OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO oOOOO OOOO. OOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO" .OOOOOO OOOOOo OOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOO oOOOOOOO OOOOOOO. OOOO oOOOO OOOO .OOOO OOOO OOOOOOOOo OOOO OOOO" OOOO oOOOO OOOO OOOO "OOOO. OOOO OOOOo .OOOO' OOOO .OOOO" OOOO OOOO OOOOoOOOO "OOOO. oOOOO OOOO oOOOOOOO..OOOO OOOO "OOOOOOO OOOOoOOOO" OOOO .OOOO"""OOOOOOOO OOOO OOOOOO "OOOOOOO' OOOO oOOOO ""OOOO OOOO "OOOO OOOOOO |---------------------------------------------------------------------------| | | | There Ain't No Justice | | | | #100 | | | |---------------------------------------------------------------------------| INTRODUCTION Welcome to TANJ #100! This issue has been a long while in the making, and includes stories written by several authors, new and old. A couple of the stories are installments, and will be completed in future issues. Any attempt at sorting these issues by author, or time of submission has been overlooked; as this is the first issue I ever had a "hard" release date for, when it came right down to it, I hadn't the time. Deal with it. Red Wings by Metonymous Bosch ...They were all pretty drunk, that bunch of biker wannabees that hung out in my bar. Between their obnoxious behavior and the lateness of the hour, all the other patrons had left. Their table was littered with beer pitchers, half-eaten sandwiches, cigarette butts, and less savory debris. But at least it gave me a chance to finish my own supper, between their calls for more beer. I chewed the last bite of a microwaved sausage-and-pepper hero as I delivered yet another pitcher to their table. "But only the *toughest* Hell's Angels earn their 'red wings'. You know what that means?" said Allen. He was the bigmouth, and alcohol just increased his bluster. "No, but you're gonna tell us anyway," said Dan. Dan was the drunkest of the bunch. "So tell us already." "Well, you gotta get one of the biker bitches who's on the rag. Then you go down on her until she comes. She's gotta really be bleedin', and she's gotta swear she didn't fake it or nothin' when she comes." "Aahh, that's not tough. Just go down on some bitch till she comes? Why do the Angels think this is so tough?" demanded Dan. "She's got the curse, see. She's on the rag. Bleedin'. It's really disgusting. Most guys puke when they try it." "Does it disqualify you if you puke?" "Nope. Just as long as you make her come. Then they take like Air Force wings and paint 'em red, and you wear 'em pinned on your colors. Shows all the other Angels how tough you are." "Well, it still don't sound so tough to me," said Dan, taking a swig of beer. "I bet I could do it. I bet I wouldn't even puke." "Oh, yeah? I'd like to see you prove it!" sneered Allen. "Well, you don't see any biker bitches hangin' with us, do ya?" said Dan. "But if we had some women here, I'd show ya!" Of *course* these losers had no women hanging out with them. No woman in her right mind would want any of them. I felt nothing but contempt for the whole bunch. But, as it happened, I was at that very moment menstruating. On a sudden, perverse whim, I stepped out from behind the bar and said, "You're on, Dan. Prove to the guys how tough you really are." "Suzie! Suzie the barmaid! You really on the rag, Suzie?" To answer them, I reached under my skirt and pulled out a blood-dripping tampon. I dropped it into Dan's half-empty beer glass as the group made rude noises. "Okay, Dan..." I pulled up my skirt and lay back on an empty table, my bleeding crotch near the edge. Dan knelt in front of me as I spread my legs wide. His face went pale as he got a whiff of the menstruous odor, and his buddies jeered. I smiled to myself; what a pathetic bunch of posers! In a jokey voice I said, "Go ahead...make me come." I didn't think Dan could make me come with three vibrators and a truckload of spare batteries. I felt nothing but contempt, verging on loathing, for this drunken lout. He'd never win his "red wings", but I could humiliate him as he tried. Hesitantly, Dan licked at my crotch. He gagged slightly, and his pals jeered him again. He steadied himself and started to establish a sort of rhythm, licking mainly at my clit. I was surprised to find myself actually beginning to feel aroused. Of course, his technique was terrible, but the notion of how I was degrading and humiliating him added to my excitement. Then, in a moment of bravery, he stuck his tongue right into my cunt. His buddies' cheers drowned out his faint retching noises. "Hey, Suzie, are you about to come?" yelled Allen. "Not even close!" I replied truthfully. I was beginning to enjoy the perverted situation, though. I had the power to make this man look stupid in front of his companions. And they didn't realize how stupid they ALL were in the first place. Dan licked me some more, concentrating mainly on my clit, which must have been a little less disgusting for him. It was a LOT more stimulating for me, though, and eventually even this crowd of louts noticed; I was sweating, my breathing was uneven, and I had begun to move my hips against the hardwood table. I lifted my head and called to Dan, "Stick your tongue in my cunt again. I want you to tongue-fuck me." Dan did his best to comply, but he started to gag and retch again. The guys laughed at him. He took a couple of deep breaths, and tried putting his tongue in me again. I writhed, not faking anything at all. "Finish her off, Dan!" shouted Allen. I thrust my pelvis into his face. He retched, harder this time, but stuck his tongue in as deep as it would go. I felt the sensations beginning inside my lower abdomen; as the muscles began to contract, the onions and peppers from my sandwich made their presence known in a huge, uncontrollable fart. That was more than Dan could take. With an agonized belching sound, he heaved and started to vomit. And that was more than *I* could take. As Dan regurgitated my own blood and mucus, mixed with used beer and pizza, all over my crotch and thighs and belly, I came. My spasms were synchronized with his heaves. Finally, he had nothing left to puke up, and he knelt there retching dryly. I regained my composure enough to look down at him. Nobody said anything for a few moments. "Uh, I guess Dan won his 'red wings'," said Allen. The Tattoo by Laura Lemay copyright (c) 1992 Laura Lemay (permission granted to TANJ to re-publish) Ellen was nearly finished with her third drink when she noticed the man in black. He was standing by the edge of the dance floor, watching the crowd with a bored expression. The crowd deserved his disdain; for an underground nightclub, there were certainly a lot of normal-looking people at Shades of Midnight tonight. Ellen had been on the prowl all night, and had been decidedly unimpressed with the variety of men she had seen. Until now. She put down her glass and turned to Tamara, prodding her on the shoulder to get her attention. "What do you think of that one?" she asked, leaning close so her voice could be heard over the blast of the music. She pointed through the crowd where the man was standing "Oooh, definitely do-able," Tamara replied, nodding. "And just your type, too." "Who's this?" Andrew, the third at their table, asked. "Who are we talking about?" "The longhair in the corner. Black jacket, black pants," Tamara replied, gesturing with her cigarette to the figure Ellen had just pointed out. "Ellen wants him." Ellen put on an mock expression of indignance. "I only pointed him out, I didn't say I wanted him." "Just your type," Andrew affirmed, as the man took a long drink from a bottle, completely oblivious to thier observations. "Long hair, black clothes, earrings. Yup. Ten bucks says you wants him." "Ah, but you don't know if he's tattooed," Tamara noted as Ellen opened her mouth to protest. "True," Andrew demurred. "Five bucks." "Sucker's bet," Tamara said, refusing Andrew's outstretched hand. "Cut that out," Ellen laughed. She had obviously spent far too many nights in nightclubs with these two; they knew her taste in men all too well. Although she had to admit her taste was all too predictable; to give Andrew credit, the mysterious man in black had most of the characteristics she looked for in fresh meat. "Well?" Tamara asked, nudging her with her arm. "If you don't get a move on, some other sweet young goth thing'll steal him away from you, and I'll have to listen to you bitch all the way home." "Wait, the song's ending," Ellen protested. "And besides, he sees me. I have time." Ellen took her time in approaching the man in black. For almost three songs she watched him as she had a fourth drink, watched him as he danced a little bit, danced with the showy air of someone who knows they are being watched. He had most definitely seen her in the corner, watching him; even though he was positioned on the dance floor at the opposite cornber of the room, he peered at her through the spaces in the crowd. Ellen felt herself flushing with drink and with the attention; she loved this game of tease and reply, of hide and seek. All the while Tamara and Andrew made fun of her for not getting up from her chair, but she shushed them. The crowning glory in Andrew's and Tamara's evening came when the man removed his jacket after dancing to a particularly hard and fast song, revelealing his bare chest underneath. Covering the front of his upper torso, and snaking over his shoulders and around his sides, was a single, huge, tattoo. Andrew and Tamara practically crowed with glee. "Ten bucks," Andrew reiterated his bet. Tamara merely gave him a sarcastic look. "What is it of?" Ellen asked, peering through the darkness as the man wove between the dancers in his own rhythm. "I can't see clearly from here." "Its some sort of monster, I think." Tamara said. "I can see claws, and....eyes." "Its beautiful work," Andrew commented. Of the three of them, Andrew was the resident tatoo expert and owner of five of his own. He was on a first name basis with most of the artists in the city. "I don't think I've seen so many gradations of purple blended like that before...." Tamara snorted. "Leave it to Andrew to provide a running commentary on the artistic qualities of punker tattoos." "Oh, its ok," Ellen said, relishing the chance for the teasing to turn to someone other than herself. "You know how Andrew gets sometimes --" "Holy shit." Andrew abruptly said, sitting upright in the chair. Tamara and Ellen turned to face him. "What?" Andrew's gaze was riveted upon the tattoo. "Thats a Mark Killock. I'd swear it, its his work." Andrew leaned even further foreward, trying to get a better view through the lights and the darkness. "Shit, I never thought I'd see one." "Who's Mark Killock?" Ellen asked. "A tattoo artist, obviously." Tamara replied. Andrew looked sharply back at the two of them. "Not just any tattoo artist. Mark Killock is one of the very best tatoo artists...his work is incredible. That tat is just his style, the colors, the blending, and the subject matter...." "Its delicious." Ellen commented, grinning, standing up and adjusting her short skirt over her thighs. "He's mine." "Don't look so worried," Tamara commented after a pause, reaching out a hand. "Ellen will be fine. You know her, she likes dangerous-looking longhaired boys." Andrew shook his head. "I was just thinking about that tattoo." "Is it that special?" "I've heard some really wild rumors about Mark Killock," Andrew replied, looking at Tamara mysteriously. Tamara laughed at him, taking his hands in hers as if to reassure him. "Ellen can take care of herself." Ellen was pleased with hwo the night was progressing. When she had started dancing the man had ignored her, but he had been watching her the whole time. When this song had started he had given her his undivided attention. One more song and she would be sure. The music pounded in her ears as she swayed back and forth, and the man in front of her mimicked her movements, watching her with black eyes that radiated lust and made her breathe faster even before he had even touched her. And here on the dance floor, with the lights, Ellen could get a better view of the tattoo. It was a shapeless monster of a tattoo that seemed to writhe as its owner moved. It appeared to have dozens of tenacles, tentacles that ended in claws, claws that were tinged with dark blood at the ends. It had no head, this monster, but it had eyes, thousands of them, greenish purple eyes over the exapanse of its gelatinous body that seemed to look straight at Ellen while she danced. Its mouth, in the center of its body, was ringed with teeth in rows, sharks' teeth. The creature was purple, varying shades of purple that reflected and glistened in the light, almost like scales. It was a repugnant picture, and Ellen could not fathom why anyone would want it painted permanently on thier skin. But at the same time she had to agree with Andrew that the work was fantastic. It was hard to believe that any single needle had crafted the lines and blended the inks so perfectly that you could not tell where one shade of purple ended and another one began. Reaching out playfully, Ellen ran a finger down the center of the man's chest, right over the creature's mouth. The man's shest was smooth and hairless, with nothing to break up the lines of the tattoo. Beautiful. "Do you like it?" the man mouthed to her as he danced. "Yes," she nodded admirably. "He likes you too," the man smiled at her, and Ellen smiled back. Bingo, she thought. She had made her conquest. Later on Ellen approached Tamara and Andrew, who had moved to the upstairs bar where the music was quieter. "So whats up? Progress?" Tamara said as Ellen approached thier table again. "Oh, yes," Ellen said, smiling. "We're leaving." "Have a good time," Andrew commented. It was ritual that made him say that; Ellen always had a good time. The man approached Ellen from behind, wearing the discarded leather jacket over his bare skin once again. He reached out and took the back of Ellen's neck in the other. Andrew looked uneasily from the hand to the man's face; he looked like he could close his fist and snap her neck with barely a thought. "Ready?" the man asked, as Ellen took her jacket and purse from the chair where Tamra had put them. "Yes," Ellen said, nodding politely to the pair, and turning to leave. "Excuse me," Andrew suddenly asked. Ellen and the man stopped and turned back to the table. Andrew motioned to the tattoo with his chin. "Is that a Mark Killock?" The man looked at Andrew, and his eyes pierced the darkness as if a light was shining behind them. "Yes," he replied. "It is." "Are the rumors true?" Andrew asked, his voice straining to remain causal. Tamara could feel the tension behind it in the air. "The rumors about the rituals...?" The man laughed, once, a short laugh that showed only in his mouth. "Of course not," he replied, taking Ellen by the shoulder and guiding her away from the table. Ellen waved back as she left, grinning. Tamara waited until the couple was out of sight before turning to face Andrew. "Rituals?" she demanded, eyebrows raised, "what rituals?" "Its just rumor." Andrew shrugged, watching at the doorway where the two of them had vanished. "I've heard a lot of rumors about Mark Killock's work.. wierd satanic shit." Tamara waited several seconds for Andrew to continue and when he did not, asked, "what sort of satanic shit?" Andrew shrugged again, reluctant to continue. "Mark Killock tattoos demons." "I'll say," Tamara stated. "That creature was horrible --" "That not what I mean. I don't mean that he tattooes pictures of demons; he tattoos the demons themselves." He took a pause as Tamara absentmindedly let the ash fall from her cigarrette onto the floor. "Its just rumor," he finally continued, when he realized he had said too much to just let it drop. "I've heard that just finding Mark Killock is a test; you have to be really determined to want to find him. It's not like he tattoos in any shops. Then once you find him if you want to get tattooed by him you have to go through years of training, to prove yourself, before he lets you go through the rituals. And the rituals are the wierdest part. I've heard claims that during the ritual, black magic draws out demons from your soul. Usually the worst kinds of demons. The magic enslaves them and then Killock tattoos the demon itself into your skin." There was a long pause, and then Tamara took a long drag on her cigarrette and laughed. "Do you actually believe all that shit? Thats major twilight zone stuff...Personal demons, exorcised from the body and painted into the skin. Ooooh," she laughed, waving her hands about in the air in front of her. Andrew looked over at her almost angrily, grasping one of her hands in his. "Does it really matter if I believe it or not, or even if its true or not? The point is that if someone goes through the trouble to get tattooed by Mark Killock, he very probably believes it himself. Regardless of the validity of the rumors, Ellen has just gone home with a man who believes that he has enslaved his own personal demon under his skin. And thats what worries me." Ellen laughed as they walked to his apartment, feeling drunk and silly, and loving the feel of a new man in her arms. They weaved haphazardly down the sidewalk, occasionally taking breaks in the dark sections to grope each other. Inside the building, he stopped her abruptly in the hallway outside his door and shoved her up against the wall, one hand tangled in her hair, forcing her head back to kiss her, hard, and the bit at her neck. Ellen pushed her hands up under his jacket, gasping at the naked skin on his back. She gasped when he hurt her. Then as suddenly as he had grabbed her, he let her go, standing aside and reaching for the keys in his pocket. She had to press her hands up against the wall to keep her balance, t keep from collapsing in a heap on the floor. Lustfully she eyed him as he unlocked the door and gestured chivalrously into the apartment. She giggled when he locked the door behind her and pulled her directly to the wide futon in the middle of the small studio. He pushed her onto the bed, and took off his jacket in the dark, dropping it absentmindedly on a chair. "Get undressed," he commanded her, turning away from her and moving about in the room. Ellen did as she was told, watching him in the half light as he lit candles around the bed. In the flickering of the yellow light the tattoo on his chest moved with the muscles in his body as if it were alive. "Come to bed," she said, impatient. "In a bit." he said, ignoring her as he finished with the candles. It seemed like an hour before he finally put down the matches and climbed onto the bed next to her. She gasped as his body covered her, gasped as his teeth bit into her neck and her breasts. "Oh," she said, once, and he leaned over her, his hands on either side of her shoulders, the demon on his chest fully displayed by the light of the dozens of tiny flames around the room. "Oh," she said, again, finding herself drawn to stare at the work on the skin a few inches before her face. It was moving in the light. The clawed tentacles undulated towards her and the mouth appeared to open and close, dripping black saliva as it did. The demon's eyes looked down at her body in lust and hunger, and Ellen found she could not take her eyes away from them. "Oh," she said, a third and final time, as the man bent his arms and crushed her body beneath his. "She's not home," Andrew said, holding the receiver against his ear with one shoulder. "I'm telling you, she's not home." "Well then where the hell is she?" Tamara asked. "She never misses Fridays." "Maybe she has a new guy," Andrew shrugged as the phone rang over and over again in his ear. "Maybe she's out with him. You know her." "She would never miss a Friday at Shades," Tamara insisted. "Never." "When was the last time you talked to her?" Andrew asked, giving up and hanging up the phone. "Same time you did," she replied. "Wednesday, when she went home with that guy with the tattoo. He's probably murdered her, dismembered her body in the bathtub and poured acid over it to get rid of the evidence." Andrew smiled, once. "And you claim that I have a vivid imagination." Then looked worried. "I woulnd't put it past him. He does have a Mark Killock, after all. The type of people who get Mark Killock's tattoos are hardly the type who are into normalcy in any way shape or form. And I didn't like that guy to start with." Tamara suddenly leaned close and pointed. "We could ask him." she said, her voice low. "Thats him over there." He was standing by the bar, wearing the same battered leather jacket as before, once again bare-chested underneath it. The creature on his chest seemed much less frightening than when it was fully exposed. In the full flourescent light of the upper bar, it looked almost like a regular tattoo. Andrew and Tamara watched him for a while as he ordered a shot of something dark and sludgy looking, and swallowed it effortlessly. "Go ask him," Andrew said, nudging at her arm. He didn't admit that he was slightly afriad to ask himself. "OK, I will," Tamara took the challenge. Andrew watched as she pushed through the people standing around in her path, watched as she walked boldly up to the man and talked to him. Andrew could not hear thier conversation, but the man looked puzzled when she asked. Tamara made motions that were obviously a description; about this tall, longish hair. The man looked at her, and a slow languid smile spread across his face. He leaned over towards her, and Tamara seemed transfixed by her voice. The man's lips just touched her ear, and he whispered something to her. Tamara blinked, once, and then turned pale.

