A. Lee Martinez's Blog, page 20

San Diego, Here I Come (update)

With San Diego Comic-Con just around the corner and a new book deadline approaching, I’m just popping in to say you probably won’t see me posting quite so much in the near future. But I’m still here.

Going to SDCC as an invited guest is a terrific opportunity, but I’ll admit I’m also cynically not expecting much. I have a spotlight Q & A on Saturday (at 1, last time I checked), and I’m hopeful people will show up for it. But if I’m being honest, my expectations are deliberately vague. I’ve been a professionally published novelist for 10 years now, and I feel like I haven’t made much of a splash. This isn’t me being humble. Nor is it me being terribly surprised. Writing is like that. Most writers exist in obscurity, and some are lucky enough to get mainstream attention now and then.

But I’ll also admit I’d love it if people actually showed up for my Q & A session. Lots of people. Dozens would be great. Yet in my experience, this isn’t how it works. I’ve done these things before, and turn out is almost always low. Again, not a complaint. Just a fact. And we’re talking about one of the biggest cons out there. I’m sure there are going to be many more exciting and interesting things competing for attention.

So if you happen to be going to SDCC and you happen to be free, it’d be great if you showed up. Love to have you drop by.

I’m also attending the Eisner Awards on Saturday night. That should be fun. I went to the Nebulas once, and it was a great experience. Other than that, I’m just there to enjoy the con like everyone else, but if I can make a confession, I’m not a big con guy.

I never went to cons before being invited to them, and while I love going to them in a professional capacity (it’s wonderful to meet fans and fellow artists), I’m not sure I’d ever go as a fan. Part of this is that the stuff I love tends not to be stuff everyone else loves and part of this is that I’m never excited to be anyplace crowded. I don’t have any sort of phobia, but I often find it to be a bit of a hassle.

As a professional, however, I have a different attitude. I love cons for the ability to reach new people and make new contacts. SDCC is a great opportunity if only for the chance to connect with new people I haven’t met before. So study my picture and maybe you’ll see me walking the floor. And if you do, say hi. Please. Don’t hesitate. Even if you’ve never read a book of mine (although how you ended up here is a mystery then), feel free. I suppose I’m inviting a hassle there, but if I somehow get mobbed by fans (which has NEVER happened) then I’ll deal with it then.

Keelah Se’lai

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

LEE

 

The Judgments of Lorenzo (short fiction)

Divine Misfortune

 
It was in the middle of the night that someone came knocking on Lorenzo’s door. Even before answering, he knew it was the gods. It was always the gods at this hour.

“Don’t answer it,” said Clifton.

“You know that doesn’t work. They’ll just keep knocking.” Lorenzo kissed Clifton on the cheek. “Go back to sleep. This won’t take long.”

Clifton pulled the covers over his head and grumbled.

Lorenzo put on his robe and shuffled to the front door. He gazed through the peephole at the three goddesses on his doorstep. He didn’t answer it. Not right away. The gods didn’t need to think he was at their beck and call. He made himself a cup of coffee. The goddesses kept knocking. In their impatience, they started to shake the house itself.

He opened the door. “What is it?”

Sometimes, there was a ceremony to these things. But not at four o’clock in the morning.

Freyja, goddess of sexuality and war and a bunch of other things, pushed her way into the house. The goddess, tall and blond, carryied a spear and shield. She also wore a horned helmet even though Vikings had never worn those, but it was expected in this day and age so it’d become part of her look, though it didn’t entirely fit with her white power suit.

Behind her, Oshun, the dark brown goddess of femininity and sensuality, wearing a colorful rainbow gown, stepped inside. She was the most regal of the deities and didn’t bother looking at Lorenzo as she passed him.

Hathor, patron of love, mining, music, and whatever the hell else she pleased, brought up the rear. Like all the goddesses, she was a few inches taller than Lorenzo. She was the most casually dressed, wearing a tank top and a pair of worn jeans. She still radiated beauty and power. The clothes didn’t make the goddess.

“Who is the most beautiful of us?” asked Freyja.

Lorenzo sat, sipped his coffee. “Why, hello, Lorenzo. How are you tonight? So sorry for waking you.”

Hathor pulled the iPod bud from her right ear. “Who did he choose? I didn’t catch that.”

“Our apologies,” said Oshun, “but this was a matter that needed to be settled immediately.”

“Of course.”

It was always a very important matter. Even when it wasn’t. A fourth of his judgments were beauty contests. Not just among goddesses either. The gods were every bit as vain.

