Short Writings

Abducted! – Part 1

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Feeling thoroughly disoriented, I struggled up to my feet, looking around.  Good lord, I must have had more to drink at the bar than I remembered.

As I looked around, however, still rubbing at the back of my head, I started to realize that something else was very wrong.

I stood in the middle of a small room, with white walls, floor, and ceiling.  The room appeared brightly lit, although I couldn’t tell where the light actually came from.  Were the walls themselves glowing?

More importantly to me, however, was the fact that I saw no door in the walls.

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It Just Kept Spinning

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Sometimes, when something strange happens to you, it’s best to just roll with it.  Or spin with it, in this case.

In other words, I’m glad that I’ve always had the mind of an engineer.

Also, that I happened to be playing with the magnetic trick coin when it happened.

Let me set the scene.  Friday night, about seven at night.  I’m sitting at my crappy little dinner table, fiddling with the coin absent-mindedly as I’m staring at my phone, sitting on the table.

She still hasn’t texted back, of course.  Isn’t that how life always goes?  Everything was great, we were joking, laughing, tons of texts flowing back and forth.  And then, I ask her out – and suddenly nothing, silence.

Sucks, man.  I hate that feeling, especially considering how frequently it seems to be a part of my life.  Losing.  Always losing.

Just once, I thought to myself savagely as I flicked the coin across the table, I’d like a win.

I’d been spinning the coin for the last thirty minutes, convincing myself each time that, as soon as it stopped spinning on its edge, I’d get up.  Screw this girl, anyway!  I could go over to the pub next door, grab a few drinks, probably see Sean and Andy from work.  Maybe even meet a new babe over there.

Last one, I told myself for the thirtieth time, flicking the coin out across the table, watching as the fake “dollar” coin spun around in a little flashing circle of light.  After it falls, I’m getting up.

But it didn’t.

My emotions went from anger and annoyance, to feeling impressed, to a sense of confused amazement.  I lowered myself down, looking at the coin at its level, watching as it kept on spinning on the table.  What was going on?

I tried pounding a fist on the table.  The coin jumped, but kept spinning when it landed.  I fished one of the magnets off my fridge (a smiling panda, a move-in gift from my mom) and held it near the coin.  It pulled the still-spinning coin towards it, but the coin kept on twirling.

Now this, this was definitely a sign of something.  The universe definitely was trying to send some sort of message.

I just wished I knew what it was telling me.

After another minute, I shook my head, rubbed my eyes, scooped my phone up from the table.  “Whatever,” I groaned, grabbing my jacket off the back of the couch and checking the pocket for the jingle of my keys.  “I’m going to go get that beer anyway.”

Three hours later, considerably more sloshed, I stumbled back up to my apartment, opened the door – and stared.

It was still going.  Still spinning, right there in the middle of the kitchen table.  Peering closer, I noticed that it had worn a little divot in the cheap plastic surface.

If I’d been more sober, maybe I would have wondered more about what was going on, why it kept going.  But I was drunk, three sheets to a wind, and an engineer.

So, what else?  I started tinkering.

Another magnet still made the coin move, hopping out of its little depression in the plastic.  I pulled the coin first onto my hand, marveling at how warm it felt, and then deposited it onto a thick chunk of aluminum I’d stolen from one of our recent builds at work.  I’d intended to turn it in for some cash, but it would work fine as a holder for the coin.

Next, I put some wire around it, hooking it up to a spare lightbulb.  It took a couple seconds, but sure enough, the bulb flickered into life.

I grinned.  Perpetual motion! I thought drunkenly to myself.

I looked around the room.  What else could I do?  What about going the other way?  I had a crappy little weak generator now.  Could I boost the field, get more power out of it?

A few changes to the layout of the wire, and I had an induction coil, pushing more energy into the coin via its own magnetic field.  Normally, of course, this would make a spinning magnet quickly come to a stop as it absorbed its own kinetic energy.  I held my breath.

The coin didn’t stop.  Instead, it spun faster and faster, until it looked almost like a solid sphere of metal – and I realized suddenly that the aluminum block beneath the coin was starting to smoke where it sat on my counter.

Hastily, I whipped the coil off the coin.  It didn’t slow down, but at least the acceleration stopped.

Interesting.  I’d need a bigger heat sink.

It was about this time that my stomach suddenly decided to protest its beer-filled contents, and I abruptly lurched off to the bathroom.  I spent the next hour wrapped around the cool porcelain, and then dragged myself into bed.

The next morning, I opened my eyes to a soft whirring sound.  I blinked, rubbing at my head and wincing at the bright sunlight shining in through my slatted blinds.  Pulling myself out of bed, I stumbled into the kitchen.

It was still there, spinning merrily away.  I hadn’t hallucinated or dreamed the whole thing.  The coin had formed a slight little depression in the aluminum, but it otherwise looked the same.  Still spinning.

I looked at it as I poured myself a cup of coffee, made some eggs (my favorite hangover cure, especially with some Sriracha on them).  I ate slowly, watching the thing spin.

And then, afterwards, I called Sean and Andy.

It took a bit of convincing, but eventually I got them both over to my crappy little apartment.  What else were they going to do on a Saturday morning?  Neither of them had girlfriends, either.

The three of us sat around, staring at the coin.  I carefully transferred it back over to the table, lifting the aluminum block.  I noticed that the coin seemed to have a bit of gyroscopic motion to it, and liked to stay in its little divot on the aluminum even when I tilted the block.

“It doesn’t make sense, though,” Sean finally pointed out.  “Conservation of energy-“

“Yeah, but it’s going!” I interrupted him.  “Maybe there’s some weird trick of the universe here, or some neutrino hit it just the right way-“

“It still wouldn’t-“

“Guys, guys,” Andy cut us both off.  “You’re looking at this wrong.”

“How’s that?” Sean asked, sounding grumpy at being told that he was wrong about anything.  Sean hated being wrong.

Andy gestured towards the coin.  “It’s going.  We see that.  But what can we do with it now?”

“We can boost it, if we need more power,” I pointed out, and explained my experiment with the induction coil last night.

Andy nodded.  “So maybe we put the thing in a water tank, rig up an induction coil, get some big-ass heat sinks-“

“Hook the tank up to a generator same idea as nuclear plants-” Sean jumped in, quickly forgetting his previous grumpiness as his engineering brain took over.  “Maybe a few banks of capacitors-“

“Hell, that sounds like free power!” I exclaimed, finishing the other two’s thoughts.  “At least, at one station.  We’ve only got one coin.”

“Yeah – about that,” Sean asked next, glancing over at me and waggling his eyebrows.

We all rushed to my laptop.  Amazon had the magic coins in stock, but it would still take a couple days for shipping.  I ordered two dozen.