Andrew pushed himself away from the wall, ready to jump in if Tamara was being threatened. What was going on? Tamara took a step back, blinking, and the man leaned back and turned back to the bar, waving at the bartender with authority, that smile still stuck on his face. Tamara stood stock still for nearly a minute, and Andrew was just about to go up to her to see if she was all right when she turned and bolted for the door, one hand pressed up against her mouth. Andrew paused, debating whether to confront the man, or run after Tamara. He chose to run after her, following her outside. He called her name as she stumbled along the sidewalk, chasing her, and finally caught up to her several doors down from the club. "Tamara." He said, grasping her shoulders, turning her towards him as she went weak against the wall. Her expression was panicked, her eyes wide and full of frightened tears. "Tamara, what is it? What did he tell you?" "She -- I--" Tamara started, and gulped for air, struggling for control. "He has her. He has her trapped." "Wait here," Andrew said, turning back towards the club. He pushed past the door guy, pushed through the crowds to the bar where the man with the tattoo was still standing, talking to the bartender and looking as if nothing had happened. "You," Andrew said, pulling on his shoulder, spinning him to face him. "What have you done with Ellen?" The man stumbled a bit as he was spun, but he caught his balance and looked coolly at his attacker, a faint air of disdain in his glance. "Ah, its you," he said. "I just explained it to your friend, ask her." As if that was the end of the conversation, the man turned back to the bar. Andrew took hold of his shoulder again, grasped the front of his leather jacket in his fist and turned him forcibly back around again. "She told me already. She said you had kidnapped Ellen. I want to know what the deal is, but if you've hurt her, I'll fucking kill you right here." The man looked into Andrew's eyes for several seconds, and then laughed again with that faint humorless laugh. "I haven't done anything with her." "Well, you certainly gave Tamara that impression. Why is that?" The man pulled back, ripping his jacket out of Andrew's grasp. There was a long pause between them as thier eyes locked. "Perhaps because I showed her this," the man said, and pulled aside his jacket, turning slightly into the light. The full glory of the tattoo was displayed in the flourescent light, and Andrew found his eyes drawn once again to the fine detail in the work, admiring it even as he was disgusted by its subject matter. The thousands of eyes appeared to be staring at him, almost blinking. The tentacles writhed in the light, and then as Andrew atched it, the creature actually was moving, rolling about on the fabric of the man's skin. And in one of its tentacles, viciously mauled, was Ellen. Andrew stepped back, unable to pull his eyes away from the scene. Ellen's lower body had been entirely eaten away, the remainder cut in slashes over every inch of her skin and her hair hung in her face, caked in her eyes with blood and slime. Andrew watched in horror as Ellen's body turned in the creature's claws, and saw with ever mounting panic that Ellen was still alive, that she was fully aware of what was happening to her, and that she was screaming at him, screaming mindlessly, trapped within the tattoo. Fifth Floor by Arifel `Twenty-five whores in the room next door Twenty-five floors and I need more...' Sisters of Mercy, `Vision Thing' Tara glanced up at the facade of the building, which was fairly nondescript for something which had sprung up in the middle of the old `Daimaru' area. When that particular enterprise had collapsed, dozens of smaller businesses had moved in, like jackals to the body of a lion, claiming positions in the centre of the city that they wouldn't have ordinarily been able to afford; this enterprise, apparently, was one of them. It was unnamed and unmarked apart from a curious symbol over the door; two circles, the innermost with a thin vertical oval at its centre; the outer circle was broken by curved lines at one point, making it look like a tube wrapped around the inner circle. A white droplet depended from the edge of the oval. She glanced about somewhat self-consciously, steeled her nerves and then pushed through the pair of swinging doors. It was, as Peter had said, an R-rated magazine store, at least on the ground floor. Looking past the racks of plastic-sealed magazines, she saw a set of steps at the back of the shop, leading upwards. She didn't feel confident enough to explore the second floor just yet, so she waited, browsing through the displays, checking the videos to see if they had a copy of `House of Dreams' (one of her favourites) until Peter showed up. She noticed a couple coming down the steps from the second floor. She, dressed in faded denims and a plain T-shirt, he dressed similarly (excepting the slogan on his T-shirt: `I Belong To Her', and an arrow pointing to his left). He was carrying a brown-paper- wrapped, pillow-sized bundle in one arm, and supporting his companion with the other. She had a glassy expression on her face, and as they passed by, Tara heard him mutter: `I told you to wait, I don't know /anyone/ who's ever been above the third floor...' She raised an eyebrow at this. She was examining a back-issue of `Penthouse' that had Pia Zadora on the cover (draped in an American flag) when she saw Peter out of the corner of her peripheral vision. A young man in his late twenties, dressed in what he considered to be the height of Gothic style (i.e., faded black `Country Road' wear, with motorcycle boots); he wove his way through the magazine racks and embraced her. `I'm glad you found it,' he whispered, `It isn't advertised anywhere, and there's no name out front.' He took her hand and led her towards the steps. `I heard about this place from Josephine, just before she took her entourage to Vienna; they've got some seriously strange stuff upstairs.' `Why are we whispering?' she replied. He smiled. `Because this is a temple. A holy place.' she smiled back patronisingly. He led her up to the first floor. Examining the contents of the glass-fronted display cabinets, Tara wasn't entirely convinced of the accuracy of Peter's appraisal. `This looks fairly vanilla to me... you can see more extreme stuff in the back room at Club X. Remember that set of stocks you were going to buy me for my birthday-' Peter pointed to another set of steps, leading up to the third floor. Tara smiled, gave a final, longing look at the sets of manacles, weighted nipple-clamps, cattle-prods and leather undergarments, and followed him upstairs. The third floor resembled the second, racks of magazines and videos interspersed with display cabinets. It was only until she took a closer look at the items on display that Tara understood what Peter had meant. She found a well-worn, black-leather-bound catalogue with the words `Extremes' embossed in gold on the cover. She idly leafed through it... inside were advertisements for elaborate torture racks crafted from heavy slabs of dark wood, edged and finished in bright chromed metal; on one page was a photograph of a set of unusual objects which she recognised as the gynaecological-surgical implements from the Cronenberg film, `Dead Ringers'. She felt a chill course down her spine as she viewed the cruel, clawed metal digits. She flicked past the rest of the items, which seemed to be mostly full-head latex hoods (which had always reminded her of ski masks, bank robbers and Ron Hitler-Barassi of `This Is Serious Mum'...); on the last page was a striking photograph of a hairless gentleman dressed in a full-length leather gown. He had a deathly blue-white pallor and an array of nails embedded in his skull. He was holding a small box, made of dark red wood with elaborate copper inlays. She recognised it, and smiled. There was a television screen set into the wall, showing excerpts from a video. It looked like some sort of chat-show, until the guest stood and took her clothes off to reveal an astounding array of piercings and tattoo work. She slowly turned to show off the more impressive artwork on her back while Tara watched, absorbed. Peter was toying with something that looked like a Nintendo Gameboy console with a cable protruding from the back that splayed into a dozen copper-button-tipped contacts; Peter held one in his left hand, and handed another to Tara. She held it and looked expectantly at Peter. He leaned over, brushed his lips against hers; she felt a tingle as a tiny electric shock passed between them. She giggled, until Peter pointed to the console; the `intensity' dial was set at 2, and went all the way up to 100. With a dramatic gesture, he led her over to the stairs that led upward. The fourth floor was much more solemn; subdued, even somewhat spooky. The piped Muzak that was playing on the first two floors had been replaced by one of Brian Eno's Ambient pieces. The whole scene vaguely reminded her of the crypt which featured at the start of the second `Hellraiser' film; the lighting was all set at ankle level, diffusing upward. The display cabinets were arranged in a grid, spaced about three metres apart, each containing a single object. The cabinets towards the rear of the room were taller, to accommodate full-size costumes. She approached the nearest of the smaller displays. It contained an egg, smooth reflective chrome finish, about twelve centimetres along its longest diameter, sitting on a bed of crushed red velvet. She leaned closer to examine her distorted reflection in its surface; when she was about two feet away, the device suddenly shifted, orienting itself towards her. She froze; the pointed end bulged out and a ridge swept back along its length, like a ripple in liquid mercury. This was followed by a second ripple, and a third; more ripples followed until she backed away, whereupon the egg resumed its original shape. She turned to look at another cabinet, and didn't see the dozen-or-so needle-sharp spikes, each about five centimetres long, suddenly thrust out from the body of the egg, some of them slashing holes in the red velvet. They quivered, and then retracted into the egg. While Peter was using a computer terminal to examine a catalogue of erotica, she browsed, wondering at the possible uses of some of the more abstruse items. Many of them, such as the egg, seemed designed to stimulate areas of the female anatomy; others had more obscure functions. One device completely baffled her; it consisted of a series of nine metal rings, mounted on the back of something like a telephone handset, the rings set about a centimetre apart. They varied in diameter from six centimetres at one end, down to about four at the other; the mounting seemed designed to permit the rings to move from side to side. It looks, she thought, like an exercise bike for a python. Thinking this, she suddenly perceived its use; the thought bringing a wry smile to her lips. Her attention was then drawn to the taller cabinets at the back of the room. The first one that she came to featured a spare sort of wire frame supporting a full-body suit made of gleaming black latex. Reading a tiny plaque mounted on the side of the cabinet, she learned that the design had been borrowed from the Fremen Stillsuits featured in the film version of `Dune'. It looked, if anything, just smaller than would comfortably fit her; she stood there admiring the form, the lines which looked as if the suit were designed to concentrate pressure on the perineum and around the breasts, pushing them upwards. As she gazed in rapture, a click sounded from near the floor, and the glass front of the cabinet slid down smoothly. Startled, she took a step back. The wire frame suddenly moved forward, as if it was presenting the suit to her for approval. She noted that the insides had been liberally dusted with talcum powder. She looked around... Peter was still chuckling over the electronic catalogue, and no-one else was in the room... she reached out and took the suit, lifting it from the frame by the inflated, lip-shaped collar. Her hand almost recoiled from it; the slick black surface was as warm as flesh, and had a similar resiliency. Taking the collar in both hands, she tugged, and was surprised at how easily and how far it stretched. She unlatched the matte-black plastic catch at the front of the collar and slowly drew the zip down to where it ended just above the waist. She stepped out of her sneakers, removed her socks; quickly unbuckled her jeans, undid the fly, kicked them off; slipped her T-shirt over her head, transferring the suit to the other hand as she did so. After a moment's hesitation, she slid her underpants down to her ankles and stepped out of them. Trying to make as little sound as possible, she shook the suit out, turned it around and placed one foot inside. It slid down the leg-hole easily, the black material comfortably stretching to allow passage of her foot. The leg terminated in a sort of soft rubber shoe which fit her perfectly. She drew the rest of the suit up her leg, running her hand over the smooth black surface with her hand, and then put her other foot in. She drew the rest of the suit up her thighs and pulled it up around her waist, tugging from side to side and wiggling her hips in order to seat it on her crotch snugly. She stood there for a moment, reveling in the sensation of rubber closed over her; after her initial stretching to accommodate her form, it seemed to be contracting with more resistance than she had felt before. Grasping the suit by both sides of the collar, she tugged it up and over her shoulders, but the suit now seemed about two sizes too small. She tugged again, more firmly, and reluctantly, the suit stretched to the point where she could slip the collar up over her shoulders and around her neck. She zipped the suit up at the front and re-latched the collar, running her hands down her front, over her breasts, smoothing the suit to her warm body. The costume still seemed to be awkwardly placed; she wriggled around, trying to peer down her back to see if she could spot what was amiss. She bent over forwards, straightened the material around her calves, and in moving her right leg to get at the suit, she suddenly felt the band that ran from each shoulder to her crotch tighten; concealed folds within the costume slid along the divide of her buttocks, under the perineum and into her at the front. She gasped and straightened; this action caused the folds to flutter against her with an unusually stimulating sensation. She merely stood there for a few moments, enjoying the feeling; then, with a small smile, she slowly walked over to the terminal where Peter was trying to do a global search on the word `velcro' (and finding far too many references). With each step, the suit pressed against her and relaxed, almost like a lover's tongue. It was becoming quite warm, and in places, she could feel the slick sweat inside lubricating the contact between her and the latex. I'll have to take it off soon, she thought, otherwise I'll have a terrible sweat-rash tomorrow... She approached the terminal, put a hand on Peter's shoulder and whispered, `How does this look?' Peter turned and did a double-take. `I'm impressed,' he said after recovering, `very impressed. Hey, I wonder what /this/ button does...', reaching out to press a nipple-sized contact mounted on the waistband. `Hey -' she exclaimed as the suit twitched. `ohmighod, I think it's /alive/!' She stood there apprehensively while tiny tremors and contractions ran up and down the back of the suit, squeezing her hips and behind. The sensation was so unexpected that she turned to see if someone was standing behind and had just decided to goose her. The twitchings ceased momentarily, and her apprehension grew... `Um. Maybe I should take it off...' Just then, the material at the back of the thighs contracted slightly; the rubber just above her waistband at the front did the same, forcing her into a semi-crouch. In panic, her hand scrabbled at the zipper-catch, but it had retreated behind a fold of rubber which seemed to have melded into the body of the suit. The material contracted again, more insistently; this time, she was forced to her knees. `Peter. I think I should get this suit off. /Now/.' He kneeled next to her and felt along the line where the zipper had been; there was nothing but a faint seam to mark its location. The suit contracted again, around her hips, hugging her sensually; her eyes widened and her hands drifted, involuntarily, to her crotch. Peter tugged at the collar; it stretched easily, until he had pulled the edge almost twenty centimetres away from her; but as soon as he let go, it smoothly contracted until it had resumed its original shape, fitting snugly around her throat. It wasn't tight enough to obstruct her breathing, but she still tugged at it uneasily. Peter took the opposite sides of the collar in his hands, tugged outward and downward, dragging it over her shoulders. The upper section of the suit peeled away, and snapped tight around her midriff, trapping her arms at her sides. She struggled in a sudden panic, but Peter kept tugging until he had managed to get it down past her hips. The suit writhed and almost crawled down her legs, to lie in a rumpled heap around her ankles. With a tiny grimace of distaste, she stepped out of it, and scurried back to the cabinet to fetch her clothing. `Are you all right?' Peter asked, the now-limp suit in one hand, held away from his body like a possibly dangerous snake. Tara finished doing up the fly-buttons on her jeans and sank gratefully into his embrace. `I'm okay... is that thing dead?' he held it up, poked at it with his free hand. `Hard to say... i'm not sure it was alive in the first place.' Tara shuddered. `/I/ am. Come on, let's dump it and go.' Peter frowned. `Can you wait a bit? That terminal's doing an involved search, and it should be finished in a few minutes...' She scowled, but nodded. He smiled and kissed her forehead, rather patronisingly, she thought. She strolled off to look at some of the other cabinets at the front of the room. It was then that she noticed, in the shadows behind the stairwell rail, another set of stairs leading up to a fifth floor. Her eyes widened; she turned and glanced back at Peter, who was still absorbed in his search. She peeked up the stairs, but could see nothing except a faint blue-green glow from above. She glanced back at Peter again; he looked up briefly as her foot touched the first step leading up. He waved and, reassured, she continued. The fifth floor was somehow much larger than the others; it seemed to extend for at least three blocks in all directions. It was probably some subtle effect of the lighting, which was all blue-green ripples, as if the slippery, waxed floor was actually a subterranean lake. The roof was supported by bare white columns, spaced about ten metres apart. In the centre of the room stood something that looked like an elaborate Egyptian sarcophagus, detailed in gold and chrome. The door-shells lay open along two hinges that ran up the back, like a book. She got closer and saw that the inside was lined with lush, thick black velvet. She ran her hand down the inside of the case. It felt wonderful... She looked about again; she was alone. Smiling, she stepped into the case, and stood with her back to the hinges, feeling the inverted shells lined with velvet on both sides. She closed her eyes and threw her head back; there seemed to be an indentation placed to comfortably seat the back of her head, and another, placed lower, that she could almost sit into. She lay back in the soft, dark embrace of the sarcophagus and imagined that she'd been buried under a mountain of dry stone blocks and golden sand, inside this elaborate coffin. She practised being dead; eyes closed, she breathed out, hands crossed over her breasts. After about twenty seconds of this, she giggled and resumed breathing. She stood inside the shell, running her hands along the insides for almost five minutes, admiring the sensual feel of the velvet, which seemed faintly warm to her touch. The more contact she had with it, the more she wanted to feel it against her skin, and it was only a matter of moments before the decision was made to to strip naked. She did so, tossing her clothes across the floor, and was soon leaning back into the welcoming halves of the coffin. She pushed her head back and spread her arms; her legs, behind and lower back seemed to find their places in the warm, dark recesses; her body sank back of its own accord. She sighed and closed her eyes. The faint feeling of a breeze against her naked breasts caused her to open her eyes, only to see the twin sides of the sarcophagus closing over her. She shouted in panic; too late, as the doors shut and her protest was muffled in folds of thick black material. She desperately pushed her hands out to try and stop the two halves coming together completely; to no avail... the shells closed slowly but insistently. Just as the vertical gap of blue-green light narrowed to a strip, then to a crack, she cried out in terror; then she was enclosed in soft darkness. ... The search completed, Peter looked up from the terminal. Tara wasn't in the room, so she must have decided to explore the fifth floor. He shrugged, turned the terminal off and climbed the steps... Sunday Morning Noise by Dava very early sunday morning (i.e. around eight a.m.). the room is lit by sunlight creeping around the window-shade, a dark-purple square and some low, guttering candles on the altar. three figures are sleeping entwined in the black sheets on the bed, zebra-like intervals of pale skin, dark sheets, more pale skin, dark hair. at the moment, it's impossible to discern their genders. a jet passes over, engines making the windows buzz slightly. a candle flickers and dies. a car pulls up outside, muffler loose and rattling, automotive emphysema. a door opens, slams shut again; a bonnet creaks up and then the radio starts blaring out something too distorted to identify. it has the standard dance-mix beat; occasional samples and synth notes pop out of the fuzz, putting it just on the annoying edge of recognition. whatever it is, it's loud enough to wake up one of the sleepers. she slithers out from the sheets, stands and stretches, small breasts pointing at the Giger poster above the altar, rubs dark makeup from her eyes, brushes back gel-stiffened strands of blue-black hair. the music from outside grows slightly louder. she steps over stray boots, socks and underwear, sorts amongst the junk on the altar, eventually selecting something shaped like a cordless drill. she presses a contact on one side, and a red LED blinks. out in the hallway, Kiril ignores her lack of clothing and tosses her a piece of fruit that he's grown out in the back yard. she catches it in her right hand, smiles her gratitude and bites into it, white teeth behind dark purple lips. it has the texture of a peach, a taste somewhere between an apple and a pear, and is packed with euphoric chemicals. no seeds. glossy dark purple, almost black skin. she pads up the hallway to the huge front door, enters six digits on the keypad, opens it. the front yard is overgrown with vines, ferns, an impenetrable mass of greenery with a tunnel cut along the path to the outside world. she blinks at the occasional shaft of sunlight which falls on her. outside the front gate, she can see a huge, something - a Ford? A Datsun? she has no idea; the rear tyres are much larger than the front ones, it's painted bright red and has a fluourescent green fuzzy dice the size of a basketball hanging from the rear-view mirror. the music is coming from two shoebox-sized speakers set amidst the sheepskin that lines the rear window. the bonnet, as she would have heard had she been awake at the time, is up and a pair of legs in acid-wash jeans terminating in elastic-sided boots is protruding from the left-hand side of the car. the legs wave about as if the body that they belong to is trying to undo a bolt with its teeth. she examines the device she found on the altar. there are two unmarked dials on the back, both of which she sets to their half-way points; she then points it at the car and presses the trigger. it buzzes three times, a green LED flashing above the dials; she turns it to one side, frowning, then finds the safety catch and unlatches it. this time when she presses the trigger, it gives off a deep hum and a faint disturbance - almost like a sheet of heat-haze wrapped into a pencil-sized tube - reaches from the barrel of the weapon to the side of the car. twisting the left-hand dial makes the tube expand to the width of a toilet-tube, and