“You do know I’m gay, right?” he asked.

“We assumed that would make you more objective,” said Freyja.

“It’s a simple question,” said Oshun. “Which of us do you find more beautiful?”

They were all extraordinarily beautiful. It would’ve been easiest just to pick one at random and declare them the winner. But Lorenzo was trusted by the gods because he didn’t take these decisions lightly. Even stupid decisions like these.

“Choose wisely,” said Freyja.

She tightened the grip on her spear while Oshun, aloof, studied nothing in particular. Hathor put her bud back in and was nodding along with the music.

In their impatience, the goddesses resorted to bribery. It wasn’t against the rules, strictly speaking.

“Choose me and I will reward you with a partner that shall sate your most sensual desires,” said Oshun.

“I’m married,” he said.

“It can be just our little secret,” said Oshun.

“You heard the man,” said Freyja. “Not interested. Choose me and you can have this spear. It never misses its target and kills with every strike.”

They turned to Hathor, who removed her buds again. “Oh, I don’t know. I can give you some money. Is that okay?”

“How crass,” said Oshun.

“Like, a lot of money.”

The goddesses turned to Lorenzo, who studied each in turn. There was no way to pick among them. It didn’t help that they kept adjusting their appearance. Freyja changed her eyes from bright blue to emerald green. Oshun increased and decreased her bust. And Hathor couldn’t decide on a hair length. They tried reading his face, searching for the exact look that would please him.

“Freyja,” he said.

“Yes!” The goddess pounded her spear against her shield, and a thunderclap shook the neightborhood. “In your faces!”

She handed him the spear and marched out the front door, head held high.

“Eh, whatever,” said Hathor, exiting behind her.

Oshun bent over and touched mug. The coffee turned to clear water. She smiled ruefully. “I hope you can live with your decision, mortal.”

She disappeared in a rainbow flash.

Lorenzo closed the front door, tossed the spear into a closet full of useless divine bribes, and went back to bed. His attempts at spooning with Clifton were foiled by a sudden itchiness, a parting gift from Oshun. The grudges of the gods were just part of the job. They’d get over it.

After all, someone had to make the judgments.

Barbecue (short fiction)

Super Janine

 

Barry couldn’t make the barbecue. He was off fighting mole people or fish people or something. Nobody was certain. That was the disadvantage of being so powerful. He was always one supersonic flight away from an emergency. On good days, he could even teleport.

Unless a giant robot attack happened in my neck of the woods, there wasn’t much I could do about a volcano halfway across the globe. It relieved me of the responsibility, and there were days I was grateful for that. But without Barry, I was stuck with Henry and Eugene, and none of us got along that well. We could count on each other in the middle of an emergency, but in our everyday life, there wasn’t much common ground.

I’d only gone to the barbecue because Dementra had said she’d be there, but then civil war broke out on Galadron and the warrior queen had needed to go quell an uprising. Or begin one. Her text hadn’t been clear.

I’d hoped in vain that the rain would cancel the event, but Eugene kept a patch of blue sky over our heads as rain fell everywhere else in the city. I sat at the picnic table, drinking a beer, listening to Henry school Eugene on the fundamental nature of barbecue.

“Barbecue is a cooking process where indirect heat is applied to meat over time. This is grilling, which is not the same thing.”

“Uh hmm,” said Eugene as he flipped the burgers. “Fascinating.”

Like every superteam, we’d developed our own little language and codes. Most of it was job related, but we had other in-jokes and phrases. Labeling something Henry said as “fascinating” was the equivalent of saying “Nobody gives a shit.” It’d taken him four months to figure that out. Now that he had, it was somehow even more satisfying to say.

“I’m just saying if the invitation promises barbecue, it should be barbecue.”

“Yeah, great. So how do you want your burger?”

“Medium,” said Henry, “but you’re going to end up giving me well done. Also, you’re going to be short of hot dog buns.”

“You could’ve warned me,” said Eugene.

“Sorry. Space/time continuum and all that.” Henry grabbed a beer from the cooler and walked away.

Eugene said to me, “Funny how space/time continuum doesn’t have jack to say about him buying winning lottery tickets.”

“You’re just mad because he won’t share the winning numbers with you,” I said.

“Not entirely untrue.” Eugene pressed down on the burger until it was nice and charred. He handed the burger to his wife Susan to give to Henry.

His kids played on their swing set. While Eugene and I had never clicked, I admired some things about him. He managed to have a family, which wasn’t always easy in this career.

