r/mesoscalepodcast

Every dream is an eternity.

Every night my dreams are the same. Always have been for as long as I could remember my dreams.

Every night I would awake in my bed. Except it wasn’t my actual bed. The world around me would always be covered in this ephemeral fog that permeated every single inch of space.

And the dust. My god the dust.

All I ever did was clean.

The shadows never changed. The day never began. The Dust would never end.

I would continue on from my room into the hall, then into the bathroom, then the closets, then the kitchen, then the floors. Never stopping until the entire apartment was free of the dust.

Then I would step into the outside world. The world that was not my world. The world of The Dust and The Gray.

The Dreary.

Light from above would fight its way through the fog, never making it to the hollow ground below.

Where there should have been roads, dirt, grass, and trees, there was stone.

Cobblestoned roads, stonework trees, and fields of slate.

All of it covered in The Dust.

As I would move through the still air the dust would form on my wake and disperse, leaving a trail of my presence throughout this abandoned, forgotten world.

My world of Dust, my Dreary.

I would look up into that fog filled sky and gaze into the twin hues of yellow and white whose muffled screams struggled to breach the all-but-impenetrable fog above, scattering their voices into the omnipresent haze.

Then I would wake up.

Today was no different.

A woman stood just beyond the doorway, her flowing auburn hair flailing about as she shouted at me. I couldn’t really make out the words. She seemed familiar.

Something hard and somewhat heavy hit me square in the face, then plopped into my lap.

My still-blurry sight returned to me just in time to watch the woman march off down the hallway.

Her exit was announced by the slamming of the front door.

My bed was a mess. Clothes were strewn about, the sheets were everywhere, and some were stained with a substance I could not identify. The morning sun cast my shadow on the opposite wall from behind me.

My head pounded from within, memories of last night sat chained behind an alcohol-soaked lock.

My eyes trailed downward to my lap, falling on the object that was hurled at me only moments earlier.

It was a black, featureless, leather-bound book. A fairly hefty one at that.

Rubbing my eyes to confirm I wasn’t completely blind, I took a closer look at the book’s cover.

It was completely blank.

I turned over the book, expecting somehow that repeatedly flipping the book over would magically cause it to manifest some form of identifying information.

I caught a glimpse of something on the spine as I did so. It glistened in the morning sun and sparkled like diamonds.

It was a sigil. A symbol etched in gold, a gold so vibrant that the world around me appeared gray by comparison.

“Oh shit,” the words shot out of my mouth before my brain could even register I was speaking, “Leena!”

I’m such a fucking moron.

I fell onto the floor as my legs refused to accept my authority over them, getting tangled in the bedsheets in the process.

I crawled towards the nearest pile of, mostly, clean clothes I could identify.

Getting dressed was a challenge. I fought with my own body just to put on a shirt, whilst barely navigating the hectic and wayward expletive laden rants that crashed through the windows of my sullied mind palace.

Of all the thoughtless and horrible things, how could I have forgot today was the day she came back from her-

I paused in the hallway, pants half on and shirt on backwards.

Where did she go anyway? Was it a work thing? Was it some kind of vacation?

Why did I care?

My emotional rollercoaster came to a stand-still as the emergency brakes kicked on.

I let the half assembled outfit slide off my unkempt form as I shuffled into the kitchen.

That's right, I didn’t care. I don’t care.

The dishes in the sink were clean, as they should be.

The counter was full of random brand-new crap brought home that was never properly put away and just left in its assorted state of limbo storage, not that I needed the counter space anyway. The side effect of a weak will.

I threw the kettle on and threw a pan on the stove. I figured I should have myself a good old fashioned breakfast of eggs whatever-was-left-in-the-fridge, coffee, and a ciggy.

I dug through the fridge and managed to salvage some cheese, a sausage, and a whole tomato. I chopped them up roughly and dumped them into the simmering mixture of egg and butter.

I slid the scrambled egg mixture onto my plate, grabbed my cup of liquid life, and sat my ass down on a spot I had cleared on the couch.

The TV had nothing interesting on but I left it on the food channel anyway. It was nice to eat with someone.

As I put out the cigarette in the overflowing tray I glanced over at the pile of marked envelopes on the table. Most of them said “Past Due.”

After dumping my dishes back in the sink I stumbled back into my room looking for… something.

The guy.

The cute one. Chatted me up at the bar and drank me under the table, and my sheets. I think he was a blonde, or brown? Or maybe I had hoped he was.

He must have taken off when Leena started screaming. I didn’t see any of his clothes around the bed.

I didn’t even get to say goodbye. Though it's refreshing to be on the other end of that for once.

Why did she throw that book at me?

I ruffled through the haphazardly strewn bedsheets until my hands came into contact with what I was searching for. The book Leena had thrown at my face just before she left.

With some painkillers and another cup of coffee on-board, I could think clearly enough and took a closer examination of the book.

Flipping through its pages I was met with blank after blank page.

The entire damn thing is just blank. Was this some kind of journal for me?

A gift? But why would she…

I threw it in a pile next to my side of the bed.

The rest of the day was filled with job applications.

The age of the Internet has done wonders for many aspects of humanity. Job applications were one sector made infinitely worse.

Every job fair booth I went to had a QR code to scan for their online applications system. Every Now Hiring sign in a store had that godforsaken block-grid in lieu of a simple piece of paper and a proper interview.

After the fifteenth online application referral I decided to call it for the day.

I sat down on my slightly cleaner couch and looked down at my phone, expecting to see dozens of notifications. Ideally at least one.

Instead I saw none.

No calls, no texts, no nothing.

The sun hung low over the horizon. Its waning radiance coaxed the sky into a storm of fire that lapped at the ever growing ocean of blues and purples.

It shone directly into my fucking eyes.

Shuffling my lazy ass over on the couch, I poured out the remaining contents of a bottle of whiskey into my cold cup of half drank coffee.

The evening consisted of aimlessly scrolling through various social media feeds and TV channels. Everywhere I looked I saw people on dream vacations, getting married, or buying their first homes.

Guess I’m just a fucking loser, huh.

Dinner was more whiskey, from a new bottle this time, and another menthol ciggy. I wasn’t particularly hungry as it was.

Where the hell was Leena? She stormed out and hasn’t even texted me. Maybe shes-

I quickly downed the rest of my glass before I could finish the thought. The burning warmth of the spiced whiskey rips me out of my own head.

As the whiskey level in my bottle lowered the moon rose in response. It was close to midnight by the time the bottle was empty.

The floor was my home now. This was not negotiable. Any attempt to stand at the moment would surely result in me splitting my head open on a table, or worse, ejecting the precious ounces of whiskey that I had been struggling to keep down for the past hour. The world around me decided it was time to begin rotating at ridiculous speeds, rendering me unable to stand upright.

Clinging to the ground beneath me, I dragged myself to my bedroom and eventually, I pulled myself up onto my bed.

The spinning only worsened. I closed my eyes and did my best to ignore it.

Eventually the spinning stopped and I awoke in my bed.

But this wasn’t my bed.

In what felt like no time at all I had returned to serve my sentence. My eternal penance for the crimes I must have committed at some point.

Once more I proceeded through my charge of the cleaning of The Dust.

All my life, all that I could remember anyway, I had never been able to dream. Not properly. Instead of nightmares of being naked at school or all my teeth falling out I dreamt of this place, The Dreary.

The Dreary was an empty world, a dead world, one that remained contained by a dense impenetrable fog that snuffed out all but the most diffused light from the sky above.

The Dreary was, as far as I could tell, an exact copy of the world. Save for the fact that anything not built by human hands was replaced by stone abstracts that, while giving the idea of what they're supposed to be, look nothing like it. Imagine if a tree wasn’t a tree but instead a jagged spine of stone that clawed upwards through the fog. Sure the base idea of a tree is there but that’s not a fucking tree.

There was nothing living within The Dreary. Even the wind did not blow. The world did not breathe. It was still, frozen, a corpse of identity.

Yet tonight was different.

The Dreary demanded my attention.

It had not done that before.

I broke from my charge and answered, walking towards the front door of my copied apartment.

I saw nothing new outside. The same cobble roads divided the same slate fields bearing the same stonework trees.

Except there was something new.

There had never been something new.

A great and grand staircase made of the most radiant marble ascended into the sky and well beyond the fog. Its brilliance made the fog seem black by comparison.

At the foot of these stairs stood a statue. A black statue covered in a golden cloak that fluttered in a non-existent wind.

“What the fuck?” My voice carried across The Dreary, hollow and raspy.

There’s never anything new. Nothing new, never. There was only The Dust, there was only The Dreary. What the hell is this?

I felt my breath become erratic-

I felt my breath.

I have never breathed before in a dream. I had never spoken.

I could not take my eyes off of the cloaked statue.

I could not resist the movement of my legs. Yet again my body refused to obey me as I was marched down the stairs of my apartment building.

The Dust does not react to me.

In what felt like seconds I found myself kneeling before the cloaked statue. It towered over me, but its height seemed to vary as my eyes rattled around in their sockets.

I clutched my head as I hissed an empty scream in agony. I felt a thousand hands trying to push their way out from within my mind, held back by a single flimsy door.

I strained to look upwards at the statue.

As I did I caught a glimpse of long auburn hair.

I shot upright in my bed.

The accumulating saliva in my mouth signaled to me that I should start running to the bathroom.

As the last of my wretches escaped my hanging maw, I caught a glance of my reflection.

I saw myself. Not in some artsy self-abstract sort of sense, but in a very literal sense.

Not the scars, nor the rage, nor the often bloodshot and tired eyes that have stared back at me for longer than I bothered to remember.

My eyes. My self.

I felt the fog that clouded my thoughts lift ever so slightly.

For the first time in ages I could think without strain. The string of consciousness was no longer a spider web of spider webs but was now a constant, deliberate, string that I could trace from end to end hanging freely in the newfound void.

I saw the filth, the disgust, the depravity that surrounded me.

How long had I lived like this?

I hopped in the shower to wash off days, no, weeks of god knows what from my skin. The water that rolled off my body and down into the drain was noticeably darker than the water that came out of the shower head.

I located the cleanest ensemble of clothes I could find; a pair of shorts and a button up short sleeve shirt that hung on my desk chair.

The unrelenting summer heat would stand no chance against this climate appropriate ensemble.

As I waited for the kettle to boil I started clearing the kitchen counter of all of the trash and unopened impulse-purchase appliances that had made it their home.

By the time the whistling of the kettle arrived I had already bagged up two bags of what had to be no less than $1000 of unused appliances. In their state I doubt I could get anyone to take them even for free.

The first sip of the black sludge that had the audacity to call itself coffee left a searing trail as it traveled down my throat. Even if I had any milk that wasn’t out of date or sugar that wasn’t crawling with bugs it wouldn’t have been enough to blunt the blow of that demonic concoction.

I poured the entire mug of caffeinated sewage down the drain so that it may rejoin its kin. Instead I opted for a half drank can of POG left in the fridge.

As I began my war against grime in the kitchen I felt my phone buzz.

I quickly rinsed my hands and answered the incoming call.

“Hi, is this Joseph Aiden?” The voice on the other end spoke.

“Yes,” I started hesitantly, “this is him.”

It had been a while since I had heard anyone say my name. I patiently awaited the other side to get on with whatever it was they wanted. Maybe it was a scammer who wanted to extort me for all I’m worth. I hope he likes the zeros in my bank account, because that's all there is.

“My name is David DeGuzman, I’m calling in response to your application with us…” as the voice trailed on my mind honed in on something he said.

Application? When did I-

Stopping myself short as I glanced over at the pile of yet-to-be-mailed applications on the kitchen table.

“…we’d like to have you come in for an interview. What dates are you available this week?”

I felt my heart flutter.

“Any,” I practically shouted, “right now even I can come down right now.”

I cringed inside realizing what a desperate fool I must have come off as. Even if it was the honest truth, what if this screws with my chances at getting the job?

I paused.

What job am I even volunteering myself for anyway? Sure it didn’t really matter at this point but-

“You know,” David started, “I think we have an opening around noon today, you think you could make it down to The Mall building?”

Thank god it’s close.

“Yeah that's like five minutes away from me,” I chuckled, overwhelmed and nervous beyond comparison.

“Great. We’re room 1304 on the 13th floor. You can check in with the front desk once you arrive. See you there.”

The line dropped.

As my phone returned to the lock screen I saw the time was 11:24.

While it was true that I wasn’t that far from The Mall building, I had realized far too late that any of my far more acceptable business attire was in desperate need of a wash. Sure, the shirt I was wearing was formal enough, shorts and slippers would likely get me marked down.

