Aww, Hell With It

So I'm reading back over this blog. There's a lot to cringe over: overeager voice, unfinished stories, and, of course, dozens of grammatical errors (what I get for writing blogs on the spot then posting without even a cursory proofread).

Back to the unfinished stories. Hell, Luke, I thought to myself as I scanned through my own blog's archives. There's a lot of beginnings here, but not many endings. And only half of those beginnings ever got finished. You aren't even much better now.

Which got me thinking: I should post something new. Show the world (aka myself and imaginary future readers) that you can finish a story now. Spin a cohesive yarn from start to finish.

So I wrack my brains and the only story I feel ready to post isn't finished.

Damn.

But, whatever. The story is starting to stagnate; I could finish it in a few hours (I've got the conclusion elaborate, some might say redudantly planned in the back of my head) but somehow I haven't just felt the creative oomph necessary to spur me on to completion. Mayhaps postin' it on this hurr blog will do something. Not that there's any logical reason to think that.

So, here it is. Working title (for you guys; the original working title is too revealing) is "History". Or "White House". Whichever one strikes your fancy.
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[Enter Post Title Here]



I wake up and it is a scene from a bad movie. Terrible, underfunded, noir movie: obfuscatorily complex antihero alone with a complementally lugubrious backdrop of overly-dark, gritty scenery. I am entirely a part of the scene, the completing aspect: my mind is all hissing fuzz, every part of my body either numb or in pain. All-but scripted way to wake up: the only way you could wake up in a place like this. Surroundings shadowed, grim, unfamiliar: unspeakably sinister beneath a deceptive veneer of crumbling mundanity.

I am in an alley. I do not spend much time in alleys, can not remember the last time I was in an alley. This alarms me enough, much more alarming is that I am not simply in the alley but tucked away in the alley, face smeared with some ambiguous dark sludge, one cheek bruised and pressed down hard against the rough cold wet ground. Rough because I am in an alley, cold because it is October. Wet because there is drizzling rain, as cliché and obligatorily a part of this scene as if I am in a movie. It pitter-patters over my body, which has now awakened to complete pain, every inch of it, sore or bruised or something worse. The drops splatter against my soaked clothes, roll down my cheek while I lay there, trying to rationalize what am I waking up to, trying to feel if there is anywhere on my body where I am worse than just bruised. My head, maybe; there is a scarlet blossom of fire there that I cannot summon the strength to reach up and probe with either of my still-numb hands.

I do not know how or why I am here, lying face down in the back of a rainy alley with an [injured head]. Remember nothing, no events leading up to this. Only walking home from Doppler’s, leaving his house late. I remember leaving, walking; I do not remember arriving home, do not remember anything after the beginning of the walk. This is alarming, electrifying: for me, several steps closer to terror than waking up bleeding in a dark alley.

I lie there for longer than is logical, than is wise, mind numbed by the shock of finding a black gaping pit in a memory that has before never had so much as a line-thin seam. My ransacking of my mind is frantic, hurried, repeated over and over; ultimately futile.

My incredulity is penetrated, deflated by my tugging awareness of where I am. An alley, I called it, face down, eyes only half open. Now I push myself, staggering, to my unsteady feet—I have to hunch and lean against a slick brick wall to avoid collapsing back to the ground—and see that I was correct. It is an alley like a thousand other alleys; you could have the imagination of a brick and still see it in your head. The narrow, confining, sheer walls of cramped buildings. Ground-in stench of ancient garbage, the only light wanly hesitating its way in from unseeable lamps lining the street outside, light that from time to time flickers spasmodically.

I watch this scene long enough for it to work its way sinuously into my subconscious, to create a grim, phantasmagorical imprint that I am already aware will haunt me for the rest of my life. I forget nothing. Nothing—a decade from now I will recall the intricate workings of the smeared black grime intermittently plastering the walls of the alley as precisely as I do now, staring at it. The metallic clatter of rain hitting rooftops higher up, counterpoint to the dull patter of the raindrops flattening against the ground in front of me, the ghoulish odor of rotted meat and never-cleaned dumpster, even the uniquely-grained grit of the wall underneath my palm: all of these images, sensations, sounds—mine forever, snapped into my mind as firmly an imperceptive bear in an iron trap.

This is my gift, my curse: who I am. A perfect mind. My entire life sprawls out behind me like a redundantly detailed map, every excruciating intricacy precisely charted. The sinuous patterns of the shirt my father wore his last day before the end. Every sentence, every word, ever ground into my head by the nasal sneer of my first teacher. The acrid odor of a bonfire in my mother’s backyard, growing blacker and fouler as we heap the garbage onto it, burn it all away like a corrupted sacrifice to some foul deity.

This is why, now, I can hardly bring myself to think, have to put all of my weight against the wall I lean against. The wound on my head is alive now, rain-thinned blood rolling slickly past my right eye. This does not alarm me: I have been hurt before, worse: if the wound were going to kill me I would not have woken up.

It is not merely a hiccup in my memory, a stutter, though even this would frighten me. I look again inside a mind that has never before failed me and still: silent, stable black emptiness. Doppler’s, walking home—then bleeding and drenched, waking up in an alley.

More rational parts of my mind tug at my consciousness, urge me to focus on more imminent concerns. To leave the alley, find out where I am. Make my way home, bandage my head: to worry about this recollective gap later.

These parts of my mind are painfully easy to ignore. I drop from leaning to stooping, from stooping to crouching, crouching to sitting back, leaning against the wall. This whole time, thinking so hard, trying so hard to remember that for a moment I forget where I am, forget the alley and rain and blood crusting under my eyelid.

Trying to recover my absent memories is an exercise in excruciating futility. I stare into my mind like a pair of eyes gazing into a void, striving, desperately, to grasp at anything, no matter how slight. There is nothing, nothing at all: no glimmer of recollection, no flash of insight. I put my head between my hands and squeeze, wanting to scream until I can not hear my own thoughts.

It is useless. I accept this shaking, shivering, hands dropping mindlessly to my sides. I stare back out at the alley, but it is a different alley: everything moves slowly, disjointedly. I feel like a man trapped inside somebody else’s dream.

Somebody, I realize after a long time staring numbly into this dream, has to have done this to me. I reach up a hand, extend two fingers, stroke them across the split skin on my scalp, feel the breadth of the tear, the coagulating stickiness of the blood pooled there. Gingerly prod what feels like a narrow split in my skull: this is not the type of injury you get from falling down stairs, from carelessness. I move my fingers away, stare intently at the oddly-vividly red blood on my fingertips. This was done to me: head split open, dragged into this alley, memories stolen.

I am meant to be dead, I am fairly and immediately confident in this. It is obvious, I decide, that I was not meant wake up, that my life was planned to slip out of this hole in my head while I slept on oblivious. Wonder if the rain is the only thing that woke me, if I owe my life to the miserable wetness ironically soaking me into numbness. If not killed by the head wound than taken care of somehow else: even now whoever did this could be returning, to finish the job or revel in success.

All but the barest tip of my mind still numbed by the gash in my memory, by the gash in my head, I still manage to stumble to my feet, hands waving like clumsily manipulated puppets as I fight against a wave of dizziness.

This is another thing I remember, something else that has happened before: the killing, more accurately the attempted killing. I am a man considered dangerous to many people, am a man that has too many enemies, that has been a killer’s target too many times to ever assume I am safe. I remember, also, this: that each time before, I lived: lived on to watch the ones who wanted to kill me suffer, plead, die. I have survived this long not by refusing to be ruthless.

All these things I remember—this, I do not: Who has given me this tear in my scalp, has dragged me into this back avenue from hell. Who has managed to steal remembering from a man who forgets nothing at all, who has a flawless memory.

I know from experience what I must do: find a safe place, safer than this at least, which, a static succession of stuttered shadows reminds me, should not be hard. Discover who is trying to finish me this time, then instead finish them. This world favors those with the strongest will to survive. I kill—or I am killed. Nothing more.

I will not die, already I know this: no matter what happens, no matter how much of my memory has been stolen, I will not die. This person, these people, whoever has tried to kill me: for them, it is different. This is deadly for them, desperate flailing attempts to end the life of somebody they hate, fear more than sin itself. A struggle so serious they throw themselves into it with no regard for the inescapable knowledge that it could cost them their lives, that the stakes are the highest stakes there are.

