Short Writings

He’s starting to suspect he’s being poisoned.

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The table pinwheeled across the floor of the tavern, not stopping until it collided with a thump against the opposite wall.  All around the room, patrons cringed, hastily trying to gulp down the rest of their drinks.  They could sense the oncoming storm.

When a troll gets angry, smart adventurers make sure that they’re on the other side of a door, preferably in an entirely different building altogether.

Still, Mr. Loaf, the barkeep, came bustling out, his stained apron flapping about his stubby legs.  “Ah, Mr. Slate,” he greeted the angry patron, his voice making a terminal attempt at cheerfulness.  “Does something seem to be the problem?”

The troll, still crouching as though the table was in front of him instead of flipped against the far wall, nodded.  “Yus, something wrong!” he rumbled, shaking so violently that small flakes peeled off of him and tumbled to the dirty straw covering the floor.  “You poisoning me!”

At that accusation, a couple other heads lifted up cautiously from below their hastily erected shelters.  Poisoning was a serious accusation.

“Poison?” Loaf repeated blankly, rubbing his hands on his apron and succeeding in dirtying them terribly.  “What in the world makes you say that?”

In response, Slate thrust out his mug.  The barkeep instinctively leaned back, although the gesture was more of a survival mechanism than due to anything untoward in the drink.

A moment later, however, he paused.  Something wasn’t right.

Trolls, of course, enjoyed a molten concoction of blended lava and calcium, sometimes with floating pumice chunks and occasionally, if they were feeling especially fancy, with crushed silicon around the rim of the mug.  These drinks came in a heavily reinforced steel-plated mug, and tended to leave smoldering rings on the tables if left to sit for too long.

The mug in Slate’s hand appeared to be full of a watery, amber colored liquid.

After recovering from leaning back, Mr. Loaf reached out and very cautiously dipped a finger in Slate’s drink.  He lifted the wet finger to his nose, sniffed, and then assayed a taste.

“It’s beer,” he said after a moment.

“Yuh!  Poison!” Slate reiterated.  “You trying to corrode me!”

Perhaps because it was a simple mistake, Mr. Loaf relaxed prematurely.  He chuckled, patted the angry troll on his rocky shoulder, and then made his big mistake.

He attempted to use logic and reason.

“Listen, Mr. Slate, obviously there’s just been a little mix-up,” he said reasonably.  “Clearly, you’ve just gotten someone else’s drink.  There’s no need to be upset-“

His words trailed off as the troll lifted up the heavy, reinforced mug to his mouth and, without changing expression, took a large bite out of the vessel.  Metal crunched and shrieked in his mouth as his diamond teeth tore through the steel-covered hardwood.

Around the tavern, the other patrons hastily checked their weapons, either displayed or hidden.  A fight was about to break out.  Their keenly tuned senses of danger, trained from many years of adventuring, were quivering like taut bowstrings.  A party of archers in the corner checked their taut bowstrings.

Mr. Loaf could sense the approaching fight, as well.  He’d been a barkeeper for many years, and he knew when a little willful destruction of property (which he tolerated, considering how he overcharged for ale) was about to erupt into a full-fledged brawl (which he frowned upon, because no one ordered more drinks halfway through a brawl).  Now, with no other options left, he resorted to the last arrow in his verbal quiver.

“Perhaps a credit is in order,” he suggested quickly.

Before he spoke, Slate had been rumbling, the deep grumble that a volcano emits just before violently erupting.  At these words, however, the rumble stopped, and the troll frowned in puzzlement.

“Credit?” he repeated.

“Yes, exactly,” Loaf continued, following up quickly before the troll remembered where he’d parked his original train of thought.  “How about I give you a credit for this and… let’s say, two… other drinks on tonight’s bill?”

Trolls were generally dense, but even creatures of anthropomorphic rock could sense when they had leverage in a deal.  “Three,” Slade countered.  “An’ one of them’s gonna be a River Rock Eruption.  With real agates, I can taste bad ones.”

Mr. Loaf quickly weighed the costs of a brawl versus the cost of a drink with real agates.

“Done, but no more than three agates,” he compromised.  “And you pick up my table.”

For a long time, the troll remained silent – although Loaf knew that he might just be still working through the problem.  Finally, he shrugged his mountainous shoulders.

“Kay,” he announced, standing up and heading over to retrieve the table.

Mr. Loaf bustled off to the back to prepare the troll’s drink before allowing himself to let out a small sigh of relief.

Once back in the kitchen, out of sight of the drinkers in the front room, the barkeep rounded on the unfortunate server who’d brought out the troll’s most recent drink.  “I told you that he has to be falling-down drunk before you try and slip him the beer!” he cursed her.  “He’s stupid, but he’s not stupid enough to drink straight beer before we’ve put at least a couple loads of lava into him!”

The woman tried to defend herself, but Loaf just turned away, shaking his head.  He never should have let that Assassin convince him to take this job, he grumbled to himself.  This whole thing was turning into more of a hassle than he’d ever wanted.

Next time, the damn nob could just try and get his mark with a sledgehammer when Slate passed out in the alley.

"Recommended by 4 out of 5 doctors!"

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“Hello, gentlemen.  Today, we’ve called you all in because all of you have previously prescribed Trexaphil, and we want to offer you a chance to spread the word.  Now, for the record, can we get your names, and your specialties?”

“Dr. Newman, trauma medicine.”

“Dr. Cooper, gastrointestinal disorders.”

“Dr. Arthur, pediatrics.”

DR. HAARLAX GARJHALLARAXX, PLAGUE, PESTILENCE, AND LAMENTATION.

“Dr. Daniels, orthodontics.”

The presenter paused for a moment, his brow furrowing.  Something didn’t sound quite right, but he couldn’t put his finger on what felt off.  He decided to press on.

“Great, thank you.  And according to our records, each of you prescribed Trexaphil within the last year.  Going down the line, can each of you explain what you prescribed this medicine for?  We’ll start with you, Dr. Newman.”

“Thank you.  Yes, as mentioned, I prescribed Trexaphil after a trauma patient reported headaches and chills that made it difficult for him to focus on his physical therapy after an accident.  The Trexaphil did a great job of helping increase his mental focus, and I’m happy to report that he made a full recovery.”

“Thanks, Dr. Newman.  And now, let’s hear from Dr… Cooper, why don’t you speak next.”

“Yes, of course.  A patient of mine was receiving treatment for a secondary bowel infection, and he needed an anti-inflammatory that wouldn’t also further compromise his damaged gut microbiome.  Trexaphil was suggested to me as a solution, and I was pleased to note that it caused no shift in his microbe populations.”

“Wonderful.  And now, how about Dr… er, I’m not quite sure how to pronounce-“

ME?

“Er, yes.”

IT’S GARJHALLARAXX.

“Uh, yes, of course.  And you prescribed Trexaphil, did you?”

I DO NOT RECALL – AH, YES, THE SMALL PURPLE PILLS.  WE BELIEVED THAT THEY CONTAINED SIGNIFICANT LEVELS OF ARSENIC, AND INSERTED THEM VIOLENTLY INTO THE WATER SUPPLY OF A VILLAGE TO USHER IN A NEW DARK AGE OF DISEASE.

“I, uh, I don’t think they actually contain any arsenic.”