“Where’s your Plus One?” he asked as he added the hot dogs to the grill.

“My sister’s out of town.”

He said, “That’s not what I meant.”

“Who has time to date?” I replied. “If Barry, the world’s most powerful mortal, can’t make a marriage work, what chance do I have?”

“You should try a dating site.”

“No offense, Eugene, but you’re not a guy I go to for dating advice. Didn’t Susan just fall into your lap? We can’t all be lucky enough to meet our future spouse when a bridge collapses.”

“Yeah, I got lucky,” he said. “What about Robert? Last I heard, he was really into you.”

“He’s a supervillain.”

“He was a supervillain. He’s reformed now.”

“He nearly killed me.”

“Didn’t you kill him?”

“That was his clone.”

“So you’re even.”

He handed me a hot dog. I dropped some relish and ketchup on it.

“Nobody’s perfect,” he said. “Susan snores like a freight train during allergy season.”

“You poor man. How do you go on?”

“All I know is Robert is a pretty cool guy. He’s rich, handsome, funny. Rules a small country. Remember that last visit we had to Apocalyptistan? That one where he was building the global mind control ray? Man, those beaches were beautiful.”

“He’s a madman.”

“Former madman. It’s been years since he’s done anything even remotely villainous. I hear he’s in the running for the Nobel Peace Prize this year. Nobody’s perfect, but he’s pretty damn close.”

Eugene sat across from me.

“I’ll be honest. M and Susan are starting to worry about you.”

“You and Susan?”

“She’s my wife. We talk. She thinks you’re unhappy.”

“Well, if Susan thinks so . . . .”

“You’re mostly the job now. You need something else.”

“Like a boyfriend? How progressive of you.”

“No, not like a boyfriend. Like something. Anything. All you do is punch robots and go home. If it wasn’t for Dementra, you’d have no life outside of work.”

“I’m fine.”

“Do you want to end up like that guy?”

He nodded toward Henry, who sat chewing his overcooked burger with a scowl on his face. No one liked him. He was only on the team because his ability to predict the future made everything easier for the rest of us.

“Barry, Dementra, and I have a pool on when he finally goes villain,” said Eugene. “Want in?”

I slipped Eugene a hundred bucks on six months.

“I’m not saying you need to get laid or anything,” said Eugene. “I’m just saying we all need something else to keep us going. I have Susan and the kids. Dementra has whatever the hell she does on Galadron. Who knows? Barry has his model trains.”

“I like fishing,” I said.

“Great. Go fishing. Take your time. Enjoy yourself.”

He went back to the grill. I walked to the other side of the yard, dialed my phone.

“Hello, Janine,” said the unmistakable baritone voice of the Regent King of Apocalyptistan. “To what do I owe this pleasant surprise?”

Inside Out (review)

I enjoyed Inside Out, but didn’t love it. It took me a while to figure out why (or at least part of the reason).

For a story about emotion, the tale is surprisingly emotionless. The internal characters wander from scene-to-scene, yet there isn’t much purpose to their wandering other than to set the next scene, to get from Point A to Point B. Perhaps the complaint I have with Inside Out is that we don’t really need to spend all that time in Riley’s head at all.

When Joy and Sadness are accidentally ejected from HQ and spend most of the movie struggling to get back, it never feels like they’re making any progress toward that goal. And the ending is so sudden, the revelation of Joy so quick, the return of our wayward emotions to HQ with such surprising ease that it felt a bit unearned.

What’s missing for me is that AHA moment. In Incredibles, Bob talks about being a fool because he’s so wrapped up in being a hero he almost threw away his family. In Wall-E, the Captain pulls himself up and pushes Otto’s off button. In Brave, Merida breaks down as she realizes how much she loves her mother and how important their relationship is.

In Inside Out, Riley the character has that moment with her family, but the people inside her head don’t. Because they’re abstract embodiments, they behave in mostly simplistic ways and it feels as if every complication they face is meant to reflect something going on externally in Riley’s life, not something they themselves are dealing with.

It’s a strange complaint. I get that. The exception is Bing Bong, Riley’s old, nearly forgotten imaginary friend. Yet even when we are introduced to him, he’s found wandering the long term memory, collecting memories. Why? We never find out. How has he survived to this point? We don’t know. What struggles does an imaginary friend go through? Not important.

Like all elements of the story, he exists to serve Riley’s story, but is at least colorful enough to be noteworthy.

