Outside the Wire
by
Richard Farnsworth
Published by Richard Farnsworth at Smashwords
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2012 Richard Farnsworth
ISBN: 978-1-4661-8781-8
Smashwords Edition, License Notes.
The ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given to other people. If you would like to share this book please direct them to smashwords where they can download their own copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s hard work.
Forward
Fallen angels, demons, lycanthropes, monsters and a disembodied hand (or is it), Outside the Wire is a collection of six previously published short stories about things we don’t want to let in, all anthologized for your reading pleasure.
“Succumbing to Gravity” tells the story of Greg, a fallen angel and heroin addict asked to do more than he is able. It first appeared in an online magazine (now defunct) named “Nosse Morte” in 2008. I later expanded it to novel-length picked up by Reliquary in 2010. The novel is available on amazon as a paperback or ebook editions (shameless plug).
“The Gift of the Bouda” is the story of an Army Officer attacked while on a mission in the War on Terror by a were-hyena; the Bouda. It first appeared in the lycanthrope-themed anthology “The Beast Within”, 2007 from Graveside Tales. I later expanded the story into my second novel of the same name, released in 2011 from Salvo (the Microbrew of publishing). It is also available as a paperback and ebook (second shameless plug).
“The Long Road to Sanctum” is a post-apocalyptic lycanthrope tale that appeared in the second lycanthrope-themed anthology from Graveside Tales in 2011; “The Beast Within; Predator and Prey”. (I know you may find this hard to believe, but it is available from online too.)
“B.E.K.s” tells what happens when you mix an urban legend with the war on drugs. It appeared in the anthology “Abominations” in 2008 by Shroud.
“The Sacrifices of Automated Tabulation” is a steam-punk themed story, telling what happens when demonology meets the Industrial revolution. This was my best-selling short story, appearing in Steampunk Tales #7 (an iTunes app) and the “Cover of Darkness” anthology.
“Dougie’s Hand” came out in the online journal “Rose and Thorn, in the spring 2010 issue. A fun story of perception.
“The Virtual Huntress” is a previously unpublished short story. It is a bit of a departure, as there are no monsters here. The inspiration came from a conversation relating to drone aircraft and the morality of war conducted at long distance. Given the advancements in UAV technology, it’s only a matter of time before Soccer-Moms can telecommute to the battlefield.
Table of Contents:
Succumbing to Gravity (the short story)
Gift of the Bouda (the short story)
The Long Road to Sanctum
B.E.K.s
Sacrifices of Automated Tabulation
Dougie’s Hand
Virtual Huntress
Succumbing to Gravity
A long, thin line of clouds stretched out across the azure sky all the way to the western horizon. I descended through the cool air above the Steppe and a teasing updraft bumped from my left. I dipped my wing to catch the uplifting thermal, but it dissipated before I wheeled into the column. With two strong beats of my golden wings I bought thirty feet of altitude.
Below me and to the right a bronze-colored eagle hung in a lazy upward spiral on a rising column of heated air. I stretched my left wing up and out and traced my own leisurely arc through the sky and down into his elevator. I could see the apprehensive tension in the raptor as we circled at opposite sides of the column.
“No fear, brother,” I called to him. He winged over and away; I slipped sideways and found that snaky, tightly wound, central core of air that shot me upward.
With arms stretched out beneath my wings I flexed my fingers. I arched my back, tensed my legs and splayed out my toes. I tightened the long flat muscles along the cords of my wings. My long flaxen primary feathers stood out like individual fingers beneath the primary coverts of dark russet, flecked with black and bronze variegations.
I spiraled upward and held as much of the air around me as I could. Over the top, the column was gone and I soared. All the world was beneath me, all of heaven above.
A cloud front came up behind me and a sudden down draft caught me unawares. I dropped a few hundred feet and left my stomach above. Nausea took its place. Eight long beating sweeps of my wings and I regained half the altitude I'd lost. The air cooled suddenly and tight little patches of gooseflesh puckered on my bare skin.
The earth pulled at me. I beat my great wings again, not so easy now to stay aloft. I raced ahead but still the clouds overtook me, condensed and squeezed out a sheet of rain. Looking up as the drops fell was disorienting.
I beat harder, but I could feel the air settling around me in a down draft. Panic welled up with the bile in my throat. The dark, wet ground raced up to meet me. A whimper escaped as I unwillingly gave in to gravity’s unforgiving embrace.
Hard wet asphalt pressed into my face. The impact wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. I reached up to brace against the ground and saw the syringe still hanging from my arm, the stainless steel needle pointing to a spidery blue vein. I let my arm sink back down, and watched the rain dimple the inky puddle near my face.
I always relived that flight when I was lit. I flexed my atrophied flight muscles to feel the wing stumps quiver. So many, many things I had lost. The phantom pain along the missing cords of my wings made me wince. I was freezing, but I couldn’t tell if it was the soaked clothing or the cold flashes that I got when I came down.
“Greg? There you are.”
I tried to focus on the voice and brushed the needle from my arm.
“Oh Greg, you know you shouldn’t shoot up in the open like this.” That was Sarah’s voice in the dark, my judgmental little runaway. Her smack habit wasn’t as bad as mine so she felt comfortable lecturing me. Easy to do when she hadn’t fallen as far as I had.
“I wasn’t in the open, I was behind a dumpster,” I slurred. Somehow I had ended up sprawled in the center of the alley, with the dumpster behind me.
“Someone could do something to you.” Her genuine concern was both irritating and comforting.
I wanted to ask what they could do to me that hadn’t already been done?
She grabbed my arm to help me sit up. I batted at her. It was easier to just stay where I was and to lay there in the filth and the muck. The rain pelting down on me.