My last girlfriend, before she left, told me that my brain was broken.  “Engineering – all you think about is how!” she shouted at me, as she stormed out of my apartment.  At the time, I hadn’t known what she meant.

But now, I started to see.

By that evening, my apartment looked more like an Ace Hardware, or maybe a hardware store that had just played host to a localized tornado.  Wire and chunks of metal lay scattered across the floor, and a large bank of car batteries sat balanced precariously on my living room coffee table.  We’d moved the coin to a larger piece of aluminum, enclosed on all four sides by plexiglass and balanced over a vat of water to absorb any excess heat.

We’d boosted the coin’s speed again, and figured out how to reverse the flow through the coil to drain some of the speed off if we overcharged the thing too much.  Sure enough, thanks to the coin’s magnetic nature, we soon had a charge flowing out, pumping the batteries up to their maximum charge.  Our first voltmeter blew up in a hiss of melting plastic, but we picked up a stronger one, and worked out that we had about 250 volts flowing out of the coin right now.

Each of us had our own ideas for where we should go next.  Andy was still campaigning that we hook it up to the wall outlets, try and run the whole apartment building off of it.  Sean instead felt that we should move the coin somewhere else, protect it.

And me?

I just kept thinking about that package from Amazon, on its way here.  Would the other coins behave the same way?  Was it the spinning method, the location, the nearness of my phone?  I’d done my best to keep my table, chair, and other parts of my kitchen the same, even as the piles of wire built up.

The best part?  That girl, halfway through the day, she texted me back – some insincere apology.  Something about missing my message, being busy, something like that.

I didn’t even see the text alert until two hours later, and didn’t even have enough spare brainpower to think of a reply.  I just tossed my phone aside and returned back to the spinning coin in its new chamber.

That relationship?  No future there.

But this coin, now, this had potential for a very bright future.

After the supervillains have won…

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The heels of my shoes clicked smartly against the floor as I approached the double doors of the Oval Office.  I paused for a moment outside the doors, checking my hair and running my eyes one last time over the contents of the leather file in my hands, and then stepped through.

“Sir?  I have the latest reports,” I called out to the high-backed leather chair behind the President’s desk.

The chair slowly rotated around.  I carefully avoided rolling my eyes.  The last intern to roll his eyes at the theatrics of our leader had ended up “volunteering” as a test subject for an Explosive Growth Ray, intended to boost meat production by super-sizing cows and pigs.

As it turned out, the “Explosive” part worked a lot better than the “Growth” part.  I heard that the janitors had to scrub the ceiling down for days before they got it all cleaned up.

“Ah, the latest reports, yes,” the man sitting in the chair repeated, the words sounding slightly metallic coming from behind his mask.  Through the two eye slits, dark pupils watched closely as I approached, offering the leather folder out to him.  A hand, covered by a blackened metal gauntlet, accepted the folder from me and flipped it open.

Our leader set the folder down on the desk in front of him, but those dark eyes remained locked on me.  “So, what’s the news?” he asked.

“Sir?”

He made a short, impatient gesture, uncomfortably similar to gestures I’d seen him use to order minions to execute hostages in the old archival footage tapes.  “You’ve read the whole thing, I know.  So give me a status update.”

“Well, we’re making great strides in many areas,” I began, electing to start with the good news.  “Thanks to Magneto’s work with recycling and augmenting metal, our construction boom is still providing job growth.  Analysis of Ra’s al Ghul’s Lazarus Pits is still ongoing, but scientists are fairly confident that we’ll have synthetic substitutes ready for phase II of FDA trials by the end of this year.  And a new joint venture between Loki and Kingpin is claiming that they’ll have portals open between all major cities by next quarter, although we know that Loki’s never been good with deadlines.”

The robed and masked man waved his gloved hand again.  “Yes, yes, I’m aware of that,” he grunted.  “What about the heroes?”

Despite my attempt to keep my face calm and blank, a brief grimace flashed across it.  “Yes.  Well.”

Those dark eyes watched me for another second, and then the man behind the desk rose up to his feet.  Instinctively, I took a step back, and I heard him snort.  “What are you worried about, girl?”

“Er.  I heard about the last intern,” I said, keeping a close eye on his gauntlets.  I knew he had a laser mounted in one of them, but I couldn’t remember which one.

“Oh, him?  Trust me, he had it coming,” the man insisted.  “I’m not planning on hurting you.  Go on, take a seat.”

Still feeling a little on edge, I let myself sink into one of the chairs in front of the desk, crossing my legs and smoothing down my skirt self-consciously.

Behind the desk, the man turned to stare out the tall windows behind him, clasping his gauntleted hands behind his back.  “They fought us,” he said, his words a little grander, a little softer, than when he’d been speaking to me.  “They insisted that our new ideas would destroy their old world, destroy everything they fought to preserve.”

“And indeed, they were right.”

The man – the king, I amended my thought, remembering his official title – shook his head slightly.  “We destroyed the trappings of their old world – the disease, the hunger, the sickness,” he said, staring out at the sunny day beyond the window.  “We used our powers for the greater good, fixing what we found broken – even when that meant remaking society itself.”

“You’ve done a lot of good for the world,” I spoke up, wanting to contribute.  “Poverty, hunger, communicable disease – we’re already seeing so much benefit all across the world-“

“Yes,” he nodded.  Behind his back, I saw one gauntlet tighten into a fist.  “And yet, they still fight back.”

I sensed the man’s mood darkening, but like a true storm, I couldn’t see a way to divert the gathering energy.  “They insist that what we are doing is bad, that it doesn’t match their ‘traditional values’!” he growled.  “They now lead campaigns of fear, of ignorance and bigotry, of destruction and racism against us!”

Turning back abruptly to face me, he slammed a gauntlet down on the desk, making the entire sturdy wood piece of furniture shake.  “Heroes!” he spat, his eyes blazing behind the steel mask.  “They call themselves heroes!  They have no right to the name!”

I stared, transfixed, into the merciless eyes behind that mask.  I’d always been drawn to power and influence, and I knew that the man before me possessed both in absolutes.  I’d watched his ascension, cheered for him at the polls, listened to his old speeches.

He had brought the very opposite of his name to our country, and then to the entire world.

After a minute, the burning rage in his eyes dimmed, and he sank back down into his chair.  “The news, Sue,” he stated, folding his gauntleted fingers together beneath his chin.

I nodded, snapped out of the trance of his words.  “Yes.  We froze Wayne Enterprise’s accounts, but we’re still receiving reports of the vigilante, mainly conducting industrial sabotage.  Most of the supers have moved south, setting up strongholds in more rural areas where our military forces cannot reach them.  They’ve launched several more attacks; the full list is in the binder.”  I recalled the long list of industrial targets, fusion energy factories, synthetic medicine centers, and other areas that had suffered attacks.