But for me, this is always a game. I do not die, am not outsmarted. I am like cliffs, like history, like poetry: I endure, survive, remember it all. Whoever has done this to me will lead me on a chase, may hurt me, may hurt me, inconceivable as it seems, worse than they already have. But in the end it is they who will lie defeated, dead. Me who will walk away with another eternally blood-drenched memory.

I stagger out from the alley into the street. It is a street, like the alley, like a thousand others. The apartments form rigid ranks on either side, silent and stern and foreboding as an at-attention regiment. Evenly spaced street lights: the nearest still flickering, most burnt out. Gaps in the rows where the road turns away to identical lefts and rights, diverting into night-masked obscurity.

I turn left and walk with no more reason than instinct and an animal impulse to leave this place, to put as much distance between myself and this nightmarish alley as possible. The moon sits luminescently perched between mud-grey clouds, rain still clattering down unceasing as fresh misery.

I walk for blocks and blocks, row after row of buildings adding themselves to the endless stream of such apartment buildings catalogued in my memory, each made distinct by near-imperceptible idiosyncrasies, subtle variations on an infinitely similar theme that nevertheless remain starkly unique in my mind.

I find a part of the city that I recognize—I would say I recognize it vaguely; I have seen it only once: from a window of a bus as I drove past it. But the memory is not vague: it is sharp, defined, perfect—as are all of my memories. By the time I have found it—hours from leaving the alley, by my guess—I have planned my next move. I will go to Doppler’s. He is a friend, as close to a friend as a man like me can have. More significant, far more important is that I can trust him: can trust him as easily as I trust myself. He has been with me through some of the best and much of the worst; will unquestioningly understand the horror, the incomprehensibility of this massive flaw in my perfect memory. Will help me deal with whoever has caused this.

I wrap myself in this resolution like armor, steer myself onto a street that sets me in the direction of Doppler’s side of town.

Update

Just updating for the sake of updating: more to create a sort of historical milestone to look back on and nod my head reminiscently over a few years down the road than for the sake of 'blogging' (this blog is still existent mainly for the sake of being a personal-but-broadly-accessible journal, since I'm not really attempting to get any readers/visitors yet).

So: to future Luke, future readers scanning the archives, or bored stumbleupon users: It's been almost a year since I posted, and for the most part with good reason. The last year's been hallmarked by a whirlwind of momentous changes, some good, some bad, some terrible, but all significantly impactful on my life. But since this blog is here for writing, I'll just gloss over most of those.

Here the important one. Writing. I'm writing more than ever, better than ever. My brain has gone through what feels like several paradigm shifts in the past 10 months. Everything from my vocabulary to my philosophy to my creative dreams have evolved and reshaped themselves quite a bit, through all these changes somehow retaining a consistent core.

Still working on the stories, pounding out the essays, dreaming up the novels. Hundreds of pages of disorganized notes scattered through various subjects' notebooks. A whole new regiment of half-finished attempts at genre-changing stories. Stories in lots of genres, lots of styles: fantasy, slice-of-life, faux-postmodern-psychological-detective(literally the only way one particular story is classifiable), memoir, epistemological, pseudo-autobiographical, thrillers, understated character sketches....

Everything I write I do to try and expand myself. To increase myself. To take the creative lump that is me and stretch it, bend it, twist it, force it to contort and writhe and loop back on itself in endless variations until I can do anything.

I'm trying to find myself: not just as a person and as a writer. Once I do, hopefully I'll have something new, something incredible, or at least something unique, to put up here. But until then...

I'll be drifting along in the real world, changing but staying the same.

Luke

A Big One

So I'm in the middle of some extreme inspiration for a new story.
This one, if it ends up like I'm planning, will be my new "Magnum Opus.". Like, to the point where I'll be heavily pushing it for publication once I get it all edited.
So: short and simple: Two PoV's. One's a very, very good assassin who wants to be the best; the other is a city guard, recently promoted to lieutenant, who gets put in charge of hunting down said assassin. I won't say much yet, but I'll say this: It'll take place over several months, their PoV's will be pretty independent of each other, and there's a great twist I'm thinking of putting in later in the story. Other than that, this story is still very much in its 'pre-alpha' phase (like the videogame nod, eh?), so more later. (Including samples.).

Just wanted to type this up for the sake of going along with inspiration.

Hahahaha! Victory

So.

I'll keep the intro short this time (not for any really good reason, mainly because I severely need to take a shit). But:I start a LOT of fantasy stories. I also take forever to finish them, and forever to revise them. Hell, Six Knights and the Assassin (Nearly three years old) could still do with a few revisions, and I plan on doing it sooner or later.

That being said, the downside is that, when you take so long to finish stories, you kind of start to lose sight of where you were headed. So, to work on my brevity in story-crafting, I've been trying out some ''short'' short stories--I try to keep out world building. Minimalize character development. And so on. Just short, basic reads.

Well, I finished my first attempt in two nights. It still doesn't have a name, and this is the just-finished-not-edited at all draft (it'll be a good 10-15% different when I'm truly "done"), but, hey, take a gander at it anyways.

Best of all, I not only finished this...I've done two "Things I Hate"s, two "Dr.Duke"s, and made some really, really solid progress in a still-top-secret story. Hell of a week, huh?

Also already started a second short-short story. Hopefully I'll be able to wring some more juice out of this fruit before it's ready to get tossed.

Well, I'm out. The piece, again, is untitled, but if you're the type that needs a name...'Mountaintop' was my reference/working title.

“I’d advise you to take your time.” The old man’s face was dry and wrinkled; his beady black eyes were so sunken in his face that they were hardly visible. His nose was flat, like a skull’s, and his lips cracked as they brushed together when he spoke. “Haste never got anybody anywhere.” He smiled, and the skin under his eyes folded. It was inexplicably feline.

Gabriel stared in surprise at the wizened old figure; he hadn’t even noticed him until he spoke. He was a stumped, twisted thing; bent with age and weathered by time. Somehow fitting, here, halfway to the peak of the oldest mountain in the land. But, fitting or no, he wasting Gabe’s time.

“Take my time?” He smiled condescendingly. The old always seemed to have some such advice for those that they perceived as young and foolish. And they always seemed to be under the impression that the advice was not merely sagacious, but essential for a happy life. “Grandfather, I appreciate your concern. But now is not really the time to worry about taking my time.” He spread his arms out in front of him. “Look where we are! On the slopes of the Nameless Mountain!” He wondered idly who the gaffer was, and what he was doing so far from the village. Probably a hermit.

The gaunt old fellow raised a whispy eyebrow. “Precisely, my son. Haste is never good in the best of times, and a journey to the Nameless Peak is hardly the best of times.” He coughed once, twice , feebly, “All things run their course, whether you hurry there or not. What you seek will not disappear if you take the time to notice the world around you.”

Gabriel started to tap his foot. He spared a glance upwards, to the twisted black peak so far above. It would be hours yet, even considering how well kept the ancient stone path to the top was. If he hoped to reach the peak before dark...

“Grandfather, I apologize.” Gabe said. “Normally, I would love to waste the time to argue semantics. But just now, I have...a date with destiny.” He hoped that sounded appropriately heroic. “I suggest you head back down to the village.”

A sigh rasped through the skeletal man’s lips. “You think that wanting to be a hero is enough? That acting gallant will win you what has eluded the grasp of so many others?” His eyes wavered, then locked into Gabe’s own. “I’ve seen many young men, racing their way to the top of the mountain, eager to prove themselves. And many I’ve seen marching fiercely upwards, brave companions at their back. I’ve seen men sprint, run, race, and dash by. But do you know how many I’ve seen walking up the mountain? None.” A fiery red flashed across the old man’s rheumy brown eyes. Gabe shuddered at the trick of the light. “And I’ve never seen a man come back down, either.”

Gabriel smirked. “Grandfather, is that what this is about? Don’t worry.” He raised his arm, flexed, let the bulging muscles speak for themselves. “I’ve been preparing for this day for years. The others...they weren’t ready. Prepared. Me? I was born for this. I will pass the trials of the mountain.” He grinned. “I appreciate your concern, but I’ll be coming back down. I’ve got strength, brains, charisma...I’ve got it all. I’m the one the mountain has been waiting for.”