It’s hard to be critical of Inside Out. Its intentions are good and it succeeds in making Riley’s journey worth exploring. But all the time in her head seems more like passing time the more I think about it. It just doesn’t really add a whole lot to her emotional journey that couldn’t have been accomplished by watching her in the real world alone.

Keelah Se’lai

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

LEE

Believing in Ant-Man (commentary)

So Marvel has made a ton of money by being willing to invest in characters nobody really cared much about before. Oh, sure, comic book fans knew about Iron Man and Thor and Captain America, but your average person on the street didn’t really give a damn one way or another.

And then Marvel went ahead and did it. They managed to make the first Big Superhero Team-Up movie, and they made it work. And it blew people away.

And then they didn’t stop there. They decided to make a Guardians of the Galaxy movie, featuring a setting most non-superhero fans don’t equate with superheroes and starring, among other things, a talking tree and a gun-toting raccoon, taking place entirely away from Earth with only the barest connection to the rest of the Marvel Movieverse. And it worked. Despite all the doubters, despite all the dismissals, it made a ton of money and pleased audiences.

And, yet, we must still listen to the doubts. We must still hear how Ant-Man is going to be dumb and how it’ll be the movie to finally destroy Marvel’s winning streak.

It’s entirely possible. Every streak ends. Nobody can always succeed, and even when you do everything right, you can still end up failing.

BUT this is Marvel, and they’ve proven time and again that there is an audience for the most ridiculous aspects of superheroes. When a billionaire genius in a high tech suit, a space god with a magic hammer, and a talking raccoon swashbuckler all live in the same universe AND have all proven themselves to be viable commercial properties, do we really need to have the same discussion about Ant-Man as we do with every limb Marvel goes out on?

Are we doomed to walk around in circles like this forever? If Ant-Man comes out and manages to be successful, will we have the same discussion about Dr. Strange? Black Panther? The Inhumans? Will we sit around saying, over and over again, that Marvel has gone too far this time? Do we need to breathlessly wait for the first failure, just so we can say “I told you so?”

I don’t know if Ant-Man is going to be good or not. I’ve liked what I’ve seen, and I’m glad that Marvel has the guts to even try a movie about a shrinking superhero, a crime movie with superheroic elements. Because, for better or worse, superhero films are here to stay for a while, and it’s nice that someone is willing to take a risk.

And if it fails (whether through its own failings or simply because people aren’t willing to give it a chance), I’ll still applaud Marvel for daring. Say what you will, they’re certainly not resting on their laurels. And as an artist I can respect that.

So please, feel free to wring your hands and say the same ol’ thing over and over again. I’ll just be here quietly waiting for a movie that might just surprise all the naysayers. Again.

Keelah Se’lai

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

LEE

Adjustments (short fiction)

Life was full of small tragedies. Henry had known that for years, but his daughter’s death was yet another reminder. She’d had a long, full life, left behind children and loved ones. It was sad when a parent outlived his child, but he was an old man. It could hardly be called unfair that his sixty-five year old daughter had died before him.

It still felt unfair. That was the tragedy. People would die, and people would be left behind to grieve. It didn’t matter the order. Somebody would be lost. Somebody would have to deal with that loss. He wished to hell it hadn’t been him left behind, but that wasn’t stopping the pain. It was merely giving it to someone else to carry.

Betty and the kids and the grandkids and a lifetime of friends attended the funeral, and Henry knew she’d lived a good and worthy life. She’d done more than most and made the world a better place. She would be missed, but life would go on, as it must.

On the ride home from the wake, Betty and the kids adjusted their mood boxes and were filled with smiles and laughter. Like it was just another day. Henry sat in the back and said nothing. The kids dropped Betty and Henry at home. He watched them drive away as if they didn’t have a care in the world.

Betty took his hand. “What’s wrong?”

“We just buried our daughter,” he said.

“Yes, no parent should outlive their child.” But she said it distantly, like a rote memorization. She didn’t mean it. She couldn’t. She’d shut that part of her brain down with the twist of a dial.

Grumbling, he went inside. He grabbed a beer out of the refrigerator and sat on the sofa.

“You should adjust,” said Betty. “You’ll feel better.”

“Maybe I don’t want to feel better.”

She looked at him funny. It bothered him how quickly she’d become dependent on her mood box. They weren’t a bad thing, but so easy to abuse. It didn’t matter if you made yourself happy on rainy days or gave yourself a little boost of concentration on hard days. But now even the most basic emotions were things to be programmed and regulated. Human experience had become a series of dials and readouts.