THEN THAT IS WHY OUR DARK VISION DID NOT COME TO PASS!  BLOOD AND DEATH UPON YOU FOR MISLEADING US WITH YOUR FALSE ADVERTISING!  WE SHALL FEAST UPON YOUR FLESH-RENT CARCASS!

“Right.”  The advertising executive felt very uncertain about how to proceed.  He’d never had a focus group member threaten to feast upon him, although one angry senior citizen had once thrown a half-full can of Pepsi at his head.  “Well, um, perhaps we should just jump ahead.”

Yes, that seemed like a good idea.  Something about the fourth doctor kept making him want to scratch at his skin.  “So, I will take a simple yes-no vote.  Would you recommend Trexaphil to patients who may currently be unsatisfied with their drug regimen?”

“Yes, I would.”

“I agree.  It did wonders for my patients.”

“I’m a bit cautious, but I see no reason why it shouldn’t be used in the right situations.”

Feeling strangely fearful, the advertising executive turned to Dr. Garj-whatever his name was.  “And you?”

SNIFF.  THE SMALL PURPLE PILL DID NOT CAUSE ANY PESTILENCE OR AGONY.  IT EVEN SEEMED TO MAKE SOME OF THE PUNY MORTALS HAPPIER AND MORE COMFORTABLE.  IT SHOULD BE DESTROYED BY RED-HOT SCOURING IRONS.

After he forced his leg to stop quivering, the executive paused.  That might not have been a perfect endorsement, but he’d take it!  “And finally you, Dr. Daniels,” he finished, feeling his heart start to rise.

“I actually feel that Trexaphil didn’t perform significantly differently from other options on the market, and it isn’t worth its elevated price.  I don’t recommend it.”

The marketing executive sighed.  Still, four out of five was good enough to progress to the next stage of the advertising campaign.

“Well, thank you very much for your time, gentlemen.  Please, feel free to help yourselves to snacks and complimentary coffee before you leave.”

Eat You Alive

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The two men headed straight for my table, tucked back into a corner at the back of the bar.

I felt my unease growing as I sized the pair up.  I’d assumed that my watchdogs would be normal men.  Mercenaries, maybe, or ex-military.  A couple muscle-bound toughs, easy to dispose of when I no longer wanted them watching me.

But when these two men entered, their eyes immediately found mine, not even bothering with the rest of the bar’s patrons.  The bigger of the pair showed no change of expression, but the little one flashed a brief, smirking little grin at me.

I’d picked the table at the back so that I wouldn’t be interrupted.  Now, I found myself casting longing glances towards the bar’s rear exit.  Maybe I should have sat closer to the door.
“Well, well, Mr. Check,” the short little man greeted me, his toothy smile appearing once again on his face.  It seemed to come and go with little warning; one moment it would be absent, and the next second it would appear in full bloom.  But even as his mouth twitched into a little grin, his eyes remained constant, glazed over with treacherous ice.  “Is good to meet, you might say.”

I nodded to the little man, although my eyes darted to the larger of the pair.  He’d sat down at the table as well, although he barely fit in the space between the booth and the table’s edge.  Huge and corpulent, his expression remained utterly blank.

“Oh, don’t mind Mr. Rook,” the little man said to me, flapping one hand at his acquaintance.  “He doesn’t speak  much.  All the better for you, too, if he doesn’t open his mouth.”  The little man chuckled heartily to himself, as if he’d just made some sort of joke.

The Rusty Tap didn’t have waitresses.  The bar only had a single, grizzled barkeep standing behind the shelter of his counter, bottles at the ready.  I liked it that way.  But now, the little man raised his fingers up and snapped, and the old man tottered out from behind his shelter, bringing several dirty glasses over to us.

“Now, Mr. Check, my name is Bishop, and this master of poetry beside me is Mr. Rook,” the little man went on, his eyes remaining focused on me as the barkeep set drinks in front of us.  “We, for our sins, are to be your guardians.”

I nodded again.  I’d expected this.  When I took the job, there had been a comment about “monitors.”  This pair, however, wasn’t what I’d anticipated.

Bishop lifted up his glass, examining the strangely reddish liquid inside.  He took a sip, and closed his eyes in appreciation.  “Ah, that’s the stuff.”

My eyes, moving almost of their own volition, tracked over to Rook.  The barkeep hadn’t poured him a drink, but had simply deposited an entire bottle of some dark alcohol on the table in front of the big man.

As I watched, Rook picked up the bottle by its base and, without any change in expression, bit off the cap and neck.  I could hear the glass crunching into shards as he chewed.

Beside him, Bishop shook his head with a little smile.  “Oh, Mr. Rook, where are your table manners?” he asked, clucking his tongue like a mother at a child.

“Ate ’em,” Mr. Rook replied, spitting flecks of cork and glass.

Bishop returned his focus back to me.  “Now, Mr. Check, you understand your role in this little plan, yes?” he asked.  “It has already been explained?”

I had to lick my lips before I found my voice.  “Yes,” I said.  “You’re going to remove the guards, and I swipe the case while everyone’s distracted.”

The little man nodded, smiling once again.  I could see extra redness on his lips from his drink.  “And then, you will bring it to us, and you’ll receive your payment,” he finished.

“Hold on.  I thought I was bringing the case to whoever hired me?  The brains behind this heist?”

Bishop tutted, shaking his head.  “Ah, Mr. Check.  When an ant finds that a boot blocks his path, he does not speak to the boot’s owner.  No, he shakes his little ant head, adjusts to his new course, and thanks his lucky little stars that the boot didn’t crush him.”

For a moment, the little man’s smile vanished, and he looked as wooden and emotionless as his partner.  “Do you understand my little metaphor, Mr. Check?”

I understood him.  Still, I had to know how much of a leash I’d been given.  “And what happens if I disagree with it?” I asked.  Surely, they wouldn’t try anything here, in public, before I’d even pulled off the snatch for them.  They still needed me, needed my talents.

“If you disagree?”  Bishop looked as though the idea had never occurred to him.  “Why, Mr. Rook, perhaps you can suggest what we might do in that situation?”

The big man’s eyes tracked over to me.  “Eat ‘im?” he asked hopefully.

Bishop reached over and patted the arm of his partner.  He might have wanted to pat the man’s cheek, but he couldn’t reach that high.  “Only if he disagrees, Mr. Rook,” he corrected gently.

Mr. Rook’s eyes remained fixed on me.  “Looks tasty,” he said, taking another glass-shattering bite out of the bottle.  “Crunchy.”

“I think we make our point, Mr. Rook,” Bishop took over, smiling at me once again.  “And I’m sure that Mr. Check agrees with me when I say that this will be a routine and civil affair.  We will provide a distraction, he will snatch the case that our employer desires, and he will then pass it over to us in exchange for payment.  There will be no issues.”

I nodded, but Bishop kept his eyes locked on me, his smile looking more and more out of place on his face by the second.  “And if he fails, or takes a single step out of line,” Bishop continued, his voice dropping into a whisper, “we will chase him.  He may run, he may flee halfway across the cosmos, but we will always follow, will always find him.

“And then, Mr. Rook will eat you alive.”

For a moment, Bishop’s face was twisted and filled with snarling, endless fury as he glared at me.  A second later, however, he blinked, and was as smiling and genteel as ever.

“Now, you will be at this address in two days’ time,” he said, passing a small, grubby slip of paper over to me.  “You’ll see the distraction, and you can make the snatch.  Once you have the case, we will contact you for the exchange.”