“Come on Greg, up and at ‘em. You’ll get pneumonia if you lay out here in the street.” She pulled me to a sitting position and I leaned against the dumpster. The streetlamp shed a little light into the alley and I could make out her profile kneeling beside me. She produced a crusty towel from somewhere and dried my face.
“I was flying.” I closed my eyes and rested my head on her shoulder.
“Sometimes I feel like I’m flying too. But it’s just the drugs, Greg.”
She didn’t understand what I meant and it would take too long to explain.
“Let’s get you some coffee; I got someone I want you to read.” She stood and walked behind the dumpster.
I rested my head back against the smooth, cold metal and let the drops run down my face. It was so real this time. So real. My tears were lost in the rain.
Sarah came back around with my threadbare overcoat. I guess I’d left it there before I launched. She shook it out and draped it over my shoulders as I leaned forward. Pressing her fingers to my temples, she pulled my head forward and touched her lips to my forehead.
“It’ll be okay.”
No. No, it would never be okay.
“Listen, I’m no good for a reading right now,” I said. One of my residual gifts; if I concentrated I could see a mortal’s soul. As the soul rested slightly out of phase with the physical world I could often see hints of past events, sometimes a bit of the future. Philosophers or theologians could debate how it worked, but the trick usually earned me enough cash to score some junk.
“She’s scared and she can pay.”
That last bit of information reached through the haze. “How much?”
“Dinner for both of us and fifty bucks too, I bet.”
“Is dinner your booking fee?”
She smiled. I couldn’t see it in the dark, but I knew she wore that little gapped-tooth grin. She helped me to my feet and we balanced awkwardly for a minute as I dry heaved. She reached up and wiped my mouth and chin before we started off. Though small in stature her soul was bigger than any two people.
I remembered the first part and said, “Scared of what?”
She didn’t say. Didn’t have to, I could feel it. Alone with the monsters in the dark, that’s what everyone's afraid of.
I stumbled beside her with that kicking feeling in my left leg. She helped to support me and guide me as I shook the cobwebs out. Soon I’d be good for a few hours, maybe through until morning.
“How’d you know where I was?”
“Jimenez said she saw you get a score from Beenie when she was working sixty-third. I just checked every alley from Beenie’s spot to the apartment until I found you.” She sounded pretty proud of herself. The apartment to which she referred was a room we shared in what aspired to be a slum. Often no running water or electric, but it was dry.
We stopped a few times so that I could dry heave some more. Slow going, weaving between the deeper puddles. This wasn’t at all like flying.
She shepherded me to a late night café. It was the nasty kind of place people like us could be served. I saw my reflection in the big plate glass window coming up. I had been radiant once. Now my wet straw-colored hair hung greasy and limp, framing those high angelic cheekbones that used to drive the women wild. Oh, what a different story my reflection told now. Gaunt and haunted, I looked like every other burnout in the city. Sarah looked a little better, but the dark eye make-up made her look more cheap than Gothy. What a pair we made.
The smell of stale grease greeted us inside and no heads turned when the little bell above the door announced our arrival.
The woman I’d come to meet was sitting alone, pretty and young, swathed in a heavy coat. We sat opposite her on the cracked vinyl seat of the booth, and she looked at Sarah, and then furtively at me. She complained about how long she had waited and Sarah made an excuse. Her soul was old and I saw a line from a poem I’d once read in her, something about wandering in eternal fear of falling into the indefinite.
She wouldn’t make eye contact and didn’t believe that I could really read her so I told her that.
“Is that all your magic?” she asked, a little flash in her chocolate brown eyes. A corresponding glint of light caught as she breathed, just above the top button of her blouse. A small gold cross on a chain rested at the little dip in the smooth flesh where the throat tucked in behind the collarbones.
“No, that’s the surface stuff. Tell me what you want and we’ll see if I can reveal your inner most.”
Sarah’s bony elbow nudged me. “Be nice.”
“How nice?”
She didn’t answer. She just looked at the pretty young woman and said, “This is Greg. Like I told you before, he’s the guy that can tell if there really is anything funny going on with your dreams. Greg, this is Maria.”
“He looks like a drowned junkie.”
I half-shrugged. I suppose my appearance was an occupational hazard.
“Is that how you can see into the Santeria? Because you’re on the stuff?”
“He’s okay now, it’s just cause of the rain,” Sarah said. Her tone was between placating and matter-of-fact, she didn’t want to jeopardize the deal.
“How long you been using?” She had a Latin accent. Maybe Puerto Rican, I couldn’t tell.
“Heroin?”
“Yeah.” Her hostility had an undercurrent of sadness. Maybe it was the wisps of loss I saw in her soul.
“On and off since eighteen-ninety, I think. Mostly on.”
The young woman tucked a wayward strand of black hair behind an ear and gave a disbelieving cluck with her tongue.
“Like I said, Greg used to be an angel,” Sarah whispered proudly.
Maria raised an eyebrow. She didn’t believe.
“It’s true, he still grows little feathers where his wings used to be.”
“What happened? You get demoted?” The cross flashed as Maria tucked her elbows close to her sides, like a boxer ready to deflect the body blows. She looked into my eyes then. Such sadness.
“Judged. Judged and found wanting, with ninety-eight of my closest friends. Believe me sister, that was a really bad day.”
The waitress came over to take our order. I saw the huddled tangles of unfulfilled dreams and fifty or so hard years there as she set the coffee pot on the table lip. She laughed as she took my order and with nicotine-yellowed nails biting into the pencil stub, she scratched it onto the notepad. She called me ‘Hon’, took Sarah’s order and poured out the old smelling coffee before she moved on. I held the mug against my face to warm my cheek and took a sip. It was acrid but good enough that it made my stomach growl.
“The reading is fifty bucks on top of the meal, like we talked about,” Sarah interrupted. “Remember how he helped your friend, Jessica? With her dreams? So he can do the same for you. Right”
I didn’t remember a Jessica. I usually didn’t remember any of them after I got a score though. Except Sarah. I couldn’t get her out of my head after that first time I read her. Now she was my booking agent, and my best friend. She and Milton, who Sarah had brought into my life. Or was it the other way around?