The most powerful man in the free world nodded, and I heard a sigh escape his lips behind the mask.  “Heavy is the head,” I heard him mutter to himself under his breath.

When he raised his eyes to look at me again, however, any trace of weakness was once again scoured away.  “Talk with the Joint Chiefs about troop movements – we’ve got them hemmed, but now we need to close the trap,” he declared.  “Use the robotic droid systems for reconnaissance – we can’t risk more human lives.”

“The Doombots, sir?” I clarified.

He nodded.  “We thought that we’d won,” he said reflectively, leaning back in his chair.  “But we didn’t know how much higher we’d still have to climb.”

I waited a beat longer, but no other comments were forthcoming.  He didn’t dismiss me, but I knew that our conversation was at an end.

Rising up from the chair, I turned and headed out of the office, leaving President Von Doom alone once again.

Nebulous Nightmares

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“You all don’t understand!” the man cackled, rocking gently back and forth.  “You don’t know them, don’t realize just how they are.  Ohh, they hunger, but for so much more than you ever can know!”

He didn’t seem to see me, I noted, even though he sat directly across the metal table from me.  His hands were attached to a ring on the table via metal cuffs, but he ignored how the bracelets tugged at his hands when he rocked back in his chair.

“Doctor Angell,” I repeated, waiting for the man to return back to a more lucid state.  “George, it’s me, Francis.  Please, try and stay calm.”

Dr. Angell’s eyes briefly focused on me, but then they darted off again as he kept on rocking back and forth, now muttering indistinctly to himself.  He always did eventually come around, but as of late it seemed to take longer and longer.  His mind’s grip on reality, the doctors at the sanitarium said, was slowly slipping away.

I didn’t know how much longer I had before he’d lose that tenuous grip and fully slip away.

I needed to try something else to get through.  “George, please,” I begged, reaching forward and placing my hands lightly over the man’s own on the table.  “Try and focus.”

Finally, Dr. Angell seemed to come back to himself.  His rocking slowed, and his eyes finally focused on me.  “Francis?” he repeated, his voice quavering.

I nodded, trying to keep the tears out of the corners of my eyes.  “Yes, George, it’s me.  Are you okay?”

Slowly, unsteadily, Dr. Angell nodded his head.  “How long has it been?” he asked, his voice barely above a broken whisper.

“Six months,” I told him gently.  I didn’t lie.  Even as little more than a broken shell, Dr. Angell deserved the truth.

“Six months,” he repeated, shaking his head.  “Oh Francis, I don’t know how much more of this I can take.  I can feel them hungering.  They lurk, they wait, but not for much longer.  They’ll break through when I give in, and I’m so tired!”  He sagged back on the chair, dropping his eyes down to stare at his lap.  “So very tired,” he murmured to himself.

I felt sympathy welling up in my chest until I was certain that my heart would burst.  “George, do you remember what happened on that last night?” I asked gently.  “Maybe if you can remember, you can find a way to beat this thing-“

“Beat it!?” Dr. Angell shouted back at me, suddenly bursting up to his feet.  Only the metal handcuffs binding his wrists to the table kept him from rising up fully, and the whole metal table shook.  Even after six months of wasting away in this sanitarium, Doctor George Angell still possessed his broad shoulders and powerful frame.

I did my best to not show any hint of panic at the outburst.  “Talk to me, George,” I repeated.

Slowly, bit by bit, he dropped back down into the chair.  “Beat it,” he snorted to himself, as if this was some sort of joke.  “Francis, we can’t beat them.  We can’t even comprehend what they are.”

“That night, George.  Please.”

He sighed, but the light in his eyes faded slightly as his memory gazed back.  “I was at the observatory, on the main telescope,” he recounted.  “The previous night, one of my assistants reported spotting a change in one of the red stars we were monitoring.  I tuned in to that sector of the sky, hoping to make the observations that would validate my theory on gas giant eruptions.”

I nodded, not interrupting.  Before his sudden commitment to the sanitarium, Dr. Angell had been one of the best known and most respected astronomers.  His work on documenting the slow burnout of the stars around us had been featured many times in the tabloids.

“I tuned into the sector of the sky with the red star,” Dr. Angell repeated, his voice quavering slightly.  “And there it was, glowing so balefully, red and diseased.  The nebula behind it made it easy to spot, an orb that hung in front of a great gas backdrop.”

“And then… then they came for it.”

At these last words, Dr. Angell gasped, and I could sense that he was on the brink of losing all control.  “They?  They who?” I repeated, trying to keep him in the realm of lucidity.

He shook his head violently, his long, scraggly hair whipping back and forth.  “The nebulas,” he whispered, maddened red eyes staring back at me.  “Oh, Francis, they’re alive!  They hide in the backdrop, slow as glaciers, but so hungry, waiting to devour it all!”

“Focus, George!  Don’t lose it now!”

“And then- the eye!” the doctor screamed, throwing his head back.  I could see his every muscle standing out, taut and stretched to its very limit.  “Oh, that red eye!  It turned on me- Francis, it saw me!  From a billion miles away, it saw me, sensed me, hungered for me!  It reached out – oh, it reached for me-“

The doctor collapsed, his words choking into gibbering babble.  “I felt it,” he gasped out.  “So hungry.  Forever hungry.  It will consume it all, mindless- it won’t be enough-“

I waited, even tried again, but Dr. Angell didn’t speak again for the rest of the visiting hour.  No amount of prodding or cajoling from me could bring him back from his half-paralyzed muttering.

Finally, after the orderlies had taken him away to his room, I stood outside, my hands shoved deep into the pockets of my overcoat to protect against the chill.  The sun had dropped below the horizon, now, and stars lit up the sky.

“He is getting worse at a faster rate, now,” the head nurse told me after Dr. Angell had been escorted off to his room.  “He used to come and go from wakefulness, but now he’s almost always catatonic.  He likely won’t last much longer.”

I nodded, told them to do whatever they could.  I tried to keep a note of hope in my voice, although I knew as well as the head nurse that there was nothing they could do.  Dr. Angell stood no chance.

Now, outside, I stared up at the stars.  Even without the powerful telescope of the observatory, I could see their different colors, could make out the glow of the Milky Way in a band across the sky.  My eyes scrolled across the black dome above me, automatically noting the familiar landmarks of Polaris, Mars, the Seven Sisters, Orion’s belt, and others.

Suddenly, I paused, frowning.  There, just between Orion and Gemini, a reddish blotch glowed faintly against the darkness.  There was a nebula there, I knew, but it was usually too faint to see with the naked eye.

