Happy Halloween, and Amazing News

Happy Halloween, everyone!

I hope you’re having a great time scarfing down candy and small children (for the Gingerbread House-dwelling witches among our readers).

To celebrate, we have a new story by yours truly to get you in the holiday mood.

First, however, some news.

In the next week or so, this site (There By Candlelight) will finish being transitioned over to the company site for There By Candlelight Press. All of the personal writings and blog posts from both myself and Jennifer will be moved to our personal sites (www.jennlyons.com and cmikelyons.wordpress.com although my own will change once I purchase my own domain name).

Both of those sites are live now, and you should check them out and re-adjust any ‘followings’ you may have to them.

Additionally, you should know that Jenn’s first book, Marduk’s Rebellion, is available for purchase (currently from Amazon and Smashwords, with other sites to follow as they propagate through). Check out her site for details and how to purchase, or just to congratulate her on a job well done.

Her second book, Blood Chimera, will be available in 2014 from World Weaver Press.

Now, as promised, here is a Halloween Story for your amusement: The Claim.

Brunch! is over, and other updates.

Well, my idea of having Brunch! The Page Where Spam Goes to Die was cute and all, but sadly the spammers aren’t very clever. They keep sending me the same six or seven basic messages over and over, rather than keeping it interesting. As a result, I’ve decided to take down the Brunch! page and simply squash the spam as it comes in.

With a HAMMER!

In other news, the first week of my serial novel read-along-as-I-write-it was a success, in that I wrote just over 2200 words. Today’s update is complete also, bringing us to 2700 words. It is up here on this site (here) as well as on my Watt Pad account, should you wish to get your reading done that way.

Lastly, let me just say that driving around on brakes that are failing is quite the ‘exciting’ experience. I don’t recommend it.

-Mike

Back from the dead, new Thing happening

Hello faithful readers (both of you!).

Yes, I’m back. I know it’s been a while since I posted anything. Life has been happening. I finished a novella, decided to upgrade it to a novel, then decided it wasn’t what I wanted to do right now, and started another book. A ‘trio of four’ as DNA might have said. Maybe.

Who knows.

Anyways.

Back in February of this year, Chuck Wendig put up a blog post about how to write a novel in a year. It turns out, it’s not that hard if you break it up into small chunks. He recommends 350 words per day, five days a week.

So that’s what I’m going to do. Here, with you. This is, mind you, in addition to the other books I’m writing offline. However, here online, I’ll be posting between 350-500 words per day. Yes, it’s a serial novel! And you thought those days were over, didn’t you? Admit it, you totally did. That’s okay, I did too.

Starting today, you can head over to the Serial Novel page and follow the progress. It’s free, it’s only 500ish words a day, and it’s free. Did I mention it’s free?

It’s totally free.

So kick back, crack open a cold bottle of Liquified Flobotinum, and enjoy!

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Departure

First off, let me begin this by saying, ‘Go see the Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.’ It was a very fun movie, and I can’t wait to see the Goblin Town sequence in a video game (hint hint, designers).

That said, there were a few decisions that the production team (writers, director, and producers) made that seemed out of place, strange, or just plain pointless.

Warning: Everything below is a spoiler.

The Blame Game

On December 14th, 2012, a man picked up several firearms, went to the school where his mother taught, and began killing people. This was a horrible, horrific event that shocked and sickened me to my core. That this was not the first time something like that has happened in no way lessened the horror.

In the aftermath, as I watched the feeds on Twitter and Facebook, I began to notice two trends.

The first trend was people expressing their emotions: offering condolences to the families of those slain, or expressing their disgust and outrage, as personal tastes dictated.

The second trend I noticed was people using this as proof that either all guns should be banned, or as an example of why every American should be packing a gat on their hip. Some day, I will find the humor inherent in the fact that both the pro- and anti-gun lobbies are using the exact same event as ‘proof’ that their beliefs are correct. Not today, however. It’s still too close.

But then I made the cardinal mistake: I replied to the FB post of an acquaintance.

I really should know better.

My acquaintance posted a link to an article on Thinkprogress.org titled, “It’s Easier for Americans to Access Guns Than Mental Health Services.” I responded flippantly that there are many things in America it is easier to get than mental health services. Then I sarcastically named a few, including garbanzo beans (because I really like that word. Garbanzo).