Maria nodded and pulled a billfold out of her thick wool coat. She took out three dog-eared bills and rested them at the midpoint of the grime-covered table. Such a trusting soul.
I laid both my hands out, palms up. The sleeve of my overcoat pulled back to reveal blue veins, stark against my pale skin. The veins traced up and disappeared into the elaborate tattooing on my forearms. Marks that weren’t meant for human eyes, but were just too much trouble to keep covered.
Maria glanced down and the look she gave made me feel she thought them dirty. She gently rested her two hands on top of mine. They were small. I ran my thumbs over the backs and she flinched a little, but didn't pull away. Hard. Sinewy. She took care to use lotions and the skin was supple. In another life maybe they'd be the hands of a wool sorter. Her dark eyes locked onto mine and I could see.
I closed my eyes quickly at the jolt of it. I tasted copper and suppressed a shudder. There was a hint of familiarity there in that strong soul. It was an old soul indeed, a soul that could really make a difference. The kind of soul a nether-worlder could really sink his teeth into. She had paid for a show and that’s what I owed her. A show, not the proclamation of her damnation that I saw.
“You live with your Mother. Also Maria. You work as a seamstress on the lower east side. Three bus stops from home.”
I felt her nod encouragement, but she was not convinced.
“You lost jewelry. A brooch. It belonged to your Grandmother. You had left it on the nightstand and it fell between the headboard and the mattress.”
She didn’t believe that either, but if she had time I knew she would check.
“Your little sister has passed on. Three years now. There is no fault there for you. Sometimes the little ones are just called home early.”
She almost succeeded in pulling her hands away. I opened my eyes and could see it. She arched a raven black eyebrow. She didn’t know what I saw.
The waitress came with our order. Sarah asked for extra crackers with her soup. I had a double stack of pancakes. I noted the ghost of a jagged white line there on the left wrist as I disengaged my hands from Maria’s and cut into my stack.
“Ask him,” Sarah said.
Don’t ask if you don’t really want to know. Most people don't really want their worst fears confirmed. They just want a pat on the hand so that they can continue with their delusions that everything will be all right.
Maria steeled herself and said, “There’s this man, I see.”
“There are many men, Maria. Billions in fact. The earth teems with them like locusts.”
Sarah nudged me again harder.
“There’s this man I see in my dreams. Not really a man, I don’t see him so well. Mostly the eyes. It’s not good though, you know?”
Sarah nodded encouragement for me. I speared a syrup-soaked wedge of pancakes. I loved pancakes; I could eat them at every meal.
“It’s a bad thing. Sometimes I even think that I see him standing behind me in reflections, but when I turn he is not there.”
I picked a piece of eggshell from my tongue and asked, “Reflections?”
“Yes, like in the mirror, a window or sometimes on the side of glass of water. He is there watching, behind me, and when I turn to see him he is not there. This man, he makes me worry.”
She should. There is nothing good in this. In fact, within the next three hours or so, the harbinger for this man would crack her open like a nut and extract the sweet meat of her soul. But what could I do about that? I only felt like a hero when I was lit and now I was almost all the way down.
She described the wicked strangeness of her dreams that I knew too well. Then she asked me, “Do you see what I should do?” I had indeed misread the sadness in her eyes, as it was despair.
“If you see this man, leave him alone. Get some salt on the way home. When you turn in tonight, pull your bed from the wall and pour the salt in a thick circle around it. That should keep the dreams away. Also, I’m told burning a fish will work, but I haven’t tried it.”
“Is that all?”
I tilted the plate, scooped up the extra syrup with an egg-yolk stained spoon and said, “Well, you’ll find the brooch.”
“I mean is there anything else I can do?”
“Are you Catholic?”
”No, I’m a Baptist.”
“A Puerto Rican Baptist?”
”I’m Dominican. Why do you ask if I’m Catholic?”
“I was going to suggest confession and a candle to the Holy Mother along with the salt, but I don’t know what Baptists do. I’m old-fashioned religion.”
“We pray to our Lord and Savior.”
Praying. Like that ever did any good. “Do that then.”
I had nothing else for her and after a bit she left unsatisfied, but our stomachs were full. When we were alone I got a Styrofoam cup for the rest of my lukewarm coffee while Sarah gathered up the bills and stuffed them into her coat pocket.
The rain was over but the streets were covered in thin puddles. The reflection of lights on the floor of the canyon-like street gave the night a subterranean feel. Sarah stopped beside a homeless man wrapped in garbage bags lying on the sidewalk and dumped her extra cracker packets into his lap.
I stepped over his outstretched leg and said, “Someday that Good Samaritan thing is gonna bite you in the ass, sweetness.”
The small smile she gave me made me feel even better than the full stomach.
After a few paces she reached out and took my hand in hers. We interlaced fingers and I pulled her hand up to brush my lips against the back of her fingers, her nails all chewed and covered in chipped black polish.
She asked, “What did you really see, Greg?”
Maybe it was the coming down, or the positive vibe I was feeling, but I still shouldn’t have told her. In the three years we’d been together I had always told her the truth. I didn’t want to lie to her now, so I described the highlights of my vision.
She didn't say anything at first. After the weighted pause she asked, “Why would they come for her?”
“I don’t know. She’s special, the fact she dreams of them like she does tells you she’s got serious mojo. Funny they come in the flesh though. That’s so old-school for them.”
“You can’t just leave her to that, Greg." Her voice caught a little, so she cleared her throat and said, "You need to help.”
“I did help.”
“The salt? Will that really do anything?”
“Hell no. For the dreams yeah, but not if one comes in the flesh. Maybe slow them down and give her time to pray. Perhaps the big guy will help.”