Staring up into the sky, for just an instant, my mind’s eye filled with a long finger, stretching out across millions of miles, stabbing out with unthinking hatred towards that puny mind that dared to touch it.  I saw a huge creature, a gaseous body stretching across a galaxy, a mind so ancient and cold as to be frozen over.  I imagined that I felt hatred, cold and reptilian, seeking to consume all light and warmth, an ocean swallowing the light of a candle.

“It will consume it all,” George had babbled, before he collapsed into senselessness.

As I walked home, most of my mind focused on composing my report to the Royal Guild of Astronomers on the unfortunate fate of the man who was once one of their most prominent members.  It would be a difficult report for me to deliver, but as Dr. Angell’s protege, I knew the duty was mine and mine alone.

Still, a tiny little part of me wondered about his last, mad rantings.  Surely, they were nothing but madness.

But I resolved to spend some time on the main telescope, turning it towards that reddish nebula that now glowed faintly but unmistakably in the night sky.

Lost.

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The ship drifted, the deck softly rocking back and forth beneath me.  I could feel the shifting of the rough boards against my back, in gentle constant motion.

Gazing up into the sky, I watched sleepily as the mast rocked back and forth, its motion amplified by the boat beneath me.  Back and forth it swung, tracing a line back and forth across the innumerable points of light on the night sky’s backdrop.

Adrift.  Lost.  The words flitted through my head, but they meant nothing to me.

Almost out of time.

Occasionally, a spark jumped from one of the spar lines, earthing itself in the wooden boards.  My eyes couldn’t help tracking those bright little points of light, but I knew they were meaningless.

The last of my time, burning itself away.

What could they do?  I knew there wasn’t enough energy to jump away.  Adrift, all I could do was wait as the last little reservoir of energy slowly expended itself.

Eventually, I knew, there’d be no energy left.  I couldn’t produce enough on my own to keep the entire ship warm.  Everything would stop, and I’d be frozen, out of time.

There’d be no rescue.  After all, I hadn’t told anyone where I was going.  That’s the point of an adventure, isn’t it?  Brashly, I’d jumped out beyond the bubbles of fast time, out into the far reaches.  I had sought adventure, had been willing to embrace danger.

Had I been foolish? I wondered, feeling my fingers starting to grow colder.  Perhaps.  I’d been told that running out of time felt a bit like freezing to death.  Once it had progressed past the point of turning back, it didn’t hurt, but felt instead just like falling asleep.

I wouldn’t mind falling asleep.

Beneath me, the ship drifted.  I didn’t know how it ended up out here, way out in the far reaches of Slow Time, far beyond any civilization.  I’d searched the boat, hoping to find some hidden store of Time that could help me jump back to civilization, but I’d seen nothing.

Abandoned, empty, just another cold place for me to lay as my time ran out.

At least the sight was pretty, I thought drowsily, slowly, to myself.  All those little points of light, little points of time, comforting even just out of reach.

Slowly, I closed my eyes, crossing my hands across my chest.  I doubted anyone would ever venture out here, into the depths of Slow Time, but I’d like for them to find me at peace.

With my eyes closed, the boat still gently rocking beneath me as the last vestiges of my time burned away, I waited for anathema to claim me.

Suddenly, just as that bitter cold crept up my legs, I thought I heard something.  Some sound, just at the edge of my hearing.  I tried to ignore it, not wanting to stop with my eyes open.

There it was again.

I couldn’t lay in suspense any longer.  Despite the bitter cold of timelessness creeping around my extremities, I opened my eyes.

Another pair of eyes stared down at me.  Blue eyes, brilliant blue, dancing with suspicion, determination – and amusement.  They watched me carefully, watching as renewed time flooded back into me, warming me.

“Well, well.  Not what I expected to find out in the Far Reaches.”  The voice was deep, amused – but on guard.  I could hear the steeliness, beneath the friendly surface.

I said nothing, staring back into those eyes.  Their owner looked down at me for a moment longer, and then shrugged as he turned away.

“Coming?” he called back after me.

I’d planned on freezing, running out of time peacefully out here, but it seemed as though I was destined to end up somewhere else.  Fighting my cold, still half-timeless muscles, I pulled myself up and followed after my new companion.

A few minutes later, the boat came to a gentle stop as the last of its time ran out.  Objects couldn’t hold time well, and the last few sparks of time jumped off of the boat, vanishing into the nether.  With its last passenger gone, the boat cooled into blackness.

Eventually, there was only a dark shape, left forever adrift on the endless sea.

A day in the life of a secret agent

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The door slid open to reveal two hefty men, both of them clad in identical black outfits and both wearing identical angry scowls.  They gaped at me for a moment, and then lunged forward, grabbing for the guns at their belts.

That moment’s pause was their undoing.  Relying on my years of training, I slid forward, ducking under the swing of the nearest.  I rose up with a powerful uppercut, connecting squarely with his jaw and sending him flying backwards through the air.

I pivoted as soon as the blow landed, opening my hands to grapple with the man’s companion.  He’d freed his gun from his holster, but I snagged his wrist, keeping the pistol aimed up into the air.

The gun fired, a sharp retort that echoed through the air, but I twisted at his hand, snapping his wrist and knocking the pistol from his hand.  I caught the gun by the barrel with my other hand, swinging the butt up to connect with the man’s temple.  He collapsed down bonelessly next to his fallen companion.

Readjusting my grip on the pistol, I sighed.  Were all henchmen so easy to beat up?

Up ahead of me, I could see stairs rising up, entering the main chamber.  Up ahead, I knew, the evil Dr. Universe was putting the final touches on his Total Annihilation Ray.

Just another day, I grunted resignedly to myself.  Remember, Jeff, once I make it through this trouble, I’ve got a fresh six-pack waiting in the fridge at home for me to arrive.

That thought was all that kept me moving forward.  I sighed, shook out the tension in my shoulders, and then bounded forward, the pistol held in a two-handed grip and pointing ahead of me.

Sure enough, as I climbed up the stairs, I found myself standing inside the massive, domed interior chamber of the old observatory.  There, in the middle, the huge and twisted shape of the Total Annihilation Ray rose up, pointing out towards the closed observatory doors.

And there was Dr. Universe, fiddling with the massive control panel in front of the Ray.  He glanced up at the sound of my approaching footsteps, giving a cackle as his eyebrows rose up above his reflective goggles.

“Ah, Jeff the Secret Agent!” he hissed at me.  “Here to stop me, I see – but you’re too late!  The Earth will soon cower before-“

I groaned.  Not the world domination speech again!  I hefted the gun in my hand and put two shots into the console beside Dr. Universe.  A shower of sparks erupted out from where the bullets hit, scattering and dancing across the metal observatory floor.