she can see faint waves streaming along the beam to where it hits the side of the car, scratching and screaming like a dentist's drill. the bonnet falls down, and the person connected to the legs starts shouting. the beam moves up towards the front of the car, blows in a side window and hits something vital inside; the radio dies. she releases the trigger and notes that a foot-thick layer of haze has surrounded the car, which is beginning to crackle and smoulder. the legs have stopped moving. she backs off and watches as the car heats up, the windshield popping out like a set of false teeth being spat, the tyres bursting, the petrol tank rupturing and spraying flame from the back with a breathy `fooosh' sound; the upholstery burning, the frame sagging into the softened tar of the road. the blaze seems to be confined to the car-shaped field. she nods and goes back inside. her companions are still asleep; she adds a fragment of amber to the single burning candle, to cover the smell of burning rubber, places the weapon on the altar and climbs back into bed. - Life With Dava - by Arifel foursday morning. that means the home shopping delivery! food! i went over to the wall, checked the flag - which was flashing green - and pulled open the drawer. this time, the second and third drawers opened as well, making a bin set into the side of our apartment about one and a half metres deep. i started lifting out plastic bags and dumping them on the kitchen table, selecting by feel the ones that had been refrigerated and putting them under the conical stasis-field in the corner. that still left a large assortment of... things. i picked up one, examined it; a blank white waxed cardboard tetrahedron about the size of a softball, faint raised edges spelling out alien pictograms that i could see by holding the container up to the light, turning it from side to side, catching the shallow shadows. i shook it; whatever was inside shifted around like a liquid. i shrugged, took it over to the sink and punched a hole in one side with a fork, a scratch and three small punctures leaking a thick saffron fluid which smelled like blood. my nose wrinkled involuntarily and it went into the waste recycler. if any of the others wanted to try them, there were five more. there was a box which i knew had a passable copy of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, the blobby, oddly-shaped script on the side of the box remeniscent of Moridani Phandric. this box and two others like it went on the shelf. there were things like a book of raffle-tickets, five centimetres along the spine by thirty centimetres, the leaves pale green, pulpy and edible, faint taste of cinnamon. on the shelf. a hexagonal-closest-packed stack of ball bearings wrapped in blue- tinted clingfilm. that went over in the `don't know' corner with the knotted finger-thick tubes filled with glowing white liquid, the incomprehensibly twisted spanner set, the tin cans with non-human script and pictures of spitted and dressed people on the labels, the package of two-dimensional biscuits that we couldn't pick up once we'd unwrapped them, the music disks with unreadable or incomprehensible data and pictures of six-legged animals on their labels. four clear plastic pencils filled with dark grey powder. i hid these in my jacket pocket. most of the other stuff that they'd sent us was standard, generic non-interesting food, things we'd identified before and had been game enough to taste; short, wide jars filled with rich, yeasty-smelling black paste, bright orange grapes, spherical sponge-cakes, dodecahedrons filled with slightly salty water; amidst all of this, a startlingly human-looking jar of Nescafe Blend 43 instant coffee (the label saying that it was `MADE ON SYNDAINE', wherever that was). i held the jar up and shouted, `hey, everyone! COFFEE!' Peter passed by, looked in, sniffed, grabbed some grapes and continued on down the hall. Dava came in behind him, took the jar, unscrewed the lid and broke the seal with her thumbnail; she inhaled and shuddered. `lovely! is there any sugar left?' i indicated the crystalline block on the shelf with spoon-marks on one side; she leaped at me and hugged me. after disengaging, she sorted through the few things left on the table that i hadn't moved into the `don't know' corner. she picked up a mirror-surfaced forearm-sized cylinder, examined it, looked at me; i shrugged. she took it over to the sink and gently tapped it against the edge of the waste-recycler's mouth. there was a brief fingernails-on-blackboard screech, the mirror-surface vanished and she was holding a roll of soft black cloth, carpet-thick. a reel of thread had been attached to the end; it fell into the sink and she caught it before it rolled down the waste-recycler. for almost a minute she just stood there, rubbing a fold of the cloth between her fingers, eyes closed, cooing. `come here and feel this.' tentatively, i stroked it with an index finger. it felt... well, strange; very slippery, almost frictionless in fact; warm, furry, elastic. she held up the edge and let the rest drop, a jet-black strip half a metre wide and almost two metres long. very black. no shadows; i'd even go as far as to say light-absorbent. she laid it out on the table and fetched her sewing kit. while i sat on the bench, pulling off chunks of sponge and chewing them, she took off her jeans - faded black denim that fit her slim hips like a tight glove - and laid them next to the strip of alien cloth. they looked dusty in comparison. dava turned them inside-out and took a pair of scissors to them, cutting out a wide pinnate section starting at the base of the zip, under and between the legs, up the back. she held them up for my examination. `crotchless jeans. nice,' i said around a mouthful of sponge. she picked up the alien cloth and cut out a broad hastate strip just larger than the section she'd cut out of the denim. it took her only ten minutes to hand-sew it into the crotch of her jeans. she took off her underpants before trying them on, wriggling her hips as she settled into the familiar shape. `what does it feel like?' i asked. she stood facing me, hips moving in tentative circles, her eyes closed. she ran her hand down her behind, shivered and then murmured, `excuse me.' she left the room, walking slowly, the crease of alien material riding up between her buttocks. i shook my head and made some coffee. - Wurlitzer Love - by Dava A bar that bears a suspicious resemblance to the one in `Akira'; night-time. The numbers are divided, unevenly, between Goths (few) and members of a social sub-group known (in australia) as Bogans (many). A word about Bogans to those unfamiliar with them: citified, urban red-necks, they wear tight blue jeans; tartan flannel over t-shirts advertising beer; moccasins. They will have a packet of cigarettes tucked into the rolled-up t-shirt sleeve. Their musical tastes encompass such innovative and ground-breaking acts as Cold Chisel, AC-DC, the whole Guns 'n' Jovi thing. They drive overpowered Holdens and Fnords and have no intellectual pursuits beyond ridiculing Goths. The place is quiet except for the drunken hoots of the Bogans. A gaggle of them stagger over to the juke-box. It's one of those modern computer-based things, a rounded column about the width of those old Esso petrol-pumps, smooth unmarked plastic the colour of old bronze. A list of available songs scrolls past at chest height, yellow text on blue. The Bogans jabber excitedly, pointing out tracks by Jimmy Barnes, The Angels, Rose Tattoo; their voices die down slowly as their spare processing capability is taken up with the task of figuring out how to work the juke-box. There aren't any coin slots, no swipe-card recess; no buttons, dials, switches, contact-pads, not even a grill for a voice-recognition system. Half the group grow more excited at the list of songs and the other half grow more exasperated at their inability to get the thing to play any of them. One particularly drunken specimen kicks the machine; the glowing screen flickers and fades. They give a ragged cheer and go back to the bar for more beer. A young Goth girl - floor-length black dress, lace panel over her cleavage, black lipstick, white face, kohl-darkened eyes with eyeliner curlicues, burgundy ribbons in her white hair - goes over to the juke-box and, before the astounded gaze of the Bogans, gives it an unashamedly affectionate hug. The screen comes back on, this time with blood-red Fraktur text on a black screen, listing songs by Big Electric Cat, Rosetta Stone, Southern Death Cult, Skinny Puppy. She gives the machine a secret smile and whispers to it; seconds later, `Heresy' by Nine Inch Nails is screaming out of the sound system. While the Bogans scratch their fleas, the Goth girl sweeps off to dance with herself. - Ethnic Cleansing - by Arifel if anyone had ever tried to classify such things, i suppose this would have been suburban nightmare number twenty-three. it was sunday night, moving on into monday morning. we'd been out to Apocalypse on saturday night and had kept going thoughout sunday, finally running out of steam around eight o'clock in the evening. seven of us had started, but only three of us had made it through the gauntlet of the goth nightclub, the early-morning drinking session and the sunday market trauma. it was a shame that when we finally collapsed into my king-size bed, Jeri and i were too tired to do anything with Michael; we were good friends, not so close that we felt we had to do anything apart from sleep whenever we ended up in bed together. anyway. as i said, it was monday morning when the front door was kicked in and the house was invaded by a squad of heavily-armed men, their faces hidden behind reflective-plastic gas-masks. they'd cut off the power before making their dramatic entrance, and the place was underlit by their very bright torches. we were too stunned to ask what they were doing; they just surrounded the bed, pointing their blunt-nosed rifles at us. Jeri - always a quick thinker in these situations - sat up in the bed and let the black sheets drop from around her shoulders, exposing one pale-nippled breast. i could see the line of some of the rifles waver in response, but they weren't about to be swayed from whatever they'd come to do. someone up the back shouldered their way through the armed men and held up a plastic bag with a sheet of paper inside. i couldn't see much due to the uncertain nature of the light but i did see the word `cleansing' in bold type near the top of the page. that was all it took to start that Pop Will Eat Itself song cycling through my mind; as they bundled us out of the house - still undressed - and into the back of their black van, i imagined their thumping, booted feet keeping time with the riff in my head, over and over... `Ich bin ein Auslander...' there were about a dozen others in the back of the van, in similar stages of undress. nobody i knew. we were too numb to speak; Jeri and i huddled together for solace while the van lurched around the streets, making two more pickups - five more people - before stopping at a long building in the middle of a concrete compound, surrounded by cyclone-wire fences. there were guard-towers at the corners with spotlights and, behind them, just visible against the sky, the long barrels of automatic weapons. we were herded, shivering, through the double doors at the end of the building, down a long corridor and into a low-ceilinged room with that kind of painted concrete floor you sometimes saw in institutional communal showers. the doors slammed shut behind us and there was an ominous silence. i was the only one who spoke: `i guess Jello Biafra was right all along.' Jeri laughed, despite herself. a clanking sound came from overhead - oh, goddess, this was it - and suddenly sprays of warm water shot out of concealed spigots in the ceiling. again, we were too shocked to say anything; we stood or kneeled in a bunch at the centre of the room while the hot water beat down on us. it was quite relaxing, after a while; i'd just started massaging Jeri's shoulders when the water shut off and the guards entered with large, white towels. we were forcibly dried off and returned to our homes, but they still haven't been back to fix the front door. - Company's Coming - by Tal Meta Commander Derek Quan was the sort of curious halfbreed the Earthani Militia sought out. Born of a Chinese mother and a black SolBelt father, what skin he had left was the color of creamed coffee. He favored burgundy mirrorchrome for his prosthetics, except for the eyes, which shined like two backlit emeralds. He had doctorates in both mathematics and history, and masters degrees in a half-dozen more subjects. Never a "people-person", Derek had pulled all the strings he could to get his current position as Chief Watch Officer aboard the EMW_Cape_May. CWO wasn't a command position; it didn't have to be. The Cape_May only had life support for four, and most of that was for emergencies. No, Derek was quite alone. Except for the voices of the stars. Sitting naked and alone in the 'tower, Derek would often have the onboard computer tune into a hundred or more frequencies at once, and just let them hiss and crackle in dissonant harmony. Every once in awhile, some signal would manage to rise above the noise of the stars, and then Derek's life would be hectic for awhile... isolating its direction, amplitude, probable age... Humanity knew seven races by contact, and had heard rumors of perhaps a dozen more. Most of the rumored ones lay at the far ends of their known races' trading sectors, but the geography of space often meant that what was a fringe area to one race was right next door to the next. Earthani economic & military strategists were guessing that one such race, known as the Ifshnaire, a Vorsk client-race, were actually situated within few hundred light years of the Human worlds. Since direct contact with the Ifshnaire would cut out the Vorsk as a middleman in mutual trade, and there was also the chance of putting Humanity into contact with other races as yet undiscovered, Humanity had started the WatchTower Project, of which the Cape_May was a part. The Cape_May was shaped vaguely like a dumbbell. One end contained the sophisticated radio and gravimetric sensors, the other contained a powerful hyperpulse transmitter. Life support, Derek's meager living quarters, the fusion reactor, and a few weapons occupied the 10km long "shaft" of the platform. Cape_May held a wide orbit around a white dwarf star, well beyond the star's wispy solar wind and the noise of her remaining gas giant's magnetic storms. On a really good day, Derek could filter enough static out to get really, really crummy reception of radio and TV broadcasts from Earth made 450 years before, and then ONLY because he knew what frequency ranges to look in, and what type of transmissions to look at. Usually not worth the trouble, as it was all still in black & white. For the last week, Derek had been receiving intermittent signals in binary. The messages had a strange, blue-shifted quality to them, as if the source were approaching him at relativistic speeds. The messages he'd tried sending at the source of the transmissions wouldn't reach them, even with the closing velocity, for another six months or more. Derek was very hopeful that he'd have the chance at a "first contact". Company'd be nice out here, so long as it wasn't _Human_ company.... ... When the EMS_Camille jumped in-system eight months later to resupply the Cape_May, only her half-blasted shell remained. No trace of Cmdr. Quan was ever found. ... Eli always liked to watch transition... something about the way the starfields would shift and dance about in the few seconds it took for his aging ScoutJS to make the jump across the void appealed to the romance in his soul. On the far side of the control center, a proximity alarm began its shrill bleating. Eli ignored it for the moment, as he swung the ship's nose towards the star he'd recently arrived at. Setting the sail mechanism on automatic, he motioned towards a small, monkey-like being that had been curled up one of the spare acceleration couches. "C'mere Jingo, watch the dials. Call me if it goes into the red." Jingo clambered up over the top of the couch he'd been sleeping in and gracefully leapt the intervening distance, an easy feat in the zero-gravity of the ship. As the biostruct settled himself atop the sailmaster's position, Eli's aged, wrinkled body made a similar leap to the helmsman's position. Zero gravity gave even his old body grace. Eli quickly silenced the proximity alert, and began adjusting the Doppler radar set to resolve the shape of the object that had set off the alarm. He half expected to find a cluster of asteroids, or some other similar body, as such debris often was found at jump-points. But the object the radar reported was too diffuse to be rock, and the spectrometer was reporting some kind of metal alloy. "A ship? Didn't think even pirates would be out this far; no shipping lanes within a hundred light-years." Eli mused to himself as he brought more of the ships instruments online. Spectrometer showed traces of titanium, cobalt, and ceramics, with a dusting of oxygen, carbon dioxide, and helium ice coating the outside. Magnetometer was off the scale; whatever it was had a strong magnetic field inside somewhere. Gravitometer was going wild, swinging between 1.2 & 1.5 gees in an erratic pattern. Massometer showed the entire ship, less the varying gravitational field, weighed in at about 100,000 metric tons. Optics showed it to be roughly egg-shaped. Eli was still musing over the readings when the door to the bridge slid open and Cecilia glided towards his position. Cecilia was another biostruct... only in her case, the only telltale sign of it were the birthmarks on her forehead and left buttock. Designed as a rich man's sexual plaything, Eli'd bought her at an auction for a tenth of her original selling price. Lossend biomerchants were notorious for their shoddy business practices, and in Cecilia's case they'd skimped on a few controls in her personality. For instance, while they'd designed her to be a loving, sexually enthusiastic companion for her millionaire owner, they'd neglected to inhibit her cravings to JUST her master. When her owner came home early one day to find her straddling the gardener, he came very close to killing her out of hand. He settled for having the merchant's home burned to the ground. But the laws governing the ownership of biostructs, _especially_ humanoid ones, carried stiff penalties for damaging them. In disgust, he sold her to an auctioneer, and Eli bought her for a song. Besides, aboard the HJS_Lansing, there were no other men for her to be unfaithful with. Intelligence was another area they'd skimped on, but neither the millionaire or Eli cared much about that. She had a chipware socket, after all. Eli had his own strange tastes... scout pilots often went for years at a time in the unexplored reaches beyond mankind's settled stars. If he hadn't had a grav deck installed aboard ship, he'd probably have made her cut off all her hair. Instead he let her grow it long, and it billowed out behind her as she drifted across the bridge to his position. Even though he himself seldom bothered with clothing more complex than underwear, he always made Cecilia dress in a patent leather black corset, with garters and black circuit pattern hose. Even though Eli didn't know it, her genetic pattern was based on the one time UN President Vera Wells, a woman almost as famous for her beauty as for her chilling slaughter of a quarter million rebels aboard a habitat in the Harmony system when she'd been a captain in the EMS. She settled into his lap almost purring with desire. "What's so int'sting, Eli, that its keeping you up here so long? 'celia's getting impatient for her man. Besides, dinner is almost ready!" Eli liked his women to be a bit on the teasing side, so he'd bought a custom skillsoft to give her the personality he wanted. Cooking was another thing he needed, so he'd bought an American cuisine chip as well. The third chipslot was usually empty; Eli'd plug in a Kama Sutra chip when he began to grow jaded in his appreciation of Cecilia's charms. "Found a ship, sweetheart. Real odd one, too. I think I'm going to have to investigate it firsthand, as its got too strong of a magnetic field to use a WAD in. If its a derelict, I'll have salvage rights to it. Doesn't match to anything in the Federation's database, so that means its from a new alien species." 'Why'd it be a der'lit, Eli? How you know?" her hand was snaking down towards Eli's crotch, spoiling any illusion that she was actually interested in his discovery. "Because, darling, its got a variable gravimetric field, like one of those Saathik ships. Only it looks like this one's gone haywire, and maybe killed everyone aboard. Traces of atmospheric gasses icing up the hull, so she may have lost pressure. Why, the man who brings back even a broken gravity generator could well write his own ticket, back home. Saathik ships'd just explode and fuse all the components if tampered with... these folks might not be so paranoid." While Eli was explaining the possibilities of salvage to his concubine, another of the small monkey-like beings appeared in the doorway Cecilia had entered from, ringing a small bell. Monks were a biostruct often sold as pets, even though they were almost as intelligent as an eight year old human child. While incapable of human speech, they could read, and had an attention span any eight year old's parents would die for. "Jango says dinner's ready, Eli. Please come and eat. You can go 'splore your der'lit after dinner." Cecilia half pulled, half pushed Eli from the helm, pulling him along behind her. ... Meanwhile, aboard the 'derelict', carefully shielded sensors slowly, cautiously came on line. Detecting only electromagnetic and primitive gravimetric sensors being used to probe itself, it brought its own, more sophisticated equipment online. Carefully, it extruded an antenna on the far side of its hull, and broadcast a tight meson beam to a point deep in the inner system's asteroid belt: "CONTACT. 