Chad A. Clark's Blog, page 20

Baked Scribe Flashback : From Life

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The dogs sounded like they were waging war out there. Grady looked out, to see what the hell they were up to and there they all were, crowded against the house and barking savagely. They all seemed to be staring past the fence, where the property dropped off severely into the valley below. Grady noticed nothing out of the ordinary. Other than the unusually cool breeze flowing over the farm, it was a normal night. He lifted the mug to his lips and took another long sip of the tomato soup. Diane had been gone for over a year now, but he still couldn’t bring himself to reject her preferred method of serving soup. “You drink it, more often than not,” she would say. “You don’t drink out of a bowl do you?

The picture frames clunked against the wall, as they often did at night when the wind picked up. There were times he couldn’t help but feel like the entire house was about to be attacked by flock of some kind of long dead, prehistoric monster.

Grady sat down and reached for the hardback he had been reading. He set the mug down on the end table when there was a soft knocking from the front door. Frowning, he looked down at his watch before standing up and walking to the door. The last time he got a visitor this late, it’d been a passing college student with a flat tire, just up the lane. A tiny voice urged him to peek through the window before opening the door, but he ignored it. The wind flitted into the house like a cacophony of screams as he did so, knocking him back on his heels.

There was no one there.

Grady shook his head and stepped out onto the porch, hitting the switch for the outside lights as he did so. Warm, yellow light popped on, revealing the expensive wooden deck and confirmed what he had already seen.

There was no one out here.

Had to be a fluke, a trick of the mind. Still, it was better to be careful. Grady stepped down off the porch and began scanning around the property. If this was kids screwing with him, then he would bring all holy hellfire down on the little bastards. The whole point of buying this property out in the middle of nowhere had been to get away from people.

Nothing was out of order, no windows open or doors hanging loose in their frames. He heard no sound, no snickers of suppressed laughter that he might expect from errant pranksters. Grady looked up into the sky, and took another moment to revel in what lay above him as the twinkles of stars tumbled off into the horizon of infinity. This really did make the rest worthwhile.

He turned to return to the house. As he began climbing the stairs to the deck, he glanced up at the bedroom window. It wasn’t until he took several more steps that he realized what he had just seen.

Someone was standing in the window.

Grady backpedaled down the steps looked up. There was now no one there. For moment, he considered throwing something up at the window to try and startle whoever had been lurking up there. He stood, fixed in place for several moments, reluctant to enter the house and wishing whoever had he had seen would return to the window.

The wind rushed over him, feeling even colder and, for a moment, he thought he could detect the sound of something screaming.

It was idiotic to just stand out here like this, afraid to walk into his own damn home. He tossed the soup out onto the ground and set the mug down on the porch railing, picking up a heavy pipe that was leaning up against the front door.

“Anyone in here?” He yelled out, holding the pipe in front of him like some kind of talisman. No one answered, but his nose suddenly exploded with a tickling sensation as his allergies started to flare up. He looked up, glaring at the dust trickling down from the floor boards above, which were flexing down, as if from the weight of footsteps.

He was going to give it to whoever was up there. This had been going on for long enough. Grady raced up the stairs and began marching down the hallway, banging the pipe on the walls in order to scare out the intruder that was hiding up here.

“Picked the wrong fucking place to break into, friend!” Grady kicked the door open to his bedroom, wincing at the sound of the door knob, punching a hole through the wall at the other end of its path. All the better for a dramatic entrance though. Drywall was cheap. “Get the hell out of here!” He reached out and yanked the closet door aside, half-pulling it off the track as he did so.

The closet was empty.

“What the Christing hell?” Grady muttered as he returned to the window, glaring out over the front lawn. He looked up into the sky above and in the glass of the window, caught the reflection.

There were people in the room with him.

Grady stared into the reflection, refusing to turn and look or acknowledge what he was seeing. There was nothing distinctive about them, faceless, with simple white dresses draped over frail figures. They started shamble forward, freezing him in place as he felt the pipe drop from his fingers. He tried to draw in a breath against the icy fingers crawling across his chest.

Grady set up with a start, looking around the room from the relative safety of his hospital bed. Why did he keep waking up here? He began to lift his hand to his forehead but, before he got halfway there, he felt the cool steel of the handcuffs linking his hands to the side rails.

“He’s awake officer,” the voice came from the darkness to his left. Grady looked, but saw no one there.

“Still with us then?” A cop was now leaning over him, his face coming so close that Grady flinched against the mattress to try and get away.

“Where am I?” he asked.

The man shook his head, laughing a little. “Still don’t remember, huh? It’s getting a little old trying going over this again and again. Or maybe someone is just trying to set himself himself up for a crazy defense.”

“I don’t…” He started to protest but, in an instant, the room swirled away from again, his head filling with howling wind. He shivered with a cold that he felt down to his bones. It was a feeling of death. He felt like his body had melted, leaving behind nothing but fragmented consciousness.

He was falling through open space. A lake shimmered below him and in the low ambient light, he could tell what he was plummeting towards.

The lake was filled with blood.

Grady bucked in mid-air and screamed out in anticipation of the impact but when he opened his eyes, he was on his knees, in the cellar underneath the house. He looked down at his hands and saw them streaked bright red with blood.

What was this he had wrought? Was he really here, or was he trapped inside of this memory? Was this his mind trying to—

“Wake up!”

Grady snapped his eyes open to see the attacker, the cop, once again leaning over him, and drawing back as if to strike. Grady suspected that this blow would not have been the first.

“About time. Tired of you drifting off like that. I will smack the feeling out of your face if you drift off again, motherfucker.”

Was he really just dreaming? Or was he actually being drawn out of this place, pulled into these varying times and places in physical form, as well as memory? Somehow, the officer was able to lean in even closer.

“One of those girls was my cousin, and I’m going to see to it that you burn for what you did.”

“Officer!” The crisp voice came, following the sound of the door opening and light, flooding in from the hallway. “The patient is in an extremely sensitive state right now. He does not need this kind of agitation.”

“Sure thing, cupcake.” The officer smirked down at Grady before heading for the hallway. The doctor followed him out, standing there in the doorway to make sure the man was indeed leaving. He lay back, listening to the sound of footsteps moving past, fragments of conversations and the occasional squeaky wheel of a gurney.

Would the blood ever truly wash away, or would the spectral taint be there forever, attached to him for the severity of his sins, for the lives he had taken? He couldn’t remember anything that happened before being in this room, other than the scattered images of his dreams,. He didn’t know what was true or false, but somehow he fundamentally knew that he had done every single thing that he was being accused of. The blood has been shed by his hands, no one else’s.

This was his purgatory.

