The man in the black suit sat alone at the end of the bar, his hair glowing orange under the neon light of the “OPEN” sign.  He stared down fixedly at his files, the papers spread out across the table.  His cup of coffee sat off to one side, carefully placed away from the papers to avoid any accidental stains.

Behind the counter, I shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot.  I couldn’t wait for the end of my shift, when I could sit down, take a load off my feet and relax.  There were no other customers; you couldn’t call the little diner busy at the best of times, and just about no one passing through a dinky little rest stop on the highway after sundown would bother stopping.  But the man in the dark suit was always here.

He was a lawyer.  I was pretty sure of that fact.  I had once dared to ask, while stopping by his table with his customary cup of coffee.  He hadn’t given me a straight answer, I don’t think, but he had sighed deeply.  Spreading his hand out to take in the files and papers, he had said something about always having too many cases.  I had laughed, I think.  I didn’t know if it was a joke, but I laughed nonetheless.

I glanced up at the clock.  Just past 11:30 PM.  Closing time was still a half hour away.  Shifting uncomfortably, I reached back and picked up the pot of coffee, circling around the counter to head along the diner’s narrow aisle.

He always took the booth at the end of the diner.  By now, I knew his routine like clockwork.  He would arrive shortly after nine, just after the sun had finally given up and dropped below the horizon.  His time varied slightly, probably due to traffic, but he would always arrive, shed his long black coat, and sit at his table at the end.  No one was ever in his seat.

One time, when the diner was empty, I had decided to rest my legs, dropping into the nearest booth.  It wasn’t until I was seated that I realized I was in the lawyer’s booth.  But after I had sat, I knew it immediately.  It felt wrong, somehow; I couldn’t shake the feeling that somewhere, just beyond the edge of hearing, somebody was dragging their fingernails down a chalkboard.  As soon as I stood up, the feeling vanished.  It was probably nothing.

Coffee pot in hand, I approached the last booth.  Still several feet away, I could see that he still had a half cup, but there was nothing else to do.  He had probably already heard the click of my shoes on the cheap linoleum.

I stepped up to the table.  “More coffee, sir?” I asked politely, managing to muster up a small smile.

Lowering the sheaf of paper he had been perusing, the lawyer gave me a smile in return.  I felt my own expression wilt slightly.  I held back from looking over my shoulder at the kitchen, wishing hopelessly that Cookie would manage to rise from his drunken slumber.  I knew that the lawyer wasn’t going to cause trouble, but I was still scared about basically being alone in this diner, miles from any other towns.

The man shook his head slightly.  “No thanks,” he said.  I thought I could hear the slightest hint of a Southern drawl in his voice.  “I think this will last me up until close, dear.”

The lawyer always stayed up until we closed, at midnight.  I gave the man a wordless nod, backing away slightly.  I had turned to return back to the relative safety of the counter, but the man spoke once more.

“I’ve got your file here, too,” he commented, his voice sounding calm.  I turned, to see him holding up a thin sheet of paper.  “Not much substance to it, though.  Not really worth my time to consider, at this moment.”

I should have said something.  I should have confronted the man, asked him what he was talking about, demanded to see that single sheet of paper.  But I didn’t.  I retreated back, escaping to the other end of the diner, waiting for my shift to end so I could leave, as if I wouldn’t see the man again the next night.

As I walked away, I risked a single glance back.  The man was still sitting in his booth, his face half turned so one eye could follow me.  A thin smile played about his lips.  After a long look, he returned to sorting his files, sitting alone, beneath the glow of the neon sign.

Part I.  Part II.

There is a crack in my ceiling.
Sometimes, late at night, a light shines through.
In the dark, trapped below, my eyes are drawn upward to that eldritch haze.

From where does this light emerge?
Soft, what light through yonder crack breaks?
The hue is different.  This light is ancient, tired, has traveled across dimensions to reach this place.

At times, I am overwhelmed.
Deadlines at work, issues at home, familial and familiar frustrations.
At these times, I gaze up, into that baleful glow, and am relieved.