“If you want to feel bad, go right ahead.” She disappeared, puttering around the house somewhere. He thought about how she’d deal with it when he was gone. Would she even wait until the funeral to adjust?

He pulled his box from his pocket. Such a small thing to change the world. So simple even a child could operate it. Push a button. Change a setting. Change yourself. One day, there’d be no more pain, no more sadness. It might be easier, but it would be a poorer place for it.

Henry clutched his mood box tight and grieved for his daughter and his wife and a whole world fated to be fixed with one final adjustment.

Broken (short fiction)

A Keeper of Worlds

 

They wouldn’t stop fighting.

It wasn’t hard to figure out why. The previous keeper of World 14 had experimented with wars. He might have thought it would make the inhabitants smarter, tougher, stronger. A simplistic interpretation of survival of the fittest. Or he might have gotten off on it. When you had ultimate power over life and death, it was easy to be corrupted by it.

There were times when Red wanted to push a button and flip a switch and wipe away the tiny beings in World 14. Maybe it would be better to start fresh. They might simply be too damaged for anything other than a reset. Or possibly he could have the world declared invalid.

That was the term used on the form. All he had to do was check a box on some paperwork, drop that form in a box. The old world would be cleared away and replaced with a fresh one with a clean slate.

He watched the wars unfolding across the landscape and wished he could open the glass case, reach in, and scoop them up, one by one, and tell them to knock it off. But opening the cases was against the rules.

Red had a whole floor of worlds to attend to, and he’d done a decent job with most of them. Some were doing better than others, but overall, prosperity was up and peace was the norm. But World 14 remained a place of constant, unending death and destruction.
The elevator dinged, announcing the arrival of his supervisor. He still didn’t know her name. He’d never asked. She’d never offered. She nodded to him and inspected the progress of his worlds. She offered no comment as she took notes.

She paused at World 14.

“I haven’t been able to fix it,” he said.

“Does it need fixing?” she asked.

“You want them to kill each other?”

“It’s not a question of what we want.” She always used that word. We. She never said who that was.

He didn’t always understand his job. He kept the worlds on the third floor, but there were no parameters given. He got a paycheck regardless of how many hours he spent here, how prosperous or decaying his worlds were.

“What am I supposed to do?” he asked.

“Whatever you think you should do,” she replied. She left.

He took his lunch break early (though he had no assigned time other than his own habit) and went to the burger place across the street. It was the only convenient place in the neighborhood, so he ate there often, as did the other keepers.

Fiona was there. She kept the fifth floor. He had a little thing for her, though she was twenty years older than him and married. But she was cool, smart, and pretty. He hadn’t thought so at first because she was a little plump and had a big nose. But that was all bullshit, just images forced onto him by endless images and ideals meant to make him dislike himself so that he’d buy stuff.

Since becoming a keeper, he’d noticed that kind of thing more and more often.

He ordered, and she waved him over. “Hiya, Red. How’s it going?”

“Good.”

“14 still giving you trouble?”

He nodded. She was a good listener, and she remembered. One of the things he liked about her.

“I wouldn’t worry about it too much,” she said. “You’ll drive yourself crazy.”

“I should be able to fix it,” he said.

“Some things you can’t fix.”

“I guess.”

She offered him some French fries while he waited for his food. “Sucks to be so omnipotent and powerless at the same time. Just remember. It’s not your job to save the world.”

“Have you ever invalidated?” he asked.

She frowned. “Once.”

“Do you regret it?”

She looked away. “Every goddamn day. I still think if I’d tried a little harder . . . .” She turned to him and forced a smile. “Never mind. We all have to invalidate one day. Some worlds are just too broken. But you need to take care of yourself. You’re not doing anyone any favors by exhausting yourself. Get some rest. Go out. Have some fun.”

His social life had taken a hit. The job gave him more freedom than ever, and yet he kept coming back here. He even slept in his office two or three times a week on an uncomfortable couch. Just in case he needed to be there.

All he did was keep things from getting worse. Without his constant intervention, World 14 would’ve been a wasteland by now, and he wondered why he bothered? If they were determined to destroy themselves, wasn’t it their choice?

Red and Fiona finished their lunch without talking any more about work and returned to the building.

“You’re right,” he said as he stepped off at the third floor. “I think I’ll call it an early day. Just going to give a quick final check on my worlds first.”

She smiled. She had no problem calling him on his bullshit. It was one of the things he liked about her. But she also let him believe his bullshit when he needed to. It was one of the other things he liked about her.

“Sure, Red.” She smiled. “Just one quick look.”