She pulled her hand from mine and stopped walking to give me that look of hers. When I stopped and turned back she said, “Greg, think of what you used to be.”
I shrugged and said, “Sorry, my hero days were over long ago."
"You can do something. I know you can. You have it in you to do great things."
I just shook my head and gave a little shrug. The look she gave me broke my heart, but I’d gotten used to letting people down. She turned from me and ran into the cavernous night.
I called after her to wait. To come back. I even threw my cup in frustration, but she didn’t stop. The rain picked up to a misty drizzle now as I turned back the other way and started home.
The night was at its darkest. And I was alone again. A city of millions and I was alone. But then, I had been alone for a long time. Probably for the best, as the lives I touched never seemed to be better after, than before. The full stomach was a nice change so I focused on that. It would have been better without the ache in my joints so I started to plan my next narcotics offense while pretending not to think about Sarah.
Three blocks down from the café, I stepped off the curb and noticed something small near the gutter. I reached down to pick up a dead sparrow. I sat down on the curb with my legs over the rush of gutter water and cradled the little corpse in my left hand. With my right I teased out the little wing.
“No flying for you either, little brother.”
I stretched out both the little wings and gently rested the bird on the stream of water and watched it not quite fly away. With the darkness the water was invisible but for snatches of reflected light. And the broken bird weaved first left then right on a glittering silver path through the detritus of the gutter.
I pondered that after I got my bearings and started back toward the pad. The dead bird pushed along involuntarily as if by an invisible hand, on his way to an appointment with a sewer grate. It was too cold and wet to philosophize and I just wanted to get back home and crash.
#
A working girl sheltered in the alcove that led into my building. Her soul was twisted and forlorn gray, shot through with little crimson rivulets of spite, all stuffed in an overweight body in fishnets and too much makeup. She'd turned at least two tricks already and her pupils were little pinpricks in the dark.
"Party, Greg?" With a cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth, she gave me her best impersonation of something desirable and I stifled a laugh.
I tried to be nice because she'd been someone's little girl once. I saw the father who died and the succession of her mother's boyfriends that turned the little princess into a whore. The last decade she'd spent on the street had polluted and poisoned the soul she'd been born with almost beyond recognition. I knew a monk who would have called all those hard lessons opportunities for personal growth. I called it a shame.
"All partied out, Miss Jimenez."
Her eyes roamed freely over me and she said, "For you it's half price."
"Hard to refuse, but you know how Sarah feels about that. Speaking of, why'd you dime me out to her about my score?"
"You know, she can be persistent. 'Sides, she was all proud, telling me you were cutting back on the smack. So I jus' had to say to her, no sister, you're man is a junkie to the core."
I nodded at her thoughtfulness and started toward the door. She stepped to intercept me and reached out a dirty hand.
I grabbed her wrist and wrenched it sideways. Hard enough to move her along, but not hard enough hurt. She smelled of cheap perfume, cigarettes and that musky pungency of stale sex.
"No touchy the goods, Anna." Skin to skin was rough on me. I was cool not being cruel to this broken spirit, but that didn't mean I wanted to be her friend.
The used-up woman shot me a spiteful look but didn't press it. Instead she looked away and said, "S'okay, your loss."
Loss. A common theme across the length and breadth of my existence.
I brushed past her, not inhaling, and pushed open the unlocked door.
Inside, I braced my hand against the wall where mailboxes were once mounted. I waited while the tingly little wave of post-high nausea swept through me. When I was sure I wouldn't puke up my pancakes I picked my way through the garbage in the dark hall to the room I shared with Sarah.
The hinges gave a screeching protest as I pushed the door open. I flicked the light switch, forgetting the electricity was off. Or maybe the bulb was burned out, I forget. Enough red neon came in from the no-name liquor store across the street that I could make my way through the sparse furniture to the kitchenette. The light started with one letter and added one until all were lit and then it blinked on and off twice before starting again. It wasn't quite a strobe, but the effect was great when I was lit. Not so good when I was trying to hold down my pancakes.
I opened the refrigerator and got a whiff of something old, but no light came on. So it must be the electric. I found a stash of fast-food ketchup packets behind the jug of vinegar I used to cut my smack, and slammed the door shut.
I should save them for when I was hungry, but I wanted to get the acidic taste of bile out of my mouth. I bit in and sucked a few down.
I spun at the sound of a little thump on the counter. Disembodied yellow eyes stared reproachfully at me. As the U-O-R blinked on, the rest of Milton came into view.
He gave me a low rumbling meow, followed by a shorter, louder one for effect.
"I'm not in the mood, cat."
Milton continued to stare and then slinked his inky-blackness across the counter, sitting on the edge, facing me but looking away. The cat pulled away as I tried to scratch him between the ears and repeated his short loud meow.
"Didn't Sarah feed you?"
I rummaged in a cabinet while the cat paced the counter, watching. I finally found the last little pull-top can of tuna and left it open on the counter for him.
The overcoat made a rustling swish as I dropped it in the hall. I went into the bedroom and flopped down on the thin mattress resting on the floor. I rolled over on my back and tried not to think of Sarah.
The blood red neon went through its brighter, brighter, off, and on routine and I stared at the archipelago of dark moldy splotches on the ceiling.
Sarah was liable to do something stupid. I didn't see it, but I knew she was going to warn that Dominican girl. This was a really bad time to play the Good Samaritan.
Milton padded in the doorway and hopped up on to my chest. His breath smelled of fish and his yellow eyes bored into me.
"She made her own bed cat," I said.
Sometimes I think cats are tuned into something the rest of us can't see. Other times I think they just serve as a really good vehicle for our own guilt.
"I'm not the hero she thinks I am."
Milton never blinked.
I rolled the cat off and said, "Fine. But you owe me for this one."