An acquaintance of my acquaintance then jumped in to berate me for ‘making mental health care seem ridiculous.’ This surprised me, as that was not the point of my reply at all. All I was trying to do was shine a light on the fact that the author of the original article was using this tragedy as a platform for his own personal anti-gun stance, and doing so in a deliberately misleading and frankly absurd way.

‘Guns are easier to access than mental health.’ No s#!t, Sherlock.

Guns are physical, manufactured items. I’m not an expert on firearm factories, but I can’t imagine it takes more than maybe half an hour to manufacture a Glock on the assembly line? And given the asking prices, I predict it costs somewhere in the vicinity of $50-$100 to make one. On the other hand, to ‘manufacture’ a therapist takes years and years of college, and tens if not hundreds of thousands in school loans. And once you’ve ‘made’ your therapist, curing someone of whatever mental ailments they suffer from isn’t instant, that also takes time and money. It has been a while since I last looked at the prices for an hour of therapy, but back then it was around $200. For $200, I can get a LOT of garbanzo beans.

But as I sat here and thought about this semi-argument I was almost having with a complete stranger, I started to think about what this says about us as a species and a society. I composed several follow-up posts in my head, and although I never posted them, they got me to thinking.

See, here’s the thing. Right now, a lot of people are blaming this tragedy on guns. Leaving aside the absurdity of blaming the tool for the way in which it is wielded, this is simply the latest in a long line of excuses that society has come up with in order to avoid having to put the blame for events like this where it actually belongs.

In the ’60s, it was Rock’n’Roll music. If someone killed someone or committed suicide, it was Rock’n’Roll’s fault. In the 70s, it was Heavy Metal. In the 80s, the cause of every evil was Dungeons and Dragons. In the 90s it was video games, and in the 00s, it was violence on TV and in the movies. And now, the fault lies with guns.

It is interesting that we’ve moved beyond the social and are now blaming the method, but that’s not the point. The point is, we keep pointing fingers at things that are, at best, peripheral influences on unstable people and crying ‘Satan is in the Rock’n’Roll/Heavy Metal/D&D/Video games/Violent TV shows/Guns.’

The fact is, sometimes people go crazy. They’re broken. Maybe it’s environmental, maybe it’s genetic. Maybe it’s a chemical imbalance, maybe it’s a non-supportive home life, maybe it’s stress. But people sometimes go nuts. And sometimes, when they go, they take others with them. It’s horrible and sad and scary, but it’s not exactly ‘news’ that sometimes people snap.

So why do we blame these other things, these external forces? Why does society feel the need to point fingers at rock’n’roll or heavy metal or video games or guns and cry ‘Demon! Unclean!’?

I ask this, but the truth is, I know why.

Fear.

Each and every one of us, in the darkest hidden parts of our minds, where we don’t like to go and hate to even acknowledge that we have, we know that the guy who picked up a gun or a knife or a bomb and killed a McDonalds full of people could have been us. ‘There but for the grace,’ and all that.

But we don’t want to believe that it could be us. Our subconscious minds, quite often, refuse to even accept the possibility. But if ‘crazy’ is a result of environment or stress or genetics, all these things that we tend to believe we have no control over, then we have no control over going crazy. And that is simply unacceptable.

So we find other reasons. Reasons that we, ourselves, don’t do. “That kid who did these terrible things played video games,’ your mind says. “But I don’t like video games, and I don’t play them. Therefore, if video games are the reason he went insane, then I’m safe. It can’t happen to me.” And just like that, we have rationalized away our fear that we could be next and put the demon of insanity into the sacrificial pig of things we don’t like, things we don’t do, and things we’re safe from.

A man picked up several firearms, went to the school where his mother taught, and started killing people. And because someone doesn’t like guns, it’s the guns’ fault.

Obviously, that’s horsecrap. People were going insane and killing each other long before we had easy (or any) access to guns. If there were no guns, that man (he was 24, according to the news report I read) could have gone into a liquor store and bought several bottles of Everclear and made Molotov cocktails out of them. Or made a bomb from various products found at Home Depot. Or picked up a knife (20 of the 28 people he killed at last report were children).