4 BIOSENTIENT, 2 PROTO-SENTIENT. TECHLEVEL 101. ACQUIRE Y/N?".... ... After dinner and 'dessert', Eli clambered through the airlock separating his shuttle from the main ship. Jango followed along, carrying a small container of water and Eli's gyrojet pistol. After a brief preflight, Eli disconnected the shuttle and began a cautious approach of the derelict. While the autopilot made course corrections to bring the shuttle within 100 meters of the alien vessel, Eli struggled into a much stained flightsuit, followed by a pressure suit that was almost 30% patches. As the ship began its final braking maneuvers, Eli strapped his gyrojet pistol to his hip, and motioned Jango into a emergency pressure ball. Once his shuttle had reached its destination, he dragged Jango's pBall into the airlock and leapt across the distance separating the two ships. About 10 meters from the derelict's hull, he fired an EVA stick at full throttle, hoping to cushion the impact with the ship's g-field. Even still, he hit hard enough to rattle teeth. A 10 minute search finally revealed what could only be a hatch on the surface of the ship. Ice, probably oxygen or CO2, made it difficult to get the hatch open, and Eli eventually had to resort to chipping it away with the butt of his pistol. Once inside the alien craft, the monitors on Eli's suit reported a thin, cold, but breathable mixture of gasses. What the monitors didn't report on was the smell. "I pity you your sense of smell, Jango. After this trip you'll probably be mis-seasoning dinner for a week!" Eli's nose couldn't wrinkle quite as effectively as the monk's, but the stench of what he guessed was rotten meat was pretty stiff. The corridor leading away from the airlock was at best dimly lit, filthy, and showed signs of a battle having been fought in and around it sometime in the distant past. No bodies were in evidence, but the perfectly cylindrical shape of the corridor was reminiscent of a Drallim ship, except for their size. "Big blokes, to need hallways this big around..." Eli mused to himself, as he and Jingo began to look for signs of the ship's crew. ... ...2 BIOSENTIENT ABOARD, 1 PROTO-SENTIENT WITHIN 12 KAMEII. BEGINNING COLLECTION PROCEDURE... ... The corridors seemed to snake around in no discernable pattern; whoever they were, straight lines and flat surfaces weren't high on their list of design parameters. After awhile, Eli began to realize that perhaps the corridors were the size they were to permit their gravity technology to make every surface 'down', without causing vertigo. Chambers located off the corridors were spherical, and usually filled with equipment Eli couldn't even imagine the uses of. Some had surfaces that seemed to glimmer, or that had a sort of twisting, escher-like effect to them. Controls? Readouts? Eli's portable techscanner couldn't tell. After a half hour of wandering aimlessly, Eli began to follow his nose. After another 15 minutes, his search was finally rewarded... sort of. His best guess was that it had been an arm. A loose grouping of fingers(?) at one end still curled tightly around what he guessed was a weapon. When Eli tried prying them away, they broke, sending out a faint spray of dust as they did so. What looked like the 'trigger' was protected behind a guard too small to get his own fingers through, so he dropped it into the empty pBall tucked under his gunbelt. Taking the nearest exit led Eli into the first spherical chamber he'd encountered that did not have any gravity. Here the dim lights gave way to a billion or more brilliant pinpricks spread out in a large spiral; a model of the Milky Way. One point in particular drew Eli's attention by simply being hard to look at, and the more he concentrated, the more clear it became. Suddenly, instead of the whorl of the galaxy, he floated suspended amidst the stars of system he was currently in. He could see the derelict, as well as his own ship... but he was beginning to get a massive headache. He tried changing his point of view, remembering the night sky of L-6, his home system... ... COLLECTION PROCESS COMPLETE. POINT OF ORIGIN ESTABLISHED. PROCEEDING TO COORDINATES 1143.12 x 11874.23 x 13.565. ETA 14,234,492,992,110 CYCLES. COLLECTION OF PROTO-SENTIENTS AND REMAINING BIOSENTIENTS OF SECONDARY IMPORTANCE. COLLECT AT LEISURE. ... Klaxons began ringing anew aboard the HJS_Lansing when the egg-shaped derelict shimmered, then shot out of sight at almost 98% of lightspeed. Cecilia had grown restless on the grav deck, and had eventually wandered up to the bridge to watch the pretty dials and lights flicker. Jingo quickly clambered to the top of the acceleration couch he'd been napping in, futilely looking to Cecilia for instruction on what he should do. Cecilia, her hair forming itself into a tangled mask as she shook her startled head to and fro, quickly found the switch that would silence the proximity alarm. In the back of her mind, she tried very hard to remember what Eli had told her a thousand times before, about what to do if... if something BAD ever happened to him. Something about... a chip? Yes... the pretty blue one he'd never let her try before. She gracefully leapt across the bridge towards the door to the rest of their quarters. Once in their private quarters, she had a new dilemma. Eli kept the chips in the ship's locker, behind a small combination lock. She felt sick, deep in the pit of her stomach. Numbers and writing were very difficult for her, as her designers hadn't optimized her for anything but being a concubine. Oh, she had manners, and could be the belle of any party; her wit and grammar were impeccable, when she needed them to be. But when faced with a simple math problem that any born-human could solve in moments, she had to resort to carefully counting on her fingers and toes. What had Eli said? "You're the key to everything on this ship, my dear. I couldn't even start these engines without you." But that was silly. Eli almost never allowed her on the bridge, and he'd spanked her HARD the only time she'd ever gone down to the engine room. How could she be the key? Jingo was clambering around her ankles, making it hard to think. When she picked him up to swat his bottom, she noticed that the tattoo on his derriere contained a short string of... numbers! She knew the tattoo on her forehead was just a maker's mark, but...? Sure enough, as soon as she found her hand mirror, she tried angling it to show the tattoo on her left cheek. The numbers looked all funny, but she dutifully tapped them into the comb- lock. Nothing. The other way? To her elation, the door to the locker gave a gentle click, and swung open. Her hands were shaking so badly now that she dropped the chip twice before she managed to get it oriented on the socket at the nape of her neck. When she finally got it seated correctly, her mind exploded. Perhaps expanded would be the better term, she thought to herself. As the chip fed its database of knowledge and mannerisms into her brain, she felt the cold chill of her fear leave her. But she almost fainted as the full impact of the chip hit her... There was a voice in her head! A man's voice.... Eli's voice! Almost without realizing it, she'd returned to the bridge, and was reviewing the sensor logs of the alien spacecraft's vanishing act. All the numbers and readouts were still mostly gibberish to her, but it seemed to make sense to the Eli-in-her-head. Her hands flew across the controls now, and she could feel the hum of the ship's fusion generator come to full life. The ship shuddered as her hands worked a dozen controls, this one reeling in the solar sail, that one channeling energy from the fusion reactor directly to the drive coils. {Eli, what are we doing?} she thought to the presence in her mind, as he moved from one control station to the next, obviously preparing the ship for a quick jump out of the system. {The Eli you knew my sweet is likely dead by now. I'm the "original" Eli; the one you knew was a... not a clone, or biostruct, but a special kind of copy. He wore the same body we were both were born with, and we had alot in common, personality wise. But 40 years ago the Militia began losing ships and listening posts in this region of space to a new species... a race of machines... a race of weapons. We started calling them the Neumanns, because they have no name for themselves.} {Are we at war with them?} Cecilia wondered, half to herself, half to Eli. {Yes and no. We surmise they were created by some long dead race as a kind of "final weapon" of destruction. Even though it is likely that both their creators and the race they were designed to fight are both now dead, the Neumanns continue on, following orders that were given while men still lived in trees. Their travels through the universe finally brought them to the edges of our civilization, and now we must either fight them or die.} {Why do we call them New Mens if they aren't human?} Cecilia asked. {Not _New Men_, Neumanns, after Dr. Von Neumann, a 20th century theorist. He envisioned self-replicating machines designed for exploration. They'd travel from system to system, and when they found materials suitable for building others like themselves, they'd do so, expanding Humanity's reach and knowledge exponentially. These creatures are much the same, except instead of exploration, they engage in genocide. So far, we've lost every battle we've fought against them, which is why I volunteered for this mission.} "What kind of mission, Eli?" she whispered aloud. {I agreed to undergo a process that completely wiped my memory and experience from my body. An edited copy of that gestalt of knowledge was fed back into my meat-brain, while the rest was encoded into this chip. The Eli you knew has no memory of ever serving in the EMS, and doesn't even properly remember our childhood on Earth. _He_ believed he was raised on a planet circling L-6, a star in the military corridor. The Neumann's don't have hyperdrive, so it'll be several decades before that ship reaches there. What little we've learned about the Neumann's these past few years, aside from their lack of a jumpdrive, is that they operate in swarms; each Neumann imparts the sum total of its knowledge and tactics to its descendants.} {They also have some kind of psionic technology that they can use to pick the brains of races that they meet. Which is why Eli had to be as ignorant as possible of his true origins and function.... the Neumann'd spot any falsehoods he tried to plant. Also, as they "age", they add to themselves and change their mission profiles. The one that Eli just left here in is called a Trapper, about as old as Humanity's Industrial Age, 600 some odd years. It was designed to lure a sentient aboard, and then use its psionic instruments to locate its point of origin. Its "parent" is probably still here in this system, and already on its way to collect or exterminate -us-, which is why we have to hurry.} Almost on cue, the ship's proximity alarm began ringing anew, and a quick glance at the Doppler radar showed nearly a billion metric tons of mass rushing at the HJS_Lansing. "Thirty seconds to outjump, thirty-four seconds to intercept. Jingo, secure yourself and prepare for jump." Cecilia's voice held the commanding tones of a seasoned commander as she spoke. {How long before the Neumann reaches L-6?} {About 144 years. .98c seems to be the best speed they can make, and the big ones can't even make it over .91c. Plenty of time for us to prepare a proper welcoming party. Eli's going to have one hell of a funeral pyre...} ... Eli awoke naked in zero-g, in a bare chamber that seemed to radiate light from its very walls. Everything he'd brought aboard was gone, and the light seemed to reinforce his body's frailty. He couldn't smell the decay anymore; either it was gone, or he'd grown too used to it to notice anymore. His only company seemed to be a silver sphere about a meter in diameter and about 4 meters away. The very air seemed to thrum with power, as if the derelict's engines had come alive while he slept. As the sphere began to move towards him, he could see that it had been eclipsing the still, mutilated form of Jango. When the sphere began to unfold to reveal what looked very much like surgical instruments, Eli didn't even have the will to scream.... - A Date With Siaoubo - by Arifel The concert is due to start at eleven, but the main feature (Einstuerzende Neubauten) aren't due to come on until some time after midnight. i want to see what kind of goons would front for E.N, so i get to her place at quarter to ten. she's only just woken up, is still drunk, so i help her get dressed and drag her out to the car. she realises she's left her bag inside, rushed back to get it and emerges with one of those hessian bags, you know the ones, about the same size as a large TV screen. as we drive to the old greek theatre, she's going through the bag, doing an inventory. by the time we get to the main road, i feel like grabbing the bag and throwing it as far as i can - there are enough illicit pharmaceuticals in there to put us both away for several life-times. she keeps sampling them. i feel like Oscar Acosta, trying to keep up with Hunter S Thompson. i think at least one of us should be straight, so i settle on munching on some chewy, earthy- tasting brown stuff while she eats several varieties of capsules and tablets, washing them down with bourbon (yuck!). `are you trying to kill yourself with all that stuff?' `all what stuff? all this? this is -nothing-, my love.' `oy vey.' she keeps asking me to pull over, 'cause its hard to inject speed when i'm bumping over the tram-tracks in Bridge Road. i find a parking-spot around the back of that hopsital just down the road from the venue, and she crouches on the back seat with a spoon and a cigarette lighter and a length of shoe-lace, trying to co-ordinate her actions. i have half a coke-bottle full of water under my seat (left over from when i drove a car with a radiator) and so to avoid the distressing sight of my lady friend boiling up speed with bourbon, i offer it to her. i even hold the spoon for her. `you should try this stuff, it's great.' `uh-huh.' `no, really, you can shoot it into the veins along the side of your dick.' `yeah, right! did you read about that guy in the states who did that with cocaine? he developed blood clots in his legs and had to have them amputated, along with his balls, his dick and most of his fingers.' `well, that's -cocaine-, isn't it? that stuff's mostly baby powder anyway. -this- is pure, Gowron [real name changed to protect the guilty - ed] makes it himself.' `and what does he cut it with?' she snarls at me. `he wouldn't -dare-.' we walk down Bridge Road to the old greek theatre. there's a huge queue full of goths (up 'til now, i didn't know melbourne had this many goths) and we're right at the end of it. she's twitching like someone's jammed a power cable up her ass and they're turning it on and off in time to music only she can hear. despite the large number of alternative type people in the queue, people are still nervous when they see her. i just hope she doesn't start noticing that they're noticing her... we get inside, with approximately half of the audience still behind us, which means we get a fairly good seat. i chose seats up in the balcony in the hope that she wouldn't try to get up on stage and participate (as she had done in the past), but it occurs to me now that she might try some impromptu flying lessons. it seems she can't go more than sixty seconds without glaring at someone and asking them `what the f*** are you staring at, asshole?' i hang back and signal over her shoulder to whoever she addresses that she's off her face and should be ignored. i dread to think what she'd do if she turned around and caught me making that twirling-the-finger-next-to-the-head gesture. i don't think she brought that gun with her. i hope she didn't. there's some guy playing a variety of native australian instruments. he has a huge dirty grey beard and looks a lot like a wandering street person. his music isn't amplified and before she can focus her irritation on him, i try to engage her in a conversation about a story i'm writing, during the course of which i discover that she did bring the gun but didn't bring any bullets. what seems like years later, the street person has vanished and the stage crew are setting up E.N's stuff. desperate to sidetrack her from noticing her boredom - because she is most dangerous when bored - i ask her if she has anything `interesting' in her bag. a sly look crosses her asiatic features and she produces something like a ping-pong ball made of crumpled dark-brown paper. it smells like compressed dust-bunnies. she's looking at me like `go on, i dare you!'... i draw the moment out as long as i can, slowly take it from her, sniff it cautiously and then swallow it whole, hoping that it isn't fatally poisonous and that i can drive while under the influence of whatever it is. at that point, the band starts, Blixa Bargeld doing the speech which is the introduction to the song `Prolog', from `Haus Der Luege': Meint ihr nicht: wir koennten unterschrieben auf dass uns ein biz zwei prozent gehoeren und tausende uns hoerig sind i'm relieved that she waits until they start singing `Feurio!' before joining in. it's almost near the end of the show before she starts coughing badly. i drag her outside where she starts vomiting, really projectile, like a fire-hose. where is all this spew coming from? she's throwing up into the gutter and we're slowly moving up the street, and there's a police car on the other side of the road, and they're watching us... oh god. she finally runs out of chunks and faints, so i grab her in an awkward fireman's carry and stumble back to the car. just another fun night out. i'm driving her home when i realise the buzzing in my head, which i thought was from the loud music, hasn't gone away, and i remember the brown-paper ping-pong ball. uh oh. - INSPIRATION & RUBBER LOVE: 2 Songs - by Slack Mammoth Congratulations Leo Fender, and to the guy who thought of Body suits I do appreciate your contribution. but most of all, Jack Daniels, I thank you. Thank you, Jack Daniels for the life you saved me from; a wife to feed, a job to keep, a place to call my own. Thank you, jack daniles, for everything that you done... but most of all, Jack Daniels, you helped me write this song. Cold nights on the trail from colorado, I think about the girls that I once knew. But all I have around me is my horses, so Once again, Jack Daniels, I thank you. Thank you, Jack Daniels, for the guy you let me be; my social charm, My Tattoed arm, my yearning to be free. Well, thank you, Jack Daniels, for everything that you done... but most of all, Jack Daniels, you helped me.... yeah ya helped me... you helped me write this song. [End] Verse 1 I'm just crazy 'bout the fact that my baby doesnt breath. - E - | -A- | -E- | -A- | -E- | -A- | -E- | A- | turns me on, the way that I turn on her batteries. -E- | -A- | -E- | -A- | -E- | -A- | -E- | -A- | Chorus oh, oh oh, rubber love \___ x2 -B- | -B- |-A- | -A- | -E- | -A- | -E- | -A- | / Where | -A- | is a bar of A, straight eights. Verse 2. I don't mind that my baby don't help around the house. it's hard to pay the bills, but when it come to thrills, I never do without. Chorus Verse 3. when she meets my friends, they don't understand what I see in her Thats ok, I don't like them anyway, I'd rather be with her. chorus. [End2] - Images of ShadowWatch Keep - by The Awakening An angry red eye, Dying, dying, As it sinks, And winks, Out, The Stars peer cautiously, Glittering, O'er the moon-tossed land, As the shadows rise, Shades of black, And black, Dark wings, On a moody Night, Dark eyes, Watching, Brooding, As a slender moon-pale hand, Reaches out, And points, Towards a moon-pale castle, Between shaggy darksome forest, And cairn-dotted plain, It's ivory minarets tower, Above ebon courts, And dusky gardens, Where a silver-dappled rose, Grows, Nurtured by the pearly glow, Cool and close, Floating eternally full, Faintly smiling, Seductively beckoning, Calling, Through twilit halls, And gloomy chambers, Down inky stairwells, And lightless corridors, Deeper, deeper, To the nether reaches, Of a restless soul, To a door, Shut, Locked and fastened, Barred and bolted, A questing moonbeam, Slips in, Quiet and unobtrusive, Unnoticed, Gliding behind a chair, Silently, An alabaster maiden sits, Raven-tressed and sloe-eyed, Hushed, Before an icy cold hearth, Dark and empty, Waiting, Waiting, The silver-cool finger, Of Light, Quietly curls around her ankles, Tingling, Around her calves, Gleaming, shivering, Between her thighs, Glowing, Around her waist, Shining, Over her breasts, Sparkling, Around her neck, Pulsating, Over her eyes, Glittering, Radiant madness, Calling, Pulling, Tugging her up, Out, Through the door, Barred and bolted, Locked and fastened, Shut, Through lightless corridors, A moonlit maiden races, Up inky stairwells, Through gloomy chambers, And twilit halls, A moonlit maiden races, Across Stygian courts, Into a dusky garden, A moonlit maiden, Stops, Before a silver-dappled rose, And smiles, As she leans close, And gently kisses it, A lover's kiss, Before she rises, And looks into the Night, Silver-chased, Beneath an argent Moon, Seductively beckoning, Faintly smiling, Over a moon-struck land, Where dark eyes of jet, Watch, And brood, While a moon-struck maiden, Runs - High Flight - by John Gillespie Magee, Jr. Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth, And danced the sky on laughter-silvered wings; Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth Of sun-split clouds, and done a hundred things You have not dreamed of -- wheeled, and soared, and swung, High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there, I've chased the laughing winds along, and flung My eager craft through footless halls of air. Up, up the long, delirious, burning, blue, I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace, Where never lark, nor even eagle, flew, And while, with silent, lifting, heart I've trod The high untresspassed sanctity of space, Put out my hand, and touched the face of God. - Dark White - - 04: Touchdown - by IronHorse Gliding lowly over the tops of the buildings in the downtown Detroit area the nearly transparent Great White sailed in search of a host. His desires were to find some low-life criminal type who had escaped the system and had no right to an afterlife, even if it was to be burning in the depths of hell. However, unknown to Great White, another telepathic individual was standing in the crowded streets beneath his flight path, and was picking up on Great White's probes. 'Great. One of those do-gooder types,' thought Randal Smith as he slid his Colt .45 back into it's holster. 'I suppose the President would like me to go see what he's up to...' With that, the telepathic detective turned to the building behind him and mounted the stairs, again missing out on the fanfare that was a Presidential parade. "Shut up!" Eddie yelled at Lisa as he smashed her across the face, "I've got things to do!" "Yes Eddie, I'm sorry Eddie..." Lisa blubbered as blood ran down her cheek which already began to swell. "You know, I've just about had it with you," Eddie screamed. Lisa turned away from him, flinching from the blow she knew was inevitable and giving Eddie the perfect target to strike her in the back of the head, and knock her unconscious. "Bitch," Eddie said as she slumped to the floor. With his girlfriend out of the way, Eddie turned back mounting the tripod she was questioning him about on the window. She was correct, it was a photographer's tripod, but now Eddie was mounting on a special bracket he bought for just this one purpose. Killing the president. After a final adjustment he slid his rifle home. A look through the scope and he was quite satisfied. 'A parade? How am I supposed to find one sent of prevailing evil thoughts in a parade of thousands of people?' Great White asked himself. And just as his hopes were beginning to diminish, he caught the fish he was looking for. 'Take this Mister President,' echoed in the hero's head in the words of Edward Lynch, accompanied by that man's imaginary image of a bullet striking between the eyes of the President. Great White soared towards his prey. 