The light doesn’t care about my problems.
The light doesn’t care about day or night or deadlines.
The light doesn’t care about time, about eons passed between the lonely galaxies.

Once, overcome by a fit of boldness, I fetched a ladder.
I put my eye to that crack, staring out of my prison into the light.
My eye, wild and desperate, drank in the sights it beheld.

Perhaps someday I will give up on my mundane life.
Climb up, break open that crack in the ceiling, and unleash what I saw upon the world.
For on that ladder, staring across time . . .

. . . I saw dragons.

And the dragons looked back at me.

Muriel always told me not to pick at them.

Part I.  Part II.

Our hike took the better part of two days.  We were given a lift by Jeep for the first leg of our journey, but rough roads and the need for stealth quickly forced us on to foot.  Jarrod led us through deep valleys, narrow caves, and dense jungle, somehow managing to annoyingly vanish from sight a few feet ahead, only to pop out from behind a tree to wave us onward before disappearing again.

It was the morning of the third day, and the sun was already half risen in the sky when we reached the mouth of a large cave, sunk into the side of a hill.  Jarrod stood at the stony entrance, wearing his usual manic grin.  “Come, come, we are nearly to the beasts!” he cried to us.  “Simply through this cave, and we shall see them!”

For once, Jarrod remained close to us as we ventured through the cave, and I soon understood why.  The cave was a labyrinth of complex turns, narrow passages, and pitfalls, waiting to swallow the unwary traveler. My sense of unease was screaming at me to turn back, but I knew that I would be hopelessly lost.  So instead, we pushed onward, our lights doing a poor job of cutting through the darkness.

After what seemed an eternity of wandering slowly through the cold darkness of the cave, we emerged, blinking, into bright sunlight.  On a small ledge in front of us, Jarrod threw his hands wide.

“Behold, my friends!” he cried.  “Look upon nature, in its beauty!”  We both looked past him and stared in amazement.

We were gazing down into a huge valley, covered in long grass and spotted here and there with small clumps of trees.  Mountains rose sharply on one side of us, while plains stretched off into the distance on the other side.  The scene was beautiful.  But my eyes were fixed on the animals.

Fewer than a thousand feet away, a herd of rhinos was making its way through the tall grass, down the side of a hill.  A herd.  I counted no fewer than fifteen adults, and half as many juveniles.  All of them sprouted both horns.  There was no sign of guards, or indeed, any other humans.  This was impossible.

Beside me, the American’s mouth had dropped open.  I felt like I had the same expression.  “This is impossible,” I muttered.  “There’s no way that a herd of rhinos that size could still exist in the wild.”

The American shook his head.  “I think it’s more impossible than that,” he replied.  When I turned to look at him, confused, he extended a meaty hand to point skyward.

As my gaze rose, the meaning of his words instantly became clear.  Despite heavy cloud cover, the scene was still brightly lit.  Although clouds obscured one sun, the second sun, hanging slightly lower, was still shining down brightly.

There were two suns.  I took a step back, trying to comprehend what this meant.  “We aren’t on Earth any more,” I said hoarsely.  “Somehow, we’ve gone somewhere else.”  I turned on Jarrod, confused and angry.  “What have you done?”

Jarrod merely shrugged, still looking infuriatingly unconcerned.  “It is a different place,” he said, “but it is still Nature, yes?  And there are still the animals you seek, free and in the wild!”

“Not quite,” cut in the American.  He had been peering now at the rhinos as they traipsed their way through the tall grass.  Now that the first ones were emerging from the tall grass on the side of the small pond at the base of the hill, we could see that they had six thick gray legs, rather than four.

Other than these small differences, however, I realized that the scene still looked uncannily like Africa.  The trees seemed fairly normal, as did the grass.  The blue sky and white clouds were also reassuringly familiar. Next to us, Jarrod spread his arms.