For a moment longer the old man held Gabe’s gaze, uncomfortably powerful for such a frail person. Then, shaking his head, he broke it off. “Then by all means,” he said, sadly, “don’t let me hold you up. Hurry on to your destiny. Though a true hero, I think, would have patience. A wise man counts his steps, friend.” It was an old adage; meaningless, in Gabe’s opinion.

Gabriel opened his mouth to say something, but realized he had nothing to say. Shrugging, he turned from the old man and started to run up the ancient stone steps, carved into the face of the mountain by some long gone civilization.

* * *

His head was throbbing, his lungs were pounding, and his skin was on fire even in the autumnal chill of the windy mountaintop, but Gabriel had never felt better in his life. He staggered up the final step and sank to his knees, breath screaming in and out of him like a winter wind.

He looked down the mountain behind them, at the thousands of countless steps descending downwards. The ground, obscured by the gathering night, was barely visible through the duskish haze settling over it. Even this high up, only the barest tip of the sun was visible over the distant horizon.

Gabe shook his head. He’d done it. A lot of people failed to even make it up the mountain; it was taxing on even on a well conditioned body. And considering that probable death waited at its peak, many spirits broke before body on the trek up the mountain.

Not Gabe’s. He’d been training for this day, preparing for everything the mountain could throw his way, for years. Day after day of long hours of conditioning, endless nights reading ancient texts by candlelight, education himself on ancient lore.

And at last, he was here. The clouds hovered so close above that Gabe was sure that, on another day, they might have dipped low enough for him to touch, and the wind had picked up howling demonically all around.

But none of that mattered. Already Gabriel’s heart was slowing, his breath coming more even. He turned away from the path.

And, there, just like all the legends told, was a cave.

If he had felt excited before, then there was no word to describe his feelings now. Everything he’d dreamed of waited in that cave. Wealth. Power, Fame.

Only pausing to hike his belt, Gabe strode resolutely into its unwelcoming darkness.

* * *

He heard them before he knew what they were. Crunching, cracking, dry and brittle beneath his boots. Gabe paid them no mind, creeping breathlessly forward, holding his arm out in front him. It was dark, almost too dark to see anything. Far too late, he wished he’d thought to bring a torch.

Then he turned the corner, and a fire torched into existence.

He was blinded, at first, so brilliant was the light from the flame. Slowly, wincing, he squinted his eyes opened and looked around.

This was the end of the cave. A stout, circular room, its walls bleak and blank and grey. The flame hovered in the middle of the air, burning from apparently nothing. Gabriel knew it for werelight from the purplish gleam to its flame. He peered around the small chamber cautiously. If the legends were right, then---

A skeleton. His eyes fell on a skeleton. Human, its bones bent into unnatural angles that made him flinch just to look at. He followed its length, from skull to foot...

And realized that was not the only one. There were more. Beneath his feet. Around him. Behind him, sunk into the walls. Hundreds upon hundreds of skeletons, testament to the failed endeavours of each and every one of Gabe’s predecessors.

A lesser man might have run. Gabe himself, a few years back, surely would have. But he had trained too much, was too far now to turn back.

“Show yourself,” he spoke, whispering. “Guardian of the power that sleeps under this mountain. Ancient spirit. Show yourself.”

For a moment, there was silence. An empty, expectant silence; Gabe didn’t even breathe.

One of the skulls started to shake, its jaw bone clapping loudly open and shut. Then another. And another. And another and another and another and another, until the whole cave was shaking and rumbling, filled with bouncing cackling skeletons.

The tremors stopped. Gabriel let out his breathe. In the middle of the cave stood...

Stood a demon.

Gabriel had never seen a demon, never even assumed they were real, but he knew of no other way to describe it. It stood half again as tall as he did, and two sets of ebony horns twisted downwards from its head towards its shoulders. Thick brown hair covered its head and most of its back, then all of its legs. It’s chest was broad and chiseled and red, but not red like a rose. Red like an ember; Now a blackened orange, now nearly golden as it flared to brilliance, then back again. Like the a chest rising and falling with breathes, the demon’s skin flared from faded dullness to ostentatious prominence.

And its face. Taught and skeletal, red flesh drawn tight against an abnormally steep skull. Flared eyebrows curled in angry hooks over a dramatically flattened nose; the mouth was a tight line twisted into an imperceptible smile. Worst of all were the eyes. Crimson, flaming things; there was enough fire in the depths of those eyes to burn the world to a cinder.

Gabriel’s throat caught, and for all of his training he couldn’t force himself to look away. It was an awesome sight, fearful as it was. If this was just the guardian, what power lay hidden here? What was buried, dormant, under the mountain?

The thought of that power gave him strength. Gabe swallowed once, twice, then forced himself to speak.

“Guardian.” His voice was neither as full nor as commanding as he’d always imagined it would be, but it least it didn’t shake. “I come...I come to risk your trials. To seek the power that you keep locked away.”

He knew what came next. Had known for years, from stories, from legends, from ancient dusty scrolls that were all but forgotten by the world.

“Very well.” The demon’s voice was all earth and fire and power, an earthquake contained. “What do offer, should you fail?”

Gabe gulped. He knew what came here, too. Had known all along. This was the point of no going back.

When he spoke, his voice was firm and loud. “My life. I offer my life.”

For a moment he let his imagination take his mind by the reins, and he thought the demon’s invisible smile increased just a smidge. He blinked, and it was gone. “Very well,” the demon rumbled again. “Very well, brave hero. Then we shall begin.”

At that moment, Gabriel was mortally thankful that he didn’t have to fight the demon, to pit his pitiful body against its own throbbing puissance. It would have been hopeless. The mountain had been the physical test, he realized. Walking through the cave of bones had tested his courage.

But here. Here, the demon would test his wits.

“I will pose three riddles for you,” the demon purred. Gabe nodded. The legends said as much. “Answer all to my satisfaction, and the power I guard is yours. Fail, and...” The hooked eyebrows raised themselves ever so slightly “...and what you offered is forfeit.”

His life. Gabe, more slowly this time, nodded again.

“Very well.” The demon’s eyes narrowed to flaming slits. “The first question I pose tests your wisdom, your knowledge, your understanding of the world you have lived in.” Gabe felt a ripple, part fear, part adrenaline. This was beyond what he’d read of. Beyond the legends. Nobody had ever come this far and lived to come back to tell the tale.

Not yet.

“Long ago, in your world,” said the demon, “there was once a great king. To you he was known as the Tyrant, the Cruel. Many names. King Alexander.” The demon paused, and Gabe imagined he could see its form pulsing, almost corporeal. He wondered if it was truly alive. “This King was overthrown by a man who is still sung of in your halls to this day. A man’s whose children’s children still lead your people. He was known as the Just. The Saviour. The Glorious. King Damien.”

Damien drank it all in like a smooth wine, all of this was basic history, known to every citizen of the Kingdom.

The cave glowed bright as the demon‘s entire body flared up; it’s eyes were a roaring inferno. “The question, brave one, is this. History names him an usurper, a rogue warlord come from afar who seized upon the unrest in Alexander’s kingdom. But that is not the truth of it. Tell me. Tell me the secret of Damien, who he really was, and how the Kingdom truly came to be his.”

Gabriel knew the answer. It was one of the most precious pieces of information he’d ever gathered. The scroll that had held it had been near legendary. He had spent monthes chasing it, following a trail of increasingly more obscure scholars, venturing into parts of the Kingdom where men hadn’t set foot in centuries . He’d nearly died many times in the journey, and at the end he had been rewarded with a mere page, a scant collection of words that had crumbled once he’d finished reading them.

But for all that, it was worth it. Gabriel swelled, and began to recite what he knew. “Alexander, tryant though he was, wasn’t a fool. He saw the foundations of his dynasty crumbling. He knew that his rule and his life wouldn’t last; the whispers of rebellion were starting to grow above whispers.”

“So he devised a plan. Sent his own son, Darryn, abroad. Told him to go outside the Kingdom. To build an army. And, in one years time to return.”

“And so he did. And in the space of that one year, the whispers grew to shouts. Rebellion seemed inevitable.”

“But then, from nowhere, came the conqueror. Damien, at the head of a host of thousands of foreign warriors. They swept through the Kingdom like a hurricane, scattering any resistance. They say that Damien himself beheaded the Tyrant. He took up rule, and soon proved himself a wise, able leader. Complete chaos was avoided, and the bards have sung of Damien as the Kingdom’s savior ever since.”