“Wake up!” The cop smacked him again. Back to the reality of his hospital room. The avenging creature had evidently sneaked back into the room at some point. Grady tried to twist away from the man, and cried out before a hand came down and clamped his throat, cutting off the supply of air. He clawed at the sheets as the room began to swirl away, the vague sound of shouting somewhere. There was persistent pressure, and his head started to feel weightless and dizzy.

“Wake up!”

The slap again, this time from the other side.

“You don’t get off that easy, you don’t—”

Again, the pressure bore down, and the room blinked away. He wondered how long this would go on before the comfort of his final release? What act of internal contrition was required of him?

Maybe he had it backwards. Maybe the dreams he was having were real and the hospital was the hallucination. Maybe he just needed to make his own mind understand the reality, the fact that—

His head rocked forward from a savage blow, the source unseen.

“Wake up you son of a bitch!”

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Baked Scribe Flashback : Knock

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Marissa groaned as the doorbell rang again, and slammed the book down on the table. It had seemed like such a good idea to do Halloween this year. This was her first year in the new house, and she thought it would be a good way to meet the neighbors. Almost right away, she had regretted her decision. It was Halloween candy, how expensive could it be? Still, she had spent thirty dollars that she didn’t really have, and while she had consoled herself at the time with the thought that she would almost certainly end up with a bunch of leftover candy, it was actually looking like she would have to close down early. Or head to the store to buy more. Maybe she was giving out too much. Or letting the greedy little vultures take too much.

She greeted the fourth iteration of the complete Avengers team at her door by trying to smile sweetly while dumping the candy into the outstretched buckets and bright orange plastic pumpkins. If she had to put up with the aggravation, maybe she could take her anger out on them by helping guarantee a diabetic coma for them the next day. The happy laughter and giggling as the little shits tore off down her driveway was only converted in her head to the sound of them making fun of her.

As she sat back down to pick up the book/ She wished she could get through even a chapter without the doorbell ringing. A voice in the back of her head said that she should just call it quits and switch off the light. She didn’t owe anything to these people’s kids. Still, she intended to see this thing through to the end. She would not be seen by the neighborhood as a quitter.

She managed to read just one page when she heard the sound, but this time it wasn’t coming from the front door. It was coming from somewhere to her left. She looked over and saw the door to the closet on the far side of the room was shaking back and so forth, ever so slightly, as if there was someone inside, pushing out on the door in its frame. That was idiotic though, no way it could be possible.

Must have been something inside that had fallen over, and was pushing against the door, a broom or a Swiffer Jet that had been displaced. She pulled the door open and staggered back several steps, nearly yelling out as she did so.

One of the kids from the neighborhood had sneaked into the house without her hearing, and had been hiding out, waiting to surprise her. The kid, she guessed it was a “he”, just stood there, staring up at her through the grotesque excuse for a Halloween mask he wore. It was unique at least, unlike anything she had ever seen, looking like some odd cross between a werewolf and an alien costume. Considering the lack of tags anywhere, and how worn everything looked, she wondered if this kid was some kind of budding fashion or costume designer.

Her curiosity was quickly drowned out by the anger of having her home intruded upon like this.

“Who the hell are you?” she asked. “What are you doing, just standing there like that, and how did you get in here?”

No response. He stared at her through the mask, his breath coming out in ragged gasps as he rocked from side to side.

“Christ’s sake, we’ve got an idiot here or something.” She glared at the kid, trying to figure out who it was. He had to be one of the neighborhood kids, but behind the mask, she couldn’t tell for sure. “Are you just going to stand there like an idiot?” She asked. “What are we doing here?”

He just stood there. For the briefest moment, Marissa thought he was going to start walking forward, but he just rocked back onto his heels and stayed there, incomprehension glowing behind those eyes.

“Do you live around here?”

No answer.

“Are you friends with someone in the neighborhood?”

Silence.

“Where are your parents?”

The situation had extended beyond odd, and was now infuriating her. She was about to take a step forward to grab the kid by the shoulder, when she noticed the knife for the first time, gripped in the tiny little hand. Initially, she had taken it as simply being part of the costume but now, as she looked at it, she immediately realized how wrong she had been. This did not look like a cheap piece of plastic that most toys of this ilk would be made of. It looked like hard steel, stained up and down with what looked like blood. The hand that held it kept flexing on the handle, as if it was about to raise the thing up to strike.

Marissa took in several breaths to try and calm herself before taking a step forward. She had to control the situation, stay calm and try to figure out what this kid needed. She reached out to try and place her hand on the handle of the blade, but just before she got there, it pulled away from her smoothly. The look of rage in those eyes that came out from behind the mask made her breath catch in her throat.

Maybe it was the mask. The kid was hiding behind it and acting out in ways that he might not do otherwise. She needed to knock him out of his daze, and this might be the only way to do it. Moving her hands slowly, she reached up and felt around on the back of the kid’s head, feeling for a zipper or a seam, or anything she could use to pry loose the tight, form-fitting mask. A zipper, buttons, velcro, anything that would dislodge the thing from the kids face.

She found nothing.

The swirl of silence in her head became deafening, as she heard the kid’s breathing grow more ragged. The eyes looking up at her had a bright red glow to them that she hadn’t even noticed before. She had immediately taken the eyes as being behind a mask, but they were actually sunken down, into skin that looked alien, inhuman. The rage coming off of the thing standing in front of her was baking off of it in waves and in the blink of a moment, all she could think about was the knife, still held in that things’ hand. She turned to run, but before she could get more than a step or two, a hand that she couldn’t believe she had ever taken as human, snaked around and grabbed her from behind. It pulled her in close, enfolding her in the stink of its breath, and cutting off the scream rising to her lips on the sharpened edge of cold steel.

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Issue #154 : In Good Faith

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Jennifer pulled her coat around herself and looked up into the sky, wincing at the thunder that was already starting to roll down off the hills. The wind cut down to her essential core, like being dumped into a tank of frigid water.

She heard the crushing blow of the horn as a city bus rumbled past, sending an avalanche of water over her. It wasn’t clear if the driver had been meandering too close to the curb and was trying to warn her, or if he was just being an asshole . Either way, the result was that she was now even more cold and wet than she had been already.

As the rain started to fall, she cursed Jessie with every foul thought she could muster. There were times when his expectations came close to exceeding her willingness to provide. All of this over money, always the stupid money and his stupid problems.

From month to month, she would learn about a new bookie that he had sweet-talked into lending him money. She was constantly surprised that there were any left but still, he would end up coming to her with a sob story, pleading for her to help with money in order to save him.

How could she say no?

It was probably what she should do, make him learn his lesson the hard way, but she couldn’t. Regardless of anything else, he was family and she had to respect that, had to support him even if that meant saving him and then knocking him on his ass when this was all over. 