Bishop stood up, straightening the lapels of his black jacket.  “And now, we have other errands to run, Mr. Check,” he said, giving me a slight little mocking bow.  “Come, Mr. Rook.  Let us be off.”

As they stood, the barkeep perked up, light coming into his sunken eyes.  “Hey, youse two haven’t paid,” he called out, once again daring to emerge from behind the safety of his bar.

This was a mistake.  As he stepped over towards Bishop, Mr. Rook’s hand shot out, closing on the bearded man’s throat.  I saw the barkeep’s eyes go wide as the big, black-clad man dragged his head down and in.

With a crunch, Mr. Rook bit a chunk out of the man’s head, swallowing as blood ran down his chin.  “Mmm,” he grunted, before diving back in for another bite.

As his partner chewed with gusto on the barkeep’s exposed skull and brain, Bishop reached out with a long, skinny finger, dipping it into the dripping stream of blood.  “A bit too aged and bitter,” he observed, licking his finger clean.  “Not entirely unpalatable, however.”

From the sound of Mr. Rook’s crunching, he would happily devour the rest of the barkeep’s twitching body, but Bishop snapped his fingers.  “Come, Mr. Rook,” he called out as he turned towards the door.  “We have no time for dalliances.”

With a grunt, Mr. Rook dropped the now mostly headless corpse down to the floor.  Wiping his mouth with one sleeve, he followed after his smaller partner.

For a minute, I just stared down at the corpse lying nearly at my feet.  Some of the bar’s other patrons were finally recovering enough to scream, but I kept my mouth tightly shut.

No, these definitely weren’t the normal guards I’d been expecting.  Whoever wanted this case was willing to go to extreme lengths to ensure they received it.

I could feel foreboding bubbling up inside of me, but I knew that I couldn’t escape.

First Contact

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A thousand cameras followed the alien saucer as it dropped smoothly out of the sky, down towards the front lawn in front of the White House.

Frowning, I hefted the silver flask in my hand.  I usually made more of an attempt to keep the flask hidden from Arthur, my producer standing just behind Charlie the cameraman, but I couldn’t manage to exert the effort tonight.

After all, all of us were feeling pretty distracted.

Right now, the flask was nearly empty, I noted with distaste.  Of course, maybe that distaste was from the remaining little bits of brandy washing around my mouth.  I capped the flask and stuck it back inside my suit jacket.

Across from me, Arthur was punching Charlie’s shoulder, making the cameraman frown.  “Are you getting this?  Tell me you’re getting this!” my producer shouted in that annoying squeal he used when he got too excited.

“Yuh, boss,” Charlie grunted back.  “Stop hitting, you’re making the camera bounce, yuh?”

Admittedly, this was a hell of a momentous moment.  The first ever contact with aliens was happening right now, and I was one of the reporters on ground zero.

We’d known that they were coming for a good week, now.  The alien saucer, although not big by interstellar measurements (“Practically just a planet hopping ship!” one of the so-called experts had dismissed it on a CrossFire program, as though he was some sort of authority on alien space ships), was more than big enough to show up on our high-powered radar.

Besides, they’d been thoughtful enough to broadcast a countdown clock to the time of their landing.

For the last week, the whole world had been afire with conflicting theories.  We weren’t alone in the universe!  But were these visitors going to be friendly – or hostile?  Were we about to receive incredible insights into the very fabric of the universe, or were we about to be captured, enslaved, or maybe just annihilated without a second thought?

No one knew.  And given the average level of panic in the world right now, I felt that I was owed a flask’s worth of brandy.

Little white lights around the edge of the alien flying saucer’s rim twinkled as it slowed down, gently descending down to the lawn.  If I wasn’t seeing it with my own eyes, I would have guessed that it was just CGI – and not even a good attempt at that, I thought distantly to myself.  This looked like a prop straight out of an old eighties B-movie.

As the saucer settled down onto the lawn, three landing struts sliding out to support it, Charlie panned over to capture the international delegation standing by, trying to not look like they were about to collectively shit themselves in fear.  President Trump stood out in front, his ridiculous hair whipping back and forth in the night’s breeze, sticking his chest out and looking utterly ridiculous.  Putin and a host of European leaders I didn’t recognize stood slightly behind him, each wearing his own unique expression of barely repressed panic.

Finally, the ship had landed.  The saucer had been emitting a soft ticking noise, perhaps the sound of its propulsion.  This ticking ended, and for a second, there was only the sound of the breeze in my ears.

From beneath the saucer, a ramp slid out, smoothly descending down to the ground.  As the ramp made contact with the dirt, the alien emerged.

“Wish I had some better lighting,” Charlie grunted to himself from behind the camera.

No one else spoke.  We just stared at the alien.

It was small, maybe four feet tall.  It had gray skin, an oversized head, and two large, oval-shaped black eyes.  It wore a single-piece garment made of some sort of stretchy blue fabric.

It looked like an utter joke.

“God, maybe those eighties movie makers were onto something,” I muttered to myself as we all stared.

Clearly, the President and other dignitaries had been also caught off-guard by the alien’s appearance.  Most of them just stood with their mouths hanging open, gasping and staring.

The alien peered at the leaders, and then turned and surveyed the reporters and cameramen standing another pace back.  “Hello?  Is this Galactic Sector ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha, Planet designation XF319-42-384, sub-Sol 3?” it asked.

For a moment, I nearly burst out laughing.  The thing sounded like Arthur after an extra hit of helium.

The President and other leaders still hadn’t managed to find their voices.  “Uh, we call it Earth,” some wag called out.

That voice sounded familiar.  It wasn’t until Art gasped behind me that I realized that I’d been the one to speak.

The little alien glanced over at me.  “Earth?” it repeated in that squeaky little voice.  “And are you a representative of the dominant species?”

“Uh, I guess?”  Why the hell wasn’t anyone else speaking up?  What was going on?  It was mostly the brandy keeping me upright at this point.

“Great!”  The alien turned and tottered over to me, holding something out.  “Here you are!”

The little gray creature held some sort of computer disk in its hands.  I took it, totally not knowing what was going on.  This was the momentous first exchange of technology between us and another civilized race.  This would go down in the history books.

The disk in my hands looked exactly like a three-and-a-half inch floppy.

I saw the little alien frown as I stared down dumbly at the object.  “Is this not right?  We understood that this was a compatible data format,” it stammered.  I had no experience reading emotions into a squeaky little munchkin voice, but it sounded a little nervous.

“Um, no,” I managed.  “We’ve got these.”

“Great!  Then just post it back to us within a Galactic cycle, please.”  The alien turned and began to totter back towards the ramp.

“Wait!”  The little alien glanced back, and I realized once again, a second too late, that I’d opened my damn mouth.  The words were already coming, however, and I couldn’t stop them.  “What is this?  What’s on this disk?”

“Oh.”  The alien did something that I could almost convince myself was a shrug.  “Galactic census survey.  Remember, just drop it on a rocket, and we’ll pick it up.  Have a good cycle!”

Finally, as the ramp disappeared back into the saucer, the politicians and leaders of the world found their voices, all of them shouting and rushing forward, waving their arms.  I could hear Arthur shouting something, and people looked to be rushing towards me, their eyes locked on that disk.

All I heard, however, was Charlie let out a disappointed grunt.  “Nuh, he’s gonna look totally washed out,” the cameraman commented to himself.  “Shoulda brought a better filter.”