The demon smiled and nodded. “And his secret? The truth behind it all.”

Damien smiled back at the demon. “Damien was no foreign warlord. He was Darryn, the King’s own son, returned from a year in the lands beyond, a famed warrior in his own right outside the kingdom. It was Alexander’s own son that invaded the Kingdom, Alexander’s own child that stopped the rebellion that would have destroyed the Kingdom from the inside out. Alexander’s own blood that took his life. Alexander, cursed by history as the tyrant, saved the Kingdom and preserved his own bloodline in one devious, visionary maneuver.”

This time, when the demon smiled, he let his teeth show. They were as black as coal, and as polished as knifes. Fireglass. Obsidian, like the mountain. “You are wise indeed to know such a thing, traveler. Very few know men have known what you’ve just told me.. It is a secret that could tear down the foundations of the Kingdom. You have answered my first question to my satisfaction: you are indeed wise.”

One. One question down. Gabriel could hardly fight back the quivering that threatened to over take him. Two questions left. Two questions between him and penultimate power. Between him and destiny.

“The next question,” he spluttered in a burst of eagerness, “Guardian, what is your next question?”

A flame-red tongue crackled out of the demon’s mouth and ran its forked tip along the edges of its lips. “Hasty, aren’t we?” the demon crackled.

“I came here to claim my power,” Gabriel said, feeling giddily reckless. “Not to waste time.”

“You have spine,” the demon observed. It do not, however, as Gabriel somewhat expected, add that it admired a man with spine. “Very well,” it said at last. “The next question.”

The fur bristled as the demon straightened it’s posture, its height filling the cavern. “The second question I pose tests your morals, your judgments, your capacity to think, if you’ll have it. A hypothetical situation: You are a traveller upon a road, walking down a path. Suddenly, you hear screams, and go to find the source.”

“Following the noise, you come upon a group of travelers. They have fallen victim to an avalanche, and are trapped up to their waist in mud, dirt, and stone. Far above them, teetering precariously on the side of the mountain, is a boulder. A gigantic stone monolith. They cry out, tell you that tremors have been coming with regularity, that with each one the stone wedges looser from its fixtures, that with just one more, it will lodge free and roll, crushing them to their doom. With time they could free themselves but...it is the one thing they do not have.”

“Now, you could try to dig them free. But they tell you it has been some time since the last tremor; you have no time. If you would save them, you must stop the boulder. There is nothing around to block its progress. No trees. Only dirt and mud and stone. You dwell upon it and realize that the only chance of diverting the boulder would to be to use yourself, to march towards it, and use the weight of your own body to turn its course when it starts rolling.”

“Of course such an action would likely cripple, if not kill you. There are children trapped by the avalanche. They are begging, pleading; any moment the boulder could loose.”

This smile was the widest yet, almost mocking in its unabashed sincerity. Smoke snaked out of the back of the demon’s throat. “Tell me, traveller. What would you do.”

Gabriel considered it for a moment. Was the demon looking for altruisim? For egotism? A clever, hidden solution concealed in the problems warning? No, none of those were right. Every time, somebody lost...somebody was hurt. He needed a solution that would save everyone. Eliminate the problem.

“I have my answer.” Gabriel said.

“Oh?” The demon’s gravelly voice echoed in the smallness of the cave. “And, pray tell, what is it?”

This was it. A gamble. A long shot. But it was the only answer Gabe had. If it was wrong.... “I would destroy the boulder.” He spoke firmly.

Steam hissed through the smoke in the demon’s throat, laughter? “And how would you do that, traveller?”

“That,” Gabe answered resolutely, “is why I’m here.”

The demon roared; for a terrified moment, Gabe thought it was in anger. The roar tore through the small room like an arrow through a fly, ripping through Gabe’s skull. He reeled, his ears ringing.

“Very good, human,” the demon rolled out, back to his typical bass rumble. “I’ve heard many answers to that question, and very few of them acceptable, but never one that I’ve liked so much as that. You have answered your second question to my satisfaction.”

So there were more than one right answer. To that question at least. Gabriel shook his head wanly, trying to shake off the memory of the demon’s roar. It had been amusement, he realized. Pleasure, in an odd sort of way.

“I expect you want the third question already?” the demon interrupted as Gabe opened his mouth. “Yes? Of course. You are hasty indeed.”

“The third question I pose tests your awareness, your patience, your capacity to observe.” It paused reflectively.

Gabe felt a tension well up inside him. One more, he realized, scarcely able to believe it. One more question, and an unspeakable power would be his. All of those years, working and training, never pausing to breathe, only fighting towards one goal, all in pursuit of an old legend...they were all poised here.

“This is my question, traveler. On your journey up the mountain, there was little in the way of scenery. Rock and sky. Little more. I ask you this:” Flames licked at the edges of the demon’s mouth, pouring out of his throat in ravenous anticipation. “How many carved steps were there on the path to my domain?”

It left Gabe all at once. The confidence. The poise. The hope. The courage. Fled out of him like a hounded fox and left him rooted to the spot, white and speechless, too horrified to speak, to even think.

“No answer?” The demon’s eyes cooled; now they were a faded brown. The fire began to seep out of him; water out of a cracked dam, until it flared all around him, a starving orange brilliance that blinded Gabriel. “Then I claim your forfeit. You should have taken your time,” it finished in a whisper.

The last sight Gabe ever saw before he was devoured, was the demon, smiling one last time, like a two-timing merchant. Obsidian fangs laced with liquid flame, folds under its eyes, inexplicably like some terrible cat.

Some stuff

Okay, a few short orders of business to attend to.

First, my personal life is hell right now. Emotional, financial, academic, physical, whatever, it's all shit. So I'm busy sorting all that out; hence the latency of any promised updates, the sloppiness in said updates once they finally do show up, and, in general, any marked turns for the negative you've noticed in my writing.

Alright. First order of business. Dr.Duke #1 is up; I'm giving him his own blog, due to his independence as a character and differences from my typical stuff. You can find his advice column at DrDukeAdvice.blogspot.com (caps aren't needed; I just put 'em in here for clarity). Warning though: it's offensive. It's a continuation of a school newspaper gimmick I came up with in high school, after all.

Second. Even with all the stuff I'm dealing with lately (or maybe because of it), I've been writing. One of them is a new short stories. It's one of those ones where two ideas just converge perfectly, and suddenly I have this brilliant idea for a story.

It's also one of those stories where the ending wrote itself first.

It's not too long; I should finish it in one or two writing sesh's. As it is, I'm about halfway done, thought it's honestly pretty rough (more so than usual for my rough drafts).

I feel pretty good about the beginning, though, rough or not. So just for kicks I'd though I'd throw that up here; give you all a taste of what's coming next. No title yet (aside from my 'top-secret' working title, which I honestly can't even remember at the moment).

So here ya go. Some new Luke fiction to stave off boredom for a few minutes.

Comments much appreciated.

Till later,
Luke

The doctors say I dreamed it all. That from the first time I saw it, my mind had been sick. I guess it makes sense, that way. That everything that happened after that is so blurred because my sanity was unravelling, thread by thread. They explained the whole thing to me; used big long scientific words. Dissociative fugue, that’s the one they used the most. And schizophrenia. I was a real mystery to them, I think, all neat and clean in their white lab coats. They couldn’t quite pin down what they thought was wrong with me.

But they tried. Over and over, questions and tests and trials. And at the end, they tried to lay it out plain in simple terms. Told me I’d, more or less, gone crazy. Imagined things that weren’t there. Created events in my mind that hadn’t happened. No, they weren’t sure why yet. There was no traumatic precursor. No physical damage they could find. But they’d figure it out. They always did.

So they sent me back out. Out of the white, shining halls. The halls where it was never dark. And told me I should be okay. That none of the damage was lasting; it had been a temporary, if inexplicably strong spell. They gave me pills just in case, told me to take them if I felt any of the symptoms come back. And more than anything else, they reminded me over and over that none of it was real.

I don’t believe a word of it.

That was three days ago. They let me out at noon. I holed up in a hotel after that and I’ve been there ever since. Hotels rooms are easy to keep bright. Every lamp blazing, every fluorescent light glowing. The whole room constantly awash in bright yellow hotel light, forcing all the shadows out of the room, leaving the walls white and bare.

I’m keeping it at bay, the only way I know how. Because whatever they say, I didn’t imagine those things that happened to me. My mind didn’t create them.