Her destination towered in front of her, not a shitty dive bar like all the rest. This was actually a dumpy house in the middle of an even dumpier looking neighborhood. How Jessie had even thought to come here in the first place was beyond her. What few windows she could see were covered with a layer of grease and dirt. She was starting to wish that Jessie had actually met this guy in a shitty bar. She would take that before walking into this disaster of a house.

Still, it was clearly the place. His description had been incredibly accurate as well as his instructions. The house was actually split into two separate units, one on the lower and one on the upper floor. She was supposed to walk around to the back, let herself in and go to the upper unit. She trudged down the alley next to the house, wincing at the sensation of garbage and muck under her feet as she walked. The back porch groaned as she made her way up the steps to the back door.

It was stuck initially and she felt uplifted at the possibly of having an excuse to turn around and go home. Suddenly though, it turned, the knob protesting as she pushed in and walked through. There was no light on the inside but she was able to use the minimal amount of sunlight creeping in through the filthy windows to find the switch. A single bulb popped on, swinging slightly from side to side as it barely illuminated the small room.

There was nothing to see, no posters, no pictures or furniture. Just plain walls, peppered with the occasional hole in the plaster and dark, rust-colored stains. There was one closed door which presumably led into the first floor unit and the stairs, which she stepped onto and began climbing. 

Jennifer put a hand out against the rail to steady herself as she moved upwards into darkness. She took out her phone, ready to use it as a flashlight if needed.

“Hello?” She called out into the silent lurking of shadows. 

Jessie had been very clear. She just had to go up and knock on the door. She was supposed to do was tell them that she was there for Jesse and they would let her in.

They were expecting her. 

As she took another step, the sound of wood splintering filled the air around her and the ceiling pulled loose. Not single strips of wood but the entire ceiling, sucked upward as if pulled by a string into an empty void. It revealed bright white light beyond, temporarily blinding her. She frantically reached out behind her into open air as she stumbled backwards and fell, roughly landing on each step until she was back to the bottom. She pushed herself up off the floor, squinting into the light as she tripped again and fell. There was the dull sensation of impact as her head struck the wall.

She opened her eyes.

She was lying on the floor of another nondescript room. She sat up and looked around. The room was neat and tidy, not at all what she would have expected from the way the house had looked from the outside. Through the one window in the room, she could tell that the storm had passed. The sky was clear and as she stood to walk to the window, she discovered that everything had changed, not just the room she was in. She looked down from the fourth or fifth floor of a building. It wasn’t the wet disgusting alley below, but rather some kind of cobblestone courtyard.

“What in the—” she started to mutter.

“Who sent you here?” The voice interrupted her from behind. Barely stopping herself from crying out, she spun around to face the person, seated against the far wall of the room. She squinted to make out his face but somehow, despite the fact that sunlight streamed in around her, he was still shrouded in shadow.

“Who are you?” she demanded

The amusement was clear in his tone. “I believe that is for me to ask you,” he replied. “After all, it was you that intruded into my home.”

“You—” She looked around, still trying to get her bearings. “I don’t understand how I got here. What is this place?”

“This place…” He held up his hands in one grand, sweeping gesture. “This place shows you what you bring with you, how it will be for each of you and I must say, this is quite different than what manifested upon your brother’s arrival.”

It took several moments before she registered what he had said. “Wait a minute,” she said. “I thought you didn’t know who I was.”

“I never said that,” he replied gently.

She wanted to argue, but as her recollection clarified, she realized that technically, he actually hadn’t said that he didn’t know who she was.

“How do you know my brother?”

“Your brother owes us quite a large sum of money,” he said, ignoring her question. “And while I am not entirely unreasonable, certain repayments are expected and I have to follow through. You understand, I’m sure.”

As much as she wanted to retort, she did understand but she still needed him to answer. 

“What is this place? How did I get here?”

“How you got here and where you are are not significant,” he said as he started to rise from the chair. “Your brother got mixed up with us and he will pay what is owed. If not, then we may be forced to take what we need in other fashions.  Possibly from those he might care about.”

She felt herself being examined, as if a prize in the contest. She shifted from side to side, uncomfortable from the sudden scrutiny.

“Did you come here to make good on his promises?” he asked.

“I… I don’t understand.”

There was an annoyed exhalation. “You only could have found this place if he told you where and how to find us. That would suggest that you are here on his behalf.”

“If I was,” Jennifer said, trying to regain her footing in the conversation, “what would I have to do?”

“Payment in full is your only option. Anything else and your brother’s and likely your life will be in jeopardy.”

“But how am I supposed to—”

“Repayment must be made in full.”

“But I don’t see—”

“Repayment must be in full!”

Jennifer took a step back. The conversation was going nowhere and she just wanted to end it. She took out her wallet and started pulling out the hundred-dollar bills she had withdrawn earlier in the day. He waved the gesture off.

“That is immaterial.”

“Then how am I supposed to pay you?”

There was a pause, followed by deep laughter.

“What?” she asked.

She screamed as she was suddenly lifted up into the air, flipped upside down and slammed into the ceiling. She tried to pull her arms free, but they were held tightly against her sides. 

The room around her started to melt, as if the walls had been made out of some kind of thick wax. They dripped down like syrup and collected on the floor. The surface of the walls underneath was revealed to be coated in blood, smeared with dried and congealed matter The window behind her was gone, the entire wall replaced with raging fire. Where the floor had been was now rusted metal grating and from underneath, she could hear a cacophony of human screams. There was a heavy smell of rot, all around her. 

The man approached her, still lost in shadow but she could now see wisps of smoke coming off of him as his features finally started to clarify. The scream in her mouth struggled to release as she saw the bloody visage of his face, more bone than flesh. She could hear the snarl behind his voice as he spoke.

“Your brother has entered into a pact. He sent you to us. He sent you to settle a debt but you clearly do not understand. He did not send you to pay his debt.”

“You are the payment.”

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Tracing The Trails Of The King : Pet Sematary

“Faith is a great thing, and really religious people would like us to believe that faith and knowing are the same thing, but I don’t believe that myself. Because there are too many different ideas on the subject. What we know is this: When we die, one of two things happens. Either our souls and thoughts somehow survive the experience of dying or they don’t. If they do, that opens up every possibility you could think of.”

― Stephen King, Pet Semetary

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Pet Sematary was a monumental book for me growing up. In my opinion, it was really the starting point for a golden era of sorts in King’s career. I don’t know if this is true or if I’m just remembering it this way because it helps make my point, but I think this was my entry into the more serious, cutting edges of Stephen King’s universe. To the best of my recollection, Eyes Of The Dragon was the first book of his I read, in grade school. I think I chose that because, while I felt the tug and the allure of the covers of all those Stephen King books I saw at the library, they also freaked me out a little bit. I wasn’t sure what would happen if I dared to enter through the doorway of those hardcovers. Eyes Of The Dragon seemed like a more gentle book, a fantasy adventure, more friendly for the younger reading audience.