“Come on, Universe,” I called out.  “Haven’t we been through this enough times already?  Just give up, and I’ll haul you back off to jail.  We don’t have to go through-“

“Too late, Agent!” the man screamed dementedly back at me.  “Even if you stop me, I’ve already activated the Annihilation Ray’s automatic countdown!  You can’t shut it off-“

Ugh.  I stepped forward, past the insane scientist, over to the base of the Total Annihilation Ray itself.  I flipped open a small control panel, revealing a red lever, and pulled it down.

For a moment, the electronic hum in the chamber rose to a fever pitch – and then, suddenly, it cut out entirely.

“You always build your emergency shutoff levers in the same place, Universe,” I pointed out grumpily as the man stared at me.  “Come on, I’ve stopped you what, a hundred times?  Can’t we just cut the charade-“

“Agent Jeff, you fool!” the man shouted back at me.

Apparently not.  I raised the hand not holding the pistol and rubbed my temples.  I could already feel my headache starting.

“By disabling the Ray, there’s nowhere for the pent-up death energy to go!” Dr. Universe called out to me.  “Now, it’s all going to go critical!  We’ve got less than a minute until total meltdown, killing us – and sinking this entire island back into the ocean!”

On the control panel behind the mad doctor, a series of numbers appeared, counting down.  The meltdown was coming.

As always.

With another groan, I stepped closer to the doctor.  “Okay, where’s the secret escape?” I asked.

“Uh, the what?”

I waved the gun half-heartedly at him.  “Come on.  You always build some crazy stupid escape door into these lairs of yours,” I said.  “Remember, I’ve stopped you dozens of times before?  Just show me where it is.”

“Never!” the man shouted back at me, pointing at me with one white-gloved hand.  “I’d sooner perish with my invention than let you escape-“

He never told me.  I always hoped that he’d come around and see sense, but apparently logic wasn’t one of the doctor’s skills.  I looked past him, and spotted the small door set back against the far side of the observatory wall.

“Hey!  You can’t go there – that’s off limits!” Universe shouted at me as I ran for the door.  “Wait, that’s not allowed!  Stay here and perish!”

I hit the door with my lowered shoulder, and it burst open.  I squinted my eyes at the bright sunlight shining outside, feeling it cut into my head and intensify my headache.  Holding up one hand to shade my eyes, I scanned across the landscape.

There!  The harbor!  I leapt down from the observatory, charging across the island.  Behind me, I could hear Universe puffing as he tried his best to keep up with me.  Despite his grand speeches about devotion to his ridiculous science experiments, the man never actually seemed willing to stick around and die with them when they invariably started exploding.

I burst out of the jungle brush and onto the road, leading down to the harbor.  I could see a couple small boats bobbing up and down, although none of them seemed to have a motor.

Not that I worried.  “What I wouldn’t give for some aspirin,” I muttered to myself.

Suddenly, the sound of aircraft propellers cut through the air.  Down from the sky descended the Project Zero, a tilt-rotor aircraft that had been custom outfitted for my mission.  The airplane’s door had been slid open, and I could see Montebusty leaning out, holding out her slim, feminine hand to me.

“Over here, Jeff!  Hurry, we don’t have much time!” she called out in that sultry voice of hers, her long blonde hair flapping in the downwash from the plane’s engines.

I angled towards the plane, reaching out and catching the woman’s hand.  She hauled me up aboard, somehow managing to keep her large, busty chest rubbing against my head the entire time.

I stifled another sigh.  Great.  My coworker probably wanted to have sex in the plane again.  We were supposed to be professionals! I wanted to yell at her.  We’re supposed to be hunting down terrorists, not having wild, bendy, athletic sex in the back of our experimental aircraft!

As the plane pulled away, I heard the series of earth-shattering booms coming from the abandoned observatory.  Lifting off, the aircraft shook from the shock wave of the Total Annihilation Ray melting down, but we managed to stay in the air, even as the ground split and exploded beneath us.

“Oh no!  It looks like Dr. Universe is escaping!” Montebusty called out, pointing out the window with one perfectly manicured hand (and somehow straining out her chest in the process, to the point where I expected at least one tit to leap free).

Trying not to glare at her overt sexuality, I followed her pointing arm.  Sure enough, I could see Dr. Universe’s white coat on board one of the boats – it seemed he’d just managed to reach the harbor and cut one of the boats free before the dock sank below the surface of the waves.

“I see you, Agent Jeff!” I heard him shout faintly up to me.  “Next time, you won’t foil my plans to dominate the world!”

With a little surge of pleasurable satisfaction, I flicked him the bird as the plane pulled away.

“We’ll send the Royal Navy boats out to catch him,” Montebusty promised me, stepping forward towards me.  “He won’t get away!”

I knew she was wrong.  Universe always somehow managed to escape the searching Navy vessels.  But I didn’t bother to correct her – what’s the point?

Meanwhile, Montebusty pushed me back into a seat, her hands crawling over me.  “Now, I must make sure that you’re okay,” she murmured up to me, as her hands slid up my thighs.  “After all, you’re a hero – and you deserve to be given whatever you want as a prize!”

I held up one hand, trying to block out the view of her massive cleavage pressing in against my crotch.  “Listen, Monty-“

“Montebusty,” she corrected me, accenting her full name, even as her damn chest melons strained to burst out of her low-cut, skin-tight top.  I could see both nipples standing out, hard and erect.  Her hands slid over my lap, feeling for the bulge in my pants.

It wasn’t there.  “Monty, I’ve got such a headache,” I groaned, pushing her back.  “Listen, can we just fly back in silence?  Come on, my head is killing me.”

Montebusty pouted at me, pushing out her supermodel lips and fluttering long lashes.  “Are you sure?  I’m feeling especially flexible.”  She lifted one leg up until it pointed up at the ceiling.

I pointedly closed my eyes and tilted back in my seat, staring up at the ceiling.

God, I couldn’t wait for one of those beers at home.  I knew that the Queen would want to present me with another medal or something, but surely we could skip the whole ceremony this time.  I already had boxes of the damn medals sitting all over my apartment.

As the plane winged its way across the sky, I let myself daydream.  Oh, what I wouldn’t give to have any other job, I thought, not for the first time.  Anything but this one.

Why had I ever answered that damn newspaper ad for a secret agent?

Taking the Piss

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“Hold on.  No, hold on.”  I didn’t hear any objections coming from my companions as we stumbled out of the club, heading down to the parking garage, but I still felt the need to protest.  “Hold on!”

Finally, Jack glanced back at me.  “Dude, what is it?”

“I, uh, I need a minute.”  I felt my bladder stretched to its limit, about to explode at any moment if I didn’t relieve the pressure.  “Just hold on, okay?”

Without waiting for an answer, I headed away from the group, up towards the tree line of the nearby woods.  I stumbled in past the first couple of rows of trees, but I couldn’t make it much further before need overwhelmed me and I came to a stop, fumbling for the zipper on my jeans.