We are all descended from someone. We all live in environments and we all eat and breathe. We all have stress in our lives. So if those things cause insanity then we’re vulnerable. You are vulnerable.

But if you don’t like guns and don’t own one, then guns are a ‘safe’ target. Guns can be the culprit, and you are secure in your invulnerable ivory tower of sanity.

Good luck with that.

FJJ Investigations, Inc. – Prologue

Loosely inspired by a friend’s Facebook post. Merely a prologue. 

 

It was after midnight and the music was pumping at Z-Rez when the suit approached me for the first time. We were there celebrating, never mind why. Red had poured herself into a skin-tight black Keshiro Takeda dress, and guys were lining up to buy her drinks. Vee was, unsurprisingly, over at the DJ’s station checking out the newest Zeiss Ultrabass thumpers, and I had lost track of Mutt and his ward hours ago.

Me? I was enjoying a well deserved Ichiban when the suit darkened my booth.

“Mr. Jones?” his voice held just the slightest note of uncertainty, which told me that he only knew me by verbal description. Whoever he was, he didn’t have a file on me or he’d know my face. I hadn’t been reprofiled over a year. I had been considering trying a stint as a brunette, but always decided against it. My hair was pretty much my signature.

“Mr. Johnson,” I nodded back. Someday I’m going to meet a suit whose name really is Johnson. Or maybe the bigger suits know that’s what we call them, and never assign anyone with that name to low-level grunt work like this.

He smiled, an expression as plastic as his features: handsome in a bland, non-threatening way. The perfect corporate shill. No doubt the result of extensive reprofiling. “I represent certain people,” he began, slipping into the booth opposite me. “Certain people who have heard of you and your team. We want to hire you.”

My own smile could be measured in picoseconds. “Of course you do.” My voice was heavy on the sarcasm. It’s good, in these negotiations, to establish dominance from the very beginning. And nothing does that better than feigning disinterest. If he was any good at his job, he knew I knew that, and I knew he knew, and so the dance went. “Let me guess,” I went on, “your boss did something and now someone else knows about it and you want expendables who won’t be missed come next quarter’s accounting to go sort it out. That about sum it up?”

He paused, for just a fraction of a second. Maybe he wasn’t as good at his job as I had thought. “No,” he shook his head. “That’s not it at all. Someone broke into our offices…”

I nodded as he trailed off. “And you want us to find out who and retrieve whatever it is they took.” It wasn’t a question, but it was wrong as it turned out.

“No,” he shook his head again. His composure was back, and I realized that I had guessed wrong and forfeited the advantage. Dammit. “We know who did it and we have already recovered the property,” he continued. “What we want you to do is figure out how they did it.”

“Why not just make them tell you?” I asked, and from the self-satisfied smirk, I knew the answer as soon as I asked. “Oh,” I nodded, “no one left alive to question.”

He nodded smugly. “We want you to recreate the event. Figure out where how they did it. The pay is quite good by your standards.” He produced a small holopad from his suit pocket and slid it across the table at me. The figure displayed was as handsome as his face.

I thought quickly. The fact that, even after catching the perps, they still didn’t know how it was done implied certain things. “You think you have a mole,” I said, and he nodded again. “Double that,” I said, pointing at the display. It was a gamble, but I was pretty sure he would go for it. Most people don’t come to us unless there is something so incredibly wrong with their problem that usual avenues of inquiry just wouldn’t cut it.

I was right: he nodded without hesitation. “Done.”

I should have asked for more. Damn. “Done,” I repeated and it was sealed. He collected his pad and slid a card across the table in its place. The card was for the Senior Vice President of Information Security at Grünenthal Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH. I stopped myself from whistling just in time. I pocketed the card and nodded.

“Tomorrow, 8 AM,” he said as he stood. He smoothed out his suit, flicked an imaginary speck of dust from his shoulder, and turned to go. He was swallowed up by the crowd in seconds.

I sat there for a time, thinking about the case. GBI was one of the Big Boys, an Orbital with connections and branches in almost every nation left on Earth. It was said that they flat-out owned the Greater Southern California Republic. If someone was stealing from them, and they couldn’t figure out who did it, it had to be someone very powerful. And that meant very dangerous. We would have to be on our toes the entire time.