“It is not quite the same, but it is still the quest, no?” he said, grinning at us.  “You against the wild, to bring down a great beast!  It is the hunt!”

I had to admit that he had a point.  I didn’t understand how we had come to this other world, but Jarrod was proof that we could theoretically return.  And here, the great horned beasts before us were unguarded, ready to face off against, to challenge.  I unshouldered my pack, sliding out my Mauser.

“He’s right,” I said, making up my mind.  “And I plan to meet that challenge.”

Author’s note: Inspired by real life events!

To quote Gob, I had made a terrible mistake.

This realization slowly dawned on me as I sat in my rather cramped seat, staring out the tiny window and trying to ignore the wailing baby ahead of me in 17E. The ground had long since disappeared below us, and clouds obscured my view. Probably too late to turn around, I thought.

The realization hadn’t started to set in until after I had frantically dashed through the loading bridge at the last minute, after I had settled down into the first available seat (thank you Southwest Airlines for your lazy different methods of arranging seating), and managed to regain some semblance of my breath.  Only once I started looking around did I notice a distinct lack of heavy coats and other insulating clothing.  For a flight into the Minnesota winter, that was very odd.

Instead, everyone seemed to be in shorts and sandals.  In fact, several people seemed to have garlands of fake flowers strewn around their necks.  That really should have tipped me off earlier, shouldn’t it?

I was on the wrong flight.  I, of course, took the most logical course of action.  I waited for the drink cart, currently three rows ahead, to roll up to my aisle.  “All the alcohol, please,” I said politely to the waitress, a blonde in her late forties.  

She stared back at me, looking confused.  “Um, we have rum, vodka, and tequila, for five dollars a bottle,” she began hesitantly.

“Yes,” I cut in.  The woman still looked confused, so I decided to clarify.  “I would like six of each, please,” I said.  I fished in my wallet and pulled out my credit card, waving it enticingly.  The woman didn’t seem happy about the purchase, but she rang me up.

“Anything else?” she asked.

“Yes.  One coke, please.  Diet, if you have it.”  She scowled and passed me a Pepsi.

And I had thought myself so lucky!  After having my bags pulled aside at security, I had heard a final boarding call for my gate, and sprinted across the airport.  I was the last one down the jetway, and even though my electronic ticket had stubbornly refused to scan, the flight attendant had been gracious enough to wave me through.  Now, of course, I realized why it hadn’t functioned properly, and wished that he would have been a bit more of a jerk to me.

I reached up and pushed the call button for a flight attendant, hoping to not get the angry drink lady.  Fortunately, a young and plump female stewardess tottered over.  “Can I help you, sir?” she asked, not unkindly.

“Yes, hi,” I said.  “I’m not quite sure how to explain this, but I think I’m on the wrong flight.”  

The young lady stared back at me.  “Here, look,” I continued, pulling out my phone to access the boarding pass.

She stared at the phone.  “You know, all your personal electronics are supposed to be turned off right now.”

“Oh, give me a break,” I shot back.  “Everybody just puts theirs on airplane mode, if they do anything at all.  We’ve all seen the Mythbusters episode and know that they don’t interfere.  But look,” I pressed on, holding up my e-ticket.  “I’m supposed to be traveling to Minnesota right now!”

The stewardess examined the ticket with caution.  “Sir, this plane is traveling to Honolulu.”

“Yes, I have realized that,” I said, gritting my teeth to hold back any sharp comments.  “That is why I am asking you what to do.”

The stewardess headed off to confer with some other people on the airline.  I sipped on my tiny bottles of booze while I waited for her to return.  

Eventually, she came back to my seat, looking uncomfortable.  “I’m afraid we can’t turn the plane around,” she said, looking genuinely sorry.  Whether she was sorry for me, or simply that she had to be the bearer of bad news, I couldn’t say.  “However, I’ve spoken to an airline representative, and they agree that they should have caught this mistake.  So we’ll put you up in a hotel in Honolulu until the next flight out with connections to Minnesota.”