I combed through my room to see if perhaps I had missed any nicer clothes. Much to my dismay I had not.

Resigning myself to my fate I gritted my teeth and pushed on out the door.

My walk down to the mall was less of a casual walk and more of a heavily restrained sprint. My body happily obeyed my restraint, despite my legs screaming to let them break out in a sprint. The tightness in my chest, like a coiled spring, desired to be released through my legs.

The Mall itself was, to my knowledge, the largest outdoor mall in the world. On any given day it was bustling with tourists from all over the world. Situated right across the street from a massive beach park and sat just on the edge of Waikiki, It was arguably the social center of the whole island. The south side of the island, anyway. The Mall Building was situated on the Mauka side of the mall, opposite the ocean side, which meant it was basically a straight walk from my shabby abode down the main road and right into The Mall.

On the walk more questions formed within me, the solemn line of thought formed into a structured diagram of red threads that stretched from one end of the void to the other.

What company was I even interviewing for? The Mall building was mostly just offices for anything you could imagine, private medical practices and outpatient clinics, law offices, engineering firms, hell even some small cafes.

And that name. David DeGuzman.

Not that I was an expert on names, but of all the names you hear around here I couldn’t help but feel that something was… off.

Before I could indulge my conspiracy further I realized I had entered into the elevator and was now en route to the 13th floor.

I was alone in the elevator. Despite the lobby otherwise being filled only I had entered this elevator.

Or at least I thought the lobby was full.

The doors opened into the 13th floor lobby. It was a modest little area with a few area chairs for people to sit as they wait for their family to do whatever business they have on this floor.

I walked out, passed the row of elevators and headed into the main hallway. There were no windows. The dull droning of the building's HVAC and the gentle buzzing of the fluorescent lights trickled through the air before being absorbed by the slight off-blue carpet that ran the length of the floor.

I nervously made my way to room 1304. Thankfully, or not, the room was close to the elevators. Just one door down after taking a right.

The door was blank aside from the room placard and an “hours of operation” sign.

I steadied myself, took a deep breath, and entered the room.

I entered a small office lobby. Two chairs sat awkwardly in the far corner next to a door that presumably led further into the sectioned off office area. A newly constructed drywall partition isolated the lobby area from the rest of the office floor space, leaving only a door and a cutout for the secretary or greeter to manage guests as they come in the door.

“Joseph Aiden?” A female voice called from out of sight.

“Uhh yes?” I answered cautiously.

A woman, appearing to be in her forties, approached the counter cutout from within the offices. Her bright red hair appeared almost plastic in the fluorescent lighting.

“Mr. DeGuzman is ready for you.” She said, bending down to interact with something below the counter.

I heard a soft click followed by a buzz.

The office door popped open and the woman beckoned me forth.

The hallway was more of the same. A drywall corridor with several doors on either side.

The door locked shut behind me with a buzz, startling me.

At the same time the door at the far end of the hall opened. A man wearing a blue floral shirt waved me down.

“Down here!” He called.

I quickly made my way inside the man’s office. The windows behind him were blocked off by heavy curtains, the only source of light being the ever-present fluorescent overhead lights.

“I’m David,” he said, extending his hand, “pleasure to meet you.”

I reciprocated his gesture and returned a firm handshake.

“Likewise.” I replied.

The man, David, had well kept short black hair and a comically yet impeccably well kept ‘70s mustache that reflected some of the overhead light.

David gestured for me to sit and I obliged.

The office itself was a modest space, the desk at which we were sat was adorned with the typical office fare, albeit a bit lacking in some finer details and a bit too clean for it to be in constant use.

“So, about-“ I started before David cut me off.

“You’re 28 correct?” David asked as he held up some papers.

“Yes,” I replied.

“Can you tell me a little bit about your previous employer?”

I paused.

My previous employer? Who-

“Oh,” the thought found its way to me, “yes sorry I was with a PI firm, Maikai Investigations.”

“Yes them,” David affirmed leaning back in his silent office chair, “what kind of work were you involved in?”

I felt my palms become clammy but I persisted and gave him the sales pitch.

“Usually a client would come to us and ask us to get information about someone. That's the very base level of things,” I elaborated, “could be, you know, someone wanting to know about their birth parents. Someone wanting to know if a spouse is being unfaithful, really just about anything involving information.”

“Were you good at what you did?” David asked, his words laced with a substance I couldn’t fully make out.

“I’d like to think I was,” I said with false bravado, “never had any clients complain and I always completed the job-“

“Even when you were asked to do things that might have been morally objectionable?”

I froze.

I wasn’t a saint. Still aren’t. But I did what I was asked and did a damn fine job of it. If someone had a problem with it they can sort it out with the cops.

“Absolutely,” I said, almost bragging, “especially when others would refuse to take the job.”

“Why?”

David’s words now came with an air of genuine curiosity.

“Can I ask the relevance to the job?” I deflected.

David shifted forward in his chair, his poker face remaining unchanged since the start of the interview.

“Everything,” he replied eerily, “I’m not here to judge you, I want to know.”

David stared at me with an intensity I had reserved only for stains in my sink.

“Because the job needed to be done,” I started, “and I liked the challenge.”

David’s eyes perked up at that.

“The challenge?”

I furrowed my brow.

“Every case was a puzzle,” I leaned in, “and I was the best damn puzzle solver in that organization.”

I winced.

“Then why’d you leave?” David shot back.

Ignoring the blatant cringe that was whatever the hell I just called myself, David’s question shot through and shattered my false bravado like a bullet through a kitchen window.

“I was banging the boss's wife.”

It wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t the reason.

David’s poker face slipped as he let out a hint of disappointment.

“The analyst position we are looking for has some caveats,” he started as he began flipping through the papers on his desk, “one is honesty. We expect our analysts to be completely honest with us.”

His eyes locked onto mine.

I caught a glimpse of the papers on his desk. One was a memo entitled “Investigative Incident,” left conveniently in my line of sight.

“I overstepped.” I replied begrudgingly.

“Honesty is paramount,” David began as laid down the papers, “I don’t mean some half-assed corporate honesty, I mean if what I ask is for you to delve into how much you hate your boss, your life, or whatever escapades you and a secretary got up to, we expect the full un-adulterated details.”

I shifted uncomfortably in my chair.

What the fuck is he on about? Sure I appreciate that this job lets you cuss your boss out in the name of honesty but isn’t this a bit much?

“Just what exactly is an analyst here?” I started, “What are the hours? The responsibilities? The pay?”

The more questions I asked the more flustered I became. I knew utterly nothing about this place or this supposed job I was now interviewing for.

As a matter of fact how the hell did this guy get a hold of that-

“Anything further requires an NDA,” David cut, interrupting my thoughts.

“I have to sign an NDA to even know who or what I'm working for?” I asked, emboldened and incredulous.

David raised an eyebrow.

“Yeah, you do,” he replied, “and you’re going to be asked far more uncomfortable questions than the ones I’m giving you now.”

Then it clicked.

Analyst position? I think I would have remembered applying for something so fancy sounding, at least compared to the myriad of fast food and retail positions I had been applying for.

“I don’t think I’ve ever applied for this position,” I said as I slowly stood up from my chair, “just who the hell are you?”

David smirked.

“Like I said, you sign this contract and I’ll answer all your questions.” David smiled.

His poker face slipped away revealing satisfaction and pride.

He slid a paper across his desk towards me, placing a pen at the top of the document.

The paper was a single page. Barely half. At the bottom was a place for my signature and nothing else.

I glanced at the page, not wanting to let my guard down. I caught one sentence that set off alarm bells within me.

“We are humanity’s first and last line of defense.”

My chest became a twist of panic, of confusion, of curiosity, of fear, and god knows what other emotions that humanity has yet to properly define.

“I’m not interested.” I said and made my way to the door.

David stood at his desk and watched as I hastily made my exit.

The door out of the office buzzed and opened as I approached.

“We’ll see you again, Aiden.” David said gently, his voice echoing down the hallway as the door to 1304 closed behind me.

The red threads in my mind formed a tangled mess that only grew as my questions remained unanswered.

As soon as I got home I made sure to lock the door.

I pulled out my phone to check the number that this organization had contacted me from.

It wasn’t there.

In the call history the last call shown was from a week ago.

From Leena.

I slumped down onto the couch.

I felt my chest constrict as a burning pain filled my chest, a twisting anxiety and yearning that sapped my breath away.

Why do I care? She knew what she was signing up for. She knew what I was.

I kept rationalizing.

I never said yes to her, I just didn’t say no. Not my fault she got all confused.

My sight became blurry.

Why’d she keep taking pity on me? Keep coming back to my dump of a house? Keep buying me shit I didn’t ask for? Keep-

The tears began to roll down my face.

Why couldn’t I care until now?

I bawled my eyes out. I cried and cried until the couch was soaked with my tears. I unleashed all the tension in my chest with a scream that surely pissed off the neighbors.

I cried, I screamed, I threw everything within arm’s reach at the wall hoping that if I threw it hard enough I could fix this mess. I threw a tantrum that would put a stubborn toddler to shame.

As a few hours pass as I lay spent on the couch at the epicenter of the disaster that trashed my living room.

“Leena…” I moaned mournfully into a tearstained pillow.

My eyes lazily scanned my surroundings, taking in the totality of my ruin and pathetic squalor.

All I could feel was a muted mix of disgust and hatred, aimed at myself.

I wished for nothing more than to never leave this couch again; better to join the rot and the refuse than continue my futile struggle against a life I had already destroyed.

A flame of insight flickered to life within my mind.

Just how the hell did those people, whoever they are, erase their call history from my phone?

After a brief but intense search online I came to a disturbing conclusion.Unless they had physical possession of my device, they could not hide my call history.

My eyes quickly darted to my door.

It was still locked up tight, right as it should be, some debris still blocking it from opening due to my earlier outburst.

I got up and inspected the jalousies.

The netting on the windows themselves remained undisturbed, even sporting a fine layer of dust. The jalousies too were equally undisturbed.

They didn’t break in. Or if they did they hid their tracks better than most, well enough to never be caught. But why go through all that effort just to delete a phone number? I could just look up the company by its address right?

I entered the address, suite 1304.

Nothing, at least for this decade. There are some old surface web files relating to a small life insurance company that once operated out of that address.

Feeling restless and seeing the sun still high in the sky, I decided to make my way back to the unit and get some answers.

Not fair they should know me so well without it being mutual.

Upon arriving in the lobby I spotted a building directory. I quickly scanned the registered suite numbers for 1304.

Not the first column, not the second, nor the third.

“Need help locating a business?”

I spun around to see a woman with long crimson hair, done up in a long pony tail.

“Oh, uh,” I fumbled my words.

Maybe I'm a little colorblind but that crimson looked auburn for a brief but uncomfortably long second.

“Im looking for the name of a business that operated out of suite 1304.” I explained to the young woman.

She squinted at the registry and scanned it intently.

“Strange,” she started, “I don’t see any, maybe we should go take a look?”

She beckoned me to the elevator lobby, to the cargo lift.

She swiped her ID card and the doors opened.

The cargo lift was very spacious and surprisingly well kept for being used to haul god-knows-what.

She walked over to the button panel and selected the 13th floor. Unlike the other elevators this one had a “Basement” floor button. The elevator had ascended at a far greater rate than the other one I had used earlier in the day.

We arrived on the 13th floor and she led me towards the suite. As we arrived we noticed a “For Lease” sign with an address for a corporate realty website.

“It doesn’t look like anyone has used this one in a while,” she frowned, “sorry that I couldn’t be of more help!”

Before I could respond she had already made her way back to the elevator and disappeared.

It was impossible, yet it was reality.

I had just been here maybe a few hours ago and the office where I’d had my interview was just gone.

As my thoughts began to settle they also began to drift. As they drifted and fluttered about in the subconscious wind of my psyche they fell upon a particular subject.

The hair, the auburn hair. Leena.

But the lady’s hair wasn’t auburn, it was practically crimson. Dyed. Healthy too.

She wasn’t Leena, so why did my thoughts find themselves wandering over to her? Just a similarity?

No, familiarity.

I’ve seen her before. Recently. But where?

The elevator came for me as I mulled over my thoughts. Scanning the panel I looked for the lowest floor option.

“Lobby.”

No basement floor option in this one. Probably just for the freight elevator.

As I walked out of the lobby and passed the ground floor loading dock I stopped.

In the office. She was there.

The receptionist had red hair. It was done up differently and partially obscured due to the contrasted office lighting but it was definitely, or probably, the same color.

But she was old, the lady who helped me couldn’t have been older than 30.

Unless they were using prosthetic makeup. But why the hell-

“Eh, out da way!” A voice announced from behind me.