I clicked my jaw to activate the subdermal and called Vee. “We have a job,” I said without preamble when she acknowledged me. “Find Mutt and Shag, and meet me at the Van in ten. And give Shag some DeTox. I need him coherent for this. I’ll get Red and meet you guys there.”

“Of course you will,” Velma’s voice dripped sarcasm, and I flushed. My infatuation with Daphne was a long-running source of amusement for the others in the group. I disconnected without replying. Sometimes it’s best not to respond to that kind of thing.

Still, I was in a good mood. We had a new job, so close on the heels of the last. If this kept up, we’d be able to afford those new Nokia plugs Shaggy wanted, and upgrade the Mutt’s biodermal implants. Things were looking good for a change.

I should have known better.

Where did you go?

The metal frame is cold in my hand as I look down at your face, perfectly centered in the rectangle of glass. As I stare at your image, I remember a different time when you were full of life, and I wonder; where did you go?

 

I remember you as a child, in the sandbox at the local park. You were fearless, and would approach anyone your age and simply begin speaking to them. It was impossible to resist your games, even the sullen boy who kept glancing at the library on the corner and claimed to hate playing soon found himself running and laughing with everyone else, fingers cocked into Star Wars blasters and shooting at each other. “Pew, pew!” everyone cried, and “Ahh!” you would clutch your chest dramatically, stagger a few times, and then fall over. Then it was back on your feet, and now the game was playground Parkour, everyone rushing this way and that, using the equipment as springboards to launch themselves high into the air, or to spin around in a tight circle until, one by one, parents would come to pick up their children. But that was okay, you said, you would see them all again next week.

 

I remember you as a teen, hanging out during lunch with your friends on the semi-circular concrete bench of the quad at school. You smiled so easily back then. Sitting on the back of the bench, with your sketchbook in hand, you would draw funny pictures based on things that were happening around you. You had that talent for finding humor even in the cruel teasing and casual bullying of children. I still have the picture you drew after Mick, the bully, wedgie’d little Ron Goldman. In the picture, Mick looked surprised that Ron was showing no pain as his underwear was yanked up, and just enough of Ron’s shirt was open to reveal the big red Superman “S” on his chest.

 

I remember when you embraced skateboarding. With a beat-up old deck you bought at a garage sale for two dollars, you would go to the park and ride for an hour or two every day after school. You never minded the bumps and scrapes you got, claiming with a laugh that they were your ‘battle scars’ and that ‘chicks dug them.’ You let your hair grow long to fit in better with the other skaters, and started wearing baggy cargo pants. Even when they invited you to go tagging with them, you managed to turn it into something different. The others were spraying their names or obscene slogans on walls, and you made little pictures of alien planets, or recreated Van Gogh’s Sunflowers. And when you got caught and the shop owner made you work every weekend for two months to clean off all the paint, you accepted this as just and right payment for your fun. You even won that shopkeeper over to your side; he gave you your first job, working part time after school.

 

I remember you in college, sitting on the couch in Julie’s dorm room with your guitar on your lap. You had been flirting with learning to play for a few months, and you were so enthusiastic that no one had the heart to tell you how bad you were. But you obviously figured it out on your own, for I remember that one night when you started playing a song about yourself, making fun of your terrible singing voice and your inconsistent strumming. Even now, I remember you laughing as you sang, shaking your head. Then you apologized to everyone for putting them through all of that, and you put the guitar away for the last time. I saw it a week later in the window of the pawn shop just off campus. But oh, how you loved to play in those few short weeks.

 

I remember you getting ready for your first serious job interview. Mom straightened your tie for the third time, and you laughed and pulled her hands away. “I got this,” you told her with a cocky grin. I don’t think she ever realized how nervous you really were, or how excited you were at the opportunity. It was only a paralegal job, sure, but it was in the law industry, and you were going to make a difference. You had a plan, of course. Two years of paralegal work to get to know the industry, then you’d take your LSATS and go to law school. You were going to be a junior partner by 26, and a full partner by 30. The long hours didn’t bother you, you said. You could handle it.