My mind wouldn’t be that cruel.

So I keep my vigil. I haven’t slept since I got, haven’t showered, haven’t even looked in a mirror to see what that place did to me. Just sat here in this bright-lit hotel room, thinking, shaking. Trying to think of a way to escape. So far, nothing. Maybe, just maybe, if I stay here long enough, he’ll forget about me. Lose me. Leave me alone.

I haven’t seen it—him—for almost a month now. The asylum was brighter even then this. He didn’t dare follow me there. I have moments where I almost convince myself that he has forgotten, that I’m free.

But they never last. I can feel it. Still. That cold, creeping ice in my stomach, that knife twisting in my gut. Whatever it was...it’s still here. Somewhere. Hiding. Waiting.

I'm back

Well, partially.

Truth is, I've been busy lately. Like, really, really busy. Busy on a level comparable to a particularly industrious ant. Or an entire beehive. Some sort of busy-like insect.

Anyway. I'll be putting up new stuff more frequently now (and just wait till summer.).

Two new features:
1) Things I Hate. Loose rants that I type up on the spot. Purposefully directionless, rambling, and angry.
2)Dr.Duke. More about this to come. He's an old 'character' of mine that I'm bringin out of retirement.

And that's all for now. Sorry for the brevity, but I have other things that require my attention at the moment.

Like, y'know, actual writing.

Later
Luke

Short new stuff

Okay, I've been pretty dry lately to be honest. In a literary sense. A smattering of something here or there, but nothing significant or notable. Guess I drew from the well just a bit too heavily.

Well, my muse is timidly creeping back, so I'm finally starting to get the ball rolling. I should be done with the "Adahm" story (not to mention have a title for it) pretty soon--week and half or so for a rough--but completed--draft. I'm also gonna get a few more ''Poultney Tales'' and various other personal memoirish things out of the way. Besides that, I'm planning on starting a new fiction story (probably set in modern or recent times, besides that my only ideas are that I want the story to be able to be summed up with the sentence "It was clever"), but that's going to simmer on the back burner for a while. I'm still working and improving my untitled, unrevealed project too, of course. Oh, and I almost forgot to mention, since "Adahm" is winding down, I'm starting a new fantasy story.

I thought about this one for a while. I've been playing around with a lot of (I think)pretty good ideas for fantasy stories lately, so there was somewhat of a mental clamor among them when I decided I was going to build one of them up from "idea" to "story". Among those were a story set in a wholly new world, focused on a member of a complex, trading archipelago based society, backstories for characters I've written about in other stories, a rewrite of an old, unfinished story called "Sword"....the list goes on.

I suprised myself with my ultimate choice. Completely out of the blue, I'm heading back to Arston. It's a feeling similar to dreaming your awake, then really waking up. Disoriented, confused, and still a bit hesitant to declare this as reality so quickly. I honestly thought I wouldn't touch Age of Shadow or Arston for years.

Which, as I should have known, has been impossible. I've been touching up a few of my older chapters and stories, to be completely honest, as well as reading through one of my old writing journals. (The other big one's at home, or I would have read that one too.). All this delving into my old work really put me in the mood for Arston, so I decided, at last, that I had to do an Arston story.

The thing is, I really didn't want to touch Age of Shadow. Not yet. It's like finally getting in touch with a long lost best friend, then the next day asking them to borrow a couple grand. So that meant no Gane, Corik, Kyrae, Torulath, Scrym....Not even Veranes (I want to build up more of his story eventually, though). I basically wanted a story about somebody who lived in Arston. That was it the same world, not the same story.

A solid idea, but where to start? It's hard to write a story when you can't really think on anything or anyone significant to wrapt the plot around. The dilemma nagged me for a few nights in a row before, finally, a great idea decided to give me the nod.

The story will be about refugees from Narpas, heading south. They've been putting up a scattered resistance to Torulath for the last half year or so, but have finally seen the futility of it (what with Carjiston falling) and are heading south to try and find a new home. Chronologically, this is a few monthes before the prologue of Age of Shadow.

What makes this idea brilliant is that they'll appear in Age of Shadow. The initial troop that Corik manages to call to arms, the only ones who give him a chance, the ragged band of soldiers who lead him to his monumental victory at the Riverlord's Dam---these guys. So I'm touching Age of Shadow without touching what's already there.

In a sense, I'm starting to work on it again, ever so slightly. It's a very purple thought; meaning I don't really know what to make of it (Red is anger, blue is sadness, green is life, etc...what's purple?).

In the book, they're hardened and famed, a travelling band of refugees whose famed skill is only superseded by their legendary hatred for Torulath. Nearly a myth they're so skilled and picky in their clients. And they're leader...not a man to mess with, in short.

But in the story. They're cold, hungry, alone in a new land. Their leader, Nathan, is decent, but pompous and overconfident. My main character, Arthe, is 'barely a man', though to be honest his experience in the war has hardened him quite a bit (though not quite so much as he might like to think, perhaps).

The story is about their hardships in the new land, their unsuccesful attempts to fit in, to find a place to belong. And the growing tension between Arthe and Nathan as his leadership falls from misguided benevolence to stubborn incompetence.

Not to ruin the ending, but...well, to ruin the ending (keep in mind, this is my rough sketch for the ending/plot. You'll find a similar skeleton, but once I've fleshed out the story and added on all of its personal characteristics, you'll barely recognize it. Like Tolkien said--The tale grows in the telling).

The ending. At this point all kinds of negative aspects from this 'new world' are leading the group into ruin, and Nathan is making it worse, etc. Arthe finally openly opposes him, leads to a direct conflict. (Arthe, at the beginning, would never imagine doing this; speaking to Nathan gets him nervous. He hardens and matures throughout the story, and is very changed by the new world. I'm really looking to put a lot more character growth in to this than "Adahm".)

In short, he wins, he's accepted as the leader. The story fades out with him recognizing the enormity of his task--so many people's lives in his hand. But he accepts this, resolves to become unparalelled. During the story, Nathan has been telling them to 'live in the city'--to fit in, etc, but it chokes the wild hearts of the winterlands people and so on, plus he's wasting their coin faster than stitchless purse. And so Arthe closes the story with a blind, but hopeful resolve, leaving the city, knowing he'll find a better life for them.

His next appearance? The battle hardened, tactically shrewd legend that becomes one of the key players in Corik's part of Aos.

Standalone story, a segue into Age of Shadow, and development/refinement of the long stagnant plot. If I can pull it off (if I put the effort in, believe me, I can) this could very well be one of my best works yet.

Here's a short, really rough possible intro. Keep in mind that at the point I wrote this, I'd been awake for 20+ hours, and had spent the last few reading. (Reading, for me, can have an effect on my writing like holding a magnet up to a TV screen. It distorts me, because my style is caught in a tug-of-war between my own style and whatever the style of the book I've been pouring into my brain is). Oh, and the [brackets] mean to put in a more specific noun/name/etc. Notes to myself I use in hurried first drafts.

Basically, don't judge. But it's a start. A seed.

It'll grow.
_____________________________________________________________________

The land felt wrong. Arthe noticed it almost as soon as they were into the Riverlands proper, and it only grew stronger as they went south. He watched as the Narpas’s snows gave way to faded greenery, as the great beds of ice disappeared, supplanted by angry, rushing rivers. The sun, a pale, yellow stranger his entire life, had suddenly become a fiery, intrusive presence that seemed to fill the whole sky. And the stillness. The stillness that had been as close as his shadow all of Arthe’s life was gone. A flock of birds on the wing, a squabbling pair of squirrels. Even the rustling leaves of a drab bush stirred by a tepid wind.

The land felt alive.

Arthe was sure the others felt it too. The growing unease was plain their faces, in the way they held themselves, how they grouped closer as they forged deeper into Ayamar. Besides Nathan, he was sure not one of them had been past the Tundras, let alone out of Narpas altogether. They were men who had grown up in a frozen, merciless world, a place where death lurked behind every snowdrift.

The last half hour had been the worst. Before it had still felt almost like Narpas, a Narpas kissed by the touch of life. But the trees had been thickening, they hadn’t seen any snow in a span of miles, and several of them had near lost a shoe from stepping in mud. Real, six-cursed mud.