A very impatient and upset package courier stood behind me with his cart full of parcels.

I quickly moved on wanting to avoid any awkward interactions.

The walk home was unpleasant.

A growing uneasiness in my gut had worked its way throughout my entire body. The traffic, people, buildings, even the sun all seemed so distant yet painfully close. Too close.

Was I being watched?

I glanced around. Nothing unusual, which only served to drive up my anxiety more.

I knew I was being watched, I could feel it, years of experience and training screamed the obvious to me but my eyes, my mind, I was blind to it.

I locked the door upon arriving home. Closed the windows and blinds too.

Still I felt the eyes, the presence, I was seen. Exposed. Vulnerable.

But that was impossible.

A thorough sweep of my house confirmed what I had already known; I was alone. Just me and my belongings.

I took a drag from the quickly emptying pack which helped ease the tension I felt. The feeling persisted.

Paranoia wasn’t unusual for me, though it was mostly back when I still worked as a PI. Most PIs had rules though. Standards. Maybe even a moral compass.

I didn’t.

The pay was good, real good, but it wasn’t about the pay. It was all about the thrill. It had been so long since I felt that fear, that ever watchful eye, that I forgot how good it felt. I had spent years binging on every substance I could get my hands in, trapped in my own mind.

Now, for the first time in years, I could feel that sensation coursing through my body like electricity.

When I awoke I once again found myself in The Dreary. I do not remember falling asleep.

But it had changed.

The Dust. The layer of dust that had coated the entire world was gone.

I rushed outside to see the fog, still ever present but much lighter. I could see further than ever before. Far enough to see that The Dreary had been rearranged.

The roads that had once mirrored their real-world counterpart were now gone. The houses all replaced with different, familiar structures. There was now just one long cobblestone boulevard that stretched from the foot of my apartment building to a massive tower. The Mall Building, behind which now was a massive ocean that expanded beyond the fog which replaced the massive beachpark, and mall, that would have normally sat behind it.

Gone was the marble staircase. Gone was the statue in the golden cloak.

Without thinking I began walking down the procession towards The Mall Building. Its upper floors pierced the fog and stretched into the unseen sky.

The structures that flanked the boulevard on either side were houses, most of them that is. Some were industrial buildings, one was a hotel.

Their commonality soon became apparent.

I had investigated cases involving each of these structures. An unfaithful husband having secret meetups with some girl half his age at the hotel, a string of disappearances tied to a warehouse with a cold trail, a teacher that had been using school equipment to manufacture narcotics, and many, many other escapades.

The closer to the sky scraper I got the more recent the structures were in my memory. Until eventually, just short of The Mall Building, my eyes fell upon the house I had blocked from my mind for years.

The house that sealed my fate, both giving and taking so much.

The place I first met Leena. The place I lost my job. The place I nearly lost my freedom. The place I thought I’d lose my life. The place with a shattered kitchen window.

My head was turned away from that house and toward The Mall Building.

I became unable to look away from it, my eyes transfixed on the lobby entrance.

Why would I want to look away? There is a mystery here, something to solve, to understand.

The words echoed in my mind, but they were not mine.

My legs marched themselves towards the opening and into the lobby. An elevator door was already open.

The cargo elevator.

Entering the elevator I scanned the button panel. The card reader was gone. Only one button remained.

“Basement.”

The doors closed as I hit the button.

I felt myself nearly float as the elevator descended at a rapid rate. Despite its apparent speed the ride seemed to go on for far too long.

Then it stopped.

The doors opened and before me was the office I had just been in earlier today.

Following that familiar path I proceeded into the hallway.

There was only one door. A door at the end of the hall. And it was open.

From the entrance I could see the windows were gone. Replaced by the marble staircase. The statue with the Golden Cloak stood in front of it.

I approached the statue and fell to my knees once again.

Voices.

Dozens. Hundreds. Thousands. Millions of voices began to echo in my mind. What small fragments I could grasp would only say one thing.

The Cataclysm.

Echoes of screams and fragments of agony filled my mind from a past long before what I had known. I knew not how, only that these voices were ancient beyond reason, ancient beyond knowledge, beyond what any human, any mortal had any right to hear let alone understand.

I felt the weight beneath the ground. I felt a pull below that threatened to swallow me whole.

My eyes struggled to focus on the statue, only seeing the fluttering of the golden cloak.

The staircase descended into an infinite darkness. It beckoned me forth.

My hand reached into my back pocket. I grabbed onto something firm and pulled it forth.

Immediately the voices silenced and I regained my strength.

In my hand was a featureless leather bound book with a golden sigil etched into its spine.

-Thank you for taking the time to read my first work, this community has motivated me to put pen to paper after years of indecision. I’d rather the stories I write be painfully mid than non-existant. Part Two soon.

Signed, CGCallisto-

[removed]

Beginner hobbyist looking for feedback. This is just the beginning of the story. I will post another chunk tomorrow if there is any interest. Of course happy to read 4 read. Thanks!

CRYPT CREEPERS

I couldn’t shake the feeling. A hard little lump in the back of my throat. It had been nagging me all day. I tried coughing, gargling, and massaging my neck. Nothing worked. I had spent the evening stoned and playing video games, same as nearly every night these days. My focus kept drifting from the game however, and returning to the nagging pressure in the back of my throat. Frustrated, I turned the game off and switched over to YouTube, clicking the first thing that popped up. I just needed something to fill the silence.

I had been living alone for months now and still had not adjusted to the oppressive silence of the empty apartment. I sucked in a huge hit from my bong and started coughing. Something dislodged from the back of my throat and got caught under my tongue. I wiggled it out and spit it onto my palm. It was a lumpy green thing, maybe half the size of a skittle. And holy shit, it smelled fucking disgusting. Although the pressure had lightened, I could still feel something in the back of my throat. I dropped the nasty little thing on the coffee table and walked into the bathroom.

Leaning in front of the mirror, I shined a light into my mouth. There was still something crammed up in the back of my throat it seemed. Something small and green. I reached in to poke it and my skin flushed as I realized I was only glimpsing the surface. The rest of whatever this thing was was buried, packed into the flesh of my throat. 

I had an old friend(we hadn’t talked in many years) that would send me pictures after removing a particularly large and nasty tonsil stone. While I would laugh and give him shit, the unsolicited photos repulsed me and I silently begged(never been much for praying) to never have one myself. Unfortunately it seemed my silent pleas went unanswered, as I was looking at a rather large tonsil stone, and it looked like it was about to pop right out. 

I was correct in my assumption. The rotten little thing needed very little persuasion to come out. Just a nudge from my pointer finger and the putrid green stone tumbled out onto my tongue. I could taste it, or smell it. Maybe both, I’m not sure. It was fucking rancid though. The stench and taste of decay danced across my taste buds and flooded my sinuses, causing me to retch before spitting the rotten stone out.
It glistened there in the sink, a sickly pale green tainting the white ceramic. I watched with sick fascination its nearly imperceptible movement toward the open drain along a puddle of saliva. 

A hidden cave entrance, dark, damp, and carved deep into the wall of my throat was now exposed. Nudging the edge of the hole, I spied the green glisten of another stone. With a bit of prodding, the stone, slightly smaller than the last, tumbled out of its hidden little home and sat, pale green and slick, on the tip of my finger. I rubbed it between finger and thumb, crushing it and exposing a stringy fibrous interior. It reeked of rotten food and decaying teeth. I rinsed the foul thing off the tip of my finger and returned to poking around.

The light did not immediately reveal another stone, just the small glistening hole in the back of my throat, slick with saliva. Bracing myself for another stinking surprise, I pulled the hole wider. A glimmer of green, of course. And also something else. A hair maybe? It was thin and black and wrapped halfway around the stone. I started prodding and applying more pressure, trying to wiggle the damn thing out. As it became more exposed, I saw more of the hair like substance wrapped around the back side of the stone. Two or three more strands it looked like. I did not know how hair could have been packed into my tonsil crypts but the thought nauseated me.

The stone began to emerge as I applied more pressure. The thin black strands began moving with it, scrabbling and scratching at the stone. This one was large, perhaps even bigger than the first, and on the precipice of popping out. I backed off a little pressure and watched with sick fascination as the black strands frantically and desperately grabbed at the stone, as if they were trying to keep it where it was. Too bad, I thought, and pushed in, fully dislodging the stone. 
Just like the first, this tonsil stone dropped onto my tongue. This time however, the stone did not emerge alone. There was something else. And it was moving. My vision darkened. I cried and spat, then stared in horror at the large stinking tonsil stone in the sink. And at the brown and black spider, just about the same size, writhing beside it. 

The faucet was on and both intruders were plummeting down the sink drain before I even realized what I was doing. Trembling and bracing against the counter, I stared at myself in the mirror. The faucet was still open, dumping water into the open hole of the sink drain. I left it on, couldn’t stand the idea of the spider(itsy bitsy little trespasser that it was) crawling up the drain pipe and finding me. 

I had to check if there were others. Mouth open. Light on. I leaned in towards the mirror, shined the light into my mouth and saw four little legs stretched out from the back of my throat. A terrible gasping croak sang out from deep within me. The spider’s legs stiffened then slowly retreated back into the hole it had claimed as its home. The world was closing in. Gravity fell heavy upon me and pulled me down. I thought of spiders. Crawling into my mouth, my nose, my eyes. Making a home inside of me. Crawling, feeding, breeding. Dancing up and down my spinal cord.

When Elizabeth Hurley saw Lester Owens coming down the crooked road by the pasture, she was sure he had been in the silage hooch, drunk as the last lord of creation. She stood half-hidden behind a beam on her porch and watched him in the early blood dawn. The sound of screech owls crying the last of their descending, ghostly whinnies of the night echoed from the deep woods as he stuttered along.

She was afraid of Lester.

Lester wasn’t walking so much as he was lurching down that dirt road.

He would stagger forward on one good leg, dragging the other behind, swinging his hip in a half-twist to carry that dead weight after him. He was slathered in mud from head to trailing foot. The filth ran brown to black hitting that gimp leg and left a foul trail behind him she could just make out in that apocalyptic new day. But the way Lester tried to grab at something in front of him, wanting purchase to carry himself forward, Mrs. Hurley didn’t like that one bit. That made him seem dangerous. She watched him shamble along the road - step, draaag, step … draaag, step… draaag, step -  slow, but not quite ambling drunk-slow.

She watched him until he hit the curve that would have taken him into the town of Cedarville a couple miles going southwest from here, except he didn’t take the turn. A growing sense of dread rose up in her. Lester pitched into the underbrush beside the dirt road, going away from the curve. Then he was gone, leaving just the rip-haggard brush that seemed to shake in agony as it failed to close up. Something primal in Elizabeth told her not to look too closely at the road Lester walked; spatterings of blood trailed his muddied footsteps and the long, swishing smear that his anchoring deadweight foot left behind. She hadn’t seen it but she knew if she went to look she would find all that and more.

Somewhere, not as far off as Elizabeth would have liked, a barn owl screamed and it sounded like a banshee, or maybe a woman in distress. She stared off into that broken and dark wrangle of bushwork and trees. Her chest rose and fell at motor speeds and she clung to the porchbeam to keep from fainting. She knew what was over that way, straight as the crow flew, through the dogwood brush and the oak woods and the dark, spiraling animal trails that criss-crossed one another in secret places.

Lester Owens was walking to the Cedarville Cemetery, direct.

And, wildly, as if she were still in bed next to her husband, she had the waking-dreamlike belief that Lester Owens was dead. Had been dead, trudging along that country road and trying to imitate breathing, dead and weeping.

-

On the Friday before Elizabeth would see Lester boring through the pines and into the red twig dogwood, he was sitting at home, reading a letter. A warm buzz flushed up his face as he sipped out of a ceramic jug. The evenings were getting cool and the lightning bugs slalomed through the deepening autumn sky, will-o-wisps ferrying the dead. Firebobs, they called ‘em as kids. Lester was enjoying that build-up of tipsy every drinker craves, knowing it was building to something good. But this letter. Jesus mercy this letter just wasn’t gonna do.

He read by the dim electric light coming out of the window from his and Marcy’s squat, single-story home. The place had been rough when they bought it and was positively run to riot now. Creeping ivy had gone barmy on the north side of the house and the wood was so warped on the front that you could stick your knuckle in the bow between the boards. A number of disemboweled cars had been swallowed up in the weeds around their place. It wasn’t nothin’ to Lester, but Marcy was on him about finally taking care of the scrap in their garden now that baby Evelyn was turning one.

Lester took a belt off the jug, smacked his lips, and blew steam into the chilling night.

This letter.