'Take this? Well I'll be damned,' thought Randal Smith as he stalked up the apartment building in which Edward Lynch was stationed. 'Seems Mister Goody-goody has relayed some information to the proper authorities for once, instead of knocking the whole damn city down by trying to take care of it himself. I am surprised.' Lynch was getting edgy, he could hear the sirens of the lead motorcycles in the motorcade coming down the road, he wasn't sure if the eleventh floor was such a good idea to be shooting from, but he knew it would give him the best chance of getting away. As he waited, he looked back on Lisa lying unconscious on the floor, and thought back onto why he was so set on killing this man. Eight years ago Lynch was in 'The Vipers', a rather dirt-bag little gang in the northern end of the Bronx. They didn't command much respect among the other gangs, quite possibly because the other gangs knew even their weakest members could kick the snot out of the Vipers entire gang. However, they did have themselves set aside in a small neighborhood and were doing pretty good, as gangs go. The police near bothered with the Vipers either, they too having bigger and better things to concern them. So the Vipers had a rather easy life. Eddie found himself a girl, and soon he was the second in command of the thirty-odd member group. He was rather proud of himself for once, actually doing something with his life after failing and dropping out of high school. However, President - then Mayor of NYC - McCartile ruined all that. In what was to be his first step towards the Presidency, McCartile declared a war on all the gangs in NYC. Employing the National Guard and some super-powered special forces when necessary, he would not stop until every gang was wiped out. As a sample of his abilities, he decided to start small. The Vipers didn't stand a chance. Three hundred men in battle armor swooped down upon their neighborhood and before lunch time everyone associated with the gang was either dead or captive. Everyone except Lynch. Lynch got lucky because he was at the other end of town speaking with the larger gang in this area, paying the Viper's respects. When he returned later that evening, it was all gone. His girl, his friends, his possessions, his livelihood. All gone. He tried to return to the other gang, but by nightfall all the gangs in the Bronx joined the Vipers in defeat. Eddie endured many long nights at his mother's house waiting for there to be decision on what was to happen with all the captured gangers. Eddie wasn't the only one to be surprised and outraged to hear the verdict of 'all members guilty by association, with a minimum sentence of ten years.' The straw that finally broke the camel's back was when Eddie's girl got killed in jail over a fight for her 'favors'. She was only sixteen, there was no reason for her to be in prison, let alone dead. For that alone, Edward Lynch vowed McCartile would pay. As Great White bolted towards the source of the evil he sensed, Randal Smith was just reaching the first door on the eleventh floor. He knew he had to move quickly because the President was soon to be in range. The first and second rooms being a bust, Smith was beginning to get worried... Great White found his lock and began to prepare himself for the excruciating pain that usually follows a transfer like this. He was also hoping to begin his life anew as a hero with another heroic deed, saving the President from what was destined to be an assassination attempt. Lynch was psyched now, already the beginnings of the motorcade have passed and he could make out the Presidents limo drawing near. He squatted into position and peered through his scope... Smith was still two doors away. 'Damn goody-goody. Don't get involved in this,' he thought to himself about Great White. The President slowly rolled into Lynch's cross hairs... Lynch tensed on the trigger... Great White got closer... Smith tried the room next door... Lynch began to track the President with the scope, preparing to lead his shot... Smith banged on Lynch's door... As Lynch pulled the trigger on the rifle there was a flash of sunlight in his scope and he hoped he didn't miss... Smith smashed his way through the door at the sound of the gunshot. "FREEZE!" He yelled at Lynch. Lynch's body seemed to jerk and he twisted about, ripping the rifle up along with the tripod, turning towards Smith. Smith fired quickly like the marksman he was, and as Lynch's cerebrum hit the wall behind his body Smith thought he heard someone scream 'No!' He dismissed it and checked on the President's condition. The President was not hurt, yet there still seemed to be some commotion... ... To be continued... A CHILD'S NIGHTMARE SKETCH by Doomlord CHAPTER ONE I Anton Farrar sipped his bourbon and looked over to where Marty sat with his pick-up for the night. The girl looked young, too young to be allowed in a place like this. She was gorgeous, with wide, brilliant green eyes which shone with innocence, even in the gloom of the club. Marty had introduced her as Sasha, and then quickly whisked her off to an adjacent, but privately separate table. Sasha wore a simple black skirt and halter-top which showed off her figure perfectly. Anton admired her from a distance, secretly envying Marty for his lack of scruples. Give the handsome young man, with his long blond hair and sparkling personality, ten minutes away from his steady girlfriend and he would be with some other girl. It was not so easy for Anton: if Sharon found out he'd cheated on her there'd be no forgiveness. Shortly, an older girl walked up behind Sasha and whispered something into her ear, glancing over to where Anton sat. This other female, like her friend, was not familiar to Anton, and therefore obviously no local of the club. He had observed her from afar that night, and wondered at her air of boredom, her quiet mystery and sullen beauty. So it was that he experienced an excited, nervy thrill when Marty leaned over and told him that the girls had invited them both to their place for a few drinks and maybe some speed. The four stepped out of the noise and heavy atmosphere of the club into the cool sea-breeze. As they walked towards the car-park, Anton noticed that Marty had his hand comfortably resting on Sasha's curvaceous, black-clad arse. He tapped his friend on the shoulder and said: "Hey - aren't you going to introduce me?" "Ah, yeah, Anton, meet Nicolette. Nicky, meet Anton." "Hello," said Nicolette, smiling at Anton. She was beautiful, he realised - all dark hair and impressive curves - and he was sure if he played his cards right, she could be his that night. All thoughts of Sharon had fled his mind. Suddenly he realised that he was fairly drunk and if he didn't concentrate on his speech, he'd slur his words. He began to fumble in his pocket for a pack of cigarettes just as they arrived outside a small convertible jeep. Nicky drove with Sasha next to her and they chatted, oblivious to the two in the back. Whatever they were talking about was obliterated by loud dance music on the stereo. The car sped along the coastal road, with houses to one side and the endless expanse of the ocean on the other. Anton turned to his friend and shouted in his ear: "Are they sober?" Marty shook his head vigorously and grinned. Without warning the car bumped over a gutter, swerved and jolted everyone about. "Shit!" shouted Sasha. "Keep your eyes on the road, Nicky." Marty laughed drunkenly, insanely. Anton looked nervously up at the bar supporting the plastic sheeting which served as a roof for the convertible, and began to feel paranoid. He was aware that, were this thing to roll, the back-seat passengers would have little chance of survival. He leaned forward, his eyes on the road in front of the car, and shouted at Sasha to turn off the music. "Are you okay to drive, Nicky?" he asked, concern obvious in his voice. "Yeah, sure. Hey, I'm sorry about that." "Do you want me to drive, Nicky?" asked Sasha. "No, no. Look I'm fine." "Yeah, fer fuck's sake, Anton, stay cool," Marty said to Anton, playfully punching him on the shoulder. "Don't be so damn on edge all the time." He handed Anton a bottle of Wild Turkey Sasha had passed back to them, and Anton took a deep swig. The car sped onwards. "Where do you two live, by-the-way," asked Anton. "Oh, Subiaco," said Nicky. Anton saw the turn-off sign for Subiaco flash by. "Dammit," exclaimed Anton. "I think you just missed the turn-off." Nicolette took her eyes from her driving and turned back to where the boys were seated. She grinned and said: "Yeah, I'm taking a different route for a change!" For a second Anton saw something in her eyes. Was it a flicker of malevolence? No, just my paranoia, he rebuked himself. "Are you sure you know where you're going?" asked Sasha. "Of course! It's a surprise tour." Both girls giggled. Nicky turned off somewhere - seemingly to Anton, at random - and began driving through suburban streets which where obviously completely alien to her. Anton turned to Marty and gave him an exasperated look which was completely wasted on him, because his eyes were glazed idiotically; Marty was hopelessly drunk. Anton turned away from Marty, annoyed. They didn't even know who these crazy bitches were. They were both obviously very drunk - or were they? There was something in the girls voices which made him think that this was in some way pre-planned, that he was being taken for a ride, that they were out to purposely scare him. Of course, Anton had every reason to doubt his intuition: it had failed him many times before. He considered himself more of a level-headed logical type, an introvert, than one who possessed a finely tuned sixth-sense. Once again he chastised himself for being uncomfortable and paranoid. He leaned forward and gave the driver some quick directions so that she could get back onto the coastal road. They didn't have a chance of making it to their destination while they drove in erratic circles through suburban streets. They would have to go back and find the turn-off they had missed. Nicolette complied and soon they had found their turn-off. Anton found his sense of uneasiness pass away and his spirit of adventure return. He slumped back, grinned to himself and took another sip of the strong bourbon whisky, feeling it run like fire down his throat. Sasha put the dance music back on and turned it up loud. The car came to a halt on the driveway of a two-story townhouse, which Anton summed up as quite a valuable property. The engine and the music cut out abruptly, leaving silence. "You renting this place?" he asked, as he helped a very intoxicated Marty out into the night air. "Yep," said Sasha. "We just moved here. From up north. So yeah, sorry we don't have much furniture. Just one couch. We don't even have a T.V. We haven't been able to afford transporting all our stuff from back home." The small group made its way to the front door. While Nicolette fumbled through her handbag for the keys, Marty and Sasha groped each other wildly and kissed, the girl giggling all the while. In the months that followed the image of her flashing green eyes and cackling laugh, her blond head thrown back in laughter, would be a constant image imprinted on Anton's mind. At that moment, however, his eyes were firmly fixed on Nicky's curves. II The floorboards were clean and polished and slippery in the shadowed interior of the house. If the place was bare, it was not obvious at that moment. They'd all stepped inside without the interior lights being turned on. "Hey," said Marty as his arm snaked around Sasha's waist. "Do we have lights? I mean, its..." "We've got candles!" called Nicky from the kitchen. "The power hasn't been turned on yet," said Sasha. She kissed Marty quickly on the lips. He drunkenly pulled her close to him, and they both fell against the wall, laughing and embracing deeply, their lips locked together. Anton gave them a brief sidelong glance and shook his head. He felt far to sobre for this. "That's right - we're too poor to afford the start-up cost," came Nicky's voice from the kitchen. There were some clattering sounds and then the flare of a match as she lit a single thick red candle. She slinked up to Anton and, holding the candle in one hand, put the other around his shoulders, pressed her warm body against his and kissed him. Anton was aware that his mouth was bitter- tasting after too many cigarettes and too many drinks, but this lusty kiss washed all of that away in sweetness. He pulled away, overly self-conscious. "Sorry, my mouth must taste like an old sock or something..." "Don't be silly," said Nicolette, and she kissed him again. "Come on." She led the way, bearing the only source of light in the gloomy place, past were the two other rolled as if wrestling on the floorboards. The short passage ended in a door, which Nicolette opened. "Don't think this too weird," she said, stepping into a large open area which appeared to be the living room. "But we're into Wicca - you know, Mother Goddess religion." "Yeah? That's cool," said Anton, a little cautiously. He had a few friends who were pagans - practitioners of alternate religions, new-agers, herbalists, and so on. None of their practices could have prepared him for the growing wonder he felt as Nicolette's candle danced deftly from candle to candle in the room, causing each in turn to ignite. A tableau was slowly revealed. Possibly more than a hundred thick candles were placed around a central area where a complex metal stand held a large many-angled crystal. Just then, as Anton tried to come to grips with the array of weird, alien artefacts scattered around the room, Marty and Sasha tumbled into the room. Marty swore and exclaimed, "what the fuck is all this shit?! Are you some kind of Satanists or something?" Surprised, but more amused than anything else, when Anton turned back to him, Marty gave him an expression which just said 'typical - crazy bitches!' "Not Satanists," corrected Anton, his head still turned to Marty, his eyes rolled in exasperation. "Wiccans." "Ah, yes," said Marty, slurring his words slightly, but more coherent than before. "Praise be to Shakti, or Dani or whoever it is you worship." "Well, yeah, so lets..." Anton stopped speaking when he realised Nicolette was saying something. At least, her lips were moving - no sound was emerging. "Talk louder, I can't hear you," he said, knowing full well that she was saying some sort of prayer or something. How easily young people got sucked into crackpot religions these days. It was enough to make him sick. The dark-haired older girl was serious as she spoke her prayer. Behind Anton there was a grunt. A wet, gurgling sound made him turn around. Marty had spat out half a litre of dark blood over the front of his white t-shirt. His eyes were surprised, but he could make no noise. Something long and thin protruded from his throat. He toppled forward, writhing. Sasha stepped out from behind her dying partner, the blade spraying Marty's lifeblood everywhere in the many- flickering lights. It weaved, that red-stained blade, practiced patterns before its wielder. Anton gave a choked, startled cry and ran. The other woman - what was her name? - she was screaming incomprehensibly. It was an unholy sound, an alien sound, a horrible rending sound. Anton ran, and everything blurred by. He crashed through candles and candle holders. And then both women were screaming, and things were moving in the dark. Things were moving in his head. Shapes shifted, and he was aware of his feet propelling him, but all the time there was Marty's twisted, surprised, gurgling face before his mind's eye. And the horrible beast behind him with the sharp thing that would cause him pain. Would end him. Glass broke about him. The world exploded for a second, little pieces of pain ripping into his nerves. Then he was outside and running for his life. III As Nicollete sang the Rending of the Veil the air in the candle-filled room had become warmer and dryer with each passing moment, and as she intoned the final verses, it became almost furnace-like in its intensity, or so it seemed to Sasha. Both of them had started to sweat soon after the ritual had begun, and as Sasha watched Nicollette sing to the crystal (her face tilted back, her eyes closed in ecstacy) she allowed her eyes to feast on the glistening body of her partner. Globes of moisture ran in quick streaks from the forehead, down shoulders and arms, between the breasts, and criss-crossed the belly. The corpse lay naked before the crystal, surrounded by glowing orbs of candle-light. His flesh had become a canvas for Nicolette's practiced blade-work, his back, face and chest carved with intersecting angular patterns and all of his major arteries opened. Marty's life- fluid, pooled thick and viscous, had formed many tiny rivers which, wriggling, were drawn towards the legs of the crystal-stand. Each wrought-iron leg carried a canal, through which travelled a stream of blood, which, having seemingly taken on a life of its own, fled inexorably towards the bright and many-faceted focus. It was a display Sasha found both enticing and disturbing. Nicolette had told her about the the thrill she would feel when confronted by the confounding of mundane reality. It was like a drug-rush, she'd said, but more profound. Something bit deep into Sasha's being when she watched those rivers of blood run their course. Having reached it's goal, the blood ran patterns over the crystal's face: with each fresh vein emptied a new line grew along a facet's edge. Without warning, Sasha's skin began to tingle. She could feel her muscles jerk of their own accord - little tics controrted her face - and she could see the same thing was happening to Nicky. The feeling was not entirely unpleasant so long as she bore in mind her partner's instruction to surrender to the bizzarity, and to embrace rather than fear. In any case, it was over in seconds, and Nicky had stopped singing. She knew it was her turn to act. She had been told that she would feel something strange, a sign that the Rending of the Veil was almost complete. For a second she hesitated, recalling all they had rehearsed, and then she stepped towards the crystal, over lines of oily black between candelabra. "Lord of the the Dead Plane we implore you to come to us," she said, reaching out her arms towards the crystal (its surface now pulsating with slick red made transclucent by the crystal's glow). "We offer ourselves for your pleasure. Cross the barriers between the worlds. Clothe yourself in flesh and appear." These words were only a formality, Nicolette had said, to draw the entity into the ritual area. Once said, Sasha could step back out and she would be safe. She turned on her heel dramatically, preparing to leave, but when she did so, she found her ankle gripped by something so firmly, it hurt. Still holding Sasha's ankle, the corpse hauled itself to its feet. "Nicolette!" she implored her partner, her voice approaching a scream, "is this supposed to happen?" The scene would have been comical if it were not horrific. Marty's shredded remains held her right ankle as she tried pathetically to keep her balance and pull it away. Then the creature simply ripped her in towards it and she landed backwards into its arms. Her scream was cut off abruptly as it clamped a lacerated hand over her mouth. When it spoke, or breathed, blood bubble up between its lips. "Well, pretty little girl," it said. "Not quite prepared to fulfill your side of the bargain?" From where Nicolette stood, she could see Sasha's tortured eyes straining to look towards her for aid. She had expected something like this. Sasha had served her well, both as lover and partner in this venture, but the summonation would need flesh (had been promised pleasure). In any case it was too late now. The corpse had forced Sasha to the floorboards face-first, one hand still clamped tightly over her mouth. It mounted her then and there, and Nicolette had to turn her head to avoid the disgusting picture. She was not a squeemish woman - her previous experience had proved that - but this was something she did not want to see. Just hearing the corpse's gurgling, liquid grunts was foul enough so that she knew those noises would stay in her mind (and come back to haunt her during quiet times alone) for the rest of her life. After a few minutes it was over and she saw fit to turn her eyes back towards the two figures which lay, one on top of the other and completely still, before the now clear, mundane crystal. The corpse had removed its hand from its victim's mouth: presumably she had passed out and gone limp some time during the proceedings. A few more seconds went by before it began to dissolve. Pieces of flesh began to part from one another, wriggling like worms, first across the slashed symbols and then in the spaces between them, dividing in millimitre thick ribbons. Nicolette almost turned away again, but found herself held by a perverse fascination, when she saw the strips (which had taken on the colour of minced meat) writhe down upon Sasha's unconcious form. The girl awoke then, but found she could not scream, for the meat-stuff had squirmed into her mouth just as it was forcing its way into all of her bodily orifices. The entity was raping her again, but this time in a more penetrating fashion. Within moments, the formless mass had covered its prey and taken it unto itself. What remained hauled itself to its feet, drawing ribbons of raw flesh and moisture away from clean-picked white bone. The creature which stood before Nicolette had a humanoid form: arms, legs, fingers, head; but the ribbons continued to move, winding and diving, over and under each other, as if they were fighting for dominance. When it spoke, no mouth opened in the lump of writing flesh which made up its jaw. The words simply came, hollow and grinding, from somewhere in the creature's vicinity. "You called and I came. Now step into here with me and give me what you offered. Like your tasty friend." Nicolette was annoyed that this creature expected something of her. Another deal would have to be struck. "What should I call you?" she asked. "As I see it, that is no concern of yours. Now just step in here and we'll see what we can do." "His name is Ska'kt-qu-a-diz," came a voice from the hallway, immediately followed by its owner. "It means Meat Given Form in the Dead Plane tongue." "Who the fuck are you?" said Nicolette, the anger in her voice plain. This new arrival was something completely unexpected, a random element which could easily upset the whole equation. The man ignored the question. "Now that you have him here what makes you think you can control him?" Saying this, he nodded over to where the creature stood at the perimeter of its prison, its gaze alternating between Nicolette the newcomer, seemingly trying to judge who first to invite into its lair. Nicolette took a few moments to evaluate the man who stood before her, trying to determine what sort of threat he could pose from the bare physical clues his appearance provided her. He was tall and dark-skinned, with facial features which suggested