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Pet Sematary definitely does not fall under that category.

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It is scary. It is bleak. It is intense. It speaks of a darkness inherent in the human soul and shows a virtual road-map for how a seemingly well-balanced individual can be taken down a path that plunges into the worst places imaginable.

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In the end, it still stands as one of my favorite King books and the ultimate irony is that it is a book which the public almost never saw.

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As it turns out, Pet Sematary is one of those few titles in his catalog that King isn’t a fan of. While it may be hard to imagine, he evidently felt that even by his standards, the book might be a little over the line. In his own words, King has stated that “If I had my way about it, I still would not have published Pet Sematary. I don’t like it. It’s a terrible book—not in terms of the writing, but it just spirals down into darkness. It seems to be saying that nothing works and nothing is worth it, and I don’t really believe that.” Despite the incredible success of the book, King refused to participate in any kind of publicizing or interviewing immediately following the release.

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So why was it published in the first place? Stephen King was in the process of moving to a new publisher and contractually, he still owed one more book to Doubleday Publishing. So, possibly in an attempt to stick it to them and just be done with the whole affair, he gave them the manuscript for this book which had been sitting dormant in his desk drawer for years.

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It’s an interesting story, along the lines of another near miss when King’s wife, Tabitha had to rescue the manuscript for Carrie from the garbage and talked him into finishing it. It’s like Kafka leaving instructions for all of his writings to be destroyed following his death. It fascinates me sometimes to how close we exist on the precipice of landmark art never being created in the first place.

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Pet Sematary tells the story of Louis Creed, his wife and two children. They move to a small Maine town so that he can take on a medical practice for a local college. They move into a large, beautiful old house, where their front yard spills out into a heavily traveled rural highway. It is this highway of course, that plays into and drives a great deal of the narrative of the book.

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Following the death of the family cat, hit in the road by a truck, and in an attempt to spare their daughter the heartbreak of losing her pet, the older neighbor (Jud Crandall) from across the street introduces Louis to a local secret. What he shows him is a small, out of the way cemetery where, if you bury your pet in the sacred grounds, your pet will return to life. Sure enough, Church returns home with seemingly nothing wrong with him although Louis harbors suspicions about what exactly has come back. Church’s behavior is odd and withdrawn. He seems to lose some of his balance and dexterity as he is often seen staggering and stumbling around as if drunk, and there is a smell of rot to him. While he never really seems to do anything overtly wrong, Louis never really feels comfortable around him either.

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From there, following his experience with Church and trying to glean more information from Jud, Louis asks the most natural question that many of us likely would have thought of as well.

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Had anyone ever buried a person up there?

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Jud immediately denies the suggestion, although his reaction comes so quickly and awkwardly, it is hard to imagine that he is being truthful. And from this point on, I don’t want to delve into any more details and risk spoiling the tragedy and horror of this story. Suffice to say that if most people were asked if they would bury someone in a special graveyard with the knowledge that the person would come back to life, I think most of us would not do it. One of the lines from the book which has ended up becoming a sort of tag line for the book in general says it best, I think.

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Sometimes, dead is better.

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Pet Sematary is a huge treatise on the idea of death and what might happen after we cross over that undefinable threshold. It’s a book about how grief and loss can foster a desperation that can drive us to show the worst parts of ourselves in what we do. I think that this aspect of the book was one of the things that gripped me so much as a young reader because, as a pre-teen the notion of death was something that was starting to scare me as well.

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Ironically, one of the more minor characters in the story, Victor Pascow, was the one that probably had the greatest impact on me. First there was the sudden and violent accident which ultimately takes his life. I found that to be one of the more frightening moments, even though it had almost nothing to do with the plot of the book. The idea that you could be going about your day, just like any other and on any given morning, tragedy has the ability to take you down with little or no warning. Pascow’s repeated appearances in the book as a spectral cautionary figure left me with more than a few sleepless nights.

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Over the course of the book, Louis Creed ends up doing a number of things that some might consider wrong or maybe even inhuman. Regardless of what you want to call it, I think that one of King’s strengths is to take that character’s story and present it in a way that you find yourself admitting that you might do the same thing. It’s about taking the crazy and making it seem kind of sane.

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Knowing that you could reach a point in your life where you might not be able to tell the difference is what makes this book terrifying to me.

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My name is Chad Clark, and I am proud to be a Constant Reader.

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Baked Scribe Flashback : Off The Reservation

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The storms rolled through early that morning, the thunder making the windows rattle in their frames. Above that, the metallic plink of water dripping down into the large cake pan could be heard distinctly as rain pelted the roof above them. Louis stared down at the book he was reading, oblivious to anything going on outside or around him. Raymond stared at his friend and squirmed around in the chair, so bored that he felt like any second he was going to boil over. He hadn’t brought anything to entertain himself, he hated to read. But what he assumed was going to be a weekend of socializing had turned into an exercise of watching himself being ignored.

It seemed absurd to be here, and the only reason he could think of for Louis inviting him was because he wanted some help covering the cost of gas and food, driving all the way up here like this. That was all Raymond was to him anyway, just a resource to be exploited for his own gain.

When Louis had called, inviting him to come along, it had seemed like something was weighing heavily on his friend but he would not admit to anything specifically. He thought they were going to have some kind of drawn out, heavy conversation but as soon as they had arrived, a cold front had swept through the house, and Louis had barely said more than two words ever since. Raymond had considered walking into downtown and exploring, but was worried about getting lost. Louis had booked the rental, and Raymond didn’t know the town,

What the hell. Even the pouring rain seemed like a more attractive alternative to the stifling silence he was having to sit through in here. It didn’t even occur to him to say anything to Louis as he stood up and walked out the front door. Part of him was a little disappointed that Louis hadn’t called out after him.

The main street through town was mostly deserted, probably due to the rain but also because it was getting down to the end of the tourist season. Before long, the most action that would be found anywhere would be the locals at the newspaper stand, arguing over their checkers game.

Raymond looked out over the channel, and at the boats drifting around on their lines. A few owners sat out on the decks of their various over-sized yachts, sipping drinks in the now misting rain. He was surprised to find that his hands were starting to tremble slightly from the chill in the air.

He scanned the boats, looking over each one when, as he passed over one of the more modestly sized fishing boats, he saw the older owner, sitting there in a lawn chair, and staring straight at him. He passed over the man so quickly, that it almost didn’t register. Raymond frowned as he shifted his gaze back to the boat and saw the man, still glaring at him from across the park.