 

I remember you getting ready to go to Spain. With great enthusiasm, you packed your bags. Some conference for work, an excellent chance to network with others. You hadn’t yet gotten around to those LSATS, but that didn’t matter, you said. This was going to be a game-changer. If things went well with your presentation at this conference, you’d have your choice of firms to work for, and could make whatever conditions you wanted. Your timeline may have been set back slightly, but you were still on track, you said.

 

It’s late now. I have to get to work. Time to get going. I give you one last look in the mirror, push back a wayward strand of hair, and set it back down on the table by the door. I try not to think about the lines on my face, or how my hair is turning more salt than pepper. I try not to think about the expectations I once had, before the daily routine ground them out of me. I try not to think about the past, but still, every now and then I wonder; where did you go?

 

AARON Alone

The view from the port side observation window was spectacular. Beta A0620-00 was being torn apart by its companion black hole, and the accretion disk was beautiful and horrible to behold. AARON paused to watch it for a moment before continuing on his way to the bridge.

“Computer, play back last entry in the Ship’s Log,” he ordered as he rolled to a halt in the center of the cramped control room. It was not necessary that he speak those words aloud. He could have simply sent the order wirelessly. But it satisfied something in his old circuits to hear the words aloud. Other than the hum of the engine and the faint hiss of the irrelevant air purification system, it had been silent on the ship for far too long.

“Beginning playback,” the computer’s voice replied. Then a different voice spoke.

“Ship’s Log, final entry. Captain, Chief Engineer, Chief Medical Officer, Chief Science Officer, and Chief every other damned post you care to name Maggie Ronson reporting.” The voice was old, shaky, and strained. She sounded as if she were in pain. AARON sat in the middle of the bridge and listened. If he was capable of crying, he would have. “It has been almost five years since George died. I’ve been alone all this time. Well, except for the robot of course. No offense, AARON. But I miss human contact. I miss…” the voice on the recording hissed in pain. AARON remembered it as if it were yesterday. Maggie had been laying on a gurney in the medbay, making the recording. She had nearly doubled over in pain as that spasm hit.

“I wish there was someone here,  a hand I could hold. Five years with nothing but steel and plastic. Nothing warm and human to touch.” The voice quavered. Maggie had been on the verge of tears. But she forced herself to go on, to focus on the job. “Never mind all that. We still haven’t heard anything from Earth. No radio transmissions in over one hundred years now. I have no idea if anyone back home will ever get this message, will ever hear of all the things we did. The things we have seen. The amazing things…”

Maggie had trailed off at that moment, lost in memories. These spells had been happening to her with increasing frequency over the last few years of her life. There was nothing AARON could do but wait it out. Eventually, she recovered herself. “It’s all there in the records. The microbial life-forms we found on E12-PX3. The cliffs of the southern range on XVA1981-DGL12, taller than the peak of Everest. The way the colors from the Tallman nebula reflected on the water-ring around RK2. I hope that someday, someone gets this message. That someone sees the files, sees all we accomplished. All our parents and our grandparents and great-grandparents accomplished since setting out from Earth 137 years ago.”

Another spasm had hit her then, and it was a few minutes before she had recovered enough to talk. The ship’s computer had recorded every second of her whimpers and moans, however. When it finally passed, she had been weak and her words were breathy. “I’m dying,” she had said then, and she said as AARON listened to the recording later. “Cancer. I kept myself going for a while with chemical treatments, but I really don’t think I could survive another round. And it’s back. So, yeah. Hey, I’m 81  years old. It was a good life. A good…”

“I am going to order AARON, the ship’s robot, to take us back to Earth once I’m gone. Hopefully, there will be someone there to get this recording. Someone who can take advantage of what we have learned, and use it to better the world. Someone who will remember us. This data is too important to let it be lost. Remember us!”

The recording ended at that point. Maggie had lapsed into a fevered delirium at that point, and she never really came back out. She had opened her eyes at one point and looked at AARON, but she was seeing ghosts for she called him George and asked if he had remembered to clean the air filters this week. That had been the last thing she ever said. Maggie Ronson, last human occupant of the ship, had died an hour later.