African heritage. But there was something else (in his eyes, the noble lines of his nose, mouth and cheekbones): she found herself likening him to drawings she had seen of the kings of Ancient Egypt. There was that, and then a definately modern affectation (out of character for a Ramses or Tutmoses) in the way he styled his hair: in dreadlocks tied back into a tail which hung almost to his waist. She found his age difficult to determine, but decided he could be in his thirties. These details faded into the background when he reached into his overcoat, drew out a handgun and held it casually at his side. The was no overt threat in this action - had he pointed it at her head, she might have felt different - but there was no doubt that he had used the weapon before in situations more difficult than this, and that he was prepared to do so again without a thought. The nonchalance with which he glanced at the flesh-creature, almost ignoring it, suggested a familiarity with such things which Nicolette found a little unnerving. "Step away from the candles, please," said the stranger. The arm with the gun on the end of it was relaxed and pointed at the floorboards. Nicolette stepped backwards. "You have no business here," she said. "You don't know what you're fucking with here, girl. Now, I said, move..." His voice had suddenly become very threatening. "No," she said. "I don't think so." She spun, her arm reaching out towards the candles. The gun was lifting now, sweeping up almost unnoticed. "No!" he shouted, and fired. The bullet punched through Nicolette's shoulder. There was a spray of blood as she whirled, her arms flayling and her body tumbling. Wrought iron candelabra collapsed in a cacophony of sound almost blotted out by a frantic scream of pain. The beast, now unbound, swatted any ritual paraphernalia in its path to the ground and moved hungrily towards its prey. Nicolette, dizzy and disorientated, scrambled away clutching her shoulder. Michael Kaylish shouted at the creature to move away, but didn't expect it to listen. The way it moved bespoke a single-minded hunger for flesh which he'd seen in these things on too many previous encounters. It had made the jump from the Dead Plane by divesting itself of its body, and now it needed to clothe itself once again. Weapon held in both hands, feet planted firmly apart, Kaylish put three holes in the crawling mass which was the beast's back. It staggered to one side briefly, the bullets spraying meat and blood where they exited on the other side. If anything, now he had its attention. Ponderously, it turned and directed its eyeless gaze towards this new annoyance. The wounds were invisible, or had already sealed. It had obviously been too much to expect physical force to harm it. Kaylish took a step backwards and reached inside himself to where he knew the darkness lay tightly coiled and sleeping. He slipped the useless Beretta into a pocket of his overcoat and cupped his hands in front of him. Inky tendrils squirted out of gaps between his fingers as he felt the ball of shadow-stuff take form. "Ahh," breathed the creature. "We have a Wielder here." It took one more step towards him and then he let the projectile loose. The creature's head was completely engulfed. Liquid black oozed over raw worms of flesh, running in complicated patterns between them. It gave an anguished scream and collapsed, bits of it already fleeing from the whole as it was unmade. Kaylish realised that his body was shaking from the effort of what he'd just accomplished. He overcame a wave of nausea and looked over his shoulder to see Nicolette flee through the hallway. The pieces of flesh on the floor were struggling to reunite into a whole as the black cancer clung to it, consuming with a appetite of its own. He knew it would only be a matter of minutes before the beast pulled itself free and separated itself from that which sought to contaminate. As he'd anticipated, he'd have to burn what was left. He left the room and followed the sounds of a struggle outside. When he arrived at the front door, Vince was just coming through, carrying a kicking, clawing and biting Nicolette with him. "Where do you want her?" he asked. Kaylish removed the gun from his pocket and handed it to the man. "Put her in the kitchen. Shoot her if she tries to escape." Saying this, he ran to the car outside and returned soon after with a jerry- can. In the living room, the remnants of the summonation was spreading itself over a wide area so as to minimize the damage caused by its tormentor. Kaylish noted the chaos of toppled candelabra, as well as the presense of candles which remained upright and alight. It would be a tricky operation to doust the whole heaving mass with petrol without a premature ignition. He was about to start pouring when the night's second uninvited guest made herself known. She was perched on the window-ledge over which Anton had leapt in his escape. "Kaylish," she said. "Why do you always insist on interfering in the affairs of others?" She'd been human once, and beautiful. That was when her face had been covered with skin (smooth, pale and clear) and tissue. He had known that it would be only a matter of time before the Dead Plane wrought its signiature of decay upon her body. The lords of that realm needed servants who were loyal and only those of their own kind could be trusted. When no such servitor was available on this side of the Veil, they compromised and remade a human to suit their own aesthetic tastes. The first thing they took was that thing which the applicant held dearest, that aspect of their physical form which the individual felt most defined their personality. In Teresa's case, it had been her face. Her beautiful face, which of all those things which had made up the woman Kaylin had once loved, had been the greatest expression of her soul. Her head was now a cage of bones, meeting at the centre with a thick central ridge which ran diagonally down her face. Her body, once possessing a woman's graceful curves, was now extremely emaciated. The arms (now bony and elongated far beyond their natural length) ended in fantastically long, thin, tapering fingers. Kaylin found himself too shocked to say or do anything. His guts churned, seeing this vision of the familiar perverted into the Enemy. "Drop the can, Kaylin," she said. Casually, using one arm, she reached down and pulled a limp shape from somewhere outside the window. She draped the unconcious body of the young man over the sill next to her and gripped his head with a hand. The fingers easily wrapped around the shape, enfolding it like a dead spider's legs. "Or I'll crush his little head like a grape." Kaylin set the jerry-can down slowly and carefully. He realised for the first time that he was sweating, and that the air in the room was like a continuous blast of desert wind: scorchingly hot and devoid of all moisture. "So you have become a lacky for the Deathly Ones," he said. With some effort he managed to keep his voice smooth and unemotional. It was always fatal to show any signs of weakness toward the Enemy. "You have changed, Teresa. I never imagined- " "I've never valued your opinions, Kaylin. Why should I now?" Was that a hint of pain in her voice? There would be bitterness, he mused, for the price had been terrible. Who would willingly serve a master who did this to his servants? Only a madwoman. There was a shuffling of feet at the hallway's threshold. Vince had one arm around Nicolette's neck, pulling her to his chest tightly. The gun was firmly against her temple. Then he saw the thing on the window sill. "What the - ?" he whispered. He redirected the weapon towards Teresa and then - realising the futility of bullets against a creature wrought of bone - pressed it back against his captives head. "Hello Vince," said the Bone-Cage. "Get the fuck outa here would ya? Both of you - go!" Kaylin nodded to Vince to release Nicolette. He pushed her away from him. She staggered, spun around and hissed at him like a cat. "What is it you plan to do with this - all of this?" asked Kaylin, backing away. Vince had already left the house. "Well, what does it look like to you, Mike? We're having a fucking party! Now go -" her grip tightened on the head "- or the boy dies." Delivering spiteful wit had never been her forte when she was human; becoming a monster hadn't altered that in the least. Vince left via the front door. Teresa let Anton fall to the ground outside the window and turned her head to look at the meat creature. "I see the ritual was successful. You follow instructions well. I'm sorry that Kaylin turned up and caused this trouble. No harm done, though." Most of shredded flesh had separated itself from the ball of shadow-stuff. It reformed itself into humanoid shape, but the battle had taken its toll and removed half its mass, reducing Ska'kt-qu-a-diz to the size of a child. "I will need more flesh," it said. IV Outside the house, underneath the ledge, Anton staggered to his feet and broke into a bent-over run. He found himself crashing through bushes heedless, given strength by fear. He reached the road, collapsed and vomited into a gutter. A van pulled up alongside him, the side door opened and Kaylin hopped out. He dragged the young man into the back and slammed the door shut. CHAPTER TWO I He was walking through a park when he realised he was dreaming. The world around him suddenly became more focused - sharper - than reality. Gravel crunched under his feet. The chill morning air stung his skin and frosted his breath. The familiar tang of foliage and earth was ambient. He could feel his heart beating steadily in his chest. Lucid dreams came to him more frequently than they did to others, yet they were still infrequent and he didn't hesitate at the opportunity to play God (if only in his head). He leaped from the path and soared upwards, rapidly gaining momentum. Vast wings sprouted from his shoulders, unfolding and holding the winds. Below him, the lush gardens became an island surrounded by stark concrete buildings which stretched away to meet the horizon in every direction. The city seemed to be a world, the world, a city. This place had existed before stone dwellings had been imagined, and would exist after the last had fallen into rubble. He went in search of its inhabitants (it appeared to be deserted). Swooping low over a six-story office block, he headed towards the vast side of a skyscraper. On a sudden violent impulse (he felt careless and free) he flew faster and faster towards the plate-glass windows. Bursting through on the eighth floor amidst a cacophony of fragmenting glass, he found himself in an small office. She was waiting for him there. Bathed in her white glow, he approached, and then realised she was bound, her arms and legs circled by ebony rings. "We have to talk," she said. "About what?" he asked, shifting his wings nervously in the cramped space. "I need your help." He stepped forward, misinterpreting this as a request for liberation. His hands went to her shackles, found them to be cold and hard. When she was free (this shining angel) the dream could become very interesting. "No. I'm not part of your dream." He willed her free, willed her to have solid form, willed her... But nothing happened. He stepped away from her. "Does this have something to do with last night?" he growled. The tone of his voice was accusing. "Yes." "This has nothing to do with me. Get the fuck out of my dream!" he screamed. He spun around and willed himself to be awake. He could hear her behind him, imploring, begging, as light exploded into his eyes. II His eyes had been weary and partially gummed shut with tears. Something had seemed to be strangling his mind, pressing consciousness out of him, and yet he had fought to keep his senses. His body useless, his spirit rapidly dying, he had viewed the meeting through a cage of bone fingers, clamped down over his head and threatening to burst his skull. What he had seen had not made much sense to him in his condition. Nicolette was being half-carried out of the room by a man Anton didn't recognise. She had been naked and angry, with a gun at her temple to subdue her. Had those been Marty's shredded remnants being smothered by darkness on the floor? And then his captor - the child's nightmare sketch - had demanded something of someone, another unrecognised player in the little tableau, and in his terrible delirium he had only vaguely comprehended that it was his life being bargained for. Even so, at that moment, he didn't have the will to care and told himself: If I'm to die at the hands of this abomination, this ridiculous situation, then so be it. Later, after another frantic attempt at flight and another loss of consciousness, he awoke on a mattress in a featureless room. At first he thought he couldn't move. Every muscle in his body was heated with pain. His brain ached, but somehow he found his thoughts clear. Shortly, a door opened and a man stepped through tentatively. There was a flood of memories and detail (candles, Marty coughing up blood, the bone monster, shredded flesh on the wooden floorboards) and then he remembered that his host was the one who he'd first seen restraining Nicolette. "How are you feeling?" he asked. Anton lay still for a while, almost angry. Then he said: "What the fuck happened last night?" He found his immobility to be imaginary and hauled himself into sitting position. The man smiled sadly. "You... stumbled... onto something that maybe you shouldn't have." "Yeah, fucking great. I can hardly remember any of it." "Maybe its better that way." He remembered far too much of the night before: far too much to simply forget. "Okay," he said. "Firstly, who are you?" "I'm Vince. I'm surprised you have any memory of last night at all. Exactly what did you see?" This question brought up too much horror in Anton's mind. There were feelings and images which he forced down like the rising bile in his throat. He attempted good humour: "Hey! I'd rather not recall, okay?" Vince smiled in a way that very nearly put Anton at ease. "Can you stand?" "Yeah sure." Anton managed to drag himself up to his feet. He staggered, stumbled, almost fell, but Vince was there, with an arm around his shoulder, steadying him. "Thanks," he muttered. The lounge looked liked it had been filled with furnishings picked straight from the page of a junk-mail catalogue. A leather sofa set was arranged around a television, VCR and stereo. A small bookshelf held a few tatty old books. The walls were bare. In one corner of the room was a heavy pine dining table. By this sat the man who had talked to the monster as if they were old acquaintances, had bargained it: the man it had called Kaylin. His head was bowed over a book when they entered, his whole lean body seemingly focused on its yellowed pages. The lines of concentration eased from his face as he looked up at Anton, and were replaced by something like a smile. As Vince helped Anton to the table, Kaylin reached for a pack of cigarettes. He was seated, offered a cigarette (which he accepted), and then Kaylin spoke. "How much of last night do you remember?" he asked. "Too much. I don't know," Anton said. He was tired, his arms resting on the table's polished surface, his body hunched over. "Maybe you could tell me. What was going on?" "We don't have to talk about this now, you know," said Kaylin. "You should rest. Think about it all. See what you can remember." Vince was standing somewhere in the background. "Would you like a cup of coffee or something?" he asked. Anton ignored him and stared at the dark-skinned man. "Now's as good a time as any. I want an explanation, and then I'm outa here. That's all." "Okay. There's so much to tell. You're very lucky to be alive. The women you met were looking for human sacrifices." "Yeah," said Anton. "Marty. They killed Marty, I think." Kaylin's expression suddenly registered what Anton took to be genuine concern. He was silent for a while. "I'm sorry about your friend," he said. "These people have no respect for life. They do whatever's necessary." "Necessary? Necessary for what? Who are they?" "This is not really the time for the whole story. You're not well. You need..." "I'm fucking fine. Now just tell me," said Anton. They were avoiding giving him any information. It was as if they hoped he hadn't remembered what he saw, or that he would just forget what he had seen. But it was all in his mind, and it was becoming clearer by the minute: every pungent, gritty, piercing moment of it. "There are other places, Anton. Places where..." "How do you know my name?" Anton interjected. "You were talking in your sleep when we drove you over here. It was more like raving really." "Jesus. I don't remember that. Now, you were saying: other places?" "The ancient people named the places where they believed the soul goes when the body dies. The Greeks had their Underworld - Hades - ruled by its own King, and from where the dead were sent to the Elysian Fields, to paradise, or to Tartarus, to face eternal torment. Heaven and Hell. The Egyptians had their Underworld, overseen by their God of Death, Osiris. And, long before that, the Sumerians, too, had their place for the dead - Kur - with its gatekeeper, Nedu. Most cultures believed, and still believe, in an afterlife. Life seems so brief and meaningless without anything more." "All stories and teachings have their root in some kind of truth. The ancients saw the sun rise every morning, as we do, and set every night. They observed nature and Her seasons, and since the sun appears in the sky above the Earth, the sun became the fertilising, the masculine principle, while the Earth - its soil, its water, its trees, everything - was seen as a kind of mother. Today, through science, we know that no life would exist on this planet without the rays of the sun. You can see how there is truth in the observations of the ancients there, can't you?" Anton, his head almost resting on his folded arms, nodded. "I've read a little ancient mythology. It's one of my interests. But what does that have to do with everything that went down last night? Are you saying those - those whatever the fuck they were - monsters - were creatures from some kind of Hell? That..." "Yes. In a way. But not exactly. The ancients could only try to explain what they observed, and there was a lot of confusion. Today people scoff at their attempts to explain the universe. There were truths in their explanations, though. There's a place where only death is to be found. Souls don't go there when they die. There's no judgement of good or evil. Only death and a malignant yearning to extinguish all life." "The Dead Plane," said Anton. "Isn't that what you called it last night? Is that where the bone-bitch... Teresa...?" Kaylin suddenly looked like he'd been physically struck by the name. The momentary furrowing of his brow, the twitch of his mouth, the painful look in his eyes - these things didn't go unnoticed to Anton. "Yes. How she's changed. Only a few months ago... But she serves them now. And as much as it hurts me to say it, she's our enemy. She's the one who's responsible for Marty's death." Anton could feel things closing in on him. He wasn't going to be able to escape it. The world was not as simple - nor as safe - as he'd taken for granted. The fears which plague a child, but which are later discarded and laughed at upon the attainment of adulthood - they came back in a flood of charcoal scrawlings upon his mind: clacking mandibles and things which squatted, waiting behind hard materiality; all things grotesque and half-realised. "Who does she serve?" he demanded, once he had found his voice again. "The embodiment of stagnation and sterility. Things that come from the Dead Plane. And most of all, her own obsessions, a hunger for knowledge - for power. Who knows?" Anton was quickly piecing together the story from the meagre offerings he'd been given. It was all obvious to him, no matter how unlikely it sounded. "You had something going with this woman once, didn't you?" he said. "We were once friends. Lovers. I suppose you could say we were looking for something beneath it all. The truth beneath all the old insights. Together we found it, and we found the Dead Plane. With Vince's help." It was almost a que for Vince to join their discussion. Previously, he'd been standing in the background behind Anton; now, when Kaylin glanced up at him, he seated himself at the table. Anton wondered how this man - so calm and amiable in aعppearance now after his confident gun-wielding the night before - could fit into all of this. There was something in his appearance which reminded of someone he'd seen once. His thick blond hair, his beard, his moustache and his intelligent blue eyes - Who? "My real name is Vince O'Brien. You may have heard of me..." "You write occult books. Big sellers." "Yeah, well, Michael and Teresa came to me for information. I was supposed to be an authority on all that stuff. It was an obsession of mine. They were looking for a certain rare book, which, as it happened, was in my possession." "Look," said Anton, his gaze momentarily falling on his hands (dirt on his palms, grit under his nails). "I had a dream last night." In the blur of reality he was experiencing, the situation couldn't become any more ridiculous. If creatures of nightmare could take form and walk on the Earth, then didn't the inner events of the dream-world have a new relevance for the situation? "In it, a woman - a bright, shining woman - was trapped, captured, bound. She asked to be freed, but I couldn't do it. I got angry. I got scared. I woke up." Looking over at Kaylin, Anton saw that his words had meant something to him. Kaylin looked at the table. His hands went down to the book which lay before him and he flipped its pages shut. "The Shining Lady who guards the Way Between," he said. "I just thought you should know about that," said Anton. "That's all. Now I'll be going." "Stay a while: listen to what I have to say." "No thanks. I'm going to try and forget all this shit." "You think you can just walk away?" Something in the way he said that made Anton stop and reconsider. "You think they'll let you live now that you know about them?" "What would they want with me? I'm no threat..." His voice was full of doubts, almost pleading, as if Kaylin was the enemy. "Even if they leave you alone, how will you live knowing what you know?" "I don't know. I'm going to try," said Anton. He walked to the front door, opened it and took one step outside. "Wait. I can't keep you here. Go try and continue as if nothing happened. Take this, though." He offered a card, which Anton accepted. There was a single string of digits scribbled across it. A mobile phone number. "Okay, thanks. Don't think I'll be needing it, though." Saying this, he slipped the card into his pocket and walked into the sunlit suburban streets. III Upon arriving at the flat, Anton was presented with a scene which brought his thoughts back to several important questions. Marty's possessions were scattered amongst the mess of the lounge: they had spent two hours drinking before going out and this was the refuse. Anton stepped wearily over to the door of his flatmate's room and pushed