Month: May 2014

Ambition, Part I

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Azrael slid into the seat in the diner, waved his hand vaguely towards a waitress to put the idea into her mind to bring him some coffee, and began struggling out of his overcoat.  Just as he’d known, Mephistopheles was late.  The angel had even done his best to move slowly, to not rush to get to the diner on time.  Angels have a hard time violating social protocols, however, even when they’re trying to do so, and Azrael had still ended up walking into the little restaurant exactly on time.

The waitress arrived with the coffee, and she placed it in front of him with a rusty smile.  The angel nodded back politely and began adding his generous rations of cream and sugar.  Twice, he had to pour a little of the coffee out to make room; he guiltily opened up a tiny dimensional pocket to hold the excess liquid.  No sense in making a mess.

Once the liquid in his cup was a light brown in color and a thick sludge of sugar covered the bottom, Azrael raised it to his lips with a satisfied sigh.  And of course, that was the moment that Mephistopheles chose.

The devil came barging in, kicking the door open in front of him with a clatter.  He barreled across the diner, pulling off his coat to reveal the ill-fitting suit beneath, and plopped down into the booth opposite Azrael.  He grinned, showing off his tombstones of teeth.

Azrael glanced up at the clock.  “Only eight minutes late,” he commented.  “You’re getting better.”

Mephistopheles just countered this with a glare.  The waitress, alerted by the man’s banging entrance that he was probably an important person, wandered over with a menu.  Temporarily distracted by this, Mephistopheles quickly leafed through it and ordered something with triple bacon.

“I really didn’t even need to bother showing up,” Mephistopheles complained after he had placed his order.  “Pretty thin itinerary for today.  It’s only because we’ve been meeting for the last couple thousand years at this place that I even bothered to come.”

This put a grin on Azrael’s face.  The devil would never admit it, but Azrael knew that he had grown fond of having some company to chat with.  “Well then, we can just talk,” he offered.  “There’s always time for a relaxed debate.”

The fallen angel rolled his eyes, but his attention was diverted as the door to the diner opened again.  A man came wandering in, looking around with his footsteps a little uncertain.  He hovered at the entrance for a minute, but eventually made up his mind and settled into the booth next to Azrael and Mephistopheles.  He had the vague, mousy, slightly worried look of a home insurance salesman.

Mephistopheles jerked his head back to indicate the newcomer.  “Shall we play a game?” he asked, waggling his eyebrows.

Azrael groaned, but he didn’t say no.  “What are you thinking?” he asked.  “Sodomite?  Whose Claim?  Judgment Day?”

“You know that all of those games are basically the same thing,” Mephistopheles pointed out.  “In fact, every game we have is the same.  I try and ruin him, you try and save him.  Just once, couldn’t we play something different?  Like horseshoes, or Mousetrap?”

“Does that mean you don’t want to play?”

“Now, I didn’t say that!” the devil countered.  “Here, I’ll tell you what.  I’ve got a twist.  I’ll strip some quality out of him, and you try and figure out what it is!  Guess it right, he gets it back.  Deal?”

Azrael looked shocked.  “Of course not!”

“Too late,” Mephistopheles said.  “I’m doing it anyway.”  And the devil snapped his fingers, and a puff of smoke momentarily surrounded the insurance salesman’s head…

Just a Hunting Trip in the Woods…

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It all started when Jeb came stumbling back from the woods.  He was still holding his shotgun, but his bright orange flannel was ripped, and his eyes had a crazy glint in them.

“Goddamn, man,” I let out in astonishment as he came back into our clearing where we were sitting around the fire.  “What the hell happened to you?”

Jeb just stared back at me, not even blinking.  “Deer,” he gasped.

Next to me, Kyle popped the top of the cooler.  “I dunno what happened to you, man, but you definitely look like you need a beer,” he commented.  He popped the top off a Miller by rapping it against the cooler’s lid, and then passed it over to Jeb.

The newest arrival took a long drink, and some of the color returned to his face.  “That helps,” he agreed.  He lifted the bottle to his lips and drank again, not stopping until the last drop had rolled down his throat.

With the beer filling his belly, Jeb finally blinked, leaning his gun up against a nearby tree.  “Those deer, though,” he insisted, looking around at the rest of us.  “I’m telling ya, there’s something off with ’em.”

“Yeah, they won’t hold still long enough for you?” I jabbed, drawing a bark of laughter from Kyle.  Jeb didn’t laugh, however; he didn’t even crack a smile.

“Them holding still ain’t the problem,” he said darkly.  “I hit ‘im.  I know I did.  I saw the hole.”

Kyle was still sniggering a little, but the corners of my mouth lowered.  Jeb really seemed shaken up.  “So what’s wrong?”

The hunter turned to me, and I could see the agony in his eyes.  “He kept coming,” he said.

I opened my mouth to say more, to question, but Jeb’s eyes shifted, moving to over my shoulder.  His mouth dropped open, and his hand shot out – but the gun he was reaching for was still leaned against a tree, on the far side of the clearing.