I grabbed my overcoat on the way out to rescue my friend. The friend that had saved me so many times from falling any further than I already had.
#
Five blocks and a bridge later, and I’d left the multi-storied tenements for a real neighborhood. A row of small frame houses huddled together in the dark.
I could tell Sarah was close, but not exactly where. I was good with general directions, but not so good with specifics. I slowed and tried to concentrate. Her soul was masked to me, so it was hard to place her. I recalled the image of the Dominican girl’s soul and reached out with my mind to find it. The blinking lights of all of the other souls bound in flesh in this crowded city masked hers. Ahead and to the right. I skirted a row house blocking my way and went into the alley beyond.
I paused and closed my eyes. The crash of glass and a scream led me to where I needed to go. I stumbled on a length of rebar protruding from a tidy heap of garbage in an alley and grabbed it up. I vaulted over the sagging chain-link fence and stumbled through a cluttered yard to the rear door of a house. Locked.
Another scream, muffled and in pain this time, but it wasn't Sarah. I kicked the door in, ran through the empty kitchen and knew I'd be there again. Creaking floorboards indicated movement above. I rounded the corner and bounded up the stairs. There in the hall, half out of a doorway loomed a vision from Maria’s dreams. Maria knelt in the hall beyond and called out to me.
It stood taller and broader than me. Great leathery wings stretched out from the second set of scapulas. One wing in the hall, the other reached back into the room. The smoky gray skin was thick and covered in oozing boils where the ancient words had been written. It turned to me and paused, the eyes were dead, the pupils blown. The skin of the lower face had torn away and the yellow-white mandible shown through.
“Araqiêl? Is that you, little brother?” His voice rasped like a file being pulled across a steel pipe.
“Semjaza. It’s been a long time.” I stood ready on the balls of my feet.
“You look terrible,” it rasped.
“Yeah. Not so bad as you, though. You look like hell, Sem.” The nausea, the after effects of the drugs, all extraneous thought drained away as my body readied itself for battle.
Semjaza shrugged and the upper half of the face smiled. The lower half didn’t have enough skin to complete the expression and it leered. “What can I say? Brimstone is bad for the complexion.”
“I can’t let you take her,” I said abruptly. I flexed my fingers on the rebar held down at my side.
The demon looked at the girl, and then back at me. “You always were a sucker for the pretty ones, Ara. Capital vices and all.”
I shrugged and turned the motion into a twist as the demon shot out a twisted reptilian claw. Eight feet in an instant. It cut through the fabric of my coat, but didn’t touch skin and I slashed down with the length of iron.
His skin blistered and hissed where the bar struck, leaving a thick wide burn. The iron rod smoked and glowed red where it had touched Semjaza. Iron was good for that with demons. Something about a fire elemental being struck with an earth element. Like a metaphysical game of rock-paper-scissors.
Semjaza hissed at me. I had seen him leading hosts of angels to war once, and now he hissed like a cat.
The hallway was too narrow for this slugfest. The demon was bigger and stronger than me. I wouldn’t last long if I couldn't maneuver.
“How did you come to the middle world, Sem?”
“Crack in space-time, little brother. Same as before, you remember that Ara, don't you? What you did to me? To your brothers?”
I backed slowly to the head of the stairs.
“Ara, don’t go away mad. Or is it Greg? Isn’t that what the sweet-meat called you?”
“Yeah. It’s sort of a nickname. Short for egregori.” I didn’t know whom he meant by sweetmeat. Sarah? The ward hid her soul, so that Semjaza and his friends couldn’t take it but it also meant that I didn’t see her well.
“Ah, the watchers. That was the job wasn’t it? Before the fall?”
I nodded and felt for the steps.
“That is where you lost your wings. Did Gabriel take them from you? Clip you?”
“Nope. Gideon, with his terrible sword.” I didn’t care to rehash this with him. I just wanted to keep him engaged.
“Gideon. I hate that sanctimonious bastard. I was cast down by then though, wasn't I? Missed all the fun and games.”
I took the stairs slowly. One at a time. I noted the inner phalange of his wings had a thick, hooked talon, two thirds up from the base to the end.
“We don’t have to fight Ara. Sêmîazâz made you an offer to join us and it's still good. Bygones and all?” The laugh which followed was hollower than his speech.
“Sorry, I’m not interested in your team.” He couldn’t finish what he had come to do with me here. I would either have to be run off or destroyed.
”You owe them nothing Ara. They turned their backs on us.”
I reached the bottom step and kept backing into the little foyer, and said, “We turned away, Sem. Not them.”
Even though I saw it coming, I couldn’t avoid the wing as it snaked out. The talon sunk into my neck with a wet sound. A thick rope of blood fell out onto the tiles as the talon retracted. The hole it left in me fizzed and I swung the iron rod at empty air.
The second wing snicked out impossibly fast, the talon sank into my shoulder, and back. Again I swung the length of iron at nothing. Bubbling ooze ran down from the holes in me.
“Time is coming to an end, Ara. We’ll bar the crack and then we will feast on the children of clay.”
He lunged at me again and I dodged. I saw a plastic grocery bag on a sideboard. Through the plastic I could see the little girl holding an umbrella on a blue background and knew it was the salt I had told Maria to get.
I feinted with the iron rod and twisted to grab the bag. Semjaza’s index and middle fingers stabbed into my flesh below the ribs. I twisted away, but his talons scraped against the underside of my rib cage and pulled me in. The pain pulsed as I twisted like bait on a hook. The wing talon pinned me through the bicep as I tried to raise the iron rod.
"Where will you go when you die, little brother?"
I had no answer.
“It ends now, Ara.”
“Yes,” I exhaled. I briefly contemplated letting him have me. If only it could be so easy. I sank my fingers through the sides of the little round box and the salt spilled out of the holes I made. I slammed my hand into his face and packed the salt into his eyes, his shattered nose and the gaping hole of his mouth.