“How long will that be?” I asked.

She shrugged.  “Probably about three days.”  

As she tottered away, I sat back and took a long pull of alcohol.  Three days!  Three days stuck in Honolulu before I could fly back.  Three days, stuck in Honolulu, on the airline’s dime, in the warmth and sun… a smile slowly grew across my face.  

Maybe my day wasn’t going so badly after all.

Part I.

“Aw right!” the man greeted us loudly.  American, from his accent; somewhere in the south.  The model of what every true hunter hated.  Loud, crass, and relying on overkill instead of skill.  I gritted my teeth and gave the slightest of nods in reply.  He seemed not to notice.  “Let’s go get us some goddamn rhinos!” he nearly shouted, hefting a meaty fist.

Jarrod didn’t seem put off by the other man’s demeanor.  On the contrary, he was happy to accept another envelope of payment.  “Yes, yes, let us go,” he cried out in return, smiling broadly.  “Come.  Follow.  We have a long path to walk, and you do not want to be lost.”  He smiled even more broadly.  “No, do not get lost on this path.”

Turning lightly on one heel, Jarrod took off into the dense forest.  Hoping that I wasn’t walking into disaster, I followed, with the American bringing up the rear.

Continue with part three!

I sat in the dusty, sweltering, miserable excuse for a bar, grimacing between sips of too-warm beer.  Flies buzzed above my head, ignoring my occasional attempts to wave them away.  I was thoroughly dejected, soaking in my sweat and failure.

Nearly five weeks previously, I had arrived in the Congo, equipped with a modified Mauser double-barrel, fifty grand in good old US currency, and an iron-willed determination to bring down the Big Five.  The buffalo and the lion had both been surprisingly easy, and the leopard had given me an enjoyable stalk before I finally cornered him in a thick but isolated copse of trees.

The elephant . . . I smiled briefly at the memory.  It had required several sizable bribes just to secure a narrow window of opportunity, but I had ended up staring down a young bull, just fully grown, short-tempered and feisty.  For a long moment we had both stood our ground, two apex species facing off in the pre-dawn twilight.

The bull had tossed his head, showing his tusks in challenge.  I knew that he was about to charge, that the two heavy shells in my Mauser were all that stood between me and death.  Center-of-mass shots wouldn’t stop a headlong charge, wouldn’t drop the beast quickly enough to save me.  I needed to pierce the skull, needed a perfect shot.

The long moment ended.  The young bull dropped his head and charged.  The rifle rose to my shoulder and barked once, twice.

I needn’t have bothered with the second shot.  The first round was dead center, hitting the elephant directly between the eyes.  I had stood my ground and watched as the beast slowly and ponderously collapsed before me.

Now, seated in the filthy bar, I still felt a small twinge of regret.  I hadn’t needed the second shot.  If I had trusted my gut, had held back, I would have been able to count myself among the true elites, those that had brought down the largest big game animal in the world with a single shot.  But that small regret withered and wilted in the heat of my current rage.

I had vanquished four of the Big Five.  Only the rhinoceros stood between me and victory.  But here, I had hit a wall.  My contacts were of no help.  Bribes had failed, or had only led to dead ends.  Even my acquaintances among the poachers had merely shrugged their shoulders.  “They are too rare,” they had told me.  “Too many guards, and the punishment for trying is death.  It cannot be done.”

The hell with that.  I still had better than half of my cash remaining, and I refused to give up.  Finally, a tip from a back-alley Nambian gang member had led me here, to this miserable excuse for a watering hole.  I had been told to look for a man who went by Jarrod, who had one blind eye, who smiled too often.  “He is a crazy man,” the Nambian had told me from the shadows.  “He is touched by the creeping madness, and half of what he speaks are lies.  But he claims to know where the rhinos are, and has sold the horns before.  He is your best shot.  He was my only shot, I thought, but I didn’t share that with the gangster.