Feeling desperation rising along with the water level, I managed to tug my equipment out, aimed it hurriedly at a tree, and then sighed as I let go of that tension.  A powerful jet shot out, spraying against the tree and scattering droplets in all directions.

“Ohh, yes.”  I closed my eyes, sagging back as I felt my bladder finally, mercifully, beginning to empty itself.  This felt better than sex!

“Um, excuse me??”

My eyes shot open at the unknown voice.  Had someone caught me?  Was I about to be arrested for public urination?  I stared wildly ahead, but the sight didn’t explain anything to my drunk-addled brain.

In front of me stood a luminous figure, a tall man dressed in a white robe, or toga, of some sort.  Below his blonde hair, his face glared at me, his reflection somewhere between furious and utterly bewildered.

“Oh!  Uh…” I took a step backwards.  I hadn’t even heard him approach!

Unfortunately, I’d forgotten about the fact that I was still halfway through the process of emptying my bladder.  I couldn’t cut off that stream halfway through, and my sudden movement back altered the direction of the spray, sending a rush of golden droplets ahead of me-

-directly onto the man standing in front of me.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry!” I burst out, quickly shoving my hands down and trying to redirect my stream.  There was something bothering me about the sight of the man in front of me, but I couldn’t quite place my drunken finger on it.  “I, um, I can’t stop halfway through!”

Guiltily, I glanced at the bottom of the man’s toga getup.  Sure enough, it looked quite wet, now with a newly acquired yellow hue.  Oops.  Nice going, drunken me.  “I’m so sorry.  As soon as I can stop, I’ll, um…”

Halfway through that sentence, as the man kept on making disgusted little noises and trying to shake drops of wetness off of his hands, my voice trailed off.  Finally, my brain managed to kick in and point out what had seemed odd about him.

Slowly, my eyes rose up to the man’s head – and then kept on rising even higher.

There, floating a couple inches above the top of the man’s golden hair, a ring of light hovered, bobbing up and down slightly.  I peered a little closer, hoping that this was just part of some costume getup, but it didn’t appear attached to anything.  It just hung in the air, glowing.

Floating.

The word “halo” flitted through my mind, carried in on a golden wave.  Another word followed behind it, one that I didn’t want to consider.

I stared dumbly at the man (but he really wasn’t a man, was he?).  “Are… are you here to punish me?” I asked faintly.

He blinked, looking even more confused.  “Why would I punish you?”

“Er.”  I didn’t want to explicitly point out that I’d just urinated on a Heavenly being, but the fact seemed pretty unavoidable.

Okay, then – redirect.  “Why are you here, then?” I asked instead.  “Are you a prophet?  Are you here to deliver a message?”

The being – fine, the angel – sighed again.  “No.  Except maybe that you need to make some better choices with your life.  Seriously, what are you doing with your limited time on Earth?”

“Um, pissing?  Getting drunk?”

The angel just looked at me for another minute, and then shook his head.  “Maybe this will have to wait for another time,” he muttered to himself.  “Honestly, all the humans to watch over, and I get this one?”

He stepped forward, reached up, and lightly slapped me.

When I opened my eyes after taking that slap, I found myself alone in the forest.

I might have stood there for hours, my equipment still hanging out of my jeans, staring around and trying to figure out what had just happened.  Instead, however, my ears caught a shout, snapping me out of my fugue.

“Hey!  Dude, are you coming?  We got the car!”

That was Jack’s voice.  Hurriedly, I tucked myself back in, not even caring about how a dribble of warmth ran down one leg.  I stumbled back out of the forest, over to the road, where Jack and the girls were already sitting in the car.

Jack eyed me as I approached.  “Everything go okay in there?”

“Uh, no?  Yes.”  I shook my head.  “Let’s just get home.”

Climbing into the back seat, one of the girls we’d met at the club that night (Anita?  I couldn’t remember her name) slipped a hand over my thigh, but then pulled it back in disgust.  “Ugh, you’re wet!”

Any other night, I might have tried to convince her that it was nothing, just dew from the forest.  Tonight, however, I just leaned back, closing my eyes.  Maybe I wasn’t making the best of my life, after all.  And getting with Anita, or whoever she was, wasn’t going to help make things better.

After all, when a guy pisses on his guardian angel, I thought to myself, he’s probably at the lowest point in his life…

Morning Routine

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I stumbled into the bathroom, blinking as I tried to rub the remnants of sleep out of my eyes.  My bare feet padded across the cold tile, and I vaguely wished that I’d had the forethought to pull on my slippers.

Entering the bathroom, my hand banged against the wall, searching for the light switch.  I found it, and the fan in the ceiling hummed to life as the lights came on.

Glancing up at my mirror, I blinked.  Where was my reflection?

There it was.  For a moment, I’d thought that the mirror was blank, that nothing was echoed on its silver surface.  But no, there was my reflection, blinking back at me with the same mussed hair and half-asleep expression.

I turned on the water, letting it run as I brushed my teeth.  For a moment, I thought that steam was rising up from the bowl of the sink, but when I took a gulp of water to wash out the toothpaste from my mouth, it was ice cold.  I sloshed it around in my cheeks before spitting it back into the sink.

Leaving the bathroom, I returned to my bedroom.  Outside my window, the sun hadn’t yet broken above the horizon, but I had to get ready to leave for work.  I turned next to my closet, pulling open the sliding door.

For a second, I saw rows of pine trees, their heavy boughs covered in a thick coat of snow, stretching off into the distance.  I blinked, and the dark rows of trees became dark rows of coats, hanging from the pole stretched across the length of my closet.  Behind the row of coats, I saw nothing but the blank back wall.

I picked out one of the suits, brushing a few flakes of something white off of the collar.  Sure, that one would work.

Once changed, my tie still hanging half-knotted around my neck, I headed for the kitchen.  Had to get something into my stomach before I left.  I felt a gnawing hunger settling in the pit of my stomach, growling and roaring with each step, demanding sustenance.

Outside my bedroom, in the hallway, my foot bumped against a small crinkly ball, which rolled away from me.  I grimaced.  Jasper, my cat, passed away six months ago, but for some reason I kept on finding more of his toys, still strewn about the apartment.

For a moment, as I passed my little kitchen table, I thought I saw the skeletal outline of a cat lurking beneath, its bare skull glinting as it hissed up at me through exposed teeth.  I pushed the chairs in beneath the empty table.  There was no cat there, alive or dead.

Pulling open the door of my refrigerator, a putrid smell assaulted me, making me wrinkle my nose.  The smell seemed to be coming from the crisper drawer, which I almost never used.  My hand stretched down towards the drawer’s handle, trembling a little, but I changed my mind at the last second and picked up a small yogurt container instead.