As he walked over and approached the boat, the man’s gaze somehow became even more icy and hostile. He didn’t know what he had done to piss the guy off, but he needed to find out.

“Sorry, do I know you?” he asked. The man crossed his arms across his chest but did not answer. Raymond stood there, feeling like an idiot as the man reached up and slid the hat off the top of his head, scratching at the mostly balding area before replacing it. He leaned over and let loose with a giant wad of spit, somehow managing to maintain eye contact with Raymond.

“Is there a problem?” he asked, trying to get some kind of response. Finally, he started to turn away when the man yelled out at him for the first time.

“You just don’t know what the hell you’re doing here, do you?”

Raymond turned around to face the man, who was now standing up from his chair. “I don’t understand. What’s that supposed to mean?”

The man chuckled and shook his head. “Blind to the world, right? Wearing blinders?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, are you mistaking me for—”

“Hard to mistake someone as dim bulb as you are around these parts. Don’t have a clue, do you?”

“A clue about what?”

Again, the man chuckled, a gravelly tone, as he reached down and jerked on the rope to loosen it from the dock. He turned back to the controls and twisted the key. Before Raymond could say anything else, the boat started to move out into the channel, its owner keeping his back to Raymond the entire time.

It was about on par with pretty much every social interaction he had experienced in town so far. There wasn’t much outright rudeness, but everyone seemed to be peering down at him, making him feel like a bug in a petri dish. He had written it off, at first, as simply locals scorning the tourists, but now it seemed deeper than that, as if there was some huge inside joke that he wasn’t privy to.

There was a clamor of activity from the other side of the park, a sound of heavy equipment dropping and someone cursing loudly. It had come from one of the repair houses for the yacht club, and he could see something flashing inside, as if a work-light was being swung back and forth. He strode over to the entrance and peered inside, hoping to maybe find some reason to strike up conversation with anybody. By the time he got there, however, there was no one to be seen.

He did notice an office door against the far wall that was ajar. There was no one in there either, but the computer on the desk was on, the chair slowing to a stop from rotating, as if someone had just stood up in a hurry. He didn’t even know why he cared, but he approached the computer and looked at the screen.

The black and white footage looked like some kind of a laboratory or doctor’s office. The room contained one operating table with a patient sitting atop it, staring listlessly off into space. Raymond was about to disregard the footage until, in a moment of breathless recognition, he turned back to the screen to look closer.

The patient on the bed was Louis.

He watched as the black and white image moved, and someone approached the bed, wearing what looked like a Hazmat suit. The person produced a needle that looked over a foot long, and leaned over Louis, placing the tip just to the left of one of his eyes. Raymond looked away as the needle was plunged in, but looked back reflexively, peeking through his fingers as he discovered that Louis was lying alone again, a fresh tube now inserted into his arm. Blood flowed freely from him, but Raymond couldn’t tell where it was going. He looked at the time stamp on the footage and saw that it was late at night, the same night they had arrived here.

The past few days came back to him in a flood of images. Louis, growing progressively more introverted, showing less and less interest in anything. Raymond had felt like he was talking to someone in a walking coma. He thought about the attitude of the locals, the snarky comments of the man in the boat and how he had almost seemed to be warning Raymond of something.

In the length of a heartbeat, he suddenly realized that the bells on the buoys outside had gotten louder, as if the outer door to the building had been opened. He felt the kiss of fresh breeze on the back of his neck and the groaning from floorboards. Raymond turned, already knowing what he was going to find.

A half dozen of the town locals stood there, staring silently. Raymond took a step back, trying to formulate in his head what he was supposed to say, what they might accept. Before he could come up with anything, they began shambling forward. There was no other door, no windows, anywhere that he would be able to escape from, and he certainly couldn’t overpower all of them.

The only sound filling his head was the increasingly ragged intakes of his own breath as someone switched off the lights and closed the door, drowning him in darkness.

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Baked Scribe Flashback : Unto Each Other

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Sara listened to the gravel crunching under the tires as the car groaned to a halt and the engine coughed one last time before dying. The warehouse entrance was only about a hundred feet away, but it might as well have been a hundred miles. Maybe if they had jumped out right at that moment, one or both of them could have made it, but as they sat there in a stupor, that thin opportunity vanished. She reached down and twisted the key, knowing that there was no point but needing to try anyway. The engine turned, but did not catch. She considered leaning on the horn but it was unlikely that anyone would hear it and, even if they did, it wasn’t like they could do anything about it.

Arman looked over at her, his face blankly reflecting the lack on understanding. There had to be something she could do to save them, something to get the car started again. She returned his gaze, shaking her head slowly to indicate that they had run out of ideas to try.

Outside, the swarm was already starting to form, tiny insects buzzing around the side mirrors and the windshield. They were slightly larger than gnats, tiny little jet-black specks floating lazily around the car. If she didn’t know any better, she might have taken them as harmless, but she did know better. One bite from any of those things would be enough to kill them. They wouldn’t be able to get into the car but in the end, that wouldn’t really matter since they also couldn’t get out.

“What do we do?” Arman asked. She shook her head again. A hundred feet. It was nothing. The darkest reaches of her mind was contemplating pushing him out of the car and hoping that those things out there would focus on him, giving her the opportunity to get away.

“What are we going to do?” His voice was rising, going into clear panic mode now. She turned to look at him, disgusted at his unwillingness to acknowledge the obvious.

“What can we do?” she asked, turning back to the window and placing a hand up against it. The things out there clustered on the other side of the glass, trying to burrow through to her.

She turned back and saw the entire spectrum of emotions cross his face in a matter of moments. The fear in his eyes quickly gave way to anger as he struck the dashboard several times with an open palm. He screamed until his voice started to go hoarse, until his energy began to wane. His chest heaved, trying to catch breath as he slowly calmed down, leaning against his door. Sara saw his hand fiddling around with the door handle and thought for the briefest second that he was just going to throw it open.

The hand returned to its starting position though and she breathed a little easier, even though the real situation hadn’t been resolved, just delayed.

She wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but the bugs were now swarming the car so heavily, they could no longer see out the windows. The outside light came through in fractured cracks within the writhing blanket of insects as they crawled across this metal tomb.

“Does the battery still work?” Arman asked.

“There’s no way we could do anything to them with it, even if—” Sara started to say.

“I just thought we could listen to the radio.” His voice sounded like a child who was about to start crying. Sara turned the key in the ignition and pressed the power button on the dashboard. Music started to filter through the speakers and returned her attention to the death that awaited them on the other side of that glass. Anger flared up in her again, along with the hundredth iteration of how unfair this entire situation was. She remembered being intrigued about the new form of insect life that had been discovered in the Congo. All the way over there, it was other people’s problems. It wasn’t so intriguing now.