Arthe flexed his neck apprehensively. The trees were becoming frighteningly thick. He cast about, looking for Nathan. It was an easy task; he was easily a whole head taller than any of the others, and in a group of several score men, height labeled a man as clearly as a beacon. Arthe quickened his pace and hurried up to the tall man.

Nathan’s blue eyes peered down at Arthe as he drew abreast, but he said nothing, merely lifted his eyebrows expectantly.

Arthe cleared his throat. “Nathan. I’m not trying to cause trouble, or question you or anything-“ a warning steeliness flashed briefly across Nathan’s eyes, “but...I think it might be best if we stopped. Found a place to setup camp for the night and all.”

Nathan answered him without breaking stride. “Arthe, I know you mean well. But trust me. I’ve been to Ayamar before, remember. There’s a ways we should walk yet it we want to reach [the capital] by tomorrow. And besides,” he shrugged his head to his right, “we still have at least an hour of day light. No point in wasting that.”

Natha was right, of course. He did know the road to [capital], and even without looking, Arthe could feel the unwelcome glare of the foreign sun beating against him. But...Arthe looked back at the rest of them. Barely two score men, some old enough to be his father, others not quite old enough to drag a razor across their cheeks. The ablest men they had, sent on ahead of the larger group of the women and children and elderly. Men who, once, had proudly stood united against Torulath’s army’s.

They had been proud, and they had been strong. But that had been nearly a year ago, and they intervening monthes had harbored nothing but misery for Narpas. For all their range in age, Arthe could see the same expression on every one of their faces. Weariness. Not exhaustion; he didn’t doubt that they could march on for hours yet if need be. No. This weariness went deeper. You could see it in the lines in their face, in the grim ground into those same lines, in the dullness of their eyes. Arthe knew that if he could see himself, he’d find himself in a similar state.

They’d lost it all. Their friends, their war. And now their home. They marched south because they had to, to fulfill the basic urge to survive. Not out of any particular hope or desire.

The newness of the world filled Arthe. The fading roar of a river some miles back. The twitter of birds. The glare of the sun. The thickening obscurity of the gathering trees.

It was too much, too fast. If Nathan made them walk any further, it would only force their spirits deeper into the ground.

“Nathan.” Arthe fought to keep his voice even. “Nathan, we should stop. We’re all tired. This is completely new to all of us.” Arthe waved his arms in front of him. “Another mile or so, and we’ll be in a forest. A forest, Nath. Maybe you’ve seen one before, but to me and the rest of us, a forest is just a place out a story. As real as the Reyde’s Hill or the Hall of the Six. Please. Just today. Let us rest.”

Hardness settled on Nathan’s face, as comfortable there as paints on a jester’s. “Arthe, you’re overstepping yourself. You fight a few battles, and you think your judgment holds significance?” He shook his head, not bothering to hide the condescension in it. “Arthe, you’re just a boy. Not a leader. You tell me things I already know, thing’s I’ve already considered.” His pace quickened almost imperceptibly. “Your concern is appreciated, but its misplaced. I know how to lead.”

More than a few voices started to rouse themselves in the back of his head. Arthe quickly silenced them. “Nathan, I know. I’m not questioning your leadership. I’m just saying that, tonight, maybe—“

Nathan halted in midstride, almost causing a few men who’d been keeping close pace behind him to collide with him. “Arthe. There are at least a dozen other men here with more common sense than you. And have any of them come forward? Have any of them complained? Try to be strong, Arthe. It’s another hour at most, surely you aren’t all that bone weary.”

Shame burned across Arthe’s face, as red as the foreign sun. More than a few of the others, halted by Nathan’s sudden standstill, had heard the exchange. They peered at Arthe emotionlessly, to drained curiosity, disdain, or whatever else they might be feeling, to show itself on their faces.

“Men,” Nathan barked, turning to face the rest of the group. “Arthe here seems worried about heading into a forest. As if I would lead you into danger” He paused, dramatically. “Obviously, it’s a false worry. Now, you’re all strong men. Another hour’s march is all I ask of you, and then we retire for the day. Do any of you find it too much to ask?”

Arthe watched the expressionless sea of faces that Nathan cast his words into. Nothing. No flinching. No despair, no annoyance. Nothing but stoic acceptance of the reality of the situation. They were tired refugees in a foreign land that only Nathan knew; if he said march, then they would march.

Note to self

Edited out

Probably Better To Skip This One

Okay, I got something a little different today.
Usually, I'm going to post *parts* of fiction that I'm working on at the moment. Sometimes, I'll post stuff I wrote a while back; either way, I'll always give it an intro (much like this).

Today's will be different mainly because I won't be posting a fantasy/other fiction short story. I figured, for the hell of it, I'd post a personal essay of mine I wrote for my creative non-fiction class. It's...well, it actually is REALLY personal. I almost don't want to post it.

The theme for the essay was "place". So...I tried to roll a bunch of places...and their memories...in to one. I didn't think too deeply about this; just the first memory of a place that came to mind, I wrote about.

This version is slightly short. There's supposed to be two more "memories" I have (one at the Elementary School and one in front of Nate's house), but they made it too long for the essay's requirements, so I cut them out. And, like an idiot, accidentally saved over them. If there's one thing I hate, it's rewriting something I JUST wrote. It feels like going on a date the day after your wife passed away or something.

Anyway, I'll leave you with this: This essay should give you a really good sense of who I am...or, at least, who I was. Because, more than anything, it's about how these places...these memories....are just that. My past. Something I look back on now, from the outside.

Enjoy, and, as always, please leave comments.
_____________________________________________________________________

Luke Dailey

501.16

I step outside, and take a sharp breath. The air is crisp and frigid, ripe with the sting of winter’s heart. The wind flirts with potency, now flailing at me like a wronged lover, now slowing to an almost imperceptible lull. Others might draw their coats tighter, shiver, and turn around to retreat to the warmth of the house. Not me. The cold’s bite is like the friendly punch of an old friend; nothing more than a greeting.

My breath frosts as I squat down, grab my toes, arch my arms across my back, flex my neck. Squinting at me like a single, baleful eye, the waning moon stands stark against the empty night sky. The stars are little more than imperceptible pinholes on a black canvas. Silent and unforgiving, they watch me rise to my feet, pull up my hood, pause for a heartbeat to adjust the volume on the mp3 player banded to my arm. Then I’m off, feet pounding on the driveway, the sidewalk, the road, a lonely patch of life in a dead December night.

The town is a graveyard after 9; past midnight as it is, I could be running through a photograph. I run down Church Street, headphones blaring. Even through the music, I can feel the silence. The houses are darkened and quiet, no cars prowl the streets. In the middle of town, I’m alone.

The first corner comes soon; with the automated precision that comes with thousands of repetitions, I juke to the side of the stop sign, stepping lightly onto the sidewalk. The town seems a bit more alive here; two successive streetlights stare feverishly at the ground, and the glow of the grocery stores eternal fluorescent lights spills through its windows in a pale crescent. The parking lot waits for me soberly, unvisited and forgotten this late at night, so far from the bustling traffic that packs its corners during the day.

It was a Saturday night. We’d played a football game earlier in the day; more importantly, we’d won. Blessed with the liberating sense of carefree apathy that can only come after you’ve accomplished something that makes you feel truly proud of yourself, Nate, Ed and I were lounging the afternoon away in Nate’s living room. The gurgling TV, a constant fixture of his house, sputtered noisily in the other room; it had been annoying at first, but after half an hour had inevitably faded into forgettable background noise.

It was late September, but Summer was maintaining a more-than-welcome extended visit. A cool breeze, smelling subtly of freshly cut lawn, wafted through the windows, mingling comfortably with the distinct odor of Nate’s house. We threw barbs back and forth, discussed the highlights of the day’s game. Idly perused the internet. Plopped down in front of the TV; for an hour or so, game controllers were exchanged and tempers flared and fell. As usual, the games got old fast, and we sank quickly into the inescapable quagmire, Boredom, that relentlessly sucks in all of Poultney’s youth.

Ed suggested heading outside, Nate and I agreed. We grabbed a football, headed out to his driveway, and spent a few lazy minutes tossing it back and forth. We headed off down the street, the football flickering randomly between as we made our way. Past Ed’s house, past the old firehouse. To Shaw’s parking lot.

By now it was growing dark. But Shaws was light enough for us---their fluorescent lights never went off. Young, careless, and scornful of any potential consequences, we hucked the football back and forth violently. A few other meandering kids gathered around. We punted, passed, ran. Had fun with the football in the way you only really can in perfect weather.