A post-apocalyptic firefighter’s call

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The siren wailed, cutting through all other noise inside the firehouse.  Throughout the building, men and women paused in their current activities, their heads rising up like deer sniffing at the breeze.

In the break room, I cursed as I fought at the blankets on the cot that tried to ensnare me, wrapping around my limbs.  By the time I managed to fight my way free, I could already hear the rhythmic thudding of boots as the other firefighters hurried downstairs.

Scrambling up from the bed, I checked myself.  I wasn’t wearing much besides an undershirt and boxers, but that would just save me time in changing into my protective gear.  I sprinted out of the dark break room, grabbing the fireman’s pole and sliding down to the bay floor.

Expressions were tense as we all loaded up our gear and hurried to our trucks.  The last summer had been one of the hottest and driest on record, and the whole area was ready to go up in flames with just one spark in the wrong place.

We knew how much pressure rested on our shoulders.

I ran for my own truck, number nineteen.  A lucky number, according to Stephen King.  I enjoyed his books during my downtime, although some of the plots seemed a bit hackneyed.

I pulled myself up onto the truck, climbing into the cage on the back.  I caught Charlie’s eye in the rear view mirror, and he gunned the truck into life as soon as my foot left the cement floor.

Next to me, my fellow cage rider, Claire, gave me a chuckle.  “Just barely made it, huh?” she asked, raising an eyebrow at me.

Before answering her, I checked my equipment, patting myself down to make sure I had everything.  Coat, gloves, tank, mask machete.  Everything was in place.

“Not my fault – I was asleep,” I answered her, once I’d confirmed that all my equipment was in place.  I loosened the machete in its holster, just so that it would slide out easily if I needed it.  “I made damn good time for starting from being unconscious.”

Claire just smirked back at me.  One of the few female firefighters to make the cut, even with our limited manpower, she never missed a chance to deal out a stinging insult to the men around her.  Most of us, however, had learned to shrug them off, knowing that she just needed to keep on proving her worth.

We all wanted to belong.  We all needed to constantly validate that we belonged on the team.

The truck swung out, heading down the streets with siren wailing as Charlie steered us towards our destination.  “What’s the call about?” I asked Claire, my voice raised to carry over the rushing wind.

“Not sure – think it’s industrial!” she shouted back.  “We might have some Zees wandering around, too, spreading the blaze!”

I cursed.  I hated dealing with Zees.  Sure, they were an almost unavoidable part of this job, but they never quite sat right with me.

It wasn’t like they were dangerous, most of the time.  Sure, they’d try and take a bite out of you if they caught you sleeping, but most of them didn’t have much strength left, and they weren’t smart enough to get through a door or past a barrier.

Still, those dead eye sockets always gave me a little shiver.  I could never quite forget that they’d once been someone’s family, someone’s parent or friend, reduced to so little.

They were a problem for us, however.  All that dry, desiccated flesh was flammable – and even when they caught ablaze, they kept on moving, trying dumbly to get away.

I turned and glanced over my shoulder.  Soon enough, I could see the big, dark plume of smoke rising up from the buildings ahead of us.  The fire.  Charlie didn’t slow the truck, but he gave a toot of the horn to let us know to get ready.

As we pulled around the last corner, and the burning factory came into view, I noticed that there seemed to be a lot more Zees around than usual.  Most of them weren’t alight, at least, but they seemed to be everywhere; the truck crunched over a couple of them without stopping.

My radio crackled as the truck came to a stop.  “Call from Dispatch,” Charlie announced to us.  “Apparently, the Zees were being held somewhere around here.  Boss says to try not to kill them if we can avoid it.”

I saw Claire roll her eyes as she picked up her comm to respond.  “Don’t kill them?  Charlie, they’re a fire hazard, even if they can’t bite through our suits.  What are we supposed to do, politely ask them to stand aside?”

“Hey, just relaying orders,” our truck’s driver replied.  “Don’t shoot the messenger.  Just don’t cut them down if they’re not a problem.”

Raj, the co-pilot sitting up front, didn’t break radio silence.  But I knew that he had to be wearing a hell of a scowl right now.  Raj had his own vendetta against Zees, and we knew when he was driving – he always swerved to make sure he got them under our big wheels.

No time to think about that now, though.  With the truck stopped, Claire scrambled back to get the hose up, focusing on washing down the outside of the building, cutting off flames before they could spread.  I, on the other hand, climbed down from the truck.

“Any word on people inside?” I asked in the comm.

“No clue,” came the response.  “Give it a check, best as you can, but don’t push too hard if you feel it’s unsafe.  It’s a factory, after all, and the place is liable to come down soon.”

I didn’t need to be told twice.  I could already feel the heat radiating out from the building, pushing against my exposed face.  I flipped my mask down to protect myself.

One of the Zees came tottering out of the building as I strode closer, waving its skeletal, emaciated arms above its head as it gasped out a soundless shriek.  I could already see the flames climbing up the left side of its body.

My machete slid smoothly out of its scabbard.  The first stroke took off the Zee’s head, and the counterstroke took off a limb and part of the torso.  The poor thing collapsed down to the ground, still blazing fiercely.

I shook my head for a moment, feeling bad for the dumb, now twice-dead corpse, and then headed into the burning building.

The Man in the Field, Part II

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Continued from Part 1, here.

I sat at my desk, my fingers interlocked in front of me.  My cup of coffee, the third one of the morning, slowly grew cold beside me.

The body was down on the slab in Samuelson’s back room, and I’d carefully locked up that briefcase in our evidence locker.  Lewis had helped me put the thing in there, although neither of us spoke a word for the entire ride back to the station.

It was only after the thing was out of sight, under lock and key, that we started to drift back to normal.  I gave him a couple tasks to do – run down the prints off the dead body, try and get an ID, check for a wallet or other personal items – and sent him off.  Maybe we’d get lucky, find the guy in the system.

I, meanwhile, had a tougher decision to make.

I held the position of senior detective for our precinct, not that the title meant much.  When the county’s only got the money to pay four of you, not counting Marian’s volunteering on the weekend to sort through our files, the rank of “senior detective” is a bit like being the tallest kid on the playground.  Sure, it sounds nice, but it’s not worth printing up on a business card.

My boss… technically, I figured that would be the county sheriff.  Alan Hayfield was a nice enough fellow, bit forgetful these days, but he always showed up to the local school to encourage them to say no to drugs.  Still, he’d be just as over his head in this as me.

I drummed my fingers against the scratched wood of my desk, thinking hard.  I could still see the slight glow of the contents of that case, could feel the weight of its contents.  That case didn’t belong out in a field, in the middle of nowhere.

So what was our dead man doing with it?

And, perhaps more importantly, what was I going to do with it?

Fortunately, Lewis came barging into the station, breaking me out of my looping thoughts.  I stood up as he stomped his feet against the welcome mat, knocking off caked-on snow and huffing as he unzipped his heavy jacket.

“Any ID on the stiff?” I asked, giving him a hand with his coat.

Once he’d managed to remove a few heavy layers, Lewis nodded, looking a bit happier.  “Yeah, he had a wallet on him,” he replied, pulling out a plastic baggie containing the item in question from a pocket.  Detectives always looked happier with a lead..

I took the baggie, fumbled to manipulate the object inside until I had it flipped open.  “Bill Loonan,” I read, and chuckled at the resemblance.