He squinted at the fancy print for the third time since he yanked it out of Marcy’s hand this afternoon, getting in late from harvesting the O’Donnelly’s fields. He sat and thought. Late, but their tractor was a real hayburner jalopy that guzzled gas harder than Mr. O’Donnelly did his booze. They should have been grateful he got it done at all.

Lester swigged the bottle. The vinegary shit O’Donnelly’s boys brewed in about a hundred clay pots buried under silage made some of the foulest drink Lester ever had the pleasure of supping. Coughing, he thought about the contents of the letter.

The Letter, in no uncertain terms, was a notice to the residents of Cedarville and the surrounding communities within the district that the Cedarville Cemetery would be replotted to the far edge of town, to make way for a NEW road they were putting in to connect them to the NEW highway. That wasn’t the part that interested Lester, but it did do for a chuckle. The idea that this jerkwater town was going to be connected. Hoot and a holler, that.

No, the part that caught his eye was the bit about replotting the cemetery. Bad timing, with fall on the way, so they’d make a rush job of it, and probably not fuss up about any oddities. Afterall, gotta get Cedarville connected.

Lester laughed. The rank drunk odor clouded around him.

The front door opened behind him. Marcy was there, frigid - which he didn’t like - and scared of him - which he liked a helluva lot. She had on the whisper of a nightgown that draped off her shoulders, sheer enough to almost see through. Lester could feel himself getting a little hard just at the sight of her.

“Lester,” she breathed, clearly desperate but keeping her voice low, “Evvie is asleep, ya hear? You don’t be wakin’ her up. I just spent half the evening tryin’ to git her to sleep.”

He grunted, father enough to care about baby Evvie but not about to let Marcy tell him off. “Gonna laugh if I want to.” he said.

“Lester, please.”

Marcy held her ground, staring. The defiance caught him. She was still curvy and supple in ways that made Lester’s mind work like a dog’s, but she had gotten tough on him lately. Frownin’ on the drinking, frownin’ on the late nights, just always frownin’ he thought. Lester took another swill and then put the jug down into a little groove he had butted into the lawn that made for a good hold.

Lester stood.

He was a thin man made lean after years of hard living and hard working. Scrawny-strong. He faced Marcy head-on and his crooked-blade nose twitched, broken years ago by his old man over a dispute about money. There was a quiet, agile way he could move even with the drink so heavy set in him - she was scared of that. A smudge of grease like an Ash Wednesday cross was between his eyes where he had wiped sweat away. Foul hooch in his breath like poison on the wind. Hard, jade eyes. Lester didn’t like being told what to do in his own home.

“You wanna say that again, Marce?” he said, stepping close.

She swallowed, arms crossed defensively over her chest. “Lester, Evvie is sleeping. Please. Not tonight.”

His hand snapped up like a gator, strong fingers biting hard into her near-bare shoulder. “What the fuck do you think you’re saying to me, Marce, in my own Goddamn home?”

Marcy didn’t cry out because she knew he’d like that. She wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction. Lester could be like a wild animal, unpredictable and dangerous. She was attracted to that like a moth to the flame when she was younger, but not anymore. The danger and hurt were simply danger and hurt, now. She fought the pain but he could see her wince. He knew that he was hurting her, those sharp eyes of his. Sick satisfaction grazed his dark features. “Don’t you be cursing here, Lester Owens,” she said, fighting harder than she ever had before. “I said Evvie is sleeping and I won’t have you upsetting her. Not again.”

His eyes never left hers but she had caught him in a way he didn’t expect. Marcy knew that sometimes seeming brave was all you had to do to get a wild animal to hesitate. He loosened his grip and let go.

Marcy stepped back from him, not numb enough to keep from rubbing the hurt away where he gripped her. They stood for a moment, her hurting and him out on the darkening yard. He was becoming a silhouette of himself. She mustered and put sand in her craw, tightening up, muscles taut like she might jump. She didn’t think he’d hit her now, what with the evening being so early on, but he had been drinking the hard stuff. Was still drinking that vile witch’s brew.

“Evvie is sleeping, Lester, and I won’t have you causin’ a ruckus here. I don’t got it in me to be fightin’ you. Please.”

His eyes were sharp. Brilliant jade eyes. “You watch yourself, Marce. You goddamn watch your uppity mouth or I’m gonna shut it real good.”

But there was no turning back now. Either she would get her say in or forever be under his heel. Her own mother had been broken the same way. She promised herself something better. There was a galling certainty in her voice the next time she spoke that Lester wouldn’t forget. “Lester, I’m telling you, you stop now. Now. Cut the drinking tonight and sleep it off. Or go elsewhere.”

His hands moved in a blurred flash, unbuckling his belt as he took three large, quick steps toward his wife. She wanted to run but held her ground. If not for herself then for Evvie. God was he fast though. Faster than she realized. Lester held the folded leather in his right hand. His face was so close to her she would taste the liquor in his sweat if she just pushed out her tongue. He’d belt me and I’d bite it off, she thought, terrified. He breathed on her for a moment, then the rhythm changed - slowed. Deeper inhalations.

Lester ran the belt up her nightgown, along her shivering arm and to her breast. He kept his gaze on her as he let the belt fall to his other hand and began to idly play with her nipple through the sheer fabric. He could see her vision go distant and he smiled. He gave her a pinch and let his hand fall away, stepping back.

“Well, mayhaps I do that. Go elsewhere. Take a little run out to Cedarville and see if anything’s doin’ out there.” He gave a half-cocked smile, booze so thick in his spit it welled in his mouth. Vinegary hooch. “Might even be that I bump into Jeremiah Dudds. Could be we pal around, see if we can find anything with value, or somethin’.”

There was a twitch in her eye at Dudds’ name. He liked that.

That mean-drunk spirit was in him as he stepped back from her. “Ayup, I’mma gonna do that, Marce. But when I’m back, you’re gonna be awake. You got that? And if you ain’t, I’m gonna wake you up, Evvie be damned.”

He slipped his belt back on slowly, loop for loop, watching her. Even on the verge of being drunk he was nimble. He turned, twisting his booted heel into the floor before the door to leave a muddy print. She expected he would want her to clean that up too, before he got home. She’d be right.

Lester Owens climbed into his beat up Ford and turned it on, engine sputtering as if its guts were wracked with cancer, until finally the old bitch whirred alive. Marcy watched him drive off into the dark and pressing night until his lights were as distant, agonizing stars.

–

Jeremiah Dudds was enjoying the O’Donnelly hooch himself, and damn near drank half his jug by sundown. Dudds didn’t have a wife or kids. He was free to be as spiffed as he wanted to be any night he pleased. He stood up from his broken rocking chair, legs beat and wedged into the topsoil and through the thick mat of grassroot going half a foot down. He took three good, wobbling steps before he decided he had gone far enough to do his business. His gnarled fingers burned with rheumatism and ached as he worked the buttons to his overalls.

“Horse shittin’ spade!” he spat.

Like an incantation the button on his overalls let open and he schlucked them down past his knees and began to piss. He groaned and took in the cool evening breeze, ignoring the hot pain pinging from his prostate. The rank, acrid odor of his own urine blended with the pungent stink that came from the muck his clothes were covered in. If the hooch hadn’t been so vile he might have cared, but O’Donnelly’s boys made a batch that would make Satan himself hack.

Dudds swayed on his chicken stalk legs, piss dribbling into his pants and a humming tune coming to mind. He farted and it hurt. The hum turned into a Woodie Guthrie tune as he closed his eyes. Now came the real turn for the night; from here on the drinking would be hard.

It was in this trance-like state, pants covered in cow shit and his bloomers stained, that Lester’s dim trucklights fell onto him. They rolled over the hill and near-blinded the older, pot-bellied man. Dudds made a bad job of blocking the light with his arm and staggered, trying to find his chair. The Ford rolled to a stop in front of his house and for a stupored moment Dudds thought he had died in his front yard with his dick in his hands, reeking and reeling.

The motor died and the lights spasmed and died too, leaving a murky orange glow where the lamps were. Dudds blinked and rubbed his eyes with blunt, grime-covered fingers. Lester laughed at him.

“Lord ah mighty Jeremiah but do you look just all kinds of bent outta shape!” Lester cantered toward him, stumbling over a rock as he did so.

Dudds wasn’t amused. “Yeah, well go suck an egg why don’tcha? Your Ma knows a thing or two ‘bout that.”

Lester ignored him, still laughing loud. Dudds stumbled and finally pulled up his trousers. “The hell you doin’ here anyhow, Lester? Ain’t Marce still up?” Lester half-looked. Across the field, distant but just down the road, sat his squat little home, the dim-yellow lights giving its front a face full of mourning. Lester swiped at it, annoyed.

“Fergit et!” he snarled, losing the buzz he had been getting up while on the drive over. Dudds picked up his own jug and they knocked them together, taking a pull each. Hooch dribbled down the sides of Dudds’ mouth like a baby’s drool. Lester chaffed the rest of his and tossed it into the yard. Dudds’ place was worse than his own. The trash made for a junkyard maze of machine corpses and baubles. At night the place could kill a man if they stepped wrong.

Dudds belched and he could feel the bile rise up in him. “What’re ya doin’ here Lester?”

Lester side-eyed him, still checking on his house from over here. “You got yerself a letter today, from the county-man?”

Dudds nodded. “Ayup. Even read sum o’ et. Bad.”

Lester started to nod, slowly at first but more rapidly, excited about something. “Could be, Duddsy, but ah gots a plan. A good’n. But we gotta act quick. Tonight. Hotter’n a jackrabbit on a date quick tonight, yah git me?”

Dudds finished his drink. The hellwater slosh burned even his wretched guts. “I couldn’t read all of et, Lest. What’s the damage?”

Lester fished for the letter he brought with him, digging it out of his pocket along with a kleptomaniac’s haul of nails and bolts. He slapped it like a bill of goods onto Dudds’ chest. “This ‘ere says they’re moving the cemetery all the way ‘cross town. Bodies and kaboodle. All of et.”

“You don’t think they be findin what we did, do ya?”

Lester waved that off. “One horse town like Cedarville ain’t got nuthin’ but pikers and lollygaggers doin’ that kinda work. They won’t notice a few busted up coffins or nuthin’, ah tell ya.” he jabbed a finger into Dudds’ soft chest, making a point about this. “Hell, I spect they’ll be bustin them up themselves. Lazy bastards probably just bustin’ it all up and tossin’ it in a pile. Gonna move the whole lot over in a parade.”

Dudds laughed, soused and half-following Lester’s meaning. “Prop ‘em up and have ‘em toss worms to the kiddos, right Lest?” Dudds gave a wet wheeze of a laugh and Lester faked his own. Dudds was unsavory, but unsavory was the kind of man he needed. For the work they did so late in the deep and baleful black of night, when only barn owls watched and cried out at them, Dudds was the right man.

“So ya don’t think they’ll find nuthin? Nuthin’ about us stealin’ or taking whatever?”

Lester clapped his shoulder, already turning good ol’ Jeremiah Dudds to the truck. Dudds could be a lickspittle turd but he did what needed doing and that made him worth having around. Plus, he was always good for a drink. “Not a chance bucko. But look,” and he stopped him here, trying his drunk-damndest to make a point to the drunker Dudds, “they’re moving them soon. Don’t know when, could be those pencil-pushers got on ‘em to do it already. We gotta go tonight. Now.”

Dudds shook him off. “Tonight? Lord Lester, I’s been drinkin’ real good tonight. Tomorrow. Ayup, tomorrow.”

Lester squeezed his shoulder tight now. He wasn’t above beating Dudds black and blue in his own yard. Done it before, when Dudds had filched from Lester some of the jewelry they got off one of the bodies in Cedarville. Impossible to hide at the fence who ran a bunco game behind the apothecary in town, and Dudds wasn’t a sly man. Not like Lester. Not half as vicious either. Lester had larruped him good that night, so good ol’ Dudds was out of work for a week.

“Tonight Duddsy. Tonight or never. They’re going to start proper work on it one way or another, and once that happens it’s going to be hard to pull off. We need to pilfer what we can tonight so we can make a clean sneak of it. Maybe all of it.”

Lester scared Dudds sometimes. Scared him the way men shouldn’t be able to scare one another, as if Lester had tapped into a meanness beyond simple alley-working thuggery. Like he enjoyed it.

“Ya, a-all right, Lester boy, we’ll do that tonight. J-Just lemme get some more drinks, ya?”

Lester smiled, canines big and bright in the moonlight, rotgut on his breath like a poison wind, and jade eyes lean.