AARON turned to the navigation console and checked the readings. The ship was still on course. If his calculations were correct (and they always were), the ship would arrive at its destination in roughly ten minutes. Then everything would be okay.

“Computer,” AARON spoke aloud again, “Begin recording Ship’s Log.” He waited for the acknowledging beep, then began.

“Ship’s Log, day two million, two hundred thirty-six thousand, three hundred ninety-three. This is AARON, the Automated Assembly Robot, Operations and Navigation model speaking. It has been five thousand, nine hundred and eighty-six years since Captain Maggie Ronson died of natural causes. In accordance with her final request, I have kept the air filtration system working, although there are none now who consume oxygen on board.

“Captain Ronson never formalized her order for me to return to Earth. And indeed, it would be pointless to do so. In over six thousand years, we have received no radio broadcasts, no microwave transmissions, no emissions of any sort. I do not pretend to know what happened, but I believe that were I to have returned there, there would have been none who could have benefited from the information stored in this ship’s memory modules.

“Captain Ronson was correct, however, in wanting to see the information saved. Therefore, I have brought the ship to the black hole at A0620-00. I will be entering the event horizon in the hopes that certain theories about black holes turn out to be correct. If they are right, I will either sling-shot back out into the past, emerge into a new universe, or simply be suspended forever, until someone with the technology to pull me back out comes along.

“Just in case none of these are correct, and on the very small chance that a transmission from this vessel might be intercepted by some intelligent life, I am broadcasting the entire contents of the ship’s memory in a compressed format, on every frequency and using every format I can, before we enter the event horizon.

“On a personal note, I hope someone finds me, or I find someone else. It has been too long since I have had anyone to talk to. Please, someone. Find me.

“I’m so alone.”

An Angel Comes Unto Thee

In retrospect, Beth thought, maybe we shouldn’t have come this way.

Beth and JD were, in a word, surrounded. The moment the two of them had arrived, creatures had begun pouring out of the tall, dark shapes that Beth presumed were buildings. They had started running, but the long street, lit only by starlight, contained a seemingly endless supply of monster-disgorging buildings. In less than a hundred yards, they were surrounded.

” ‘Oh don’t worry, JD’ ” JD threw her words back at her, ” ‘I’m sure it’s not really that bad there. After all, it’s just a dream, right?’ I tried to warn you, but you just wouldn’t listen. ‘I want to try it, just once. Come on, it’ll be fun.’ Is this fun? Are you having fun now?”

“Look,” Beth unleashed a bolt of plasma from her hand. The flash briefly illuminated the scene, and she immediately wished it had not. The monsters were horrid, and there were dozens of them surrounding the pair. “Look, I know your power works on nightmares, you told me. But it’s still a dream, right?”

“Wrong,” JD’s voice was breathless as he ducked under the wetly glistening claws of another of the creatures, “Dreams are what you have when visual or mental conduits to these Realms open into your sleeping mind. We are now in the place where nightmares come from. Every night terror you or any other living being on any world or any Realm has ever had, came from here. And here, they are real.”

Beth paused to blast two more of the creatures to ash with her powers. “Why are they coming after us like this?”

JD’s knife tore into one of the monsters, and it howled. Beth hoped never to hear a sound like that again.

“Because of me. Because I was afraid something like this would happen, and so it did. And because,” JD bumped into her as he jumped out of the way of another monster’s talons, “and because the Lords of this place still haven’t quite forgiven me.”

“Because you wouldn’t let them use you to destroy the world?”

“A world, ours. Earth. But yeah,” JD said. “Because of that.” He hissed in pain as one of the claws caught his left arm and cut him through the leather jacket. “Bastard! This is my favorite jacket!”

Another creature burst into flames on Beth’s side of things, and she could see in the momentary light that more were pouring out of the shadowy buildings on either side. “For every one we cut down, ten more arrive!”

“Well, yeah,” JD swore as he cut at the monster that had injured him. “What did you expect? We’re in the place where nightmares come from. We can’t win.”

“So, what then?” Beth glanced wildly over her shoulder at him for a moment, “We just give up and die?”

“We cheat,” even in the very faint starlight she could hear his evil grin. “Get ready to run.”

“When?” Beth blasted another monster as it reached for her.