it open. Marty had not been a tidy or organised person: he had lived amongst the trash of his existence - dirty laundry, fast food packaging, beer cans and drained whisky bottles. Standing there, a flood of memories - all the touching moments of friendship which are never dwelt upon when they occur - came down on Anton like a deluge. Struggling to hold back the tears, he sat down on a grubby, torn sofa in the lounge. A quarter bottle of Jim Beam was lying on its side at his feet. He found what passed for a clean glass, poured himself a generous hit, and drank it down in a single gulp. His stomach, empty of anything solid and still tender from the pervious night's excesses, rebelled. His hand went reflexively up to his mouth to halt the flow of bile, but it spilled between his fingers and spattered his legs, the table, the carpet. Shakily, he stood up. While he showered he wondered how he would cope with the questions Marty's disappearance was sure to raise. He was vaguely aware of the phone ringing, somewhere in the background to the splashing water. Half an hour later, free of grime, he unplugged the telephone and went to bed. Lying awake, he came to a decision. Although he needed Sharon now as someone to unburden his fears upon - why drag her into this? Better, he reasoned, to cut himself off from everything and give himself time to think and readjust. Eventually, he fell asleep. IV The dream had been a routine mess of imagery, so that when he gained control, it came unexpectedly and left him floundering amongst pieces of his past. He'd been walking through a small village set high atop a mountain so tall its tip reached above the clouds, piercing them and setting them below as a shifting white ocean. The place had seemed uninhabited, as he walked its main strip, until his mother had stepped from a doorway and opened her arms to him. He wanted to go to her, but, somehow, he could not, and continued walking. He began to cry as he walked, and soon his t-shirt became wet with tears. Unable to reach up and dry the flow, or to stop walking, he soon reached what appeared to be the village square. His father was waiting there for him with a gift-wrapped box, but he turned away and hid his face in embarrassment as the tears continued to fall. "You fucking baby," said his father. As he turned back towards him, his senses sharpened, and the dream-world around him took on an awesome clarity. Suddenly it was all so perfect, so clear, and so still, that it was almost painful. Anton willed his father away and he vanished instantaneously. The package went with him: that revelation would have to wait for another dream. Once again, Anton was in control. He strode across the square and down the main street, looking for his mother. He saw her in the distance, but as he drew closer he realised it was not his mother. It was the Shining Lady. As before, she was bound by rings of shadow, her expression sorrowful, and (his heart shocked) so beautiful. "Who are you?" he asked. "I am... I used to be Melinda Terrence. That was until the Guardians of the Between passed their guardianship onto me. I became something else..." "When? When did this happen?" "It was..." Concentration creased her features (angelic, shining features, he thought) as she struggled to recall. "The year eighteen hundred and thirty two. I was so young then, and naive, and the responsibility was too much for me." "Why did they do it to you then?" "They became weary. Bored with their lot. I stumbled on them at the wrong time. But it no longer matters really, because now I am more. I don't fully understand it, but I've become more than I was." "You seem fairly human to me," he said, watching her glowing outline. She smiled. "Yes. What you're seeing... what you're dreaming... is coming partly from you. It is your dream after all." "So," he said. "What does this have to do with me?" "The Ever-Dead - the lords of the Dead Plane - have captured me. I tried to resist. But... Now they'll have their way with the world." This was too much for Anton to take in. "Look, if you think I'm going to be dragged into this little Jihad of yours or whatever it is, like Vince and Kaylin, then you're sadly mistaken." V He awoke with a foul taste in his mouth and a hot lance of sunlight across his face. Looking over at the bedside clock, he realised he had slept through the rest of the previous day and most of present. With a shudder brought on partly by protesting muscles and partly due to the chill outside the warmth of the blankets, he arose and went to the bathroom. He turned on a tap and doused his face in the numbing flow. This was when he remembered the dream. It returned in all of its intensity, with all of its weighted meanings, filling him with its strange images. He considered the implications over a cup of coffee and a cigarette, his eyes straying to the litter in the lounge. Was it possible that his subconscious was creating all of this after the shock of the meeting? Or was the diabolic already conspiring against him, descending upon him to make him one of its own? He was being compelled, somehow, to become a player in this farce. Vince had hinted that what he had witnessed had changed him, and that he was part of the drama now, no matter how he wished it were otherwise. The Shining Lady. Melinda. The Woman of his Dreams was imprisoned somewhere on the Dead Plane, for what crime he couldn't guess. From the meagre information with which he had been provided, he could only conjecture. There was a knock at the door. Sharon, thought Anton, can't you be without me for the briefest time? Did she have to be there, haranguing him every hour of the day? He tried to ignore the persistent tapping, but it became more insistent, more annoying, until she spoke: "Are you there Anton?" He didn't answer. He put his coffee cup gently onto the table. The door was thin and insubstantial. Someone on the landing outside would be able to hear every movement inside. "I know you're in there," she said, hammering the door as if to punctuate the statement. They'd been in love - or at least what Anton had once believed to be love. Now their relationship seemed to him to be insignificant - a diversion - before all that had been revealed. "Open this fucking door, Anton. Tell me what's wrong." He was suddenly very annoyed by her ranting, whining voice. It faded into the background as he closed his eyes and slouched back into the sofa. ("Marty! You there? Marty - open the door will you?") If only he could tell her he needed time alone. It should have been enough, but he knew it wouldn't be. There'd be prying questions. Was it her fault, she'd ask. No? Then what? Was he seeing someone else? And where was Marty, by the way, because his girlfriend was looking for him as well. What could he reply? She always saw through his lies, just as she knew he was behind the door and trying to ignore her. Eventually she gave up, leaving after a string of expletives and threats. He put a Clapton CD in the player and slouched back down into the couch. Soon he was lost in the mournful blues melody and, as he began to collect his thoughts, he realised sleep was claiming him again. His head began to nod, his eyelids became heavy. He stood up again, feeling the Lady's call deep in his gut and intending to quell it with another cup of coffee, but then he hesitated. Why resist it? She'd have her say eventually, whether he like it or not. So then, why not now? With leaden limbs, Anton gave in, headed back to bed, and to sleep. VI This time there was no superfluous metaphor. He felt himself enter the dream-state almost as soon as his head touched the pillow. He was standing in a stone cell without exits, lit only by the luminescent shape of the Lady. She was bound to the wall in front of him, and her features expressed a mournful desperation which pierced him to his soul. She was about to say something: "Anton you must..." But he cut her off. "I've given this some thought," he said. "What do you want me to do?" She seemed to relax, and the hopeless look was replaced by a smile. "You must call Kaylin. Offer you help. Explain all of this to him." "Why couldn't you just go to him in is dreams?" "He's closed himself to all Dead Plane contact. Nothing can touch him. He's trying to protect himself." "Why not Vince, then?" he said, his voice raising in anger. She was hiding something from him. She was fucking him around. "I can't explain it now... The dream began to blur into light. He was screaming demands at her while she continued talking, and reality was taking its gritty hold of him again. Somehow, he knew she would leave his dreams after this. CHAPTER THREE I She had tried to kill herself a few times, half-heartedly, but in each case there had been some malignant glimmer of hope parading behind her depression which had rendered her efforts less than certain, and thus ultimately ineffective. Now Winter had come to the city again and with it, that familiar chill which - no matter how many garments she layered onto herself - would persist in reminding her of her mortality. The ache pierced her body as she walked to the station in the morning; it breathed on fingers loosely cradling the novel which failed to hold her attention as she waited for the train to reach its destination; and most notably, it became a dull throb into her head as she tried to concentrate on her lectures. The city was not to blame. It was the only place in the world she could truly say she almost belonged. She had tried living in other places, but these had only made the way she felt unbearable. This city seemed to welcome those who hated their existence, enfolding them in its streets like so many unhappy children. Of course, the city constantly showed itself to be a traitor to Catherine, but this was more a fault of those (they deserved no place here, she told herself) who hid dissatisfaction behind a fake smile, anger behind a forced laugh. The truth was that everyone lied to themselves: they knew they were dying and yet they denied it. The cold of the city throttled all attempts at resistance; the only way to survive it was to embrace it. Catherine tried to apply the same reasoning to her fears of death. She would make a friend of the approaching endless night and, in turn, would find that it was no longer a threat. II On that winter, in her second year at the university, Catherine's melancholia first revealed itself to the world. Her wardrobe lost its colour, becoming a uniform black which she thought properly mirrored the stifled flame (when she was a little girl it had been so bright, she remembered) which was burning itself out inside her. At first she was unaware that she had taken upon herself the badge of a new tribe, but what soon became apparant was that there were others like her. She had barely noticed them before, she realised, but they had been there all along, shadowy blotches even in sharp sunshine. Two of them had been seated on a bench in the university's park, the girl cradled protectively in her lover's arms, and she had approached them and introduced herself. At first they had been unresponsive, wanting only to be left alone and harbouring suspicions as to the true nature of the newcomer. This had made Catherine all the more certain that she had found her true kin: weren't they all bound by a longing for withdrawal which verged on contempt? Caitlin, the first to accept her, was a paragon of fragile, pale- skinned and dark-haired beauty. Her first smile had communicated both understand and friendship to Catherine and made her feel bonded in a so many ways previously unknown. After that the three of them met frequently. The weeks blurred by, and soon she lost track of the times she had watched Caitlin dance between headstones in the cemetary: a twisting, rolling start-stop, back and forth to the sounds of the night. Black hair splayed in riotous cascades, down her back, into the air, as her slim, black-clad body moved. Violence and eroticism, loving and killing, pummeling and caressing, in an endless, undulating, wave-like vision. Sometimes, without knowing why, she would find herself drawn into the whirlwind ballet and then all her inhibitions would slip away as she lost herself to the moment. And then David would be watching them both, entranced and grim before the revelations. III David was not disturbed by the growing intimacy he witnessed between the girls; to the contrary, he seemed to delight in the unusual situation which would inevitably develop. He was out one night, visiting contacts through which he hoped to procure drugs. The apartment had long since dissolved in a haze of alcohol and hashish for Catherine. From time to time she became aware that Caitlin was likewise enebriated. If there was a world outside and apart from the two of them on that night, Catherine was not aware of it. They had been laughing at something one or the other had said and then Caitlin's face had become almost grave and she had whispered: "You're so beautiful when you laugh." Catherine had put an arm around her friend's shoulder and, as a wave of dizzyness had almost overcome her, she realised they were kissing. The wine tasted so sweet, and the warmth of another body so inviting; they drew closer to each other and the embrace became deeper and more passionate. At first feelings of elation and fear shook her body, but these soon passed and they simply took comfort being close. IV "We are Exiles, all of us," David had said. And to Catherine, this had been the first hint of something more, for in the inflexions of these words came the suggestion that the three of them were not alone. The talk and intimacy they shared, the way they viewed the world (it was a place of violence, unhappiness, sorrow) - these things had allowed to her to experience life anew. They were more than just a group of friends. But sometimes it seemed they knew no-one else, that they were an island of themselves, and these doubts scared her. Although she had found so much already, she wanted to belong to a greater whole. All connexions became stale eventually, even one as profound as theirs. She had the feeling they were watching her, almost interviewing her, becoming acquainted with her deepest innermost workings. She didn't mind: they showed no signs of rejecting her. A week after that tantalising inference, they revealed all to her. Caitlin had said: "We choose to set ourselves apart - to make up a race of ourselves. David, and I, and others like us. There is a place we have made apart from the world, Catherine. A place where misery's load is lightened briefly, while it lasts. We're sorry we couldn't tell you about this before. We had to be sure, and we're sure now. You're one of us. We see that now." "Will you come with us? Be one of us?" David had asked. "Oh, yes..." After that they talked about the tribe's meeting place for many hours. It had once been an old factory in what was now the most desolate part of the city, on Lennor Street. Now, they said, it was their secret, and they had kept it well, free from pretenders and those who didn't understand. It was the only place they had. V Days after they let her into their confidence, David and Caitlin disappeared. There was no answer to Catherine's phone calls, no answer to her knocking on their apartment's door. Nothing for Catherine. Only an emptyness, which threatened to destroy her. Catherine stood on Lennor Street, in an alcove between tatty store fronts. With her arms folded across her chest - trying in vain to keep what warmth her mutiple layers of skirts provided her - she watched two figures stroll, almost invisible against the shadowed streets, towards where she suspected her destination lay. As they passed her she drew the hood of her cloak over her face and retreated against a glass door. In spite of that, they both saw her, and turned their faces to look at her (two young men with perfect pale skin and sad eyes) as they walked. One of them put his hand to the other's shoulder and they both stopped. They stared at her for a while, saying nothing. Then they turned to leave. "Wait," she said, surprising herself with her sudden courage. She pulled the hood from her face. "I'll walk with you." As they walked, one of the men spoke to her. His eyes burned feverishly bright, reading every expression of her face even in the few times their glances met. He was tall and deathly thin. She spied ribs beneath his partially open shirtfront (didn't he feel the cold? more evidence that these had made allies of the cruel elements). His friend was good-looking, Catherine decided; but more correctly he was pretty, like a young boy who had not yet reached puberty and whose sex - boy or girl - had not yet made itself plain. He wore black leather over a black t-shirt which matched the messy black of his hair. An onyx Ank (barely visible against the dark cloth) hung on a chain from his neck. He remained silent. Catherine could see the dimly-lit mouth of the Club and as they approached the two Exiles who accompanied her said not a word, but she knew there must be anticipation and excitement behind their sullen visages. If there had been any doubt as to whether she'd come to right place, it had evaporated after their casual acceptance of her as one of their own kind. As they descended the several steep flights of stairs lit (she thought it a nice touch) by torches in sconces on the passage walls she noticed her companions expressions suddenly relax. They had come home to where they knew they were safe. Inside, the place may have seemed dismal to an outsider, but for Catherine: it cleared her mind and then set it ablaze. It was as if they had made a piece of the mundane world their own and refashioned it to suit their own inner fantasy. A small part of her, protesting, knew it for what it was - just the living out of a fantasy, but the greater whole didn't care. She was part of this now. The first room was uninhabited, but hung - as the whole Club was - with black and purple drapes. The effect of the drapes, hanging featureless at chaotic angles, was to distort and soften the space. Deep colours undulated as the drapes shifted in the breeze, providing nothing to settle the eye. The atmosphere changed once again as they entered what Catherine felt must be the main room. The drapery obscured everything here, confounding here sense of direction and offering many (changing, shifting, altering, indistinct) paths. passages. She looked over to her guides to see which way they would choose, but they had departed, leaving only the billowing of purple cloth in their wake to mark their passing. Now she realised that she'd always imagined a place like this. The few clues Caitlin and David had provided as to its geography and atmosphere (hinted, but never completely described) had fleshed out a gathering place whose shadowed dimensions - its very indistinctness - allowed it to fit anyones preconceptions of what such a place should be. She stood alone and became aware of soft music from somewhere near. What else did she have to follow? With a growing sense of dislocation, unnaturally married with calm acceptance, she made her way through the curtained walkways. Periodically, a gap between two dark sheets would allow her a glimpse - for no more than a second as she strode onwards -of a group of melancholy figures, dressed as if for their own funeral. She went unnoticed. Then, without warning, draperies gave way to a raised floor before a stage on which a band played. Upon this floor, swaying like so many soft black trees were many Exiles, the women surrounded by the swish of their many skirts, the men seeming to Catherine like so many sombre undertakers. She looked around for anyone else unmoving. She felt too vague to dance, for she realised that (although it would be bliss to enter that undulating swathe at that moment and lose herself) she would forget why she had come. She was about to head back through the corridors when she noticed a figure resting on a sofa in an alcove opposite her. Some strange fancy had her wishing it was David, but as she approached she saw that it was some other. She sat down next to him. Needing a source of information, but unwilling to mark herself as a newcomer, she tried to gauge his attitude. No, there was something about him which told her he didn't quite fit. She read feelings of discomfort and heightened awareness in the way he altered his pose: first slouching backwards into his seat, then bolt upright, and then hunched forward. Perhaps he was on something. A trip could do that to you; or even marijuana. Had she disturbed him from his reverent audience? She thought this must be how her dances with Caitlin seemed to David. It was fascinating and something else - was that a flutter of elation in her chest, or just nerves? She told herself to relax: after all, this was her home ground. She saw her feelings mirrored in his face. The display seemed to defy the flesh and bone mortality of it participants. They had become once again the creatures of shadow - the forms which went ignored or unnoticed - but seen here in this place, they were somehow tangible. "There is something disturbing about this dance, but I find I can't tear my eyes away from it," he said. It seemed to be something he had been burning to tell someone for so long. "Look at the expression on that guy's face. I wonder what's going through his mind. I mean..." He paused, looking for words which fit his wonder. (Cath realised he was acutely concious of the length of this break in the sentence, for he said nothing and held his head cocked to the side for quite a while.) "...I don't know what I mean, really," he seemed to finish. And then, on an almost irrelevant tangent he continued : "I've seen strange things. Such things. You wouldn't believe me if I told you." Why was he pouring his feelings out to her without an introduction? Could it be he was unknown here - a stranger like her - and he felt he had found something mundane to hang onto? If it was a guide he sought, he was looking to the wrong person. "Maybe I would believe," she said. "My life has not been all that... normal, lately." "No. It's too terrible." Suddenly he looked like he might be ready to cry and, not wanting to bear witness to any such display which might unnerve her any more, she prepared to leave. He caught her intention and said: "Don't go. Are you new here?" CHAPTER FOUR I The requirements for the communication had partially been provided for by the incident a week previous. According to the word, which Nicolette had gathered discreetly amongst the Exiles, the young man had been particularly drunk or high on that night. He'd been wandering in a daze, lead around by his girlfriend, completely out of touch with reality. He'd stumbled upon the door which was forbidden to them in this place, and she followed soon after, calling for him, begging him to come to his senses. If he was aware of her pleadings, they hadn't mattered to him. They'd come up the staircase and into the hall, and in his stupor (and her attempts to take him away) had entered the room where Ska'kt-qu-a-diz was waiting. Slaughter had followed, and Teresa had feared their screams would be heard by the others. If they had, they said nothing of it. The ribcages and bones, stripped clean of meat, were arranged before Teresa into two tripods, each surmounted by a skull. These she drenched with gasoline, and set to burn. Then, seated before the twin pyres, she sought the attendance of the Dead. "Kag'nit'lil," they said. Their voice was without inflexion. "You have kept us waiting for too long now. Are your preparations finally complete?" "There are artifacts I need. Paths yet to be followed. Preparations to be made. It's been difficult. I don't have much to work on." "We have given you so much already. Still, you fail to deliver as promised. You waste our time dallying with hybrids." She'd been stupid to think they wouldn't notice the summonation. It was loathsome to them, she knew. It was a thing from the border between Life and Death, and as such, it was impure, instagnant. "It's a servant," she stammered. "...nothing more. It will be of use in what I have to do." They would know. She couldn't hide anything from them. She belonged to them. "And, Tel'ik'in. You promised him to us," they said. Somehow, their insinuations lead into this abrupt change of topic. Tel'ik'in. The name they'd given to her son, Thomas. They're not going to back down from their claim on my baby, she thought. Teresa had avoided this as much as she could, and tried to stray them from their resolve, but the more she tried, the more insistent they seemed to become. "Of course," she said. "In time. I need some time with him first. I know that's difficult for you to understand..." "Remember who you serve, Kag'nit'lil. We expect your offering soon. We give you more now. To show we care." 