Lewis frowned at me.  “What’s so funny?”

I thought about trying to explain to him how the dead guy had reminded me of Biff Loman, the dead salesman, but decided not to bother.  Lewis’s reading mostly consisted of the articles in the nudie mags he furtively bought at the gas station down the road and hid in the bottom of his desk’s drawer.

“Nothing,” I replied.  “Let’s run it.  See if there’s any missing persons out on a Bill Loonan.”

I fired up our office’s single, boxy computer, pulling out the brown-tinged keyboard.  Lewis dropped into the chair across from my desk.  When I looked up, he was frowning.

“What?” I asked, as I waited for the old machine to load.

“The car,” he said slowly, looking out past our front door.  “That farmer, Ewan, said he hadn’t seen any car.”

“So?”

“So how did this Loony guy get out in the field?  We both saw his shoes.  Leather dress shit.  He didn’t walk there.”

I shrugged.  It was a good question.  “Maybe someone dumped him there.  Wasn’t much blood underneath him on the field.”

But Lewis was already shaking his head.  “Who’d dump him, but leave, well, that?” he asked, leaning on the last word.

He didn’t have to say what he meant.  We both knew.  I didn’t have any answer.

Thankfully, the computer beeped a minute later.  I typed in Bill Loonan’s name and hit Enter, waiting for the machine to creakily send off the request.  When I’d first arrived here, I asked the town council to increase our budget so we could get a faster network, a better computer.  I had young, big ideas about improving the police force.

A decade later, we had the same connection and the same computer.

While I waited, I retrieved my coffee cup, frowning when a sip revealed that the liquid had gone cold.  I didn’t feel motivated enough to pop it into our food-splattered microwave, though, so I just took a few more sips, grimacing at each one.

Finally, the computer beeped back.  No results.  I glanced at Lewis, and he nodded, sighing.

“Looks like we’re stuck with old fashioned police work,” I said, turning the computer off.  “You got a picture of the stiff?  Head and shoulders shot, one folks might recognize?”

He nodded, pulling out his camera and loading up a picture for my approval.  I took a look, and gave it a nod.  It was clear upon close examination that the guy was dead, but he still at least looked human, apart from that hole between his eyebrows.

“What about, well, the briefcase?” Lewis asked, as I reached for my coat.  “Are we just going to leave it locked up?”

I grunted.  That damn briefcase.  That was the worst twist of all with this mystery, so far, and I didn’t even know how to deal with it.

“For now, yeah,” I finally said.  “Maybe, as we find out more about this Loonan guy, it will make some sense.”

Lewis nodded, trusting his boss, but I wished that I had more conviction behind my own words.

*****

A phone rang, three short, sharp trills, before a hand picked it up.

“Yeah.  Someone searched his name?  Police database?  From where?”

A brief pause, as if the speaker needed a few seconds to adjust.  “What?  Really, from there?  Who even has an internet connection out there?”

Another pause, followed by a sigh.  “Well, get someone out there, for God’s sake.  Shut this down, get it all cleaned up.”

“And whatever you do, make sure you recover that goddamn briefcase.”

The phone call ended.

The Man in the Field, Part I

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We got the call fairly early in the morning, according to the front desk’s note.  Some farmer found the body, out walking his dog.

And that was lucky, too, I thought to myself as I rubbed my hands together.  I always chose the thinnest pair of leather gloves I could find, for dexterity, but they didn’t hold in heat worth a damn.  The engine on my unmarked car was running full blast, but the heater always took twenty minutes to warm up.

Sitting beside me, Lewis stamped his feet on the floor and huffed into his own cupped hands, making a sound a bit like a coughing dog.  “Gah!  Is it always this cold?” he complained, wriggling his fingers.

I glanced sidelong at the man.  Close to a decade younger than me, he was new blood, only just transferred up here.  I didn’t think he’d last long.  I wasn’t privy to whatever mistakes got him transferred out to the country, but I didn’t need my detective skills to see that he was a city boy, through and through.

“We’ll get some heat once the engine’s warmed up,” I commented, keeping my eyes on the road ahead of us.  The uneven gravel of the road often hid treacherous ice puddles.

“And how’s long that gonna take?”

“Maybe ’bout twenty minutes.  ‘Bout the time we get there.”

Lewis huffed in frustration, and I let myself grin ever so slightly.  Guy was definitely young; he hadn’t mastered the art of letting all the bullshit of life roll off his back.

Sure enough, just as the car’s air vents began to puff out warm air, we reached the edge of the field.  “Corner of Harris and Ewan’s lots,” the report waiting for me at my desk had read.  No street address.

To someone new, like Lewis, that might have been nonsense, but I knew the farms around here well enough to get there without much trouble.  Comes from spending my years out here chasing down cows and lost cats, I guess.

Ewan was standing there, his breath coming out in hazy clouds as he gave me a wave.  His dog, a coon hound of indeterminate age and ancestry, bayed as we approached.  I could see Ewan’s shotgun hanging down from his other hand.  At least he wasn’t pointing the damn thing at my car.

I pulled over, leaving the keys in the ignition and the engine running, and climbed out.  My boots crunched on the icy crust atop the snow as I trudged over to the farmer.  I could hear the clumsy plodding of Lewis behind me, trying to not get too weighed down in the thick snow.

“Ewan,” I greeted the farmer with a nod, one he returned.  “What’ve we got?”

Ewan didn’t respond immediately.  He glanced over at Lewis, sizing up my younger partner, and I saw his lips curl ever so slightly.  “Who’s this?  New guy?”

“Yeah.  New guy.”  At least Lewis didn’t try and start a fight.  “Now, what the hell are we doing out here?  I can feel my balls turning blue as we speak.”

That, at least, got a little snort out of the farmer.  He turned and stepped out into his field, his dog keeping at his heels.  He didn’t say anything, but Lewis and I followed a few steps behind.

There were no crops in the field, of course.  Nothing grows in the dead of northern winter.  The ground had frozen in rows of ploughed furrows, however, and we had to watch our step as we climbed over the ridges.

We didn’t have to go far.  About ten rows into the field, we saw the disturbance in the snow, a rectangular corner of something sticking up through the crust of snow.

“You go any closer?” I asked Ewan as we stepped up to the object sticking out of the snow.

He shook his head.  “Course not.  Sparky ran ‘cross it, though.”

I nodded.  I could see the dog’s tracks going over the surface.  There were no other treads, however, no other sign of disturbance on the snow.

As I crouched down, peering across the three feet or so that separated me from the object, I carefully categorized my first impressions.

It was a briefcase.  That much was clear.  It looked like a nice affair, too, leather, with brass corners.  There might be something engraved in the top, right by the handle, but I couldn’t read it with the crust of ice that had formed on top of the leather surface.

My eyes moved over to the hand that still clutched the handle of the briefcase.

It was definitely a hand.  Human, white male, maybe in his forties.  It was tough to say more.  I could see the glint of a gold ring on the fourth finger.  Married?

Like a good partner, Lewis had pulled out his camera and snapped a couple dozen pictures.  I glanced over at him, and he nodded.  I could approach.

Carefully, I stepped closer, reaching out and picking up a frozen chunk of corn stalk, left over from the harvest in the fall.  Bit by bit, I swept away some of the snow, uncovering the man underneath.