The doors closed, and Red went back to work.

Cult (short fiction)

Geneva Cthulhu

 

Most of the time, freelancing for the Unknowables was a simple gig. Track something down. Bring something back. Fix this. Break that. Keep your head down. Don’t ask too many questions because the answers are never going to satisfy you.

But sometimes things got complicated. Sometimes, you ended up surrounded by cultists worshipping ancient gods. Most of the gods didn’t give a damn about who or who didn’t worship them. We were beneath their notice. Tiny crawling things screaming to the void in hopes it might hear us, never pondering it might be better to be ignored. We looked to the stars with dreams of greatness when all along it was waiting to devour us for wanting more than we had.

There was nothing wrong with wanting more. I had dreams. Dreams of living with Mom under the sea, dwelling in the shadow of an indifferent god. The human half of me found it horrifying. The other half yearned for it. But here I was, in a room full of idiots, chanting before an altar.

They weren’t the first to cry out to inhuman cosmic forces, but the problem was that something had heard them. Something horrible.
The man in the black suit stood beside the altar. He grinned. His cruel gray eyes met mine and he laughed. Without him, things would’ve never gotten this far. The human race didn’t have the know how on its own.

The chanting rose, and a thing of twisted, wrinkled protoplasm formed over the altar. The thing struggled to find form. Whatever it was, it probably wasn’t intelligent. Probably wasn’t even sentient. It was just a thing from out of time and space that didn’t belong here.

I approached the altar. The cultists were too involved in their chants to notice. The man in black made no move to stop me. I pulled back the hood I’d borrowed from an unconscious guy I’d hidden in a closet.

I kicked over the altar. The unwelcome thing squealed and collapsed in on itself. The cultists howled and fell, convulsing, to the floor in unison.

The man in the black suit kept smiling. “It was just a bit of fun, Geneva.”

He might have looked human, but he was something else. Something cruel and malignant, who saw this world as something to be toyed with. One day, he might destroy it. Or more accurately, convince the human race to destroy it. Just for a laugh.

“Who sent you?” he asked.

“Doesn’t matter,” I replied. “But they told me to tell you to be more careful in the future. There are forces that still want this world, still need the humans.”

“For now. But what will you do when they no longer amuse?” His smile never dropped. “They’re waiting for you. Down in the depths.”

He was right. One day, the stars would align. The delicate equilibrium would fade, and all the Unknowables wouldn’t give a shit about this world at once. On that day, extinction would come. Or worse. And I’d have to decide whether to join humanity in oblivion or go home.

“Just knock it off for a while,” I said.

The man in the black suit was already gone, off to screw with more desperate souls eager to touch the void. I checked the cultists. All dead. Except for one. A middle-aged woman who could barely stand.

“Are you a god?” she asked as I helped her to her feet and steadied her.

Her eyes were empty. She’d surrendered much of herself in her quest for the divine, and in return, she was left with an emptiness and a burgeoning madness. She’d most likely surrender to insanity within the month.

“Let’s get you home,” I said.

And an indifferent universe just kept on going.

In the Shadows, part two (short fiction)

Demon with 10,000 Fists

 

I’d made a mistake coming down here. Maybe my last one. This was his territory, and I’d walked right into it. I imagined myself dragged down by dogs, devoured by rats, my corpse thrown in a dark corner. A lousy way to end up, but the Game was rarely kind to the losers.

I ran up the stairs as the mutts gave chase. At the top of the stairs, I slammed the door shut, but the hinges were rotten. It wasn’t going to hold long. Just long enough for me to get out of here.

The forsaken denizens of the tenement stood before me. Darkness covered them, but their eyes reflected in the shadows. Like Vermin’s. Like rats. These people, the forgotten, the devalued, the insignificant were his soldiers now. A wiry, wrinkled woman moved at the front. Her hands fell into a beam of moonlight coming through a hole in the wall, showing fingers tipped with black claws.

Whatever he’d done to them, they weren’t human anymore. No wonder Beggar had sent me in. With that kind of power, Vermin could cause a lot of damage. By transforming these poor bastards into his personal army, he might even become a Major himself. But worst of all, these people would lose what little humanity they had left, becoming what most of the world already perceived them to be. Vermin hadn’t brought them low, but he was the final indignity.

And now I was going to have to beat the hell out of them.

I adopted the dancing spider stance and motioned for her to make her move. “Sorry about this.”