I caught a pass, stepped back past one of the two lampposts. Nate darted across my field of vision, waving for me to pass it to him. Behind him, smaller and faster, Ed blurred towards the edge of the lot. Smiling, I readied the ball and launched it.

Too hard. Too high. It flew out of my hands, out of my reach, out of the parking lot. Over the roof of Shaws, into some unreachable nowhere.

We all stopped, too stunned to speak. I tried to apologize. Ed, incredulous, Nate—upset. It was his football after all. We searched behind the grocery store, to the sides, a task made even more hopeless by the gathering darkness. At last we gave up, deciding to give it one more shot in the morning. And so, dejected and football-less, we trudged back to Nate’s to endure another Poultney night of boredom.

Now I am past the parking lot, worming my way through the side road past the Discount Food store. Doggedly I jog on, and suddenly I am on Main Street. I run past Stewarts, the library, the bank. Still no cars, still not another person to speak of. The streetlights here are lower and dimmer. I start to sweat, breathe a bit heavier, shake my hair out of my eyes. I feel as if I’m running through a dream. The hardware store slips by unnoticed. Another corner, this one host to the only traffic light in town. I cross the road, picking up my pace to keep in time with the music. To my right is the Mobil gas station, Dunkin Donuts discreetly sandwiched into the same building. I spare the building a glance, but have no time to spare it a thought; I’ve reached the bottom of the hill.

It was spring break, 2007. I stood in the back room of Dunkin Donuts, sequestered from the rest of the store by firmly posted “Employees Only Sign”. Hunched over her desk, rifling through papers, the woman who I’d come to know as my boss paused. She straightened up, and seemed to notice me for the first time. “Oh.” She blinks. “Hello.”

Tuesday---2:30, right? I ignored the thought. At this point, I could have bet my soul on that I was right. “Hi,” I started awkwardly. “I got your message. And. Ah. Since I just live up the street, I figured stopping back by would be easier than calling back.”

“Oh. Right. You’re Luke.” The squat woman smiled. “I’m Anna, the manager.” Was the smile fake? Sincere? I wiped my palms dry on my pants. Don’t do that! It seems fidgety.

“Yeah.” I managed, scraping most of the rust off of my voice. “So, uhm...”

“Well, we could definitely use you.” She eyed me. Appraising? Considering? Nothing? “You’ll start Sunday. Lyndsey will be training you.”

“Allright. Allright.” I kept up an evenly paced nod the whole time she spoke. “Uh-huh.”

Anna opened a drawer, frowned, slammed it shut, opened another. Paused, squinted. Frowned again. A third drawer. This time after a dubious moment, she reached and pulled out a paper-clipped stack of papers. “Here’s all the forms you have to fill out. Just your standard stuff, things like that.” She held them out towards me in a pudgy grip. “Just have them by Sunday.”

“Allright,” I said, doing my best to sound pleasant. Was I sounding too pleasant?

“Let’s see. Hmmm.” She started to tap her pen against the desk thoughtfully. After less than 2 seconds, it became insanely irritating. I forced my smile a little bit wider. It felt like stretching a rubber band too far, to the point where it breaks. “Oh, right. I put in request for a uniform. It should be in soon.”

“Great,” I replied amicably. “Great.”

Anna tilted her head. “I think that’s it. We’ll set you up with keys and everything on Sunday. 1:30.”

Sunday. 1:30. A new mantra for my mind to mull over for the next few days. “Sounds awesome. I’ll be there!” I almost cringed at my own forced enthusiasm. Was it obvious? I wasn’t cut out for this ‘’be pleasant to everyone’’ stuff.

“Well then.” She nodded dismissively, and spun her chair towards her desk so she was no longer facing me. “See you Sunday.”

“See you Sunday,” I parroted, and walked away with calculated poise until I was out of the store.

The night is as serene as ever, but my lungs are burning. I stumble rather than stride past the empty apartments, draw ragged breathes as I battle my way to the crest of the hill. The cold hovers above me, anticipating, eager for me to succumb to exhaustion and collapse, hungry to devour me. I lower my head and plow forward, the music pulsing in a trancelike rhythm.

The hill breaks, and the burning in my legs and lungs starts to lessen just a bit. I am running slowly enough to read the sign in front of the high school. It announces a spaghetti dinner, wishes the basketball team luck in their next game. I pass the sign; begin to pass the main entrance. On a nostalgic whim, I detour my route, turning to jog to the front of the glass doors. I pause from my run for a brief moment to look through the darkened glass, to let my eyes look at the lobby for the first time in months. It has stayed the same. Everything does, back home. I think it is growing colder. I turn and return to my run, past the principle’s empty parking lot, losing my thoughts in the monotony of the jog.

I dropped on to the mat panting. Man, is the last station rough. I mustered the energy to look around. As red-faced and sweaty as I was, I was better off than a lot of my teammates. A lot of them could have been corpses, if corpses could breathe rapidly and complain in strained voices.

Today was especially rugged; I’d lifted weights at the college earlier in the afternoon, then showed up early to run my typical 35 plus laps around the court. Dedication is a good idea in principle, but when you feel like curling up and going to sleep for 12 hours at the beginning of practice...eh, not so much.

It was going to be a rough practice.

I could see the dark scowl already mustering strength on Mrs. Fuller’s face. Oh boy. If I could have gathered the energy and melodrama necessary to groan in misery, I probably would have. She’d been in a bad mood all week, and it had only been getting worse every day. Unless I missed my guess, today was going to be the day the storm came crashing down on us. Lots of lightning, and plenty of thunder

“Boys,” she snapped, “go get the speakers.” Normally, I’d be thrilled as hell to get the speakers. In fact, even now, it didn’t sound so bad—get away from her unstable wrath for a few precious minutes. Problem was, I was seeing everything through a kind of grayish haze, and when I tried to stand up, the world kind of grew dimmer. Still not quite horrendous enough to make me groan, but close.

“Ryan, go get the megaphones,” I grumbled out. He scrambled up like some kind of lurching chimp, and, with his goddamned grin plastered smack across his face, scuttled off to do my bidding. I watched him go with feelings somewhere between disgust and amusement. What a fucking clown.

Nothing quite as intense as cheerleading. Kind of a miserable thought. Ms. Fuller started to snap out orders like some kind of high-ranking professional Gestapo. Violently warning my body that it better not give up on me, I forced it to stand up, then. Hope wasn’t lost. Maybe she’d start off with something easy, where I just stood around with my arms crossed and tried to look sullen but likeable. I hoped she’d start off with something easy. Kind of like hoping for a fire truck for Christmas.

“First, I think...” I could hear the musing in her voice, and I realized with an awful dread she was about to hand out a death sentence. It was like when a teacher asks the one question you no clue how to answer, and you immediately just know, no matter what you do, you’re going to get picked out to answer it.

“I think we’ll start with the basket toss,” my coach concluded happily.

This time, I groaned. Death sentence, indeed. Everybody had to go sometime, I guess. Too bad I’d be taking off during cheerleading practice.

I loop around, running across the street, looking for cars even though they’re a rare, shy beast this time of night. I grit my teeth and launch myself over the stone ledge as it rises up before me, and land heavily on the doc’s lawn. From experience I know his dog is probably barking, savage yips belying its miniscule stature. But my music still separates me from the outside world, a paper-thin auditory armor that keeps the emptiness at bay.

Downhill now, my stride stretching in front of me, carefully monitoring my speed. Too fast, and a crafty patch of ice will slide up to cut off my foot’s journey to the sidewalk. I never fall, but that is as much because I’m cautious as well balanced. I run past the stream, emptier of life even than the night, frozen into a stone imitation of its usual gurgling self by winter’s touch.

A left turn at the traffic light, an uneventful straight stretch where the houses start to give way to open space. The four-way stop, a right turn. I think I can hear my ragged breathing over the music, but decide it is probably my imagination. Past Kurt’s house, over the stream again, still ashen. My vision is blurring now, I blink and force my head to stay up straight. The conclusion of my run is still a ways off.

To my left, suddenly, looms the entrance to the rail trail. An abrupt departure from the relative civilization of Poultney, a steadily deteriorating path into the woods. It’s entrance is black and foreboding, halled and roofed by a heavy canopy of trees, oppressive even without their dense foliage. I run decisively past its inky maw. Beyond that is a hungry, colder world; one best not visited at night. It falls away behind me as I continue down the road.