He didn’t look like much.  I thought briefly of good ol’ Willy Loman, from Death of a Salesman.  Our corpse looked to be in his late forties, dressed in a gray overcoat over a cheap looking suit.  He wore leather shoes, although the material looked cracked and worn.  I swept away snow from his head, revealing thinning hair, a scraggly little excuse at a beard – and a small hole drilled right in the middle of his forehead.

As I uncovered that hole, I glanced up at Lewis.  The younger man’s mouth tightened, but he lifted the camera and snapped a picture.

Murder, then.

“So what’s he doing out here?”  Ewan hadn’t moved any closer, but the man kept on peering with interest over our shoulders, trying to get a better look at the corpse.  “It’s not like we’ve had any visitors.  And I didn’t see a car or anything when I came out here.”

The snow covered the man with a solid, unbroken crust, I thought to myself.  He’d been here a while, probably weeks.  We didn’t have a real coroner, but Samuelson, the mortician in town, might be able to pin down time of death a little more.  I couldn’t see much n the way of blood spatter, but it might just be frozen further down, underneath him.

As I’d mused, Lewis had picked up his own corn stalk, clearing away more of the snow.  “Hey, Harry,” he called out in an undertone to me.  “Look what he’s got over here.”

The stiff had fallen in a weird sprawl, his arms pointing off in opposite directions.  Lewis swept away the last of the snow from the man’s other outstretched arm as I glanced over.

“That doesn’t make sense,” my partner said aloud, as we both looked down at the newly uncovered object.

In the man’s right hand, he held a blued steel pistol.  I’d have to check back at the office, but it looked about the right size to put the hole in his forehead.

Suicide?  It didn’t make any sense.  Or had he been shooting at someone else when he went down?

I shrugged.  Get him back to the station, run his records, try and figure out who he was.  Who he had been.  I stood up, stretching out my already stiff knees – but then paused, looking down at the poor sod.

One quest kept on poking at my brain.  I knew I was breaking protocol, but hell, I was the ranking detective out here.

I glanced over at Lewis.  “You get a good close picture of his hand?” I asked, pointing down at the hand clutching the briefcase.

My partner nodded, but he shot a few more, just to be certain.  He didn’t say anything, but I could see his curiosity plain on his face as well.  He stood back, letting me do the honors.

Carefully, lips pulled back slightly from my face, I tugged the man’s fingers away from the handle of the briefcase.  I heard a couple uncomfortable creaks and pops, but nothing fully broke.  After a minute, I tugged the case free, setting it down on the snow beside the corpse.

Turning the case so that Ewan couldn’t see the contents, I pushed at the latches.  They popped open obediently, and I lifted the stiff lid.

For a moment, both Lewis and I froze, staring down at the softly glowing contents.  “Well, shit,” the younger man exclaimed, the words spoken in half a whisper.

I nodded – and then, even though I had to fight to pull my eyes away, I pushed the case back closed.

“Well, this got a bit more interesting,” I said softly…

Continued here.

Sparring

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“Again.”

For a moment, as my vision swirled, I thought that I saw three copies of the man, standing over me.  All three copies wore the same identical scowl as they glared down at me.

“Come on,” I heard his voice through woolen ears.  “Get up.  We’re going again.”

“Come on, Cain,” I groaned, even as I rolled over onto my stomach and put my hands beneath me to hoist my tired, aching body up from the hard ground.  “Haven’t you beaten me up enough today?”

Still, I pulled myself up, trying to force my fingers to once again tighten into fists as I squared off against my opponent.  Although I felt like my entire body was covered in scratches and bruises, Cain looked as fresh as he had this morning, without a single mark on him – at least, none fresh.

“Now, this time,” Cain suggested to me, “maybe try not to choreograph your attacks so much.  I can tell when you’re about to swing at me from a mile away.”

I groaned back in response.  Of course Cain knew when I was going to attack!  He had, during my time with him, demonstrated the uncanny ability to beat up anyone and everyone we came across.

On the other hand, although I still couldn’t remember any of my past, I knew that I definitely hadn’t been a fighter.

Still, facing off against this man who seemed as solid and implacable as a force of nature, I took a deep breath, trying to steady myself.  “Okay,” I said, more to myself than to him.

And I charged forward.

This time, I decided to try and be as tricky as possible.  I held my fists high, intending to drop them to a low swing at the last second.  But although I started to bring my fists down, I abruptly switched direction, launching them back up towards the man’s jaw.

For just a second, I felt his skin brush against my knuckles, and I thought I had him.

A fraction of an instant later, however, Cain moved like a snake, and I found myself spinning through the air, my legs flying out from underneath me.  My hand still hit something, but I couldn’t focus on it, and barely had time to exhale before I hit the ground on my back.

This time, Cain offered his hand down to me to help hoist me back up.  “Not bad,” the man gave in reluctantly.  “You actually connected with me, that time.  A nice feint.”

“Didn’t help me much,” I grumbled back, although I accepted his help back up.  Now, not only did my ass hurt, but my knuckles ached as well.  What was the man’s jaw made of, steel?

Groaning as a shoulder popped, I took a deep breath, trying to get ready to go again – but Cain glanced up at the sky through the trees.  “Sun’s setting,” he announced.  “We ought to get moving.  We’ve got further to go before we set up camp.”

“Not making it to a town?” I asked, although I already knew the answer.  If there had been a town nearby, we wouldn’t have paused for the sparring session.

Cain just shook his head as he picked up his pack and slung it back on his shoulders.  I bent down to do the same with my own pack, trying to ignore the complaints from my joints as I maneuvered the heavy load up onto my shoulders.

With his pack in place, Cain picked up his rifle, checking it with swift movements of his hands.  I did the same to mine, the movements almost automatic now.  Another skill that my guide had drilled into me, I thought to myself with a shiver.

With his weapon secure, Cain headed off into the jungle.  “Come on,” he called over his shoulder, not bothering to glance back to ensure I was following.

I grimaced at how much it hurt to even walk, but I didn’t let the man get too far ahead before chasing after him.  Cain might be trying, but I knew that I wouldn’t survive a night without him.

Up above our heads, as the sun dropped towards the horizon, some creature let out a long, mournful call.  I felt a foreboding chill run down my spine, and I tried to pick up my pace, sticking close to Cain.

Despite the bruises he’d inflicted on me, I was glad to have him on my side.

Writing Prompt: The futile efforts of a slutty secretary.

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“So, Mr. Carlyle, is there anything else I can get you?” the young woman asked, making sure that her breasts, hanging heavy in her low-cut blouse, just barely brushed against the man’s suited shoulder.

The man, however, didn’t glance up from his paperwork.  “No, Missy, that will be all, I think,” he said, waving one hand vaguely in the air.

Missy felt a little put out, but she straightened up carefully, making sure to accentuate the long, slender lines of her figure.  Her mini-skirt ended only a fraction of an inch below the perfect curves of her ass, and if Richard Carlyle happened to slide one hand up along the inside of her perfect bronze thigh, he’d soon find a very distinct lack of underwear beneath…

The man didn’t even notice, however.  Missy was pretty sure that she could have been wearing a chicken costume, and the man wouldn’t have noticed!  She threw back her long blonde waves over her shoulder and let out a snort as she stomped out in her high heels.

It’s not easy to stomp in high heels, but the buxom blonde bombshell managed it.