Two beers later, Jarrod finally arrived.  He entered quietly, but I knew him as soon as I saw his face.  His right eye was a milky white, with a bright blue iris.  No dark pupil seemed to be present; there was merely a disc of blue floating in the surrounding whiteness.  An idiot’s grin was painted across his gaunt features.  His lanky frame moved easily through the maze of rickety and broken chairs as he headed directly towards me.  He dropped into the chair across from me, stared into my eyes, and giggled.

Continue with part two!

Continued from here.

I held up the small die that I had picked up from the smoking crater at my feet.  Turning it over, I stared, flummoxed, at the vowels printed on each side.  “Why in the world are you throwing a piece of a Boggle game at me?” I asked aloud.

Across the food court, the Word Wizard cackled loudly in his grating voice.  “My spellcasting methods may be unusual, but they are wildly effective!” he cried. “Now, you will suffer a fate worse than death!”  He reached down into a pouch tucked into his belt, which I now realized was full of Boggle dice.  He made his hurling motion again, and I was forced to dodge another spellbolt.

As I ducked behind a large planter, watching the spellbolt whizz over my head to explode in a shower of sparks, I felt my cell phone ring in my pocket.  Pulling out my headset, I hit the answer button.

On the line, I heard my number two, a creepy and twisted little tech genius named Sin.  Despite the name, he’s invaluable as an assistant, offering insight into many of the criminals I came up against when collecting bounties.  “How’s the wizard going, Rayne?” he asked in my ear.

I grunted in response.  “This is barely worth my time,” I replied.  “He’s a kook, but not much of a threat.  Maybe a two, at most, on the scale.”

From behind me, I heard a shriek as I uttered these words.  Apparently, the Word Wizard had exceptionally good hearing.  “How dare you call me a kook!” Another bolt rattled my makeshift barricade.

With a sigh, I decided it was time to end this problem and collect my bounty.  I drew my handgun from its shoulder holster, and, raising it up over the top of my barrier, I fired off several shots without looking.  I was rewarded with a scream of mingled shock and pain.

Popping up over the top of my barricade, I kept my gun out as I cautiously approached the Word Wizard, now sitting, moaning, on top of one of the tables.  As I drew closer, I could see that he was clutching one leg, from which a thin trickle of blood was dripping.  Reaching out slowly with one hand, keeping the gun in the other, I swiped the bag of Boggle dice from the Wizard’s belt.

I stepped back.  I was fairly certain that the Word Wizard couldn’t do crap without his ‘special dice’, but I wasn’t going to take any chances.  I spared a quick look into the bag.  “Seriously?  And you managed to get a bounty with just this?”  I asked myself aloud.

Between soft sounds of pain, the Wizard looked up at me, a wretched expression on his face.  “Hey, come on, man,” he said.  “I mean, my only ability is to shoot bursts of energy using dice from a board game.  If I don’t make a name for myself, no one will take me seriously.”

“No one takes you seriously now,” I shot back.  “I mean, you’ve got a silly name, you’re trying to incite chaos in a mall, and have you seen your outfit?”

The Wizard looked down at himself.  “What’s wrong with my outfit?” he said plaintively, as I tightened the plastic ties around his hands.

“Look, it really isn’t that hard,” I said as I hauled him to his feet.  Something about the poor guy just made it impossible for me to stay furious at him for attempting to kill me.  “Pick out a name that sounds more dangerous, put on something black, probably with spikes, and maybe rig up a method for dispensing these,” I shook the bag of Boggle dice, “better than pulling them out of a pouch.  Turn them into energy bolts or something.”

By the time I had dragged the Word Wizard down to the office, where he would be processed and I would receive my bounty, the blood flowing from his leg wound had ebbed to a trickle, and a considering expression had grown on his face.  “Death Spell, that’s not bad,” he mused.  And I bet I could rig up some wrist launchers for the dice…”

I rolled my eyes as I pocketed the check and walked away.  Seriously, I thought to myself.  The bounties I was assigned got weirder every day.  I mean, Boggle?  Come on!