He screamed and released me. His flesh bubbled and fizzed where the salt touched him. It was like salting a snail. I held the iron rod with both hands and stabbed it into the left side of his chest as deep as I could. I rode him over, still holding the rod.
The flesh smoked. A red ring formed in his chest around the iron spike, and I pushed harder, pinning him down to the step like an obscene butterfly.
My hands burned. I had to hold. If he got the spike out, he might still heal. The hot red halo spread outward, leaving gray, charred coke behind.
He thrashed. The talons of his wings slashed my coat and sliced strips of flesh from my back. My hands blistered with the heat of the rod. Semjaza stiffened and let out a rasping exhalation as he emolliated. I leapt back and watched him turn to dust and ash.
I bounded over his outline of melted acrylic carpet and scorched wood and up the stairs.
Maria still knelt where I had left her. I hadn’t seen it before, but she cradled the body of what must have been her mother in her lap. Her body wracked with sobs, but no sound escaped.
Where’s Sarah?”
Maria didn’t respond.
“Did Sarah come?” I asked with more conviction.
Maria didn’t respond but instead cast a glance at the doorway in the hall. I followed her eyes and saw Sarah crumpled just inside the broken window.
“No. No-no-no.” My wounds were forgotten as I crossed the small room and dropped to my knees. I reached down and pulled her broken little body to me.
“Oh no. Not her.” I reached down and brushed the wild dark hair with the red-brown roots from her blood-smattered face.
“No,” I keened. I pulled her body to me and rocked her slowly back and forth.
A friend. A confidant. A protector. An empty shell.
I cried and spoke of my bereavement in the ancient languages.
When I had no more tears to cry I laid her down gently. Then I riffled through her pockets with my blistered hands, until I found the fifty bucks.
I would need it later for Beenie.
Gift of the Bouda
I sat in an uncomfortable plastic chair looking across an industrial steel desk at my new doctor. The black plastic nameplate read; Mark Capon, MD, FAPA, FACP, and below that Staff Psychiatrist, Veteran’s Affairs Administration Hospital.
Before this impromptu appointment we had never met. His thin neck held up a too-round head. The thick titanium-rimmed lenses and beak of a nose accentuated his bird-like appearance.
“Good afternoon, Captain Rogers.”
I hated to be addressed by my old rank. That had been an entire lifetime ago.
He seemed to be waiting for a response.
An old clock on the bookshelf audibly ticked the seconds away.
“May I call you…” He looked down at his notes. “John?”
I nodded. He could call me Bucky the Wonder-horse for all I cared, as long as I got my meds. I had been denied my prescriptions when I tried to fill them at the VA pharmacy and was told I needed to see this joker first.
“Well, John, I am Doctor Capon, and I have been assigned to your case.” He affected a serious expression and said carefully, I am not sure if you’ve heard, but Doctor Roman passed away.”
He looked at me for a response.
“Doctor Roman died in a car accident last month.” He said it slowly as if to press the point home.
Everyone dies. Having only met my previously appointed Staff Psychiatrist once before, his loss made no impact.
“Well, I’ve been reviewing all of Doctor Roman’s case files.” He glanced down at my folder. “You have a diagnosis of chronic Post Traumatic Stress Disorder with attending Obsessive Compulsive manifestations.”
The clock ticked a few more seconds. He looked at me expectantly.
“I’m just here to refill my prescription. The pharmacy was closed yesterday and today I’m out.”
“Yes, well I thought it would be a good idea if we met first, before I authorized release.”
The low angle of the sun cast long shadows across the small office.
“Will this take long? I’d like to be home before it gets dark.”
“No, it shouldn’t be too long. I just need to go over some things with you before I feel comfortable with the current treatment modality.” He smiled primly.
I nodded and he looked back down.
The small room contained new VA-issued furniture and boxes of medical texts on the floor. He hadn’t been there long. The Medical diploma on the wall behind him was just four years old, so this was probably his first real job. He even smelled new.
“Alright, so Doctor Roman had pursued a primarily pharmacological approach. I have you here on Fluvoxamine at three-hundred milligrams with recommendations that you attend a VA-sponsored PTSD support group.”
He looked up at me but I didn’t respond.
“First, that dosage is extremely high, and second I can’t seem to find any evidence of your attendance at a support group meeting, John.” He leaned back in his chair expectantly, fidgeting with a gold Cross pen.
“Is that a question?”
He smiled slightly and said, “Not really. Should I be more direct?” He paused. “You’ve been treated her for almost seven years and not once have you participated in any sort of therapy. Why is that, John?”
I shrugged. A gusting wind keened against the window, warning of a change in the weather.
“I’ve found that in treating PTSD, especially presenting with anxiety disorders that exposure and response prevention therapy, combined with the appropriate medications is the most efficacious treatment. We teach ERP in several of our support groups.”
“Great,” I said, trying not to show too much enthusiasm. “Listen, I’m not good with psychobabble.”
“In my residency at Cambridge hospital I actually co-authored a paper on anxiety disorders. It was a literature survey of various treatments for PTSD, following a cohort from Desert Storm,” he said authoritatively.
“Your mother must be proud.” I suppose my tone lacked sincerity.
For a full three ticks of the clock he looked at me expressionlessly before looking back down at my file.
“From the answers on your Yale-Brown, I question if the diagnosis was appropriate, John.”
He paused expectantly again and seemed disappointed when I didn’t respond.
“Listen John, I am going to need your help here if we are going to be able to provide you an effective treatment.”
I could so easily snap that thin neck. But that would wrong, I supposed.
“We’re on the same team here, John.”
Hardly. Most of my team was buried in Arlington National Cemetery. I sighed and then squeez
“Great. Let’s talk about the images that you seem to focus on, and the behaviors which you feel compelled to perform, shall we?” He waved his little pen like a baton.