-

By the time Lester and Dudds rolled into the Cedarville Cemetery, they were blotto to the four winds - boiled as owls, Dudds called it. The Ford growled to a stop between hacked earthen loam and mounds of dirt that had been piled up fresh. Stacks of coffins went as high as Lester. The bodies were poorly tacked under tarp to protect from the wind or the rain or whatever, not that Lester could make sense of why anyone bothered. They were dead. All of them. They didn’t care if they got wet.

Even by their drunk standards Dudds was feeling swirly in the head, like he was shifting around on a boat in stormy waters. They staggered out of the car, running lights on. They would need a bit of light out here, at this witching hour.

The city folk had made a mess of their own work. Lester and Dudds, foul though the task was, were more careful. After all, they had to be - grave robbing was a crime, and neither of them wanted to be sent to the joint for something as low as robbing from the dead.

There had been a rumor, croaked out of rasping, elder throats - an old rumor that came from those who weren’t long for this world themselves. They said that Cedarville’s Cemetery was ancient. Older than the redskinned savages. Older than men warring with sticks and stones. Older. True to their whispers the place was arranged strangely, in a spiraling circle that felt druidic. You could trace the rim of that spiral from the entrance, walking - or driving, as they did - in and around, inward, along a singular row of graves folding in on themselves like a mathematical promise to infinity. Pagans in fervor marching to entomb their fellows into eternity; Pharaohs and Kings alike carried by the slaves who would be buried with them; Paleolithic man hunched and babbling as they descended like animals along paths established in the forging of time. The spiral, leading Lester and Dudds through eternal movement and interconnection; the triune nature of God and Death and Eternity.

No stars shone that night. Only the moon, fat and red, burned through the sky like an abyssal sun, as if it had pried open the heavens to peer on man, rictus grin on its deathmask face, watching them sin.

Owls cried out in the dark and Lester told Dudds that he shouldn’t be afraid. They were only owls. They’re all over these woods. They sound like a banshee, but they’re just owls.

Lester had been right in his assessment of Cedarville’s desecration. The crew had run ramshod through the place and torn it up to hell and high-water. Grave stones were stacked with paint associating them to the coffins stacked beside them, so they could be reinterned later on, elsewhere.

“Dudds, c’mon here.” Lester said, motioning to a stack of coffins set aside.

Dudds gave them a look over; they were each classier, finer wooden boxes. Fancy meant money, and dead rich folk liked to hold on to their money. Together the two slid the first coffin off the stack and began to work on it with prybars. Soon they had popped the lid, and the mouldering must of a woman dead for decades hit them. Even teetering drunk, the dead air made them reel. Her withered, open mouth scream did nothing for them as they pried her arms away from the crossed over, self-hugging rigor-mortis. Even the dead wish for an embrace.

The two men knew what they were after. They felt her up face to foot, looking for jewelry or piercings. They tore out the earrings she wore and pried open her mouth with dirtied fingers looking for gold. Dental rape. They violated and stole, tearing at the clothes her children so carefully picked for her. They stripped her to find what goods they could rob. A pearl necklace. A gold bracelet. Sapphire earrings. Three gold teeth. They threw this into a bag and put the lid back over her. Ravaged. She was done.

Onto the next.

For two hours they repeated this process, sometimes striking hot and others not. When they finished with what was dragged out of the earth for them Lester berated Dudds into more. By now the booze was wearing thin, replaced by exhaustion. But, like Lester had said, it was now or never. And it would never be easier.

“Look for what they left in the ground. We can skip digging tonight, I think. Walk the spiral and look into any of the graves for coffins they left.” Lester told Dudds.

Dudds walked that twisted passage which marked man’s closest bridge to the Great Unknown, trailing the empty graves on unsteady feet. The booze had enough of a hold on him where he felt like falling into a grave wouldn’t be all that bad. Little bit of sleep. Little bit of soft dirt if he was lucky. Empty. Empty. Empty. He turned and arched along the spiral’s orbit to the center, revolving closer and closer to its core.

Lester watched him, smoking a cigarette. The owls were screaming something fierce but the hooch almost did enough to keep them off his mind. Almost. “Like the Goddamn caterwallin’ dead, them sons of whores,” he whispered in a slur. The moon stared at him with greater intensity, manic and obsessed. He was starting to feel like they had hit as much pay dirt as they would ever and made to call for Dudds. Before he could get the words out he saw the older man twisting, dipping down and arms up in a drunken dervish, wide-eyes full of surprise. And then, silently, Dudds disappeared from the dying beams of the truck lights.

“Shit, DUDDS!” he cried out, fumbling ahead and vaulting awkwardly over a divot where a tombstone had been.

Dudds had fallen into an open grave near the center of the spiral and was moaning so piteously that Lester was sure it would be bad. Then Dudds began to wail. And then, Dudds began to scream. By the time Lester made it to the lip of the grave, Dudds was frantic, raving in the depths. The truck’s lights badly shone in. “DUDDS! DUDDS YOU OKAY?!” Lester shouted, slurring even now. But Dudds kept screaming and writhing, a struggling mass. Lester cursed and made a run back to the truck. He climbed into the cab and began to throw garbage out. Finally, under a seat, he found a lantern.

Dudds had not stopped screaming by the time Lester returned. When he put the light on him his addled brain didn’t comprehend what was going on below. Dudds was embraced by dessicated, black bejeweled arms. A skeletal face loomed out of the void behind him and there was a worm-writhing mass where the eyes should have been. Dudds was flailing but the dead man’s hands harrowed his face in gashes that bled into the beyond.

If Lester had been sober he would not have gone in.

Drunk as he was, he slid into the grave and landed heavy next to Dudds, half-falling on him and the crypt lord’s arms. He could feel it snap beneath the weight of his right leg, a dry break and pop that left something wet staining his leg. Lester tore at the hands on Dudds’ face, and with a savage cry stood himself up in a squat and booted the leering face of death back into its abyss. Dudds whimpered, shivering. Lester was breathing heavy, sweat raining onto the grime and blood that covered his friend.

He helped Dudds stand, and with an awkward, shaking crouch made Dudds climb out of the hole, using his knee and shoulder to ladder-climb out. Lester, adrenaline still pumping through him, giving him more clarity than he had the rest of the night, reached up and could just barely grab the lip of the grave pit.

From out of the blackness beneath him, from within the tomb that lay at the center of that spiral, a hand manacled onto his right ankle.

Pressure enough to crush life. The clawed fingerbones of the dead made a tatter of Lester’s pant leg, digging directly into flesh. He could feel bone chisel into his ankle and he screamed. There was a horrible moment of agony where Lester gripped the sides of the lawn above and could feel the hand glacially try to drag him into the beyond. A mad panic overtook him, and he felt the muscles in his arm almost snap as he pulled himself up, scrambling and kicking free to find his way to the top.

Dudds couldn’t help him. He was moaning and grabbing at his face, dark liquid pouring through his fingers.

Their own screams filled the graveyard air and the moon, mad and insatiable, bore down on them with its eyeless skull gaze. Hate and joy and only the inevitable death shone on them in that nauseating mix of moonlight and the dimming truck lights. The screeching of owls became a cacophony of poltergeists raving, banshees in the night. Dudds wept. Lester, through his pain, pushed himself up, wild.

Madness. Madness, all around, close, hunting them.

He threw the lantern into the grave, hoping to see whatever was down there. Just the mummified corpse lying in a pit with no headstone. It fell away into sanguine depths.

Lester took a step and cried out, the pain wracking his leg where the corpse had grabbed him was like a tiger’s bite. He fell. Dudds wept. Lester pushed himself up again, and this time began to carry Dudds to the truck. He pushed him into the cab and made his way to the driver’s seat. Sweat poured off of him as he bit his mouth to hold back the pain. Copper and iron on his tongue. He spat blood. Lester pushed away from the truck door and staggered, limping with his bad leg trailing behind, to the sack of loot they had taken from the residents here. He spat on them. “You all cain go to Hell! Ya hear!” he shouted, voice warbling.

The owls screeched on, if they had ever been owls.

Lester limped back to the truck, climbed in, and fought to get it going again. It did. He backed up and refused to look at their work; refused to see the spiral again; refused to acknowledge the dead man in his rearview mirror, a pillar of angles and bone and black hate.

-

By the time Lester swerved into Dudds’ front lawn, he was sure his leg had been bitten by a snake. In the last fifteen minutes it ballooned, a mess of tendon and muscles bulging out and dragging against the frayed fabric of his overalls. The pain was so excruciating it became transcendental. Dudds’ misery was a mystery to Lester, but the old man had fallen into the foot of the cab and was curled up there, shivering and moaning. Lester swore at him.

If Lester hadn’t been holding the driver-side door hard enough to scrape off the paint, he would have fallen a third time tonight. There was no doubt in his mind that if he fell again that would be it. One hand over the other, Lester pulled himself along the truck until he got to Dudds’ door. His leg was a nest of writhing pain radiating upward, through the meat and the bone. “Get out of the car, Dudds, come on.”

Dudds fell out. He would not take his hands away from his face. Lester could see in the bad light that Dudds was bleeding. He picked Dudds up by the crook of his arm and half-walked, half-carried him into the fly-horror, trashbag dump of a home Dudds lived in. Cans and bottles fell and rattled and exploded into shards as they pushed their way through the hall and into Dudds’ bedroom. Dudds staggered, pushing himself away from Lester to fall into his bed. He rolled onto his back, leaving a putrescene smear of dark green and blood on the pillow. His hands were stained with necrotic fluid.

Dudds, shaking, took his hands from his face. The skin had gone black and was riddled with angry, bleeding yellow boils, as if everything around where he had been gashed was burned and now rotting at electric speeds. Dudds’ eyelids were gone. He whimpered. “Lester, is it bad? Is it bad?”

Dudds smelled like dirt and death when he spoke. A rampaging rot bubbled across Dudds’ face. It ate him even as Lester looked on. Lester forgot his bad leg and screamed out as he stepped back, pain and terror in his voice. Shaking his head, Lester fled, and the clatter and bedlam of his own flight was masked only by the ghoulish, despairing wail that came from Dudds’ dark bedroom.

-

Dawn was an hour away, Lester could tell, when he stopped his truck into his front yard, engine dying on him. Marcy had shut the lights off but he didn’t have it in him to think of her. Didn’t have it in him for anything. His stomach did a slow and giddy rollover that rebounded into his brain as the pain welled up from his ankle to his hip and into his guts. Sweat spilled from his brow and somewhere in him he knew he was dying. This time Lester couldn’t keep himself upright getting out of the truck, slipping on the door as he slid out and fell to the ground.

Everything felt like snakes inside of him, tearing around and cannibalizing one another.

Lester army-crawled toward home, oblivious to the same necrotic waste he trailed behind his injured leg that Dudds was bleeding from his face. It was rank, killing the grass wherever it spread. Lester crawled to the porch, face straining and eyes bulging from the pain, until he pulled himself beside the doorframe.

Despite the hateful, enormous throbbing in his leg, Lester slept.

Marcy found him the next morning on their porch. He stank and she figured he had fallen into some sort of offal or cowshit to smell so foul. His leg especially. She could hardly look at it - truthfully didn’t want to even see him - and knew she had better let him sleep. Waking him would mean bruises. Evvie was crying in her crib and would fill enough of Marcy’s day. It might be better if Lester spent the day sleeping it off, like he sometimes did.

Lester stayed in that pitiable state well into the day, drifting in and out of sleep to vocalize the empty ache that panged from his swollen black foot. Marcy ignored it as she had his other hangovers, grateful he wasn’t caterwauling inside where he’d upset Evvie. At some point Lester dragged himself away from the front door and into the shade beneath the frame of a car that sat beside their home.

He lay in the dreck and gutterwash and dreamed of a spiraling descent into Hell.

Lester dreamt of the dead face in the grave, the one belonging to the hand that grabbed his foot. In that vast-dreamt void the skull and its writhing worm-eyes loomed from behind him, perched on his shoulder, and told him he was dying. Doomed. Its breath was full of grave dirt and stale must. It whispered in his ear as he fitfully slept. It told Lester that it was the god of filth in ditches and the wriggling masses that swam in sludge; that it was the god of insects; that it was the god of the Spiral. It was death and would take Lester.

Unless he could offer another.

A trade.

The jawbone of the skeleton clacked open and a mass of insects began to spill out, a waterfall of wriggling, biting beetles and centipedes and slithering worms, all making their way to his bloated and black leg. They spoke as one.

Can you do that, Lester buddy? Bring her to me? Why, then I’ll make that nasty old leg of yours right as rain. Do it tonight, Lester. You don’t got time to wait. Hell ain’t half-full, and the rot is spreading.

And it was.