I leaned against the counter as I peeled the top off of the yogurt.  When I reached into the silverware drawer, the spoon that emerged seemed to have a fine coating of some sort of dark, clinging slime.  I wiped it away with a thumb before digging into the yogurt.

A glance at my watch showed me that I was about to be running late.  Hurriedly, I tossed the empty yogurt container into the overflowing trash container beneath the sink.  I frowned in at the mound of decaying matter.  I’d have to take that out when I came home.

Heading for the front door, I only just remembered to grab my car keys off their little hook beside the door.  The ring of keys jingled, bouncing together as I scooped them up.

I stepped outside, but as I went to lock the door, I paused.  Holding the key ring up in front of my eyes, I frowned at one of the keys.  It seemed long, elaborately carved from a white substance.  Bone?  I didn’t recognize it.

But there, behind the bone key, I found the key to my front door, and locked my apartment.  I turned and headed downstairs, off on my way to work.

Just another normal day.

The Art of Coffee Shop Sketching

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I glanced up from my sketch book as she stopped in front of my table, her free hand tapping at the chair across from me.

“This seat open?” she asked, giving the words an upward lilt to suggest a question.  Brown hair fell in waves around sparkling hazel eyes.

I nodded, only briefly eyeing her, not wanting to lose my focus.  My pencil remained poised over my half-completed sketch, about to complete an important stroke.

I heard her pull back the chair, settle into it.  The corner of my eye caught her coffee cup as it landed on the table, only inches from my own.

I focused on my work, but when I next looked up, I saw her eyes observing me.

“You’re good at drawing?” she asked.

“Sketching,” I corrected.

“What’s the difference?”

A loaded question.  I handled it carefully.  “Drawing is a scene, a still object, capturing what it is.  Sketching is fast, in motion, capturing the sense of the object.”

She nodded, her hair bouncing in gentle waves around her face.  A pretty face, with those hazel eyes that caught my attention.  She smiled, and I noted the dimple on her left cheek.

I knew what question would come next.  It always did, at some point in the conversation.  Sometimes I would say no, sometimes yes.

Today, I pushed to get it out, instead of waiting for the conversation to meander its way there.

“You want me to sketch you, don’t you.”

A smile, quick but genuine.  A hand rose up to self-consciously push back a strand of hair behind her ear, although it immediately freed itself.  “If you’re willing,” she demurred.  Even as she brushed off the suggestion, however, I could see her leaning forward, showing her eagerness.

Why not?  I gave her a smile, a brief little smile, a secret between the two of us that she cautiously returned.  I flipped the page on my sketchpad, hefted my pencil.

For a long, indeterminate moment, I watched her, looking not at what she was, but her essence.  How can I describe the unspeakable in words, when I could show it, capture it, on the page with my pencil?  My pencil flew across the paper, sure lines joining each other.

Once I began, I worked quickly.  Rarely did I need to glance up at her; I held the image I wanted in my head, rushed feverishly to transfer it to the paper before it faded.  She leaned forward, grinning, but I kept the pad tilted away from her.

“Not yet,” I warned her.

“I want to see!” she teased me, but she sat back, waiting, pouting as those hazel eyes smiled at me.

My mind, wandering as my hand flew across the page, imagined our future together.  I saw the curves of her body, exposed and no longer hidden beneath her coat and garments.  I visualized as she arched her back, moaning in ecstasy as our bodies coupled together.  I saw those bright, hazel eyes shining at me, filled with love and devotion, as I pushed back the white veil that covered her head.

My hand ceased moving, and I smiled at my captured image.

I turned the page around, letting her see.

For a moment, there was silence.  I watched, feeling my lips quirking upward, as she stared at the page.  Her eyes widened, and then narrowed.  Her mouth dropped open, but no sound came out.

With a huff, she burst up from her chair, the motion explosive.  Those hazel eyes glared down at me, furious, as she snatched up her cup of coffee.

“Rude.  Unbelievable,” she grimaced, as she walked away.

I frowned, but said nothing as she stormed off.  I turned back my sketchbook, looking at the image.

A luscious, ripe pear, with such soft curves.  Despite the black and white starkness, I felt as though I could lift the fruit from the page, sink my teeth into its juicy flesh.  The swell of its bottom, the slight shading to suggest the breasts and buttocks… I felt myself waver on the edge of arousal.

The sense of her, her lusciousness, captured forever and bound to the prison of the paper.

I added a few more details, some cross-hatching, when I heard the tapping.

I glanced up from my sketch book as she stopped in front of my table, her free hand tapping at the chair across from me.

“This seat open?” she asked, giving the words an upward lilt to suggest a question.  Blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail, revealing bright blue eyes.

I nodded, only briefly eyeing her, not wanting to lose my focus…

"No, You Take Him."

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Gadriel was the first to arrive, and as he stepped into the mortal plane, he briefly exulted, glad to see that he’d beaten his fallen counterpart there, if only by a few fractions of an instant.

It wasn’t until nearly a nanosecond later – practically five minutes, to Gadriel’s perception – that Laxazz appeared, bursting forth from a red-tinged portal, his roar of satisfaction quickly shifting to a surly growl as he caught sight of Gadriel’s glowing wings and folded arms.

“Oh.  You’re already here,” he grunted, practically each word accompanied by a droplet or two of spittle, thanks to his hulking fangs.  “Finishing fast, huh?”

Gadriel didn’t know how this was meant to insult him, but he could recognize the tone, and chose to ignore it.  “Listen, I beat you, so I get first pick of the soul,” he stated instead, letting one of his hands drop down to rest, ever so lightly, on his sheathed sword.  The thing didn’t flame up in the sheath, but Laxazz knew how easily that blade could burn his flesh.

“Yeah, whatever,” he grunted back.  “Let’s just get this done so I can get on to the next harvest.”

With the initial exchange concluded, both the angel and the demon finally looked around at their surroundings – and the angel’s face fell.  Both of them had emerged into a gray cell, with only a small window offering much light, most of which was blocked by the thick steel bars.  This was, most definitely, a prison cell.

Laxazz clapped his hands together.  “Yes!  Looks like I’m going to get to claim this soul!”

“Not so fast!” the angel protested.  “Maybe he’s innocent, or he repented!”  Gadriel couldn’t quite make his tone sound confident, however, and the demon chuckled.

To combat the darkness, both the angel and the devil summoned up lights; Gadriel summoned a small, brilliantly white glowing sphere, while Laxazz called forth a sullen ever-burning flame.  Both of the lights lit up the interior of the cell, and they spotted their target for the first time.

As one, both the angel and devil drew back slightly, their expressions twisting.  The look of revulsion looked much more repulsive on Laxazz’s face – Gadriel just didn’t have the tusks and warts to pull the look off effectively – but both faces clearly portrayed the same emotion.