A shooting star cut across the sky, bleeding a thin orange trail out behind it. The night was a velvet blanket, stars dotted it, sand scattered against obsidian. The moon clung feebly onto the last lingering remnants of supremacy; the slight sliver that hadn’t yet been devoured by the heavens was half covered by a dense grey cloud. It was beautiful, a night sky unfettered by bothersome city lights, full of all the wonder and awe that has entranced humankind for all of its existence.

And then the sky was gone, shielded by an impenetrable roof of dense leafy treetops, and there was nothing but night and my bike and my friends. Like a body come home to an empty grave, the rail trail swallowed us.

The darkness was so complete and so unexpected that none of us spoke for a long moment, only pedaled, slowly, each of us struggling to come to terms with the limitless night enveloping us.

“We should have brought a flashlight.” I said at last.

A short silence followed. “Yeah.” Ed said, from somewhere up ahead. I could just make out his shirt---it was white, but still, it was only a candle in an ocean of ink.

Nate was closer, the man in the middle, and his shirt was white too. “We’re already here,” he said. “So let’s just go.” His bike gears whirred and clattered.

I looked behind me. There was nothing but the night, yawning, its gaping maw spread wide open, eager to devour me should I allow it to catch up with me. I shuddered and turned back around, and kept my eyes locked on the two white dots that were my friends’ shirts. “Yeah. I don’t want to go back. Let’s just go.”

My thoughts are scattered, my steps uneven. My once secure defense against winter, underarmor and a sweatshirt, has succumbed to the irrefutable reality that it is no match for this caliber of cold. I imagine my sweat freezing on my face, leaving frosted beads clinging to my skin like transparent leeches.

I turn into the arch of the corner, leaning forward to increase my momentum. The college materializes in the darkness to my left, stark tall sentinels through the night. The campus is usually alive, and so it is comparatively deader than even the town itself. The wind prowls its corners, frost paces its sidewalks. Tonight, it is a place best avoided, inexplicably mysterious despite its dogged familiarity. For a time it follows me, the campus perpetuating itself as I try to outrun it. At last my hampered pace brings me past its reach; if I had the energy, I would sigh in a strange sort of relief.

Two guys.

Late spring, and it’s just getting dark. Two guys, walking through the college. Not students, but old enough to blend. We walk a strange route; circling and recircling the same ground. To a keen observer, there is something skittish, flighty about the way we walk, avoiding others’ gaze, doing our best not to be seen.

Me- tall, red haired, and Ed,- shorter, black hair. It is nearly dark by now. We laugh, joke, whisper up unheard plans in furious undertones. The absurdity of our plan keeps our spirits on the cusp of boiling over. We are waiting for something. An oppurtunity.

At last it comes. None of the college hippies that litter the campus are around. We dart forward, grab two bikes. Locked. Two more. Locked. Frantic, now, we fly to a third set. These bikes are old. Rusted. Decorated with strange, painted designs. Bottom of the barrel.

But unlocked.

Cackling like hyenas, the two of us leap onto the bikes, peddling away furiously, unable to contain our ecstatic laughter. Two hippy bikes, clandestinely borrowed for the evening. The bikes will carry us around for a few hours, give us a good story for a few years. In the morning they will be back in the hippies’ bike rack, their dreadlocked owners none the wiser.

Everything seems to be pressing down on me now. The cold, the darkness, my own fatigue. Memories. Even the silence presses through my music, undeterred. My steps are stumbling; my head hangs at my chest. Breaths come forced and uneven, and chilled sweat cascades from my face. An aura of steam drifts up behind me, testament to my body’s battle against the cold. I start up the street; it is the last one before my house. Lurching, I force myself forward to the corner, take a right, again past the grocery store, only this time I double back, cut off the main road onto the private drive.

Treacherous potholes lurk beneath a malicious coating of ice; I battle through my exhaustion and force myself to run carefully. Over the ice, avoiding the potholes; drained as I am, I could probably do it with my eyes closed. Past the house, the window. I force myself not to look, not to think. Fatigue is not enough to keep those thoughts, those questions at bay.

But they are best kept dormant. To myself. Forgotten. Unanswerable. I leave the house behind me, meld back with the street. The final stretch. Mustering all my reserves, I channel all my energy into a final, all out sprint.

I felt conspicuous. I felt out of place. I felt unsure.

I felt like a complete idiot.

Uneasily, I shuffled through the snow, hands in my pockets. What was I doing? Was there any logic to this?Any reason? Should I have even come out? My brain, normally so dependable, just shook its head at these questions, baffled by them, not sure what to say.

I was, I decided, nowhere near as rational as I liked to think. I really wasn’t in the mood for this—I could probably still just turn around and head back...

“Luke!” My voice, hissed, a sole sound fleeting across the night. I jumped and looked up. She was there, leaning out of her window. The stupid smile that, no matter how hard I fought against it, always found a way on to my face, started to make its hallmark appearance, and my heart decided to inconvenience me even more by beating twice as fast. I hate them both, hated the endless wondering in my mind. I thought I’d been done with those feelings a long time ago. Relics from high school. A dream, no hope whatsoever. Dreams are a lot easier to forget about then hold onto.

I walked forward, stepping carefully around the frozen potholes. It was all I could do to force my grin down into an uneasy halfsmile. “You’re crazy!” I whispered back up, my mouth deciding to randomly spout words on its own, since my brain certainly wasn’t giving it any direction.“Where did you drop it?”

Clearly she found this whole situation hilarious, she was smiling like Ed from the Lion King. The smile that I couldn’t stand, the smile I just wanted to forget. To not care about. But instead, there I was, wondering if she was smiling in amusement, just because, who knows. I certainly had no idea. I never did, with her. I was never sure of anything, least of all myself.

“There.” Her hand reaches out her windows, points down to the ground, into some obscure patch of snow.

“What did you drop?” I asked as I stepped forward to try and locate the whatever-it-was.

Her reply was matter of fact. “A snowglobe.”

Oh, that made a lot of sense. You can only wonder how or why a snowglobe manages to get dropped out a second story window. It wasn’t even worth it to ask.

“Here it is.” It was easy enough to find, its fall fortunately cushioned by the fluffiness of the recent snowfall. It was, indeed, a snowglobe. Not particularly distinct, just a typical crystalline orb eternally catching a woefully idyllic scene. “Can you catch it?” I motioned throwing it back up.

“Probably not.”

Whatever. “Alright, here goes.” I hucked it up, trying to find the perfect balance between power and accuracy.

It rocketed up, spinning over and over on its own wait. It slowed, crested, and for a moment seemed to simply hang in the air. A sparkling, spinning glass ball, one that I was sure was going to come crashing back down shattering. Reflexively I stepped forward ready to catch it.

Her hands reached out and grabbed it clumsily. I breathed out, relieved. “Don’t drop it again,” my mouth, still operating independently of my brain, warned. “I don’t want to come out again.”

“I won’t,” she promised, fighting back a laugh. I think. “Thanks, Luke. Thanks for coming out to get me m snowglobe.”

I roll my eyes. “You’re welcome. Like I said though, just don’t drop it again. It was hard enough to get out of the house the first time.”

“How’d you get out?” She asked.

I grinned. “Told my parents I lost my wallet.” I lose my wallet all the time.

She flashed a smile back at me. “Ha. Alright, thanks again, Luke.”

“You’re welcome, again.” I turned, started to walk away. “Good night.”

“Good night!” I turned back one last time as she said it. She was still smiling. I shook my head at myself ruefully. I should have given it up a long time ago—had given it up a long time ago—but just being around her made it hard to forget.

Her smiling down at me. That was the last time I ever saw her.

* * *

I collapse breathlessly in my driveway, finally submit to the cold. With a sadistic glee, it rushes on to me, cloaking me, embracing me, flooding my panting lungs. My body heat floods the air around me with a dense steam, and for a moment all I can do is lie panting, thoughtless, guiltless.

Slowly my breath returns. I rise tottering to my feet, and creak my way up the porch, into the house. The town sits silent behind me, looming, waiting. Day will come, and with it life, and for a time the town will be a brighter place, warmer, bustling.

But day will fade. Night will come. The cold will creep back again. And then, once again, the town will be mine.