I nodded. A faint smell of metal hinted at his enthusiastic perspiration.
“So, would you say you engage in activities you feel compelled to perform, that occupy you for say, up to an hour a day?” he asked.
“No.”
He wrote that down.
“Well, that’s good. How about the obsessions? Do you feel that you spend a significant amount of time dealing with unwanted or unpleasant ideations?” He twisted the body of the pen to drive the point in and then back out.
“Yes. Images, mostly,” I said. There, I could be forthcoming.
He wrote that down too.
“That’s good, John,” Capon encouraged.
“The meds help me keep the lid on.”
He nodded at my progress.
“And how would you best characterize these images?”
“I try to avoid thinking about them. As I said, the medication keeps the lid on.”
“It’s okay; we’re going to work through this.” I didn’t respond, so he continued, “What do you feel will happen if you give in to these obsessive thoughts?”
Again, I didn’t respond. The clock ticked. It ticked again. I heard squeaks on the tile as someone walked down the hall beyond the office door. Probably going home for the day, it was after five.
Finally I said, “I may become unpleasant and hurt someone, badly.”
He didn’t have an answer for that. The frail little man could see from my records that I was capable. But my records didn’t reveal everything.
“I see you were in Somalia?”
I nodded.
“Operation Restore Hope?” he asked.
“Continue Hope.” He looked at me blankly. While I was undergoing my trial by fire he was probably still having his lunch money taken away by the big kids.
“Continue Hope, then. That was where this all started?”
I nodded.
“Why don’t you tell me about it?” He folded his hands expectantly.
Through the window I could see the branches of a leafless elm whip with the gusts of wind. The clock ticks almost echoed in the austere little room.
“Well, in a nutshell, I was deployed to Somalia, injured, fixed and left with some problems,” I said. “Medically discharged with one-hundred percent disability. PTSD with OCD. Don’t you have it all there in the file?”
“I’d really appreciate your cooperation, John.”
Left hand to his right mandible, right hand to his temple and twist. His long thin neck would break at the fissure between the first and second cervical vertebrae like a piece of dry wood. It would be so easy. I tried to think of something else.
“It’s a long story.”
“I have time.” He smiled that prim little smile again and fidgeted with his pen. His fingers were long and slim. He probably played piano well.
“Listen John, I don’t want to just go through the motions here. I really would like to get to the bottom of your troubles and see if we can’t make some progress?”
“Cure me?”
“I have helped others with your condition.”
“I doubt you’ve ever helped anyone with my condition.”
“Well, how will I understand exactly your condition if you don’t share with me?” he countered.
“My current treatment modality seems to work. Wouldn’t it just be easier to let me have my pills?”
“No. If you don’t cooperate I am afraid that I will not be able to authorize any medications,” he said.
“Holding them hostage?”
He shrugged assent. Though it would make me feel better, snapping him in half wouldn’t get my prescriptions filled any quicker.
“Okay then. I was team leader with the Thirteenth Special Forces, Operational Detachment Echo. We deployed to Somalia to help keep the militias from interfering with international aid:” It came easier than I had thought it would.
“I saw Black-Hawk Down,” Capon offered.
“Perhaps then you should explain to me what it was like?” I let the clock tick away a few seconds.
He seemed to get the point.
“That was Task Force Ranger’s story, mine is a little different. In August of ninety-three my Special Forces team and I executed a number of small operations outside of Moge with the intent of eliminating the flow of arms into the city.”
“Is that when you were injured?” Capon asked.
“Yes, on my team’s last mission.” I could see the thick seams between the tiles as I stared at the floor between my feet.
“Why don’t you tell me about it, John?”
I sighed. And then told him. The telling wasn’t the same as the seeing. And I saw it all again, vivid and real and tried my best to convey the depth my experiences in mere words.
#
I saw the Somali guide, Ahmed Ghedi, and the five members of my team couched low in the dry, brush-choked streambed. We crept up beside the compound of the clan leader named Samantar Afrah. The Walled compound had an open central courtyard, with a large, whitewashed, cinder-block building in the front, flanked by a cluster of smaller mud-brick and tin sheds- all covered in the ubiquitous ochre dust of East Africa.
During the intelligence summary that morning, Afrah had been described as an arms broker. He was a businessman with a large cache of weapons that he rented out to the various clan chiefs. They would in turn employ them against his other customers. Business was good.
Getting the intelligence was easy. The locals didn’t like him. He extorted bullied, and stole. He didn’t have his own territory, but picked at the fringes of the stronger clans. We thought that was how he earned his nickname, Waarabe, which means hyena in the local language, because of his tactics. I found out later that there was a different reason.
The shambles stood a few dozen meters from the road that led from Moge. We watched unseen as Afrah’s mercenaries loaded trucks and prepared to leave. Attack helicopters would destroy them later on the road. Afrah should remain behind with a smaller contingent that we would neutralize. Simple snatch and grab.
Ahmed, fidgeting as the black flies sucked at the corners of his mouth, looked furtively up and down the loose line of mismatched soldiers. Desert cammo bottoms, tan aviator vests jammed with ammo and gear were stretched over black Kevlar vests. Black Pro-tec hockey helmets and matching knee pads, earpieces and voice activated flex mikes. No two soldiers were armed the same.
My CAR-15 carbine had a silencer that looked like a soda can. A new .45 caliber Heckler and Koch M23 was in my shoulder holster. A Randall Bowie knife and a few grenades completed my personal armamentarium for healing the enemy’s ailments.
On the other side of our guide knelt my team ops NCO, ‘Granddad’. He carried an old 7.62 mm M14 rifle he had named Chekov, with a 9mm Beretta pistol at his hip. I always thought it funny he carried the big-bore antique for its stopping power and then kept a plicker like the 9mm.
