you climbed the tree you weren’t supposed to and you came home late because you were doing it right?”

“Yes Sir. I climbed the tree.”  The alarm was growing louder now. Abort! Abort! Abort!

“Did you do your math homework?”

With that, I retired to my room hurt with the response I received.  Hurt turns to anger, and anger turns to resentment.  Traumatic events (in my mind) started forming which defined much of my relationship with my father for quite a long time.

That conversation went the wrong direction because I had a perception of what it would be like.  I had played it all out in my head and when reality didn’t match my perception I turned to emotion.  I carried that (and many others) for a long time.  They grew to build a general perception of my father. 

Does this make sense?  Perception adds this emotional piece to experiences that may or may not be accurate. The perception is formed before, during, and even after the event.  Our emotions will trick us by associating unrelated events and putting them together as a general view.  I can look back and say I had a traumatic childhood just as easily as saying I had a happy one.  It’s how I perceive it in the emotional sense.  My trauma couldn’t compare to the trauma that I child growing up in a war torn country might have.  My traumas may not even look like traumas to you, but they are traumatic to me.  The same can be said for happy experience.  How is it that a person who has lived their entire life on a remote tropical island could consider their life of hunting and gathering as happy?  They don’t even have the Internet!  What’s horrific to me is paradise to another.  It all boils down to our personal perception. 

I did not have a traumatic childhood. I use those as examples.  Mine was not traumatic, sad, or happy.  There were moments from all those emotions but no emotion can be used to summarize my experience.   I’ve learned the difference between perception and reality by understanding the emotions related to the event.  Asking myself “How does that make you feel to remember?” or “Why does opening a bill bring fear?” helped me to disassociate emotion from fact.  With no emotion the things, events, and memories are all just memories.  You don’t have to hang on to them.  You can let them go.

Mike