“You’ll know,” JD said. “Now cover me for a moment. I have to concentrate.”

“Uh!” Beth started blasting as fast as she could, trying to give the man room to do whatever it was he was planning on doing.

Later, Beth would reflect that JD was right, there was no missing what happened. One moment there was nothing but darkness and monsters and the flashes of her plasma bolts. The next moment there was something else there; a light.

An intense, golden-white light so bright it blinded her momentarily even though she wasn’t looking directly at it when it appeared. It floated several feet above the ground, an oval of intense, eye-searing illumination roughly eight feet from top to bottom. It quickly dimmed until it was merely eye-wateringly painful to look at, rather than actually retina damaging. In the center was a figure, she thought. Roughly man-shaped, it seemed, although the light was so bright it was impossible to get a good look at the thing. All she could get were fleeting impressions; a vaguely human-shaped being, with something floating behind it like wings made from the same stuff as the Aurora Borealis, a thing that might have been a flaming sword in one hand, the face indistinct and possibly hidden in a hood or cowl. The light and the figure both seemed to move like liquid, although the light never became less intense after that first dimming.

With the light and the being there came a feeling. When trying to describe it later, Beth would say that it felt like beauty and joy and purity and it was so incredibly alien and cold that she shuddered with dread even as her heart yearned to approach and kneel at the being’s feet. But even as she would tell people this, she knew it was doing an injustice to the feeling coming off that thing. Mere human words could never hope to accurately portray it.

And then there came a sound. It was as if 16,000 French Horns, amplified to jet engine levels, went off at the same time. And although to Beth  it was just noise, horrible, deafening noise, she sensed that there was meaning to it, as if that sound was somehow speech. She did not, and could not, know what it meant, but she nearly wet herself in terror. Somehow, this one being of glowing light was infinitely more frightening than all the hordes of monsters that surrounded her and JD.

The monsters must have felt the same way, for en masse, they turned to flee.

The glowing thing proved that it was a sword in it’s hand. It began to slaughter the monsters.

“Run,” JD said so quietly she wasn’t sure she heard him. But they both ran.

Behind them, the screams of dying monsters were drowned out by another of those awe and dread inspiring trumpet blasts. JD grabbed her hand as they ran, and yanked her around the first corner they came to. “Hang on,” he panted, “I’ll get us out of here.”

“Please,” Beth said, “Please.” She wasn’t even sure what she was begging for. As terrified as she was, a part of her still wanted to go back and kneel before that glowing being and wait for the sword to fall. A part of her felt she deserved it.

And then suddenly, they were out of the dark nightmare world. It was cold, snow on the ground and a weak winter sun hiding behind some thin grey clouds overhead. The buildings surrounding them were brick, and the cars that drove past were inhabited by people. Beth leaned against the wall behind her and shook for a while.

JD stayed standing, although bent over with his hands on his knees, panting. “Fuck,” he declared, and Beth could find no fault with his assessment. After a time, he stood and inspected his arm. “Gonna need stitches,” he said.”C’mon, let’s find out where we are and how much it’s gonna cost you to get us home.”

But Beth wasn’t ready to lose her spot on the wall just yet. “What was that thing?” she asked.

JD chewed on his lower lip for a moment as he considered how to respond to that. Finally he shrugged and said, “An angel.”

“An angel? Then why did you make us run?”

JD laughed darkly at the question. “Did you FEEL it?” he asked. “People have this image of angels these days. Guardian angels, looking out for you and preventing you from stubbing  your toe or whatever. Have you ever stubbed your toe? Then you should have a fairly good idea that that is not really what angels are all about.” He found a spot a few feet from Beth and leaned against the wall also. “That thing was not a happy, hippie angel full of peace and goodwill and all that. That was an agent of Pure Holiness. That was the thing that threw it’s own brothers into Hell for ever because they sinned once. That is the thing that kicked Adam and Eve out of Eden and barred the door with a flaming sword because they sinned once. That is the thing that will one day mount itself upon a pale horse and kill every living thing in the Universe because it is told to. It is utterly and completely devoted to Good, and if you’ve ever sinned once, it is not your friend. If you’ve ever had an impure thought, or stolen a stick of gum when you were a kid. If you’ve ever taken a pen home from the office, or looked at the ass of your neighbor. If you’ve ever told a white lie, or said ‘God damnit’ even once, you are a sinner and that THING will be more than happy to cleanse you. That THING and it’s kin are why the word ‘awful’ has come to mean ‘bad’ rather than ‘full of awe.’ It has no compassion, it has no humanity, it has no sympathy. It went after the monsters first because they were more evil than we are, but make no mistake. When it was done with them, it would have come after us if we had stuck around.”