'Care'?, she thought. And then the pain. It rushed through her limbs, causing her to convulse and scream. It detonated inside her skull. Through the agony, she could feel the pulp being sucked from beneath her skin and she was desparately holding onto her life, her humanity, as that, too, was sucked away. "Go. Do what you're bound to do." In the torrent of vertigo and confusion, she tried to stand up. In a reflexive, a most human, movement, her hands went up to her face, but found only smooth strips of bone. Then: the familar feeling of emptyness. No more pain, because that was reserved for the living. On her feet again, she found that her body had become still more wasted away, more elongated. Once again, it would be hours before she familiarised with this slightly altered shape. As if in sympathy with his mother's distress, the baby began to cry. Through the void, she could hear his wailing call. She no longer knew which part of her responded (her womb had long ago ceased to be), but she staggered down the hall towards his bedroom, the need to comfort him foremost in her mind. Through the daze and the blur of the world she managed to find his cot. Thomas rarely made a sound. He is the perfect child, she thought ironically, a first-prize showcase baby who was being nurtured in a monstrous household, by his monstrous mother. She swathed him in blankets and rocked him in her arms. The voice she used to comfort him sounded empty and rasping to her: a demon babbling in baby-talk. He quietened, and as she lay him back into his cot, there was a noise outside the door. "Come in, Nicolette," she said. Her annoyance was plain. As much as she needed the woman's influence in the world of light outside, she found her presense galling. She was too ardent, too sly. There was jealousy, too, she grdgingly admitted to herself, for Nicolette was still whole and human and untouched. A beautiful girl, but so eager to be defiled, to have her womb - her womanhood - ripped out of her. Eager to become a monster. If only she knew. Nicolette was wearing a long black dress. Her makeup, her ivory cheekbones, her black hair piled messily atop her head: all as befitted a true Exile. "The boy's downstairs, with a newcomer," she said. "Who?" "Anton. Anton Farrar. Kaylin's boy." "Ask him if he'd like to come up here, then, would you? Bring this newcomer too, if she'll come. She may be part of this." II The raised platform before the stage was empty, its crop of dark trees having uprooted and fled all at once with the sudden halt of the music. The band, too, had departed, taking with them their assortment of strange mediaeval instruments. Anton and Catherine were left alone. Nearby, perceptable to both but better ignored, rose a wall of fathomless colours eternally warping, which obscured the greater Sanctum. It enfolded invisible regions filled with a blending of slick whispers. "I'm looking for some friends of mine," said Catherine. "I don't know anyone here I could ask..." When she spoke to him, her voice was lowered, her mouth was so close to his ear that - a perverse impulse! - she imagined biting it. She felt acutely the absense of any living, breathing thing, apart from Anton on the couch next to her: the whispering background, somehow, didn't seem to come from anything human. She turned her head to receive his reply, and she could feel his warm breath making the hairs raise on the skin of her neck. The strange notion returned to her, and she almost anticipated his teeth in the tender flesh of her earlobe. But it never came. Instead: "Who did you come with?" "Nobody. I met these two guys outside. We came in here and then they were gone." Again, the turning of the head and the breath. "I can't help you find your friends. I don't know anyone here either." It was a small lie, almost truth. "Maybe we should look around?" "I don't know if that's a good idea. They seem to value their privacy here." "I know what you mean. The place has this feel to it: its almost... like a temple." She saw that he wasn't listening. His attention was focused over her shoulder, at something behind her. "What is it?" she asked. "I think... oh, god..." She turned. Anton stood up. A face; dead white and surrounded by the dead colours of the cloth wall. What had startled him? The woman approached and, looking only at Anton, she said: "So... what do you think of our little place here?" She is beautiful, thought Catherine. What threat could she pose? Anton made no reply, but shifted uneasily behind Catherine. "Anton, I'm sorry. It had to be done... It..." An apology. "There's someone who'd like to have a word with you. Nothing else... Just a word. Upstairs." Anton moved past Catherine and away from the stranger. "I'm going," he said. His voice was small, his words choked. "Are you coming?" "Me?" said Catherine. She went to say more, but he'd already passed into the dividing wall, was already hurrying through its passages to the outside. He hadn't looked back. "All she wants is to talk with you," called the stranger, her voice dying down as she realised it was futile. "What's the big deal? Come back, dammit!" Catherine was on the edge of her seat, ready to stand and follow. She was alone with the woman now. A tumult of thoughts hit her then: small realizations turned to deductions, which became suspicions, which, in turn, gave birth to fear. She glanced up at the stranger. "What's his..." But the woman had turned without even acknowledging her, and pressed through other folds in the wall. Doubts assailed her. She was truly alone here now. Surely David and Caitlin would have tried to contact her by now, if they were present. At least, Caitlin would have been part of the dance. She made a quick decision: she would follow Anton. Again: the twisting indistinct corridors; but this time she was amongst the whispers. Then the pre-entrance room, the stairs, and finally: the streets. The night air was cold but bracing and it served to clear her thoughts. Anton was further down Lennor Street, in the distance and outlined by the light of street-lamps. He was pacing back and forth, obviously wracked by indecision or inner turmoil. Perhaps he was waiting for her? She went to him, attempted to talk to him, but he was too caught up in the struggle and paid her no more than a glance. He seemed to come to a decision and strode up the street away from the Sanctum. Catherine followed close behind him, walking fast to keep up. "You should have talked to her," she said. Her breath condensed into pale streams with each word. He didn't reply. "What's wrong? We should go back there!" "I'm not going back there. Not ever. I advise you to do the same. Those people are murderers." "Murderers? Why do you say that?" she demanded. Around them the streets were empty. Anton was looking up at the architecture which seemed out of place above the gaudy store-fronts, and his attention drew Catherine's eyes upwards. He turned down an alley, his pace quickening. She stopped. "Where are you going?" she called after him. He began to run, his head tilted upwards: up, up, to the blank and staring windows. "Get the fuck out of here!" he shouted. At first she could see nothing above, but then she noticed it: something moved. A dark blotch up there crossed the face of a building. She stepped backwards. He was mid-way down the alley when the shape detached itself from the building and seemed to leap, to the stonework on the opposite side of the street, all the time descending. Like a spider, she thought, as it landing in front of him. She could only make out Anton's frantic halt: the black shape was indistinct. Shocked at her own sudden bravery, she gathered her skirts and began to run down the alley towards the encounter. As she approached, she could hear they were talking. "I just wanted a word," it said. Anton was backing away. "Leave me alone. You fucking bitch!" Then this thing (it seemed devoid of limbs, of any form whatsoever, in the shapeless, hooded cape it wore) was female. Her voice sounded hollow and nasty. "Just a word." Anton continued to back away. Catherine came to a halt just behind him. "Tell Kaylin I want a word with him," the shapeless thing said. "I need to talk. Its important. Very important. Do you understand?" Raising her voice so that it was clear: "Tell him to meet me in the old cemetary tomorrow night." Catherine saw Anton nod, then he turned to her and said: "Come." Together they walked back to Lennor Street. When they reached it, she looked back down the alley, saw that it was deserted again. "Were can we find a phone around here?" asked Anton. CHAPTER FIVE "The Fallen Man" I "Hello, Lisa? This is Michael Kaylin." There was a long pause as the woman on the other end of the line gathered her thoughts. "Mike? What can I do for you?" The response was abrupt, but not unexpected. "I need some advise, Lisa. Do you mind if I drop round?" "Yes. Of course," she said. It was obvious in her voice: old wounds were being re-opened. "I'm just finishing up here. We could meet at the Crow, if you like?" "That sounds fine. At ten?" "Okay, see you there." As he was born along by the busy Friday-night traffic, he wondered at her quick acceptance of his suggested meeting. Again he was surprised at the kind of fatalism with which their little clique of nihilists bowed before the lure. Avoidance or squabbling are not an option, he mused, when there are so few of us. We've been drawn together and bonded by our hubris. And, underneath it all, isn't it just an urge for self-annihilation? Yes, our boredom with reality and willingness to be unmade has set us apart from the herd. It has driven us past all demarcations. It had always been with him, a source of both pain and wonder which drove him. As a child he would walk through the scenery of suburbia and be unable to see benath it. The solid objects would become nothing more than colour and shape on his retina: they were meaningless, but nevertheless brutally tangible. Surely there was something more. He became determined to discover other worlds. He read voraciously, deftly picking the subtexts from the dreaming of poets, the shadows of truth behind the musings and debate of existentialist philosophers, means of altering conciousness and utilising previously unrealised potentials in the teachings of the Old Religions. Buried amongst the rubble, there were truths - or, at least, ways of apprehending the truth. He discovered that there had been others who followed the path which lay before him, with varying degrees of success. Their writings were scattered amongst a handful of unique handwritten diaries and unpublished manuscripts: these he sought with the fervor of an obsessive. There seemed to be agreement amongst the two main paths. Primative religions, in their modern-day revival, with their "return to the soil" and dreaming existence; the esoterics and ceremonial magicians with their Kaballah and their complex inter-relationships on the Tree of Life: the essential part of the process was to make contact with otherworld intelligences. It had surprised them when they succeeded where so many before had failed. Now he understood why. When Kaylin arrived at the Silver Crow, Lisa was still on her way. He ordered a beer at the bar and selected a table which offered relative privacy, where they would not be bothered by passing patrons. The place was the same as ever, never overcrowded despite the management's attempts (they were obvious in the pretentious decor) to move upmarket. She arrived soon after and went straight to his table. She smiled as as she seated herself and it struck him how little she'd been changed by everything. Perhaps it was the way she had of remaining apart from the most damaging evidence. She'd always been more of an interested bystander, or, more properly, the guiding mentor: always willing to offer advice, but careful not to become too involved. He hoped she'd not cut herself off entirely from the group. "You look worn out, Michael," she said. He nodded, feeling the truth of her statement. She waited a while for him to say something, to offer some information. When nothing was forthcoming, she said: "So you're still on the trail. I thought you'd quit, after Teresa-" "Yes, well. I don't really have a choice now. We started this..." The look on her face when he used the word 'we' - as if he'd spat on her. She was trying to work out if he meant just Teresa and him, or if he was trying to implicate her. Lisa, he thought: always aloof, impersonal, blameless. "Tell me," she said. "What's happened?" "Teresa has a human woman working for her now. They performed a Rending of the Veil and brought something over from the in-between. To do this, they needed a sacrifice. They had found two, but one - Anton Farrar - escaped and he's with us now." He paused. She was grinning. "Quite a little army you're getting together there," she said. But beneath the irony, an accusation: You've lost it Kaylin, you're dragging innocents into your world of screw-ups; this will damn you. He ignored it and continued: "Anton says the Shining Lady contacted him through his dreams. She told him she's in the hands of the Ever-Dead." Again, she sniggered, but this time he could see fear behind the facade. She'd assessed the possibilities, though - he could see that - and it had made some kind of sense to her, as it had to him. Not that she'd admit it. "The Shining Lady? God, Michael, the Lady is a symbol, the representation of an archtypal pattern. She's a metaphor for mankind's inability to reach the beyond. You know that." "That's right. She's the block and blind which has prevented mortals from percieving the other place. And, somehow, now, they have her." "That's ridiculous." Lisa pushed her glasses up on her nose and then ran her hands through her hair, her eyes staring at the table. A combination of nervous which he knew well. "Well, what do you you want me to do about?" she asked, deadpan. "Do you still stay in touch with Carl?" "He's come low. He refused to believe me when I told him what you'd accomplished. He's become a drunk, a drug-addict, completely deranged." "So where is he?" "I don't know. Squatting somewhere. Look around the streets, in every trash can: you're bound to find him. If he's still alive." II Leaving his car parked in the inner city, he took to the streets on foot. He began his questioning immediately, approaching those who showed signs of the City's neglect: that beaten, hollow look which suggested nights spent in dark, cold places amongst the garbage and rats. He found it easy to approach these people. He had the look of an outcast, a man who refused to conform. The dark skin and the long, unwashed dreadlocks, the shabby black overcoat draped over a lean frame, and the look about him which suggested a vague cynicism, regret and self-imposed exile. On the tram which carried him to the region of the lost, he approached a group of youths wearing leather and cheap jewelry. They were half-drunk, friendly enough and left a litter of beer-cans on the floor as they left. They weren't street denizens, though: just middle-class from the suburbs, slumming. On a wide street - a run of bars and open cafes, thronged with thrill-seekers, partyers, drinkers, fashion victims and derelicts - he came close to finding what he was looking for. A small church loomed next to the side walk, its overgrown lawn dotted with benches. Two grubby girls, twelve or thirteen years old, sat nervous and cold, perhaps waiting for someone. A middle-aged man, inebriated and staggering slightly approached them. Swaying before them, he must have made some kind of lewd suggestion, because they beat him to the ground and sent him back down the street, slurring obscenities at them. "You got any picks?" one of them asked Kaylin. He stopped and seemed to consider it for a moment. "You should try the Needle Exchange." "Yeah. Thanks a fuckin' lot," she muttered. Her friend was looking away, staring at the trees, the side of a building, at the cars passing on the road. He told them he was looking for a friend of his. They didn't know him, they said, but suggested he try a place "under the bridge", where the City's lost sometimes congregated. He found them beside the river and beneath the vaulted supports of the bridge. They were a group of widely varying ages and races which would otherwise have been hostile towards each other. They were spread apart in groups of three or four, leaning against the vast concrete pillars or crouching against the walls before a small fire. They shared bags of cheap wine and smoked cigarettes rolled from a communal tobacco pouch. One of them, a young man of around sixteen, told Kaylin he'd seen Carl getting drunk earlier that day, and that he was probably spending the night in the Gardens again. The Gardens were a short walk from the river and the bridge. It was approaching midnight. Nobody cared for the park's charms that night: not the couples who lie entwined upon the lawn near its flower- beds, nor revellers who walk in scattered groups along its paths. The lovers would only have been dissappointed, for clouds obscured the moon; the revellers would have been soaked in the steady drizzle, which fell constantly now, like a fine mist. Kaylin walked briskly, his eyes looking for secret places in the dynamic landscaping: stands of trees rising above from almost verticle, wall-like inclines; beds of bedraggled flowers amongst the well-kept lawns of short, hard grass; the thick bushes which surrounded the rain-fed ornamental pools with their statues (water- nymphs and other creatures of myth). He found it profoundly peaceful, island-like, in spite of the traffic passing just beyond the vegitation. Car-horns occasionally blaring. Sirens calling from some far-away emergency. The drizzle coated him with a fine sheen of moisture. His face soon became wet, and dribbled droplets, like sweat. The damp discomfort he felt served to heighten his senses. He realised that suddenly he felt more alive than he'd felt for months. He wondered at this feeling, and that phrase (it was one which had come unbidden to him, once, and then stayed with him ever since): none of us ever felt truly alive until we discovered the ultimate place of death. He searched the most unlikely places and then, there, lying amongst the bushes, the leaves and the bark: a shape swaddled in a shit-stained greatcoat. He gave it a prod with his boot. It moved. Carl's hair was matted, the mass of it more foliage than strand. He turned over, unfolding his arms and legs. Lying there, his eyes half-open on a grubby face, it seemed almost a pose of supplication. Come on, it said. I'm a piece of shit. Kick me. Kaylin crouched down beside the supplicant. "Carl..." he said. The eyes opened a little wider, but there was no recognition, only a throaty mumbling. "I'm going to get the car. Wait here." As he jogged back through the park, Kaylin wondered what use this man would be to them. If he ever returned to his senses - and how long would that take? - would he even be willing to help? It was over a quarter of an hour before he reached the parking lot and double that time when he returned to the park and the place where Carl lay. In that time he'd curled up again and seemed to be sleeping peacefully, a babe of nature on an island in a sea of concrete. Kaylin attempted to rouse him again, but this time there was no reaction. He gathered the man, and with considerable difficulty, carried him, bundled up in his arms, to the car. III Kaylin had been expecting Anton's return for several hours. The phone call came shortly before dawn. The first realisation, seconds before answering, was that something had gone wrong. Anton knew the risks: he was to go alone, via public transport, and to return alone. "Problem," said Anton. That his voice was quivering was obvious even through the interference on the mobile. "Teresa?" "Yeah. We're at the corner of Dutch and Lennor. Can you give us a ride?" As he drove to Lennor Street, Kaylin reprimanded himself for being so foolish in allowing Anton his attempt to infiltrate the Exiles. This had been the weakest link in his planning for the coming encounters. How could they have hoped that, somehow, he wouldn't be noticed there? Judging by the fear in his voice, there'd obviously been a confrontation. He'd previously accepted that such a confrontation would have probably resulted in Anton's death. But Teresa had let him live. Why? Pulling up the street-corner where the pair waited, Kaylin marvelled at the young man's ingenuity: he'd managed to make friends with one of the Exiles. Perhaps the subterfuge had not been a complete failure after all. Catherine was silent as Anton related the night's events. Finally, as they climbed the stairs to the apartment, he relayed Teresa's message. Kaylin's reaction was, at first, confused disbelief. "This changes everything," was all he said. In truth, he wasn't sure of exactly what it changed, but that the mere fact of it suggested a reversal of some kind. ... to be continued... Individual authors may be reached at the following addresses: Metonymous Bosch : metonymous.bosch@pms.metronj.org Laura Lemay: lemay@netcom.com Arifel: arifel.tanj@pms.metronj.org Dava: dava.tanj@pms.metronj.org Slack Mammoth: slack.mammoth.tanj@pms.metronj.org The Awakening ?? John Gillespie Magee, Jr. ?? Ironhorse: ironhorse@pms.metronj.org Doomlord: doomlord.tanj@pms.metronj.org ۲ ݲ۱ ۲ ۲ ۲ ۲ ۲ ۲ ۲ ۲ Phoenix Modernz Systems: 908/830-TANJ ۲ ۱ VapourWare BBS: 61/3-429-8510 ۲ ۱ Yellow Submarine: 404/552-5336 ۲ RipCo ][: 312/528-5020 ۲ ۲ ۲ ۲ ͸ ۲ TANJ Mailing Address ۲ PO Box 174 ۲ Seaside Hts, NJ ۲ 08751 ۲ ۲ ; ݲ۱ tanj@pms.metronj.org