Arman took in a breath and she could hear it shaking as he let it out. She wasn’t sure if it was resignation, or if he was steeling himself to do something. She returned her gaze to his hand which was still resting near the door handle.

“A hundred feet. One more minute,” Arman said, coming close to repeating her internal dialog to the word.

It was pointless. Either they were going to die in here, or they were going to die out there. At least, out there, they would know when to expect it. At least out there, it would be quick. She didn’t want to just sit in here and starve to death.

One of her favorite songs was playing and she closed her eyes, letting herself be washed away in the tide of memories. High School prom, losing her virginity in college, faces and names flowing past her, and all attached to that one song, as it slowly dwindled into the silence of sputtering static and the battery also gave out.

She didn’t want to second guess herself. Sara lunged past Arman and opened his door, shoving him out with her shoulder as she did so. As he toppled back, she waited for the swarm to lift up and flock towards him before opening her door, falling out onto the ground as she did so. As soon as she hit pavement she rolled to the side, only vaguely aware of Arman screaming her name. There was no time. She sprang to her feet and began to sprint away from the car. Somehow, she had managed to get past all of them without being bitten. The door was fifty feet away now. Twenty feet. Ten feet. The sound of the swarm moved up from the car and started in her direction.

Sara felt the burning in her chest but ignored it as the elation swelled up in her heart that the door was just within reach. Just another second or two and she would be inside. She was going to make it.

The last thing she felt before her fingers brushed against the metal of the door handle was the stinging bite on the back of her ankle. Darkness bled in and enfolded her.

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Issue #153 : The Lessons We’re Taught

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Samantha slammed the grading book down on the desk and glared up at the clock which was still content to carry on ticking by the seconds, regardless of how much more work she still needed to finish. It looked like it was going to be another night of calling ahead. “Don’t bother waiting, I’ll grab dinner on the way home.”

And all of this in the wake of rumblings about more department cutbacks. As if they weren’t stretched thin enough as it was. She had already broken down and started buying her own office supplies. Better to hang the expense and write it off at tax time than deal with the scrutinizing glare from the cave troll any time she dared to go down to the supply closet for another ream of paper or a dry erase marker.

She looked up at a sudden sound from the hallway, so alien and rare that she almost didn’t recognize it. After several perplexed moments, she finally realized that it was the tell-tale squeaking from the wheels of a mop bucket.

A tall, lanky man strolled in through the doorway, the crisp fabric of his light blue janitorial uniform almost glowing in the low light of the room.

“Oh!” Samantha sat up straighter in her chair. She found herself struggling to come up with something to say and felt her cheeks flushing in the awkwardness of the moment. “Hello. I’m sorry, I didn’t think we had janitorial services here on Wednesdays.”

He smiled and shook his head. “No, you’re not supposed to, that’s the right of it,” he said, his smile easy and relaxed as it lit up the rest of his face. “But I couldn’t rightly let these children suffer the tight pockets of their elders, could I?”

Samantha smiled in spite of herself. She felt the same way but seeing that attitude in others was rare.

“I couldn’t have said it better myself, uh…”

“Sorry Ma’am. Names Randall. Randall Binsworth. Pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

“I’m Samantha.”

“Very nice to meet you. It’s noble work you do here. The least I can do is provide you with a clean school to do it in.”

She felt her cheeks going warm again from the unexpected compliment. “I don’t know about that. All I am is—”

“Ma’am, besides a good preacher or maybe a doctor, I can’t think of anyone more important than you. All those young minds and you get to help shape every single one of them. You get to be the hands in the clay.”

“Well, I guess I never thought about it that way. But you know there are far more important subjects out there. I wouldn’t put myself next to them”

Randall leaned the handle of the mop against the door frame. “Ma’am, would you mind terribly if I sat down for a moment?”

She felt embarrassed that he felt the need to ask her permission. “No, of course not. And please call me Samantha.”

He grinned, as if she had suggested he could drink sand. “Of course, Ma’am. Can I say something to you? Would that be all right?”

“Yes, please.”

“Subject don’t matter. Nope, it don’t matter if you’re teaching ‘em how to fix a car or flip an egg or split the atom or write a haiku. You’re giving ‘em the model. You’re showing ‘em what it looks like to be a good person. That’s what they need, more than the rest.” He waved a hand through the air as if shooing away an insect. “All that, they can right well figure out on their own.”

Samantha nodded. “I suppose that’s true.” She couldn’t think of anything else to say.

He smiled again, a huge toothy grin that she couldn’t help but returning. “I can see. I know. You’d just as soon take anything else except a compliment for yourself, wouldn’t you”

She laughed, but looked away briefly before shrugging and nodding.

“Everyone in your class is paying so much attention to how you do the things you do. Hardly anyone at that age ever thinks about the kind of person they’ll be when they get the things they want. More people need that kind of an education.”

“But you don’t even know me. How do you know that’s the kind of person I am?”

“I know, ma’am. Same way you can tell the inherent goodness in anyone. You just know.” He moved to stand back up. “Now, I think one of those other rooms is going to need some attention before the old dust mites start forming a chorus line.”

Samantha shook her head to clear it. “You know, I can get out of your way so you can work. I can take all of this home.”

He waved her offer off. “Don’t make no difference. I’m going to be here either the way. Do your work and I can tidy up after you go.”

Taking in a revitalizing breath, she smiled. A more genuine smile than she had felt in some time. “Thank you for that, Mr. Binsworth.”

He stopped short, halfway out the door, looking offended. “Ma’am, I told you my name is—”

Samantha put out a mocking finger. “If it’s good enough for you…”

He paused and then grinned, letting out a laugh that filled the room. “Cooked my goose in my own pan, didn’t you? Have a wonderful evening then, ma’am.”

Samantha watched him go and somehow the frustration she had just felt ten minutes ago seemed to have gone completely.

The next day, she still felt the high from the previous night and the brief conversation. It was as if she had taken the most potent energy drink and multiplied it by a hundred. She had debated the idea with herself all night but had decided in that moment that she would reach out to Randall Binsworth. Even though he would likely reject any gesture, she wanted to at least try and show her gratitude.

Before trying to call the company directly, she went to Google. His employers might not be able to give out any information and she hated to think that they might get the wrong impression, that she was calling to complain about him, especially if he had been coming in on his own without being scheduled.

His name was unique enough that the article was at the top of the list. Just reading the link brought her to her seat, knees unable to keep her standing. She opened the article to make sure, immediately recognizing the picture and the uniform. But it couldn’t be possible. It had to be a mistake, couldn’t have happened.