With a feral howl, the army rushed forward. I knocked the lead out with a kick and punched two others hard enough to push the crowd back. Space was cramped, so I resorted to a flurry of knees and elbows. I couldn’t see a damn thing, but I trusted instinct to get me through. The sheer number and tenacity of my opponents threatened to overwhelm me. Claws tore my clothes, raked my flesh. One of the things (they weren’t really people anymore) bit me on the shoulder.

I grew stronger with each moment.

Beggar drew his Mojo from the city. Vermin got his from the shadows. But I found mine in the fight. With each bruise and shattered bone I inflicted, my Mojo grew. Even my own wounds powered me for they were the mark of an unstoppable warrior. The demon took me, and it was all a blur of fists and feet, pain and glory until I stood, bloodied, amid two dozen beaten foes.

Adrenalin and Mojo ran through me, the only thing keeping me standing. I leaned against a wall. I hated that I’d had to do this. I hated that Vermin had made me do it, and I hated that the demon had wanted me to do it. It only cared about the fight. It didn’t care about the reason, but I cared. I wanted to care. I needed to. Otherwise, I was no better than Vermin who had the power to be a savior for the forgotten but was only there to exploit them.

I wouldn’t kill just because the Mojo wanted me to.

The door’s hinges busted open, and the dogs and an army of rats and bugs stepped out. Vermin, smiling, stood at the edge of darkness.

“Impressive,” he said. “But there are always more.”

“You could’ve helped them,” I said.

“I did help them. I showed them where they belonged. Now leave before I change my mind, and don’t come back.”

I stood, held my fists before me.

He laughed. “You can’t honestly think you can win a fistfight against bugs.”

“Try me.”

I pushed forward, and all my exhaustion faded. The demon spoiled for a fight, and this was one fight I was happy to offer up.

The dogs moved to meet me, but I somersaulted over them, landing ankle deep in rats and roaches. Vermin retreated into the safety of darkness, but I caught him by the arm. Twisting, I threw him down the hall, where he landed with a thud. I ignored the pain as his pets bit into my flesh and charged through his dogs. I shoved one into the wall with a forearm and another I caught by the scruff of the neck and threw aside. I dodged the third and hoisted Vermin over my shoulder.

I ran. The screeches of a thousand angry rodents followed behind me. His minions crawled in the walls. Bugs poured from cracks in the ceiling, and several homeless thralls blocked the way out.

Roaches ran up my leg while creepy crawlies ran down my back. I ended up in a room with boarded up windows. I set Vermin down and caught my breath. Running had weakened me. The demon loved a fight but hated a coward.

“You idiot,” said Vermin. “Now I’m going to fucking kill you and send your head back to Beggar.”

I thought about saying something clever, but snappy patter had never been my strong point. I unleashed a rhino horn fist into his chest. He flew across the room, smashing through a window. I climbed out after him to emerge in the half-finished courtyard of this abandoned project.

He covered his face from the moonlight coming down through the overcast sky. The rain had stopped but the humidity still clung to the air. The night felt like a spotlight compared to the darkness of the tenement. He scrambled for safety, but I grabbed him by the ankle and broke his leg. He shrieked.

His army of rodents and insects poured into the courtyard. His thralls were reluctant to step into the light. They lurked in the pools of shadow.

“Now you’re dead!” screamed Vermin.

I waited for his minions to tear me apart, but they only stood there.
Beggar appeared, pushing his squeaky grocery cart. The old shaman raised his head as if first noticing us. He blew his nose on his sleeve, and the thralls, human again, stepped into the light. The rats closed in on Vermin.

“I’m your master.” The fear in his voice betrayed him. The Game had many domains. He was no longer in his own.

I touched the scratches on my cheek. “I’m not going to get rabies, am I?”

Beggar tossed me a bottle of pills from his coat pocket. “Take these. You’ll be fine.”

The bottle was marked aspirin, but a gift from the shaman of the city was the best medicine. “You don’t need me for this, do you?”
Beggar shook his head.

I didn’t ask how he planned on dealing with Vermin. I didn’t care what happened to the son of a bitch. I’d have killed him myself, but this was between them.

I popped an aspirin and walked out of that courtyard while behind me, Vermin screamed. The demon chuckled, and I did my best to ignore it.

In the Shadows, part one (short fiction)

Demon with 10,000 Fists

 

A pigeon that came rapping, gently rapping on my apartment window. I opened it and waited for the bird to fly away. It didn’t.

“Can’t this wait?” I asked. “I’m in the middle of dinner.”

The pigeon cooed, turned its head to one side. He wasn’t taking no for an answer, and I didn’t need to piss off his master.