Spinning around, I saw a nightmare emerging from the trees.  It was a deer, no doubt about that – had to be at least a ten pointer.  But it was diseased, sick.  The coat was a sickly pale green color, and the eyes of the creature looked cloudy, hazy and opaque.  Its mouth was moving, drawing my eye, and for some reason, its teeth seemed to be protruding more than usual.

Kyle, sitting on my left, coughed as he also took in the sight.  “Holy shit,” he gasped.  In shock, he dropped his beer bottle and started to stagger to his feet.

With no warning, the buck dropped his head and charged.  Those antlers caught Kyle right in the chest, and the man’s gasp turned to a wet squelching sound.  He was carried back several yards before the deer skidded to a stop, throwing the man’s lacerated body clear.  He hit a tree, hard, and slid to the bottom.  I stared at him, but he didn’t move.

Now that the buck had charged past me, I could see his side – and now I saw why Kyle had sworn.  Right in the middle of the animal’s rib cage, a fist-sized hole had been ripped in its skin.  I could see the exposed white of ribs, little gibbets of flesh dangling out.  And inside that hole, something was pulsing, shifting back and forth.  I didn’t even want to think about what it was.

The buck turned back around.  Those milky eyes revealed nothing, but it was lining up with me.  I was frozen, paralyzed.  The creature dropped its head once more, those antlers now stained with points of red.

Its hooves digging into the loam of the forest floor, it began to charge.  It drew closer and closer, that rack aimed straight for me.

No more than three feet from my chest, however, the buck suddenly slammed sideways, nearly knocked off its feet.  Woozily, shaking its head back and forth, it tried to recover, but the momentum of the attack was gone.  Another blow ripped its skull apart and it collapsed heavily onto the ground.

I turned to see Jeb, his eyes still wide, clutching his shotgun.  Smoke was trickling up from the barrel, as well as from the two discharged shell casings on the ground next to him.  “And this time, the fucker’s gonna stay down,” he panted.

I climbed to my feet, my legs a little shaky beneath me, and picked up my own rifle.  I cautiously approached the corpse, prodding at it with the tip of my weapon.  The contact provoked no response, however; clearly, although this thing did just fine without a belly, it still needed a brain to function.

My eyes rose up to gaze into the forest around me.  I hadn’t noticed until now, but it was eerily silent – no chattering of squirrels, no chirping of birds.  Really, no noise at all.  “Jeb, I think we gotta cut our hunting trip short,” I said slowly.  “I don’t think we’ve got enough ammo for this…”

Evan Michael Tanner

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The internet is a wondrous place, ain’t it?  There’s just all sorts of things that a fellow can learn on there.  Especially if he’s got a drive to learn, a dedication to a cause, and a lot of time on his hands.

I had all three.  Actually, I even had a bit more than that.

I’ve always been interested in learning, reading and fiddling with anything I could get my hands on.  When I was young, I used to creep back downstairs after my parents tucked me into bed.  There might not have been internet, but there were books and screwdrivers and my dad’s old soldering iron.  Not everything made it back together in quite the same way that it had arrived, but it all still worked.  And my parents, so well-meaning in their intentions, never noticed the differences.

A dedication to a cause?  I had a dedication to many causes.  Every cause I found on the internet, in books, in the backs of magazines.  They all spoke to me, they all called out for help and participation.  Who was I to turn away?  So I enlisted everywhere, wrote back to pledge my support, swore that I would fight the good fight for every cause I came across.

As for time, well, I already alluded to that.

It never bothered me much.  Maybe I should have gone to see a doctor, a sleep counselor, a specialist, a shrink.  But what would they have done?  At worst, they would have turned me away with no aid.  At best, they might have found a change, some way to make me fall dead for eight hours every night like the rest of the world.

Maybe I have that best and worst backwards.

The point is, I’m perfectly happy with my extra time.  Like I said, it gives me time to learn.

And oh, there are so many end points that I can see, so many uses for all that I’ve learned!  Even before the internet, I knew about a lot of things that men would probably prefer to keep silent.  But now, there’s no limit to my knowledge.  And I astonish even myself at how much I can cram into this noggin of mine.

Right now, I’m just relaxing.  There are a lot of people looking for knowledge, people willing to pay just about any price to get their hands on what they seek.  And they don’t usually say no to a finder’s fee when a helpful fellow is willing to point them in the right direction.

But someday, I’m sure that I’ll be in demand.  Sure, I keep my work quiet, but I know that I’m on the radar of some powerful forces.  Hell, I’m watching them at the same time.  I generally just play them off against each other, keeping my distance at the center.  Waiting.

Because I know that someday, they’re going to need a man with skills.  A man with knowledge.  A man who doesn’t need to spend a third of his time lying down on a mat with his eyes shut.

And I’ll be waiting for them to come knocking.  What’s one more cause to add to my list, after all?  They will request my aid, and I will happily give it to them.

For a price, of course.