Could it?

Her hands trembled as she closed the browser, feeling her breath go short as Randall Binsworth’s obituary blinked off of the screen.

There was no point if asking if it could be possible. She wasn’t crazy so clearly it had to be possible. For whatever reason, he had reached across from wherever he now was. Why had he chosen her? What had she done to deserve it?

She could almost hear his voice. There weren’t any answers. That she had enough inherent goodness to ask the question in the first place should be all the answer she needed. The job, her calling, that was what mattered. That was what she needed to focus on. So the work was hard and thankless and unsupported. It was also what she was supposed to be doing. That much had never been so clear.

And who knew what might happen. Maybe on another late night, she would get the chance to meet her friend again and thank him properly.

Even though he would likely reject it.

It was the least, and the most she could do.

And that made it perfect.

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Top Picks : Pale Grey, by Barry P Connors

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A favorite movie of mine growing up has always been Blade Runner. I don’t feel like this is something I really have to justify but maybe I can specify what in particular I love about it. I love the representation of the future in that, while there are clearly technological advances and improvements, it also doesn’t look like a particularly nice place to live. I love that underneath all of the machinations of the future, you still sense a somewhat dark undercurrent of real human emotion. 

Reading Pale Grey by Barry P Connors I had similar flashes of this feeling, of a world technologically advanced but also a little rougher around the edges, a darkness below the surface that seems to be hinted at. But in the course of the story he writes, there are moments of beauty as well.

One crucial part of both science fiction and fantasy is that of world building. You have to strike a balance between the fantastical and the familiar. The landscape of the story must be colorfully unique and special but it also has to feel familiar. Go too far and it becomes cheesy or silly. I think this was a big reason why Asimov and Arthur C Clarke’s books were so great. Even though they took place in a fictionalized and alien universe, set in the future, the characters still felt like they could be people you knew. The world seemed like one you could adapt to and understand. 

With Pale Grey, Connors creates a universe that is incredibly rich in description in its futurism but he also grounded the book with familiar touchstones that help center the world in the mind of the reader. Every story like this is going to require some exposition, some info dumps in order to explain the state of things in the book. Connors does this but his narrative detours are done very well. There wasn’t a point ever where I felt the pace of the story was disrupted just for the sake of transmitting information. For the most part, it felt natural and presented in such a way as to spike my interest in the book.

I love a good PI book and being completely honest, if you were to pitch me an idea for a story about a PI, but it’s set in the future and there might be some stuff about alternate realities, I might be inclined to dismiss it for having too much going on, for arbitrarily placing a familiar plot in an alien environment. Still, he pulls it off. The gritty side of good PI fiction with also a touch of militaristic sci-fi seems to work really well with the more fantastical and abstract elements of the story. And over-arching all of that is a mystery that is actually pretty terrifying to contemplate.

Considering the nature of this story as well as the mystery that is driving the characters, it would be very easy to let the book run off the rails. Too often, I think that writers or directors will start throwing in random elements or occurrences in order to create an arbitrary atmosphere of the bizarre. While there were moments in the book in which I was wondering what was going on or where we were going, it was clear that all of that was by design and Connors does a good job keeping hold of the reins and corralling the narrative on behalf of the reader.

There is also a romantic angle to the story which I hadn’t seen coming. This part of the book is surprisingly touching and I thought gave a much more serious depth of character to his protagonist. This isn’t just some hard-living former secret military operative. He’s a living human with a heart and his struggles come through in his life and in the decisions he makes throughout the story.

Regardless of your genre preferences, I think that there is a little bit of everything for people. The story has several humanizing angles but also with a feeling of futuristic noir that I thought felt fresh and original. I think that this is one genre that has a high risk of becoming cliche and Connors does well keeping his prose above and away from that dangerous literary horizon. He made the book his own and doesn’t seem to rely on the easy tropes, like so many others tend to do.

The type of story this is, along with the voices of the characters gives me such a nostalgic vibe of the fantastic grittier science fiction of the eighties but also with a human heart that pumps genuine feeling throughout. I was very happy to have had the chance to read this and I would strongly encourage you to check it out as well.

As always, follow the link below to get yourself a copy of a great book. Give your support to a deserving artist today.

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Baked Scribe Flashback : Into Danger

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Jeff gripped the golf club and walked into the darkness of the factory. He crept along the hallway, surrounded by the sound of heavy equipment masticating the raw materials as it was moved down the intricate network of conveyor belts, to their resting place within the bowels of the building. The lights were all off, save for a few emergency bulbs, and the scant illumination provided by the emergency exit signs.

Still, he knew that someone was in here.

He had watched from the street, as the shadow disengaged from the dense row of trees, and expertly disabled the heavy locks on the door before slipping inside. Reaching over to to grab the phone to call the police, the image flashed before him in his mind of leaving the house that morning in a rush, grabbing the keys from the table and seeing the phone sitting there as he closed and locked the door behind him. He hadn’t gone back for it.

It made no difference. He could call the cops from any number of the land lines inside. All he had to do was find an unlocked office. Part of him cursed himself silently for being too cheap to install a phone at the front reception desk in the lobby. Or maybe even the security detail that had been offered to him at the discounted rate by the local company.

No sense in crying over what wasn’t there, he had to make the best of what he had available to him. And that just happened to be a slightly rusted pitching wedge from the trunk of his car.

Jeff peeked around the corner, down towards the main production line and tightened his grip. The problem was not that he couldn’t hear anything. The problem was that he heard something everywhere, couldn’t distinguish the normal loud noises this factory made from those made by someone who might be a threat to him. His mind raced past as many names of employees as he could think of, anyone who he might have pissed of with his quick temper and his loud mouth. Even if it was possible to name every person in the short time he had, it likely wouldn’t have done him any good anyway.

He heard a new sound this time and spun to look up at the balcony that overlooked the factory floor. That had been the door to the employee lounge, slamming shut. He was sure of it, there was no mistaking it. Either the person up there had made a mistake, or was intentionally trying to draw Jeff into a trap. There was a phone just a hundred feet from him, against the far wall, but something compelled him to start moving up the stairs.

The walkway groaned as he made his way towards the lounge, golf club raised for the threat that he didn’t even know how to prepare for. For all he knew, his assistant manager had just come in to pick up some paperwork after hours. It wouldn’t be the first time. Still, something about all of this felt wrong, although he couldn’t explain why. He stepped through the door and into the lounge, bringing the club up, in case he needed to strike immediately.

He felt his skin and fingers going numb before he could even fully evaluate what was happening in front of him. From the top of the lockers, the shadows seemed to stretch out, bulge up into the air like a bubble being inflated. A dark and hulking shape started to form and glared at him from behind a pair of blazing eyes.