-

Lester woke and the sun descended into the rim of the earth, a wavering mirage whose dissolution revealed an endless night of expansive and silent despair. He couldn’t move his right leg anymore. The pain was catastrophic. His fevered delirium had taken him to the darkest spot in the yard to try and escape the pain. Trembling, reaching down below that turtle-shell cast of rusting steel he lay under, Lester felt the pruned and rot-wet leg beneath his pants.

“Gawd Jesus,” he moaned. “Gawd Jesus what is happening?”

He had to see.

Gripping a tear in his pants made by the corpse in the grave, he tore a running gash up the length of his overalls from ankle to hip. Even in the crimson glow of the dying sun he could see how bad he was.

His skin had turned a pruny, mottled brown and black, like a leech shriveling up. The leg was withered, the whole thing gone necrotic and dead while he slept. The advance of death had gone to his hip, a widening of flesh where blotches of pink and red ached. He could feel witch-finger tendrils cold and probing inside, searching, devouring, killing. Yellow-green blisters the size of toads pulsed and spasmed along the dead flesh, as if a network of fungi were in his bones, trying to grow toadstools out of him. Those that burst left bleeding craters which stank like the waste bins of a slaughterhouse on a hot day. And everywhere within his clothes was a sopping sewage bile, soaking through. It looked like he had fouled himself.

Death ravaged him like cancer from the open and taut wounds the ghoul had left on his ankles; a curse from the Emperor of all Maladies. The once wiry leg of his, with muscles like tree roots, was an abstraction of diseased decay.

A trade.

In the haze of his fevered death throes he looked to the light inside. Home. Marcy’s silhouette against the window. Evvie at the table.

Marcy finished eating and was working up the nerve to wake up Lester - ought to put Evvie to bed first, in case Lester got rough - when she saw him standing in their yard. She was leaning over, talking to baby Evvie in her chair, when he seemed to bleed upward, out of the ground, a shape against the setting sun. Her stomach dropped, a dizzying vacuum of sense all the way to her feet. Something tiny and frantic in her told her to grab the baby and run; told her that the thing in the yard was worse than Lester.

She dropped her plate and it broke. Evvie started to cry and Marcy snapped out of her doe-like panic.

“Shhh, baby, shhh. D-Daddy’s home, yeah? Shhh,” and then in a whisper, “please.”

The looming, stalk figure of her husband began to move.

Step, draaag, step … draaag, step… draaag, step.

Marcy unfastened Evvie from her baby stool, her little girl still crying as she clung to the only comfort she really knew. Marcy clung back.

… draaag, step… draaag, step.

Lester lurched beyond sight, hidden by the wall past the window. Her eyes followed where she knew he was. There was a lull before a single, heavy KNOCK slammed into the door, followed by a low, guttural “Maaarcce… Lemme in. Ya gotta lemme in.”

She didn’t move.

Evvie’s sobbing was gentle in the crook of her arm, her soft tear-stained cheeks nestling into her mother’s neck. Don’t go.

SLAM

“MARCE! OPEN the FUCKING door or I’m gonna BREAK it!”

She had to. She pried Evvie off of her, not oblivious to the urgent refusal she had to let go of her mother, as if they would be separated forever.

Marcy rushed to the door and had it open before Lester could hit it again. She swung it wide, babbling an apology. “I’m sorry Lester, baby, Evvie was fussy and I-”

She froze at the sight of him, a watercolor silhouette of brown, black, and red, a mishmash of mud and gunk both dried and dripping smeared all over him as if he had been rolling with pigs. His breath was full of dirt and putrid bile. Lester’s jade eyes had dimmed to milky whites run rampant by scarlet veins. It was impossible not to see the mummified, leaking leg he kept his weight off of.

Lester grabbed her by the mouth, hand like a viper.

He lurched forward, moving her ahead of him like a ragdoll.

“Yyyou! Fffuuucking. Bitch!” he growled, his words a slur from somewhere distant - a voice within his throat. “Whhhy didn’t yyyou let me IN sshooner?”

A trade.

She couldn’t answer. Wild-eyed panic and desperate attempts to breathe through his foul smelling hand left her in terror. Even if she could speak it would have been incoherent.

But his strength was unreal. He threw her into the table and she went sprawling over, supper and ceramic splattering, shattering, and careening in an orchestra of loud, chaotic abuse. Marcy rolled and fell onto the floor, looking from Lester to Evvie - crying, screaming - as she felt hot blood flood from her lips. Marcy’s lip had been split from the front of her teeth to her nose, a ragged bleeding wound that would mend crooked.

“Evvie,” she sobbed.

Lester’s heavy footfalls, and that sliding scrape of his dead foot dragging behind him.

A trade.

Marcy could only watch him as her world spun in a drunk, wobbling revolution around her. All she could manage was a pleading hand toward Lester.

Lester stopped.

He stared with dead eyes out the window, down the road, beyond where the sun set.

There was a fire.

Jeremiah Dudds’ home was burning. It was a towering inferno defined by the mad junkyard and ramshackle squalor he lived in. Lester saw the strange shapes they cast in the light of the flames from here, distant though they were, and the way they danced and warped to the heat, topping into wreckage and horror. Lester saw an oblong figure emerge from the fires and waver, arms upraised, before it crumpled and was consumed. Dudds was gone.

It was enough. Lester turned his gaze onto his own hands, shaking, dirtied. What was he doing? This was too much. Who was he? He reached down for baby Evvie.

Marcy wailed, broken. Not her little girl.

But Lester did not. Lester held his crying infant and brought her to his shoulder, his own arms trembling. He swayed. Marcy wept. Soon baby Evvie’s crying stopped and she was quiet, pushing her soft, perfect face into the filth of her father’s neck, unbothered by the death that wafted from him. Because Lester was her papa.

Lester wept.

He cradled her and then gently kissed his daughter on the cheek.

“I love you, baby girl. I love you so much. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Gently, he set her back down next to Marcy. Her head was swimming but she pushed herself upright, clinging to Evvie. She was beginning to see straight again.

Lester stared at them, weeping. Then, abruptly, as if on instinct, he turned, dragging his wither-rotten leg along with him, the decay spreading upward into his guts and chest.

Step, draaag… step.

Marcy watched him lurch and fade into the dead of night, disappearing beyond the doorframe.

-

There would be no trade tonight. Lester refused. He would give himself instead. He shambled along the road dying, dead, somewhere in-between. He wept and he remembered that Jesus did too and he wondered what awaited him in the vast beyond. Can the dead change? Be forgiven? Owls screeched into the night and he followed a road that seemed to spiral into infinity, walking all night until by dawn he had passed Elizabeth Hurley’s home.

She knew, long after he had disappeared into the dogwood brush, never to be seen again, that Lester Owen’s had one foot in the grave.

Chapter 1

Soft country danced from the overhead speakers as the dim fluorescent lighting cast amber glow upon the billiard table that Rich stood at. He was large in stature, his muscles coiled in violent anticipation under his 
thick copper skin. Standing from his seat he threw out his hand, resting the pool cue. Then after drawing it back, his arm slinged out launching the striped 11 ball into the corner pocket. He smiled at his opponent, an old graying man with a face which hung from his skull. “Two left.” Rich said with a chuckle. “Never too late to back down.” The old man glared at him mockingly.

“You think you’re on to something.” He scoffed. “I could’ve cleaned house already!”

Rich smiled sympathetically, his eyes casually casting a glance toward a table that sat five women. All five watched him with hungering eyes, and eager anticipation. As though watching him wasn’t enough, a rosy pink flush overcame one of the women’s cheeks when Rich spared a glance. He had known these women well. Each one, well groomed, dawning their night on the town outfits, make up and hair styled to match, but more importantly, they had been here before. Twice actually, and each time their eyes were tuned to the tall radio tower which stood at six feet three inches tall in front of them. 

If they were compasses, Rich was true north. He didn’t mind the attention, it helped stoke his bravado, get the flames of his confidence burning. One of them, Cindy, a tall white blonde with a slightly more aristocratic style about her, seemed to be the most interested in holding his pool cue. He laughed, yet never quite let the idea of holding her close leave his mind. The snap of the old man’s stroke. Instantly his eyes snapped to the game at hand. The old man was right, while Rich was distracted, he had managed to pocket four of his six balls, only stopping because of a scratch on the nine ball. Rich looked on in disbelief as well as disgust. “Well goddamn Gus. You bested me.” Gus smiled triumphantly. “It’s okay, I’ll just close this up then.” As if mechanical, Rich began to sink each ball with robotic precision, Gus’ victory was fading with his smile. “Corner, right.” With one solid snap of his cue, the game was over. Gus’ jaw dropped. 

“You mean to tell me that you were just dragging me along?” His exasperated voice came in sharp bursts of worn out air.

“No sir, just figured it was easier to clean up before I lost my ass.”

Gus' smile returned, this time more knowingly intelligent. “You played me good, kid. Almost enough wit in you to sell snake oil!” Both men laughed heartily, when a soft hand pressed firmly against Rich’s shoulder. He turned half expecting to be met with the image of Cindy. Yet his eyes were cast much lower to the floor. There at his feet, standing no higher than five one, stood a small round faced woman, her softly hooded monolid eyes made to look much larger from the angle of his gaze. She looked to be around his age, her obsidian black hair falling from her shoulder in a heavy thick braid. A soft rosy scent emitting from her body.

He stepped back, the extremely odd and even more rare sensation of blood flooding his face erupted. “Oh I’m so sorry!” He said his hands raised in political surrender. The woman looked up, her curvy frame complimented her face in a vicious double take. Rich was stunned, as if still in the sixth grade, when talking to girls was just a little less than a horror story. His bravado, gone. Charisma, gone. Everything, gone. He stood looking as though he’d seen the face of God. His eyes locked on hers, not examining as he had done to countless homicide victims. No, as he stood there dumbfounded, he found that he was simply just admiring. 

She was having none of it. She grabbed his shoulder, and threw him to the side with surprising efficiency. He stumbled to the wall, bracing himself before impact. Once steady again, he straightened himself out and began to move with purpose. Out of the corner of his eyes he saw Gus grinning. Gus’ eyes had been locked on the situation unfolding before him. Rich finally approached the woman, his heart thudded with rapid speed, each thump pounding in his skull like artillery shells striking the earth. 

He backed off. His feet finding solace in his hasty retreat. Never had he been so undermined by his own emotions before. His heart beat with the vigor of a kid receiving their first car, it was unnerving to say the least. After a moment of complete shock, he returned to the pool table. Gus grinned stupidly at him. “She’s been a regular lately. Saw her take on a drunk guy the other day who wouldn’t lay off.”

Rich glanced over at her, attempting to keep his eyes from drifting too close to her proximity. “What’s her name?” 

“I haven’t heard one yet. She’s a siren though. She’ll pull you in with her looks, then beat your ass black and blue if you try to make a move.” Gus picked up some chalk and began chalking his cue. “Guess she’s from Carolina, either north or south. Take your pick, that’s how most of her story goes. Came on here to Chugwater Wyoming, and has been here ever since.”

“No car? No family?”

“Well not really. You see, I only see her here, and if she ain’t here then she ain’t nowhere. Catch what I’m sayin?”

“So she’s a drifter?”

“No, no.” He hesitated, “Well, I guess. Just don’t know much about her but her appearance. Quite the catch, huh?” His eyes said more than his words. As if he were holding back something more. He turned away, quickly wiping at his eyes and redirecting the conversation. An odd sense of unease gave way in Rich’s stomach. As if bile had filled every corner of his gut. 

“So, is she single?” Rich asked, the question sounding dumber than he had intended. 

Gus gave him a pitiful laugh, “if that’s what you want, then yes.” The odd conglomerate of words left his head entirely before he dismissed it entirely. “Another round?” Gus said, ever ready to push the conversation along.

Rich shook his head, his eyes narrowed in confusion. “I'm good, man. Maybe another day. You’re here on Wednesday nights, right?” Gus nodded. “Okay, let’s plan for that then. Next Wednesday I’ll swing in around seven and we can do another match.” Gus laughed.

“If that’s what you want.” His voice sounded more relaxed than before, but that statement seemed purposefully ambiguous. As if Gus was holding on to something big, as if he knew something about the girl that Rich hadn’t.

“Okay, until then old timer.” Rich waived his goodbye, and stumbled towards the woman who now sat in a booth, alone. Out of the corner of his eye, he believed he saw Gus wince. The action was so small, so dismissable, so… Rich pushed it from his mind. The liquor which was now absorbing into his kidneys making the transition easier to manage. Once at the table the woman’s chocolate brown eyes darted towards him. Her countenance, once soft and accepting, now turned hard as slate. The woman was not pleased to see him.

“He-hey,” he stumbled out, each word doing a drunk procession from his lips. “Are you f-free to t-talk?” 