As she slammed the door to his office shut behind her, Carlyle glanced up, his brow furrowing briefly.  Was something bothering his secretary?  He felt much more comfortable reading a financial report than another person, but she seemed annoyed somehow.

He glanced down at the fresh stack of documents that Missy had delivered to him.  She’d left a pink sticky note on top, complete with her phone number and a couple of Xs.  That was thoughtful, Carlyle noted absently to himself.  If she’d left anything out, he could call her about it.

He wasn’t sure about the Xs, but interpreted them to mean that she wasn’t going to strike out if she could help it.

Real go-getter, that Missy, he thought briefly to himself before his mind filled up with numbers.

*

“Your coffee, sir- oh, no!” Missy suddenly exclaimed as she tilted the cup forward, spilling the brown frothy liquid out all over the man in front of her.  “Oh my, I’m so clumsy!  I ought to be spanked for it!”

“Oh, that’s all right, Missy,” Carlyle replied quickly, standing up as the coffee poured down over his crotch.  “I’m sure you just tripped-“

Missy had already dropped down to her bare knees on the carpet, bending forward and rubbing both her hands over his crotch.  “We need to get those pants off of you right away, sir, so they don’t stain,” she insisted, her nimble fingers flying to his belt and tugging it free.  “Come, now, let’s get you out of all those wet clothes!”

She had the belt undone, the button open, and her fingers were on the zipper!  Finally, she was going to get the man naked – and then it was just a matter of wrapping her lips around him.  Missy knew that, once his dick was inside a girl’s mouth, no man would ever pull away-

“Here, no need to worry!”  Suddenly, Carlyle’s hands were down beneath her shoulders, lifting her back up!  “Let me show you something.”

Before she knew what was happening, the man was stepping away from her – and pulling open one of the wooden panels that lined his massive office, he revealed a small closet, full of clean hanging suits!

“You see,” Carlyle explained, grabbing one of the fresh suits off of the rack, “I tend to sometimes have a little accident with lunch.  And vinaigrette is impossible to get out of white linen – I know, I’ve tried.  So I keep a couple extra changes of outfit here, just in case.

“But here,” he finished, handing the coffee-stained pants to Missy as he pulled on the fresh set.  “You can take these and get them dry-cleaned for me.  Put it on the company account, of course – anyone could have slipped there!”

Met with that well-meaning, innocent smile, Missy couldn’t think of anything to do but nod and accept the stained garment.  “Of course, sir,” she sighed, turning and heading back out of the office.

Carlyle smiled as he gazed after her.  What a thoughtful young woman!  She was clearly loyally devoted to him.  She must have known that he had an investors’ meeting this afternoon, and wanted him to be both alert and spotless.  She deserved a raise, he noted to himself.

*

“Excuse me!”  The call stopped Missy in her tracks, halfway to the door to the man’s office.  “Missy, I think there’s been some mistake!”

She turned and glanced back at Carlyle behind his desk, biting her lower lip seductively.  “What’s wrong, master?” she asked.

Carlyle flicked through the stack of papers she’d just placed in front of him.  “Yes, Missy, this is the Kleiberson report.  I need the Daniels report.”

“Oh no, I’ve made such a mistake!” Missy exclaimed, dashing back and dropping to her knees beside the man.  This time, her low-cut top was held up only by the thinnest of spaghetti straps looping over her shoulders, and it offered an expansive view deep into her cleavage.  She’d carefully picked out a top a full two sizes too small – and with no bra, her nipples stood out like quarters through the thin, sheer fabric.

“Now, now, that’s okay-” Carlyle began, but Missy had already pushed him back in his chair from the desk, pushing herself forward and into his lap.  “Missy, what are you doing?”

“Oh, I’ve been a bad girl,” his secretary cried, wiggling forward so that she lay across his lap.  “Please, master, you need to spank me and teach me a lesson!”

Carlyle blinked as the woman wiggled her perky round ass up at him.  She’d chosen another short little miniskirt today, this one little more than a belt.  “Spank you?  Missy, I don’t think that’s necessary-“

“Oh, please, if you don’t, I’ll never learn my lesson!” the woman cried dramatically, managing to twist so that, even with her ass right in range of the CEO’s hands, she could give him another beguiling glimpse down at her full breasts.  “I’ve been such a bad girl, and you need to punish me with a good spanking, right on my tight little ass!”

Missy mentally crossed her fingers.  This had to work!  How could any man resist her, in his lap like this and begging for him?  This would make most men blow a blood vessel and collapse right there!  When she came in for work this morning in this outfit, two of the security guards had suffered spontaneous bloody noses!

But incredibly, Carlyle just stood up, gently easing her off of his lap.  “Now, now, Missy, I would never hit a woman,” he chided her gently.  “I’m very progressive like that, but I believe that chivalry is a lost art these days that needs to be revived.”

“But master, I’ve been bad, and I need to be punished-“

“Nonsense!” Carlyle insisted with a broad grin as he helped her up to her feet.  “You’re a wonderful secretary, and you shouldn’t punish yourself like this.  Any man would be happy to have you working for him!”

“Now,” he went on, as Missy blinked and tried to understand how she’d been so kindly rejected, “if you could go bring me the Daniels file, that would be perfect.  There’s a good girl, then!”

Wondering if the CEO had somehow lost his penis in some sort of yacht accident, Missy tottered out of the room, defeated.

Carlyle shook his head as he watched her go.  A fine girl, he thought to himself, but she needed to shake those old-fashioned notions of punishment.  Maybe he needed to sign her up for a woman’s empowerment course, give her a bit of self-confidence.

REWRITE: Possession Talk Around the Neighborhood Grill

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Author’s note: I like this story!  But I feel that it could actually use a rewrite, to give these characters some description.  I normally hate editing, but… why not give it a shot?

The sun shone brightly down from above the trees, as a thin wisp of smoke rose up from below.  Given the scent of charcoal, mingled with that of charring meat, any observer wouldn’t be amiss in guessing that they were catching a sniff of neighborhood barbecue.

The street was a cul-de-sac, a little half-circle of houses wrapping around the widened end of the street.  Today, the men had dragged their grills out to the middle of the street, plopping a couple of orange traffic cones further up the street to dissuade any lost drivers from plowing into the little gathering.  The grills were a motley assortment, from Jerry’s traditional round charcoal grill to Bill’s monstrosity of a modern grill, covered in knobs and adjustable flaps, its aluminum shining in the sun.

Gathered around the grills, the men chatted back and forth, occasionally opening up the grills to poke at the meat and produce sharp hisses of grease and juices flashing into steam.  Meanwhile, the women gossiped in little circles as they sipped at freshly made margaritas, and the children ran around the groups, chasing each other and occasionally letting out high-pitched screams.

It was a great day for a barbecue, overall.  The sun hadn’t yet reached its apex in the sky, but the day was already pleasantly warm, with just the slightest of breezes rustling the leaves on the trees.

The women gossiped, but the women always gossiped.  Most of them stayed home during the week instead of heading out to offices, and they’d raised gossip to a high art form as they ducked in and out of each other’s houses.

For the men, on the other hand, ‘gossip’ had become a taboo term.  If asked, each man would insist that he never gossiped – he merely updated the other men of the neighborhood on current events within his sphere of influence, his household, his kingdom.  They considered the exchange of information now occurring as vital to defending their homes as the motley assortment of baseball bats and golf clubs that they guiltily kept hidden in the back of their closets.