Jeff backed into the wall, vaguely aware of his bowels releasing as the thing crawled down from above, the legs unfolding and lowering down to the floor in order to support the insect-like frame. He couldn’t fathom how something that big had been crammed into such a small space. He tried to scream, tried to turn and run away from this monstrosity that was now advancing towards him from across the room. He knew he needed to run, needed to get as far away from this thing as he could manage, but his legs would not cooperate.

The thing continued towards him, moving across the floor slowly, almost sashaying as it did so. Jeff’s knees buckled out from underneath him and he slid down towards the floor. As if this was what it had been waiting for, the thing surged forward, saliva and other matter flying out of it as it rushed towards him. Jeff screamed as the thing’s mouth clamped down on his arm, biting and dragging him forward towards the middle of the room.

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Outside, in the parking lot, just as the sound of the screams started to dissipate, a sliver of bright light formed in the middle of the crisp night air, like a zipper coming undone. It grew wider and wider until several men stepped through, wielding large assault type rifles and looked around the parking lot. One of the men stepped forward and knelt, peering over the ground and picking up several pieces of debris. He examined it all, lifting one piece to his nose before dropping it and turning back to the others.

“It definitely stopped off here,” he said. “Got to be inside.”

The man in the center of the group nodded and stepped forward. He pressed a button, causing the power to surge and the weapon to crackle with the sound of unbridled electricity.

“Right,” he said. “We’ve got one more good shot at this, make it count. No telling when we’ll have the juice to make another jump like this.”

The men filed in behind, weapons at the ready. The leader stepped forward, looking up at the building that the thing had to be in.

“Let’s track her down.”

The line of men moved silently and quickly into the building. Moments after the last man had gone in, the door opened again and the thing, now wearing Jeff’s body stepped out into the crisp night air. It glanced over its shoulder to make sure none of the soldiers were following it before grinning, reaching up to straighten Jeff’s tie as it walked away from the factory.

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Baked Scribe Flashback : Turn Of Chance

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Felicity looked at the signal fires in the valley below, and marveled at the naivete of these people. They were probably convincing each other that their fire would be seen by anyone who would want to help them. It seemed incomprehensible that it didn’t even occur to them to worry about the person who shot their craft down in the first place. She had watched the ship after she hit it with the focused EMP pulse, watched it lazily float down out of the sky, but apparently for the inhabitants of the craft, that experience had already vanished from their memory. Maybe they had thought themselves victims to a mundane failure of mechanics. It was doubtful that anyone could be that idiotic, but anything was possible.

Regardless of how much she resented how easy they were making this, she had a job, and that couldn’t be ignored. She moved out from behind the bushes, crouched down, and began snaking her way down the steep hillside, towards the campsite of the survivors. At some point, she would have to move on, and do something else with her life that didn’t make her feel like this, but for now, this was all there was. She was good at it, and her employer had sought her out.

The reasons were irrelevant. She couldn’t allow her head to become cluttered up with whatever justifications or rationalizations her employers might have had for sending her to conduct this final action. It wasn’t important.

Better to not ask questions.

Any person or persons who had the ability and willingness to carry out the execution of so many people would likely not respond well to repeated inquiries. And to make things worse, the neural chip planted just under the skin, behind her ear, would give them the ability to to eliminate her from pretty much anywhere if they were unsatisfied. She was putting all of her faith in their willingness to hold up their end, and remove the chip upon completion of the assignment, as was agreed upon in the contract. It was the biggest of risks, but the higher price tag for her services if she agreed to use the chip was worth it.

It had rained most of the day so she had an easier time making her way silently towards the camp. Not that she needed to employ much in terms of stealth. The group around the fire had started to churn out drunken renditions of pretty much every campfire song she had ever heard. She imagined that if a bomb were to go off over their heads, they might not be aware of it if it weren’t for the flash.

She had hoped that everyone would die in the crash and had directed the EMP pulse just as the ship was hitting it’s zenith, passing over the deep gully, but whoever had been piloting the ship had been crafty enough to allow some of the crew to survive. That left her alone to deal with these remaining six people. Not that it would matter. Clearly, none of them had caught on to what had just happened, and were in no way prepared for what was coming. This would have to be a hard education, learned too late to be of any good.

The air around her started to feel more cool, despite the increasing proximity of the fire. The singing was getting louder now, more slurred as if from the effects of alcohol. Why anyone stranded out here in the outer reaches would choose to imbibe in alcohol was beyond her. Her skin was starting to stand on edge, making her uneasy, as if someone was watching her from afar. Could it have been the implant, sending off or receiving some kind of signal? Had her employers gotten impatient and decided to cut her off, running the poison through her body so quickly, she would barely have enough time to acknowledge the effects?

It took several more seconds of moving forward in her crouched position before she realized that the voices had all abruptly stopped. Felicity looked up, half standing as she did so and saw that the fire had been extinguished and all of the surviving crew members from the ship had disappeared. She swiveled around, first to her right and then left, but there was no sign of anyone near her. It didn’t make sense. They couldn’t have just vanished, and not a single one of those idiots were quick enough to be able to sneak away without her noticing. But she couldn’t deny what she saw in front of her. It was as if they had never existed.

She felt the slime of the arm snake around her neck before she picked up on the smell. Immediately, she let her body drop in an attempt to break free, but she already knew she wasn’t strong enough. The thing had sneaked up behind her. There must be a colony of the creatures nearby, and one of them had wandered out. Just her luck to stumble across one in the dark at the worst possible time. She had been hunting the survivors and all this time this thing had been hunting her.

Stars danced in front of her eyes when there was a sudden impact from behind. Felicity rocked forward as the thing fell limply off of her and to the ground. She looked down at the thing, it’s lizard skin glistening in the moonlight, and then up at the man, grinning as he was extending a hand down to her.

“Looked like you needed some help. Lucky we happened to be here. Our ship came down not too far from here and we’re just waiting for a pickup.”

Felicity shook her head as she stood up, looking around. The guy kept talking.

“Yeah, we heard the thing slithering around out here and so we doused our fire and got under cover before it got too close. Deb happened to see the thing go after you so…”

“How many of you are there?” Felicity asked, trying to re-assess, to take in this target who had just save her life, more than likely.

“We’re over here, just beyond the grove.” The man pointed as he walked, passing Felicity as he began moving towards the rest of his group, who were now coming out with relieved grins on their faces.

It was messy, and it wasn’t how she liked to do things, but it wasn’t like she had a choice at this point. Not with that fucking implant.

Felicity stepped forward, placed the barrel of her gun behind the man’s ear and pulled the trigger.

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