“Usual place then?” I said.

The bird flew off. I threw my macaroni in the refrigerator and grabbed my coat. It was a lousy night out. Rainy. Not cold, but muggy. But when a Major Player called, it didn’t pay to keep them waiting.

The Game was played across a number of domains and power levels. No one knew the exact score, but the levels were obvious enough. I was no slouch, but I wasn’t a Major. There were Players who had more Mojo than most, and they sat atop the food chain.

Beggar was an urban shaman, lord of the forgotten city. You wouldn’t know it to look at him. The dirty, shaggy old man looked as if he’d spent centuries wandering these city streets and never once stopped to take a bath. Most homeless people ended up homeless because of a bad break, maybe poor choices, maybe just shit that happens. But Beggar had chosen this life, and he’d become a virtual god by embracing it. A god with bad teeth and a stench you could smell from twenty feet, but that was his price.

We all paid a price for our Mojo.

He had no residence, wandering the city as he willed. But whenever he called me, we met in in the same alley. He was digging through trashcans when I approached. Pigeons milled around him.

“I’m here.” The steady rain poured down my face. A trickle ran down my back.

Beggar didn’t turn his attention away from his treasure hunt. “I need you to get something for me.”

I didn’t ask what he needed. It didn’t matter. It always paid to have a Major owe you a favor in the Game. There was only one question that concerned me.

“Any reason you can’t do it yourself?” I asked.

I was hoping he’d say he was too busy doing whatever it was he did or that it was a minor task, beneath him.

“Vermin has it,” he said as he tossed some aluminum cans into a shopping cart.

The Game was played across many domains, and those domains overlapped here and there. Beggar was lord of the city, but Vermin held all the creepy crawlies in his pocket. They’d been fighting a shadow war over ultimate control of the bugs and rats and whatever else crawled unseen all around us, in our walls, under our feet, in the dark while we slept.

I hated Vermin. My particular talents weren’t much good against a man who controlled an army of cockroaches. But I couldn’t turn down Beggar. It wasn’t only that it’d be nice to have him owe me. Telling him no was the equivalent of pissing off the city itself. I’d once seen a guy push Beggar aside, only to have an air conditioner fall on his head. I was a Player, so I wasn’t quite as vulnerable, but my plumbing could back up and my electricity could go out. The city had plenty of ways to punish a person who pissed off its master.

“Where is it?” I asked.

“Follow the signs,” said Beggar as he pushed his cart past me.

It’d be nice if he’d given me an address, but that wasn’t how he operated. You played the Game by its own rules. A pigeon crapped on my shoulder before flying away. I followed the bird until I lost sight of it. Then a rat showed me the way a little farther. And then a series of flashing detour signs took over. If you knew what to look for, it wasn’t a hard path to follow.

It led me to a condemned apartment building, covered in graffiti. The windows had been boarded up and a fence had been thrown around it. I bought a pocket flashlight from a convenient store and found a way in. It wasn’t difficult, and the place was populated by dozens of squatters. I knew then why Beggar couldn’t do this on his own. He couldn’t go inside. His Mojo diminished with every minute he spent indoors. It was his only practical limitation.

The squatters scurried deeper into the shadows as I prowled the crumbling halls. Every so often, graffiti arrows marked my path into this nest, and the farther I went, the more I risked. Meeting Vermin on his own terms was a losing proposition, but you couldn’t play the Game without taking risks.

In the basement, I was met by a trio of mangy stray dogs. Growling, baring their teeth, they moved forward. That was a new trick. Vermin hadn’t been able to control anything bigger than a large rat last time we’d met.

He spoke from the shadows. Like the beasts he commanded, he preferred to stay out of the light. “Didn’t expect to see you here, Shaolin. Did he send you? Of course, he did.”

“I don’t want to hurt you or your pets. Why don’t you hand it over?”
I caught a glint as Vermin’s eyes reflected in the dark. “Go away. Leave me alone.”

“I can’t do that. We both know I’m stronger than you, so do us both a favor and hand it over.”

“You were stronger than me.”

Things moved in the shadows. I swept my flashlight across the dozens upon dozens of rats scrambling across the floor. That was a problem with the Game. The goddamn scoreboard kept changing.

The dogs advanced.

“Tell him he can have the city,” said Vermin, “but its shadows are mine.”

He stepped into the light. His face as long and thin. His skin was pale from all the time he spent in the dark.

“Better yet, I’ll tell him myself when I have my dogs drag your corpse to his feet.”