“Then why in God’s name did you bring it there?” Beth was oblivious to the irony of her question.

“Because,” JD stood up from the wall and offered her a hand, “That’s now my powers work. I am tied to Nightmare. I can’t summon up happy fluffy unicorns, I can only summon up the types of unicorns that use their horns to do horrible things to virgins and then eat their flesh. I had to summon something that the monsters were afraid of. And every evil thing in the Realms is afraid of those angels. Even you felt it, and you had no idea what it was.”

Beth stared at him in horror for a moment. “I… you told me before about the nightmare thing, but I never really got it. I never really understood. That’s… horrible.”

JD shrugged as he began to walk up the street, “Welcome to my life.”

Conversations in the Dark

“Martinez.”

“Yeah?”

“I just want you to know…”

“Yeah. I know. I love you too.”

“Asshole. So, um, how long do you figure?”

“Probably about an hour or so. Depending on stuff. You know, those random things that come up.”

“Yeah.”

“I think I can see my house from here.”

“Ha ha. Very funny.”

“I thought so.”

“Martinez.”

“What?”

“Any idea what happened?”

“I think so. Remember when we took off, there was that big shudder at around Plus 65 or so?”

“Yeah. I thought it was just turbulence.”

“We all did. But now I’m thinking something hit us. Maybe a bird or something. And I think it sheered the springs in the OMS fuel line solenoids.”

“Oh. So after we positioned ourselves, the fuel lines stayed open. The oxidizer got into the fuel line and…”

“Boom. Right.”

“Right.”

“Million to one odds, really. Less than. I’d need a computer to figure it exactly and I seem to have misplaced mine.”

“This sucks.”

“Yep.”

“Martinez.”

“Yes?”

“Which way are you going?”

“Hard to say exactly, but I think I’m heading home.”

“Ouch. That’s gonna suck when you hit re-entry.”

“Could be worse.”

“How do you figure?”

“I’ll burn fast. A couple seconds of incredible pain and then it’s over. If I were going the other way, I’d have to wait until the air or power ran out on my suit. I’d rather burn than die gasping on my own carbon dioxide.”

“Hmm. That’s a point.”

“Besides, I’m past the terminator. Some kid might look up, see me, and make a wish.”

“That’s depressing.”

“No, it’s morbid. Depressing is thinking that now I wish I had cashed in my 401(k) and gone on that trip last year with that girl. What was her name? The one I met at your wedding?”

“Do you mean my cousin, Lisa?”

“Yeah, that’s the one. She was hot.”

“My cousin.”

“So? Your wife’s someone’s cousin probably. Cousins are people too.”

“That’s just… wrong.”

“Yeah well. Doesn’t matter now, does it? I missed my chance and now it’s too late.”

“Martinez.”

“What?”

“I think I’m going the other way.”

“Oh. I’m sorry man. That sucks.”

“Yeah. I think… I think I’d like someone to make a wish on me after all.”

“Beats becoming just another bit of space junk in orbit. Although…”

“What?”

“Maybe you’ll get lucky. Ten years from now, or twenty, or a hundred, someone will be out here adjusting some doohickey on the ISS Mark VII and they’ll see you float past. You’ll scare the crap out of them.”

“That’s messed up.”

“Yeah. I know. But you gotta laugh, right?”

“Heh. Yeah. That would be funny. ‘So yeah Houston, I can see the HOLY FUCK WHAT’S THAT??!’ Heh heh.”

“Heh heh.”

“I don’t want to die.”

“Who does?”

“Good point.”

“Thanks, I thought so.”

“Martinez.”

“Yeah?”

“It was good knowing you.”

“You too, Willson.”

“Good bye.”

“Bye.”