As he lowered the cover of his round charcoal grill back over the hissing meat, Jerry shook his head back and forth in disbelief.  “Man, you cannot be serious.  On either count.”

“No, I swear it’s true!”  Bill reached out and adjusted some knob on his huge, gleaming aluminum monstrosity of a grill.  Most of the other men would wager – accurately – that even Bill didn’t know what that knob did, but that didn’t mean that the others weren’t envious of the hulking machine.  Here in the suburbs, men gauged the measure of each other by the size of their grills.

Once the knob had been satisfactorily adjusted, Bill looked back up at the others.  “Summoning ritual gone wrong, the whole nine yards.  It’s really the only way for me to explain it.  She’s nothing like how she used to be.”

Jerry waved his tongs dismissively.  “No, man, demons don’t exist.  It’s all hogwash.”

On the other side of the circle, Keith nodded, crossing his arms over his large belly.  “Yeah, what Jerry said.  No such thing.”  He narrowed his eyes at Bill.  “Did you ever think that maybe she just conked her head or something?”

“Come on, guys!  You think I wouldn’t notice if she had a big bump on her head?”  Bill flapped his arms, perhaps trying to express exasperation, but instead only succeeding in making himself unfortunately resemble a large waterfowl of some sort.  “And no, it has to be possession.  I mean, it all started with the book, anyway.”

Keith just grunted, but Jerry leaned in.  “Yeah, what about that?  How did this happen in the first place?”

“Well, her Aunt Agatha died a couple weeks ago.”

“Oh.”

“Sorry to hear that, man.”

All three men paused, looking down at the ground as they each tried awkwardly to think of a way to comfort a casual acquaintance for the loss of a loved one.  Although, in this case, the loved one was only linked by marriage.  Were condolences necessary?  The etiquette was hazy and unclear, so they elected to just pause for silence for a few seconds.

Finally, Bill broke the momentary hush.  “Eh, no big loss,” he said, shrugging off the uncomfortable moment.  “We didn’t know her well, and the woman was crazy.  Always wore black, stayed locked away in her old Victorian house, one of those shut-ins.  But we went up to pack up her stuff, and we found the book.”

“The book that possessed her,” Keith interrupted, still looking unconvinced.

Bill started to answer, but then paused, shook his head, and rephrased.  “No, Keith, I don’t think the book possessed her.  I mean, not directly.”  He waved a hand, struggling for the right words.  “But the book had the spell that summoned the demon that possessed her.”

Jerry held up his hands, his eyebrows jumping.  “Wait, man.  So who said the spell?”

“Jerry, I was just getting to that!” Bill retorted, turning back and forth between the other two men as if unsure who to confront first.  “Let me get my story out!”

He sighed.  “Anyway, since you asked, I think my daughter did it.  Sarah gave the book to her, since she’s getting into that whole “goth” nonsense, and next thing we knew, there was a pentagram in blood on our kitchen floor.”

“Her blood?” Jerry burst out, his eyebrows climbing and knitting themselves together in alarm.

Bill quickly waved him back down.  “Nah, I think she grabbed one of the venison steaks from the freezer and dragged it around.”

“Oh.”  Jerry wanted his neighbor to continue telling his tale, but neighborhood formalities had to be upheld.  “Hey, those were delicious, by the way.  Thanks for sharing them.”

“My pleasure, we had more than we’d ever eat,” Bill replied, an accepted answer, before returning back to the story.  “But anyway, so Sarah’s the first one into the kitchen when we hear all the chanting, and she just freezes.  And I swear that I saw a cloud of smoke go shooting into her mouth.”

“Not a smoker, is she?” Keith asked.

“Nope.”

“Huh.  And you said it shot into her mouth?  Not out of it?”

Bill nodded, and Keith shrugged.  “Man, that’s crazy.”

For a moment, all of the men just stood around, flipping through their limited knowledge of demonic possession.  A couple of them had tried bringing horror movies home, hoping that their wives would feel the need for closeness after getting a few jump scares, but after Rich accidentally left the DVD in the player and his kid put the thing on, well, the wives quickly put an end to that trend.  The men vaguely remembered something about needing bells and candles and a Bible, but they couldn’t even claim any degree of expertise in the subject.

Eventually, Jerry broke the silence.  “So what, do we need to exercise her or something?”

“Dude, I think you mean exorcise,” Keith corrected, making good use of his one piece of knowledge on the topic.

“Yeah, whatever,” Jerry waved him off.  The man kept his attention focused on Bill.  “But really.  How do we get the demon out?”

Bill held up his hands in a forestalling gesture.  “Well, wait a minute!  See, at first I was thinking the same thing.  But now, I’m actually kind of not minding Sarah being possessed.”

Bill smiled for a moment as the eyes of both of his conversational companions widened.  As usual, Jerry managed to get his mouth open before Keith.  “Wait, what?  But there’s a demon in her, you’re saying!”

“Yeah… but the demon is trying really hard to pass itself off as a human!” Bill answered, grinning.

The blank looks on his companions showed that they didn’t understand.  “What’s that mean?”

Before he answered, Bill did something else with his grill, opening a small window to peek at the chicken breasts inside, and then closing it with a nod.  “Well, she’s doing the dishes, cleaning the house, buying groceries, taking care of all the chores – and trust me, she’s like an animal in the bedroom now!” he explained, a wide grin on his face.

Both of the other men nodded in customary, ritual jealousy.  “Dude,” they both chorused, although a note of concern tinged their voices.  This was a devil, after all.  Maybe.

“Hey!  It had been a while for us!” Bill defended, before anyone could attack him for possibly sleeping with a member of Hell.  “Sometimes a guy is just happy to be getting some, even if the woman might have a tiny little demon in her!”

The other two reconsidered, weighing the two sides.  Sleeping with a beast from Hell was bad, they knew, but on the other hand, they both knew the feeling of a cold bedroom far too well.  “Well, maybe,” Keith eventually gave in.

Jerry was a bit more focused on the conversation.  “So Bill, what are you going to do?”

Bill opened his mouth to answer, but then paused and shrugged.  “Oh, I don’t know.  I’ll take her to church on Sunday, maybe.  If she doesn’t start smoking in the service, well, maybe it’s for the best, you know?”

“S’pose so,” Keith agreed.  His mind, however, clearly was still a couple sentences behind.  “Crazy in the bedroom, you said?”

“Oh yeah,” Bill grinned, happy to be back on a topic where he could brag.  “I’ve got scratches all up and down my back.  And I think she’s even more eager than I am!  Makes me feel like a teenager again!  I’m thinking she might be one of those ‘suck-bus’ demons, or whatever.”

“Well, damn,” Keith said, unable to keep a note of jealousy out of his voice.  He held his mouth shut for a second, but eventually the thought on his mind couldn’t be contained any longer.  “Think your daughter could bring that book over to my place?”

Bill smiled, but pretended that he hadn’t heard this last question.  Instead, he opened up his grill, picking up a pair of tongs and experimentally lifting the chicken.  “Looks like the meat’s about done!  Who wants to eat first?”

Talk in the middle of the cul-de-sac returned back to more normal topics, such as who had the worst lawn, what new rules the homeowner’s association might try and enforce next, and whether this would be a good year for the local high school football team.  But secretly, not sharing their thoughts with the others, each man pondered Bill’s confession – and whether they could manage to get their hands on that cursed, Hellish book of his.