She smiled at him with venomous contempt. She hadn’t been drunk. Rich was sure he’d seen her down at least seven shots, so either she was a raging alcoholic, or she wasn’t drinking alcohol. The idea of her having a tolerance was quickly snubbed by his unintended sexism telling him that women weren’t capable of drinking like men. It must’ve been water. Why, though? Was she attempting to fit in? Liked the atmosphere but didn’t like the drink? “If you’re here to try and pay for my drink, go tell the barkeep. He’ll put you on the list.” The nature of this conversation grew odder and odder as it continued. 

“Huh?” Again sounding dumber than he had intended.

“The barkeep, he’s the one who sells drinks.” She mocked.

“No shit, I know what a barkeeper is.” His defensive tone carried a little more immaturity than he had expected. 

“Good, you’re tall, dumb, and have a temper.” She fired back. Her eyes were so beautifully terrifying that he had to take a step back. 

After a second of calming himself down, he dove back into the conversation. “You’re pretty damn mean.” Really? Pretty damn mean was the best comeback he could muster? His head was reeling. A small but growing migraine began to emerge from the back of his head. “I just wanted to see if it was even worth trying my hand?” Why was he persisting? His head ached, he already made a fool of himself, she seemed more disinterested than intrigued. Why had he been unable to stop himself? She smiled, the sight filling his heart with dismay. 

“I thought I made myself pretty clear, you big lout.”

Lout? Who the hell says lout? He pushed some more. “Well Christ, if I’d known you were going to be this aggressive about it, I wouldn’t have even tried!” She nodded. 

“No, you definitely would’ve. They all do! No matter what I say, you all think my pants are just aching to come off!” She was getting louder. Too loud. Someone was going to get the wrong idea. 

“Hey, easy!” Rich said, panic raiding his mind.

She continued, “You didn’t leave me alone when I clearly told you I wasn't interested! You simply didn't listen!” She flipped up her arms, observing Rich’s panicked state. Did she ask him to go? Rich didn’t recall that part of the conversation. “In fact, you rolled your eyes and stayed in my way!” The alcohol in his stomach made its presence known, lurching back and forth. He hadn’t drank that much, had he? Her voice was too loud, too apparent, too mean. In a desperate attempt to cease her vocal attack he grabbed for her hand. A violent burst of red hot pain erupted from his cheek. 

She slapped him? Why’d she slap him? His mind grasped for corners of thought that weren’t there. Out of pure anger, pure rage that the audacity of this woman, this bitch. To deny him? To not only deny but demean? Anger was just the tip of the iceberg. This was not just cruel but outright disrespectful! She didn’t respect him as a man, she didn’t respect him as human. It was people like her, the main character syndrome, she bastardized the world. Not him. It was her people. Rage, more violent and painful than the dull ache in his cheek drove him to grab the butter knife from her plate and drive it twice through her sternum.

The raw crunch of her thin chest bone sent a strange ecstasy through his body. An orgasm of spirit. He drove the knife in again and again, the same feeling coursing through his body. The poor woman choked on her bloody sobs, pushing weak hands against his shoulder. Her screams now raspy tears from her lungs. He continued his slaughter. Blood sprayed in beautiful arcs of crimson. 

The woman was dead before they could pull him off. Rich fell back. His numb face still echoing a slight sting from the woman’s slap. It happened so fast, so quickly. He hadn’t even recognized the fork moving with his eye, or the blade in his side. Laying on the ground he noticed his crowd. People had already pulled the woman to the floor, and vainly began chest compressions. She was dead, that thought held power over his mind. The fact he killed her, never even being brought to his minds spotlight. Instead, he looked up to see Gus holding his head. Gus, the old man who he had always played pool with since his late twenties. Gus the never angry old man who had a heart of gold.

It was Gus who held him now. In Rich’s most vulnerable moment. In an odd moment, Gus looked down at him. His eyes held that elderly gleam of a retired man in his seventies. “Her name is Mei Su Yan.” With that, Rich passed out.

Chapter 2

The stage had been set. Gerard Hinckly sat in his idling forerunner waiting for the casting manager to fill him in on his new part. This studio was it. This was going to be his official debut as a respected actor in the fading lights of Hollywood stardom. He just needed the management to agree. 

He had auditioned for the role of Hector Frank, a young influential businessman set on making a difference in the white collar world of stock brokers. It wasn’t Gerard’s favorite option, but when it had been announced that the director was a man who had directed a great many films, some winning Oscars, some Golden Globes, he knew it was his best chance to make his debut in the world of acting. The rumble of his car eased the tension, grounding him in a way that nothing else could. 

What was it she said when he was asked to wait in his car? “I think we have our guy!” That’s right, he told himself. I got this in the bag. Ain’t nobody gonna take this away from me! The hour wait turned into two, then three, then four. It was in the fifth hour that the casting director exited the building. She didn’t seem rushed, her pace was slow and deliberate. Like she was going through a routine. Her clipboard was under her armpit, close to her small wide torso. Her clothes remained the same from when he had auditioned, a red blouse with black dotting the fabric, and bright blue Levi’s pulled tight by her belly.

She stopped a moment, then plunged her hand into her purse and pulled out her keys. Gerard’s breath turned shallow, a noticeable rhythmic thud pulsed in his neck. When she turned around, pulling out her keys, Gerard’s heart attempted a repetitive escape by pounding against his sternum. He didn’t get the part, and he knew it. How come she had said he was quote, ‘their guy’? Why was she locking up if it had been so guaranteed to be him? Gerard needed to confront her, he needed to change the outcome of this situation. To do everything in his power to prevent the inevitable, the already decided from happening. 

The cogs of his frustration and malice popped the door of his car open. He was no longer in control. When he stepped out, he knew he would lose control. He would react. As his foot set flat against the hard asphalt, the chill of the humid fall air slapped against his face in a stinging bombardment. Before he could stop himself, he was already trudging towards the woman.

The casting director whipped around, her eyes dilating as they lensed on to his frame. Finally as her eyes came into focus, she reacted. She lunged back, scrambling for her purse. Gerard reacted quickly enough, ripping her purse from her arm and casting it to the floor. As his eyes locked back onto her, an ear piercing scream pushed his brain into overdrive. Rapidly he lunged forward, throwing his hand over her mouth. 

Her breathing was sharp at first. Quick pulsing puffs of air which rose the contours of his hand. After a while they shallowed, each draw easing and slowing as each nerve shut off the hysteria neurons one at a time. Finally she calmed. “Don’t scream.” He hissed, through his frothing scowl. “Don’t scream and I’ll release your mouth.” Why was he doing this? He was rising high and above the needed reaction, this was assault, but, he reasoned with himself, he deserved an answer. Honestly, did he think she’d care enough to send him an email? Was she the type to allow him an inkling of pity? No, he told himself. No, she deserved this.

The woman’s monolid eyes glared daggers at him, wishing she could kill him, but not having the strength nor the upper hand. He wasn’t a violent man. Was he? Was he meant to live his whole life being reasonable, just to lose it all in this one minute? Wasn’t he civilized? The short answer was no. Lifted by the world’s predetermined standards, his rise to fame had been gradual yet persistent, that was guaranteed. However, he remained that his success was due to his steadfast determination and commitment to the craft. He was a man of his own making.

Yet he wondered as his thin skeletal digits gripped the cold steel handle of his pocket knife, if this were a man, would he pursue this avenue? The avenue of murder? A muffled scream brought him back to reality, he saw the sheen of the stainless steel blade in her panicked doe eyes. She squirmed beneath him like a trapped animal, kicking, biting, tearing. When her teeth landed on his hand drawing the crimson within, he instinctively drug the cutting edge across her throat. Her desperate attempts for air, the primal way she grabbed at her throat, it drove him to ecstasy. He leaned back on his rear, watching as the final tremors finished their cascading descent. She was dead.

He had killed her. He had been denied thousands of roles, both by men and women alike. Yet, she was different. As different as bleu cheese and cheddar. She needn’t say anything he realized, the result would’ve been the same. Now as he towered over his victim, his fists clenching in the final tremors of the act. A soft movement, slight yet unsettling, was pulsating from her chest. She was still alive. The nearly imperceptible inflation on her lungs was all he needed to see, and after a few steps closer toward her head, he came to, to find his boot inside her skull. Blood and matter scattered in a violent array staining the asphalt. He grabbed for her wallet, the best idea he could muster considering his circumstance. After finding it, he opened the bifold to her license. Her name dotted the top line of the card, Mei Su Yan born June 13th 1953. Her picture had been of a gorgeous woman of Chinese descent. Her round face and characteristicly beautiful eyes smiled at him through the image. If his calculations were accurate, she had been 37 at the time of her death. He dropped the bifold, taking the license with him, and disappeared into the night.

Chapter 3
It was noon, Bentley sat in the cold office space having his tax accountant discuss the situation at hand. His accountant, a burly man with a thick gray beard, one who looked as though he would be a much better miner than an accountant, handed him the dossier containing the IRS’ audit. “Here’s the thing, Mr.Smith. You have four weeks to get your affairs sorted out before they come to pick you up.” The man’s voice crept out low and cautiously. It danced around certain trigger words which might make Bentley angry. 

“So, this is all I’m allowed, Pete? I’m just going to prison? Why?!” Bentley’s face felt hot, his breath steaming with frustration and disbelief. “After everything I’ve done for you? You’re just gonna let me go to jail.”

Pete steadied his voice, his eyes taking on a steely resolve. “Mr. Smith, your inability to pay your debts to the government is not my responsibility. I am simply a courier for both parties. I’m sorry. There is a court date, so if you need an endorsement from me, I’d be more than willing to.”

“Save your breath. You failed me. I’m filing this with the BBB, and I’m going to take you to court when I get out.”

Pete sighed. “I cannot hide four million dollars which was suddenly inherited from an unknown party. It is simply impossible to do something so illegal while maintaining my integrity as a business.”

“To hell with your business! They want six million dollars in four weeks! I can’t swing that; and integrity? You’re going to take a moral high ground with me? I’ve seen you take hundreds of thousands in hush money! You’re no saint, and you’re barely an accountant!”

Pete’s face now grew red as blood rushed his capillaries, his eyes dilating into a predatory glare. Bentley was getting to him, and he loved it. To get this man going on a matter that he had nothing to do with was part of his plan. Pete had dug his own grave, and Bentley, or Agent Hoffman from the Internal Revenue Service was in charge of getting a confession. Pete’s glare could rattle glass. Yet, the undercover agent stood his ground. “Where’d you hear that?” Pete hissed under his breath.

“The underground is a lot more talkative than you’d like to believe. You opened this door.” Bentley had the bastard and he knew it. Just a little more heat and he’d crack. They already had a mountain of evidence, from the shell companies he had used, to the layering he used, to even the people who had been smurfing for him. They had it all. 

“Well the underground better slow down! Criminals lie. You know how it is.” Pete was evading, and doing a pretty good job at it.

“Demetri said you were the real deal.” Bentley locked down one of his past clients' names. Demetri Valdez, a drug smuggler who was arrested and convicted of a slew of crimes. This got Pete’s attention.

“How is the old man?”

Bentley was in, locked on to the target. “He’s good, got busted a bit back, after I met him. You guys sound tight.”

“Ok, if Demetri vouches for you, I’ll help you out. This is strictly off the record, but I’ve helped with cases like yours. Simple slip on some ice, or car crash, and the arresting officer or investigator don’t show up to court, they’ll drop your case. The detectives working your case are,” Pete stopped talking for a moment, his mouse and keyboard clicked together in a harmonious rhythm. “Agent David Hoffman.” He said, listing Bentley’s real name. I have a contact, but you’re going to have to slip me a little.”

“How much?” Bentley asked, attempting to keep his composure. 

“1.5. Then everything will be squared away.”

“What will you do to him?”

Pete looked warily at Bentley. “Don’t ask questions you don’t want to have answered. You know your business, I know mine.” Finally Bentley stood from his chair, his hand slowly unlatching his handgun. Suddenly a subtle knock came from the door. Pete’s attention turned to the door, Bentley’s soon followed. At the door was a small, young, Chinese woman. Her obsidian hair held up by a claw clip, and her rotund body clothed in a white blouse and black skirt. “Miss Mei! How are you?”

The small woman’s lips opened, and a beautiful melodic voice broke through the air. “Good! Are you closing up for the day?” 

Bentley found himself shifting in his seat, attempting to get a better look at the woman. “Miss Mei, you know Mr. Smith?”

Her dark eyes eased over to him, washing his care away. “I don’t believe we’ve met before, pleasure to meet you!” She said, extending her hand to shake his.