“Ahmed, we’ll go in after the vehicles leave,” I said.
The short dry grass trembled in the faint breeze.
Ahmed didn’t look reassured. “Waarabe is of the Bouda,” the thin young man said earnestly. He clutched his Maadi, an Egyptian-made AK-style rifle to his chest like it was a stuffed animal.
“Tribe?” I asked. Bouda didn’t mean anything to me then. It would later, but then it was just another name. Isaaq, Hawiye, Habr Godr. Men with more similarities than differences that each found an excuse to kill one another.
“No, reer Bouda. Gelid of the Waarabe to Afrah,” he said. He was trying hard to make a point, but I didn’t get it. “When no longer the sun shines, he will be great danger.”
I was looking forward to the sun no longer shining. We all had our night-vision-devices, NODs. Special Forces owned the night.
“Rogue-six, Bear, over,” CW2 Bear Barron’s voice said I in my ear. The team executive officer had the other half of my twelve-man team in an over-watch position across the road.
“Bear, this is Rogue-six, go ahead.” I whispered back. I slowly wiped a trickle of sweat from the side of my nose.
“John, gates opened; looks like they’re saddling up, over.” From the compound I heard a cacophony of diesel engines turn over and then catch.
“Roger Bear.” No one moved.
Then the convoy rumbled over the bridge that crossed our wadi. Old soviet trucks and mismatched equipment. The mercenaries chattered excitedly with their feet hanging over the vehicles sides like they were going to a picnic.
“I mark zero. We go in zero plus five mikes,” I whispered. All of the highly choreographed events were timed in minutes, mikes, from the zero mark I made.
The last man checked his watch, raised a thumb and the signal was passed up the chain, until it got to Granddad, who modified it to a middle-finger. He stood to a low crouch with two others and peeled out of the line.
Razor alerted the aviators on a handheld High Freq radio. He and Justin stayed with me. Razor was a seasoned professional, but Justin was new and assigned to my team straight from the Q course. I wanted to keep an eye on him.
“Rogue-six, Bear again, over.”
“Go-ahead, Bear again,” I said.
“Be advised, our Sammy here is saying he’s pretty sure these guys are hopped on khat.”
Khat was a weed these people chewed like folks back home would chew tobacco. Except that it was an amphetamine and made them skittish, until they crashed. A bunch of high teenagers with automatic weapons, it was just like everywhere else on the continent.
“Roger, we go in three,” I said. I leaned in close to Ahmed and reminded him again of the plan.
As I turned to go, he grabbed my camouflage-paint smeared forearm, pointed to the tired sun and repeated his warnings about Afrah. “He is of great danger.”
I nodded and left him there.
The six-foot-high wall around the compound was made of rough mud bricks and rusted tin siding. It was the same sort of construction found in most third world shanty towns.
I grabbed the edge of the sun-warmed bricks and pulled myself up high enough to look over. Three men in the open, a half-dozen skinny chickens and a new, white, Toyota Land Cruiser, which was Afrah’s ride. The place smelled sour, overlaid with pungent diesel fumes.
I slid back down and hand-signaled the scene. I could just see Granddad and his boys at the far end of the wall, half hidden in the shadows left by the setting sun.
We silently slid low over the wall and crept between rusted oil drums and refuse. Three shots made a muffled flash and crack. Three simultaneous thumps into the chests dropped the exposed mercenaries.
A slight breeze mixed the first whiff of cordite with the diesel fumes.
“Bear, Rogue-six. Inside, three down,” I said into the mike.
A skinny young Somali, casually carrying an AK, rounded the corner of a shed. He saw me and stopped short. Razor dropped him and flashed me a smile; white teeth contrasting with his cammo-smeared face.
We closed the distance to through the detritus of the yard, and found two young Somalis by the vehicle. They stood with no thought of where their weapons were pointed. The sound of the brass casing bouncing off the gravel made as much noise as the shots. More cordite to add to the diesel fumes. The chickens clucked anxiously as they scattered.
We crept to the large central building and saw Granddad’s team doing the same. I gave him a thumbs-up, he gave me the bird.
In operations of this nature speed is your best ally. Shock them, gain and maintain the initiative and keep the momentum. So far everything had gone exactly as planned.
We posted at our pre-assigned windows and tossed in the flash-bang grenades. Two, three, four, Boom! The grenades created a concussive wave. The force and light would incapacitate those inside. Razor kicked in the side door. He an I went through, weapons at the ready. Justin stayed outside, protecting the rear.
We entered into a large, dimly-lit room. Sammies staggered to the walls but none looked like the stocky Afrah. Granddad and Valentine came in through the other door, seconds behind. We made eye contact as one of the Somali’s raised a weapon.
The Sammie started to fire before he aimed, the rounds bouncing off the concrete floor. He continued to raise the rifle toward me, spitting out a dozen 5.54 mm rounds at 900 meters per second. I snapped off two rounds, one to the solar plexus, the second ripped into his throat, and blunted his enthusiasm.
The other Sammies started to recover. There was a brief instant in which they tried to decide if they should fight. I screamed in Somali for them to drop their weapons. They were hired kids and there was no need for them to die. That seemed to tip the balance and weapons dropped as hands were raised.
“Justin, inside!:” He heard and obeyed. “Cuff them and then provide security.”
We went through the house like ghosts. We popped a few more hostiles before we found Afrah in a back room. He was a heavily muscled, middle-aged East African and looked just like the photo from the briefing. The photo didn’t prepare me for the pungent body odor though. He was unarmed and unimpressed when apprehended, watching as the sunset through the west-facing window.
“Ah, Americans. Come to save this world, but instead this night you will leave it,” he said. He was standing there with two dead body guards at his feet and it seemed like bravado. While Granddad pressed his old M14 to the back of Ahfra’s head, Valentine zipped the flex-cuffs on.
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