“Well, looks like he’s one of yours,” the angel spoke up first, already beginning to move his hand in the gestures to summon an exit portal.

“Hey, wait a minute!” the demon snapped back at him, raising his batlike wings a little in protest.  “I don’t want this one!  I’m willing to pass him back to you!”

With a sigh, Gadriel ceased twisting his fingers in the complex patterns that seemed to somehow pass through each other.  “No, that’s okay, you can take him,” he replied, giving the soul in the corner another look of disgust.  “I think he’ll fit much better in Hell.”

As the angel and demon bickered back and forth, the soul had slowly been coalescing back into its human shape.  When first severed from their host body, souls tend to dissipate as a featureless mist – but over time, they’re pulled back into the body shape that they’ve come to know so well for the last several dozen years.  Now, the man in the corner managed to sit up, blinking for a moment at his shimmering, translucent hands before raising his attention to the bickering supernatural entities in front of him.

“Hey!” he called out faintly, needing to focus even to make a sound.  “What’s going on?  Why are you two arguing?”

“This doesn’t concern you,” Gadriel snapped at the soul brusquely.  “Just let us talk.”

If Laxazz had done the snapping, this might have shut up the soul, but Gadriel just couldn’t project that same level of command.  The soul frowned, but then opened his mouth again.

“I thought I was supposed to be judged,” he commented, looking back up at the pair.  “Isn’t that what you’re here to do?”

As the soul spoke, Laxazz was making a fierce argument, muttering something about how “no, that’s just gross, we don’t want that sort of stuff in Hell” and jabbing Gadriel in the chest with a fat, leathery finger.  But as the soul spoke up, Gadriel suddenly held up a hand.

“That’s a good idea, actually,” he said.  “The soul needs to be judged – and who better to know his crimes, than him himself?”

Laxazz still wore a frown, as much over the syntax of that last sentence as over its content, but Gadriel was already turning to the soul.  “So, mortal,” he spoke up, putting on a smile that seemed to hover an inch or so in front of his face without touching the rest of his features.  “Where do you think that you belong?”

“Whuh?”

The angel’s smile didn’t budge at all, although his eyes looked slightly more strained.  “You know all the good deeds and sins in your life,” he pointed out, accenting the sins a bit more.  “Do you think you belong in Heaven?  Or in Hell?”

“Hey!  Not fair!” Laxazz cut in.  “You lot have convinced them all that they’re sinners!  He’s just going to pick me!”

The soul looked back and forth between the arguing pair.  “Wait a minute,” he said, shaking his head.  “Do neither of you want me?  Is that what’s going on here?”

Neither the angel nor the demon answered, but they both glanced away, the angel pretending to whistle, the demon reaching up to pick something out of one of his fangs.  Both supernatural creatures looked quite uncomfortable.

“Well, yes,” Laxazz finally answered, his wings dropping a little in embarrassment, his scaly tail flicking back and forth against the backs of his hooves.  “You’re a pretty terrible person, you know.”

“What?”  The soul shook his head, or the protoplasm that formed the semblance of a head.  “Doesn’t that mean that I should go to Hell?”

If Laxazz could sink into the floor, he surely would be doing so right now.  “Normally, yes.  But the things you did…” The demon grimaced – which is something to see on a face with horns and tusks.  “That’s not exactly the sort of thing we get in Hell, even.”

“So what?  I’ve been too wicked for Hell?”

“It’s not even wicked, not exactly,” Gadriel pitched in, unable to bear the awkwardness any longer.  “It’s just, well….”

“Ew,” Laxazz stated succinctly, and the angel nodded.

“Yeah.  Ew.”

The soul stared back and forth between the two, his mouth hanging open for a moment, before managing to reply.  “So what, you’re trying to decide who has to take me?  I’m the one that nobody wants to choose??”

“Yeah, basically.”

But then, just as everyone fell silent, the demon in embarrassment, the soul in outrage, Gadriel suddenly straightened up, snapping his fingers.  “Ooh!  I’ve got an idea!”

He leaned in towards the demon’s twisted, wrinkled ear, whispering.  At first, the demon looked surprised, but then, after a second, he started nodding.  “That could work,” he agreed.  “Of course, neither of us could report on it.”

“That works for me,” Gadriel replied.

The soul, looking back and forth between the angel and demon, grew more and more frustrated.  “Hey!  What the hell’s going on?  Someone talk to me!  Tell me – I want some answers, dammit!”

Both the angel and the demon turned back to the soul – and, simultaneously, they both snapped their fingers.

His mouth open halfway through another curse, the soul vanished, with a slight “pop” noise.

For a second longer, both the angel and demon stood in the empty chamber.  Gadriel was the first to move, twisting his hands through the portal summoning gestures once more.

“Well, that was a waste,” he groaned out loud.  “See you at the next one, Laxazz.”

“Yeah, see ya,” the demon replied, still staring at where the soul had, until a second ago, been angrily standing and ranting.  “Where do you think he went?”

As his portal appeared, Gadriel shrugged.  “Who cares?” he answered.  “The point is, he can make another attempt, and hopefully not muck things up quite so much this time.”

The demon considered this for a moment, but then shrugged.  “Eh, he can’t do much worse,” he replied, thinking back to the list of the soul’s activities and shuddering.  “Guh, I know that I take sinners off to Hell, but some of those thing were just-“

“You don’t need to remind me,” Gadriel answered, grimacing.  “Point is, we’re done with him for now.  And I’m off, before one of my bosses wonders what exactly happened here.”

The angel did strike a good point, Laxazz reflected, as he called up his own portal back to Hell.  After all, he was supposed to collect souls, not send them away.  No matter how disgusting their activities had been while they were alive.

#

The demon’s portal, as is typical of most portals to Hell, left a good amount of residual heat behind.  That heat crackled the stones and soaked down into the earth, causing some of the insect eggs mixed into the dirt to accelerate their hatching processes.

From one egg, a small worm twisted, wriggling its way out into the dirt.

Worms generally don’t have much in the way of thoughts at the best of times, and even when they do, most of those thoughts tend to be reflections on things like soil temperature, mineral content, and humidity levels.  A worm’s universe is intimately small, and comprised almost entirely of things passing through its digestive tract.

For this worm, however, as it crawled into existence from inside its egg, it found itself dealing with some strange thoughts.  First among those was one that shouted out, “Reincarnation!?  That’s not what I wanted!  Why the hell did they reincarnate me!?”

Worms, however, don’t have much of a long-term memory – or, really, any memory at all, so this strange thought soon faded.  Soon, the worm didn’t remember anything of its past life, or even its present life.  Instead, it focused on chewing its way through the dirt.

And hey, maybe that wasn’t so bad, after all.  Worms can’t get up to too much trouble.