“Pleasure is all mine!” Bentley’s voice broke out through his dry vocal cords. “Mind if I ask what brings you here?” Was he flirting? He was. 

“I’m Mr. Dayton’s lawyer. If I’m not mistaken you aren’t the man you say you are.” Her smile grew predatory, as she knew who he was, but more importantly, who he was. 

Rage boiled at that smile. The cocky ‘gotcha’ grin, which did nothing but compliment her visage. “You are impeding on an active investigation, Miss Mei.” She shrugged and skipped out of the room. A gesture which did nothing but enrage him even more.

“Is that so? Well agent Hoffman, I believe our business has concluded. I need you to leave this office immediately.” David stood from his seat. 

“Not so fast Mr. Dayton, you’re under arrest.”

Pete mocked a shocked expression, “what are your charges?” 

“Money laundering, and solicitation of a criminal act. That’s just the beginning. I’m thinking about introducing premeditated murder, racketeering, and corruption.” Pete shook his head.

“Can’t do that, you have no evidence.” Miss Mei returned to the door, her attractive demeanor knocking Agent Hoffman from forming a logical position. She had pulled out her pin and let her hair fall. It uncoiled itself like a silken flag. It unfurled so softly, so beautifully that soon the flowing obsidian fell past her lower back. Its tip brushing against the top of her perked buttocks. “Oh,” Pete laughed as he noticed David’s focus shift. “Not very professional, detective.” Hoffman couldn’t turn away, the way her skirt pressed against her thick thighs, the way her shirt pressed tight against her chest, exposing her cleavage. She was gorgeous. A true beauty to behold. Removing the pen from between her pillowy lips, she spoke. 

“You have to leave, there is nothing you can arrest him for. You have no case.” Each word she uttered was just as seductive as the first. “You have no choice but to vacate.”

“Bullshit. I’m here to get a confession from him, or if that falls through I need to arrest him.” The woman smiled a soft grin. “Can you leave for just a moment?” The agent’s frustrations were growing more intense, first it had been professional anger, now it dawned on something which frightened him even more. He was hard, his shaft pressed firmly against his jean zipper, causing him pain and arousal. Instead of walking away, she took the seat next to him. Pete smiled knowingly at the agent. The woman, Miss Mei as Pete had been calling her. Placed a well intentioned hand on Agent Hoffmann’s thigh. She was attempting to comfort him. 

“Agent, are you ok?” She asked innocently. Her dark eyes never break contact with him. Pete broke in.

“Yeah, are you ok?” The woman’s soft touch made him tremble violently. His body surged in a hazy cloud of lust and desire. Her hand, soft, and gentle rested upon his thigh. Mere inches away from his straining cock. Unable to control himself, unable to resist his urge, to remember his family or his wife, he lunged forward. He gripped the woman by the base of her head and pulled her close to his lips. She let out a sharp yell of fear, but soon found herself kissing the man’s lips. Soon he found her squirming from his grip, attempting to break free from his loving embrace. His hand reached into her hair as he pulled it taunt. She let out a cry of pain as her hands flew to attempt to break his grasp. The sound of her cry nearly halted him in his tracks. What was he thinking? What was he doing?

A stiletto's pointed heel soon reignited the flame as she slammed it into the bridge of his foot. He now screamed in pain, briefly releasing her hair. She took the moment and attempted to run, only to find the door closed. She grappled with the handle, unable to get it open before Hoffman descended on her. Hoffman grabbed her by the hair and threw her to the ground, his focus dulling into a steady thrum of anger and lust. He jumped down, sitting on her stomach as she wrestled him away. His free hand shot to the desk, rummaging over the table's surface, when at last he found a pencil. She squirmed from his grasp, this time breaking free from him. He lunged after her, each step accounted for two of hers. He heard her approach the stairwell, and after he turned the corner, a size 8 stiletto made contact with his face. He turned towards Mei who readied another projectile. He charged her with the speed of a rhino, tackling her over the railing. They both fell four stories down onto the cold tile floor of the open lobby of the indoor strip mall. He had crushed her on impact, and after standing, he saw her gurgling on crimson blood. Her eyes rolled into her brain cavity, and her arms and legs twitched and tremored in her dying moments. One thing remained beautiful however, her obsidian black hair haloed around her head like a small carpet. Soon, she twitched her last.

Hoffman, dazed by his sudden recollection of his sanity, stood from his kneeling position. Immediately however, his vision tunneled and he fell to the tile. Blood dripped to the floor from somewhere on his body. His hands analyzed his situation, soon finding a pencil lodged in his throat. His eyes gave way and soon he found himself staring at the ceiling, drowning internally in his own blood. His thoughts were incoherent, his voice was bubbling with blood, and soon, after around three minutes of bleeding, his life was snuffed out. 

Story 4

The year after Jed Thompson’s son died, his life bore the resemblance of his father. On the nights he didn’t spend drinking, heroin would be his kryptonite. On the damp cold nights in which neither worked, he would pull the trigger and do both substances at once. Although the high felt awful, as though his life force was being siphoned out of him by forces unknown, he preferred it to his sober reality.

Understand, although Jed had problems with the same substances that his father had used, he by no means was his father’s son. He had never swung at his wife nor had he ever been unable to control his anger. His fallacies weren’t so abrasive nor apparent as his father’s. Rather than being fraught by frivolous arguments and accusations of cheating or outright lies. He preferred the internal affair of self deprecation. At times he had brought himself so low that the cold steel bore of his 12 gauge had been the only thing that could bring him back. He hadn’t been bold enough to label his actions as the deeds of a narcissist, yet found his thoughts leaned in that direction. 

Although his self centered destruction’s catalyst was wrought by his son’s passing, it had always rested steadily within his mind.

So upon this day, the day in which he stumbled into the Seven Eleven on Fifth and Southern, it was no surprise that his mind rested in the darkness of his moral decay. The ding of the entrance bell announced his arrival. It sounded both rich in sound, yet hollow in tone. A young Chinese woman, who stood no higher than five feet, exited the back of the storage room, the double hinged stainless steel doors swinging behind her. She walked towards the register taking on her usual position. “Hello sir! Do you need any help?” Jed shook his head, his eyes scanning for something good, no, something easy to steal. Maybe he hadn’t been a good man, but the starving stomach never yielded to a moral compass. The underlying growl both impertinent to himself and imperceptible to the woman, drove his mind into a frenzy. The meth now eased its high into a dull decrescendo. He was desperate, and hungry. He looked again at the woman who remained disinterested in his antics. Her face was softly illuminated by the soft flickering light of her phone, and the dull soft volume, hollowly echoed throughout the convenience store. He quickly dropped eye contact resuming his search for an item. 

Moments after his gaze was turned away from the woman, his eyes were met by the beautiful glow of an amber reflection. His movements stopped for a moment, his heart fluttered with anticipation, his mind went blank. Soon the voice in his head began chittering again in that awful rat-like desperation. The asking, no, more so pleading than asking, begging to kiss the neck of the bottle and guzzle the liquid until he drowned. Maybe not as extreme as drowning, though if the opportunity arose he didn’t believe he’d have to sleep on it.

His hand reached forward and grasped the handle of liquor. Crown Royal: Peach, was written with gold inlay on the body and neck of the bottle. The neck which he now fisted in a tight, unyielding grip. The chilled glass cooled his hand in a comforting manner, and before he knew it, the bottle was opened and pressed firmly to his lips. A knowing smile passed on his mouth as the liquor softly burned its way through his throat. 

Somewhere inside himself however, a knowledge of the disinterested woman bit him deeply. It wasn’t rational, however neither was downing a stolen bottle of Crown in the store you stole it from, he told himself. The liquor was just playing around with his nerves and puppeteering him to do something insane, something criminal. The frantic buzz of his phone made him flinch hard, temporarily freeing his mind from the snare he was caught in. His hands danced in his pocket, feeling for the slick smooth texture of his phone screen. The tip of his finger slid effortlessly across the corner of his device. He pulled it out effortlessly, with the practiced motion of a professional baseball player lining up on home plate. His eyes glazed over the screen, Dad. 

He sighed an exasperated huff of air, sliding his finger to enlarge the red hang up icon. Just as abruptly as it started, the buzzing ceased. He slid his phone in his pocket, mentally notating the almost serene feeling which came over him. He smiled a big toothy grin which faded quickly as his eyes fell upon the clerks register. A boy no more than 10 years Jed’s junior, stood where the beautiful Chinese woman once had. He rested his hand against the bulge of his phone, attempting to anchor himself in reality. Name five things I see. He told himself. Cigarettes, soda, the clerk, the windows, and the ceiling tile. He calmed as a soldier might, when the sound of the enemy's artillery temporarily ceases. Ok, ok. We’re back. He set the partially drained bottle of liquor down on the shelf. His eyes slowly turned to the register again, the alcohol giving his vision a slight chromatic aberration. Once his sight returned to where his eyes rested, the boy was gone. Simple as that, vanished. 

Jed’s stomach dropped. Was he pitching a fit again? His worries extinguished when the cold firm hand of a young man rested upon his shoulder. Jed whipped around, his hands clenched in tight balls. The boy stepped back instinctively. “Hey, you’re going to need to pay for that.”

Jed stumbled, the liquor shouldn’t have been this strong. It never was, that’s why he had a problem. The kid, not much older than Jed’s 24 year old brother, was now closing in. With a quick jab of his fist, and a sweep of his leg against Jed’s shins, Jed found himself lying on the ground. A dull ache radiating from his buttocks. “What the hell man?”

The boy looked both lost and confused. As though his actions were a mystery to himself. “Oh, shit. I’m- I’m sorry, dude.”

Jed began to stand again, but soon sat back down after the boy stepped towards him. “What do you want? I’m just shopping around.” 

“Dawg. You just drank three quarters of that crown. You ain’t capable of shopping around. You are going to have to pay for that.”

Jed glared at the kid. “I didn’t drin-” His voice hallowed out in a slow crackling vibrato. The bottle which sat in front of him was practically drained. The liquid amber, rising and falling in soft comforting waves, barely rested at the base of the label. “What the hell?”

The kid began to talk again, the dull thud at the base of Jed’s skull which was once a tropical storm of pain, now brinked on cat 5 hurricane. First the girl, the beautiful, nosey, kind eyed, bitch. As Jed focused on that blurred memory of the woman, the pain in his head worsened. As though his brain was attempting to split in two. He attempted to break the concentration, his efforts yielding zero to no results. 

The kid grunted, taking Jed out of his reverie. “Sir, are you-” his voice fell short as Jed violently threw the bottle against the wall shattering it into glittering jagged shards. The splash of the alcohol sprayed a thin mist over both of the men. “Sir, I think you should go.” The kid said in a gentle manner. Gentle? No, patronizing. The way Jed would speak to the ill minded, or a person who was clearly high. He was neither! His mind bit at him viciously, attempting to draw some sort of imaginary blood. 

“You think I should go? Why?” The kid attempted speech, but was shot down before any words could escape. “You think I’m drunk? You think I’m high? Huh? Fuckin’ speak you dumb bastard!” Jed’s fury was met with an equally fierce response. The kid sent one closed fist into the bridge of Jed’s nose, shattering it. Jed stepped back temporarily blinded, the pain adding kindling, no logs, to the inferno of rage that bellowed from his mind. Jed stumbled back, his hand going to his nose then returning within eyesight. Crimson dripped from his digits. The kid, shocked by his own display of strength, took two massive steps back. 

“Hey man, I’m so sorry. Holy shit, fuck. I- I don’t know what to-” his voice was cut off by Jed’s advance. The image of the girl, the kid’s pestilence, the disappearing alcohol trick, everything piled itself into his fury. Jed shoved the kid, causing him to slip on the spilt liquor covering the ground. Jed immediately stepped back, regaining his foothold to strike again if the boy was ready for round two. But the boy just laid there. A soft cough emitted from the kid’s mouth, followed by the deep liquid crimson. Jed’s jaw dropped, he fell to his knees, lifting the boy’s head up to rest on his lap. 

Once up, Jed began feeling around to try and find a cure. A Hail Mary for sure, but it was something. Starting at his temple, Jed moved lower to his brain stem, nothing. Then lower to his neck. His calloused hand brisked something sharp, and stiff. Upon rolling over the kid, he saw it. A clear, massive shard of glass protruded from under the kid’s chin. On a piece of slim aluminum which draped loosely from the break, a familiar word dawned across in torn royal script. Crown Royal: Peach

Sweet ole CW took a fall and landed on his head last night. Due to that, we won’t have the episode ready until tomorrow. I do apologize for the delay but know we will get one out for yall!

To help CW recover give us your best CW quotes down below from any of the episodes!

With love,
AL