SkeeK
The Original, Rock n' Roll Doggie, VIP PASS
My next work is even longer than my last, and I know it'll take a long time to read, but I would really be deeply appreciative if you did, even if you don't bother to comment. Oh yeah, it's also rather strange. So if you're into strange stuff (isn't everyone?) then this is definately your cup of tea.
If you have Word, then you might like to view it in its native habitat... it looks much nicer there so I recommend it... it's at the bottom as an attachment thingie.
And if you haven't read my (other) short story yet, which is perhaps likely, I'd really like it if ya did that too. It's here. If you don't want to of course, that won't cause me too much grief.
The Saint, The Ghost, And The Lunatic
Night. 17?. Light breeze.
At that time of night even major roads were very nearly deserted. Rush-hour commuter swarms had settled into empty fields of grey asphalt, interrupted sporadically, mostly by taxis. Indeed at that moment a black and yellow u-need-a cab swung loosely round an ample bend and continued on toward the intersection far beyond. An LED on the driver?s wrist blinked 3:27 AM. The driver stifled a yawn as he eased on the brakes, stopped, and waited for red to turn to green. In the back seat a teenage girl, hair dyed orange and eyelids painted blue, gazed silently at the intense white shining from plastic plaza signs and tapped a slim purple shoe in time to some soundless song that echoed in her mind. The light changed, and the taxi sped on down the street, away.
It was far too late for anyone to still be up.
?
After watching the cab approach the traffic lights, a man, dressed rather conspicuously in a long dark coat and fedora, stepped from the curb onto Wellington Road and silently crossed. He carefully stepped over the metal guardrail and sauntered across a swath of grass toward a side street?s worn sidewalk. A sleek black cat stared toward him for a moment before scurrying along a hedge toward some backyard. The stranger moved east down Alexandra St between rows of low, snug houses.
?
A second-story light flicks on ? a foreign vibrant gold against the blue and grey dark of night.
A glow of mottled white-grey bleeds from the edge of the almost full moon ? into the heavy blue-black of cloudless night.
The pale lunar light falls across the lawn and sidewalks, shingled roofs ? extending dim streetlight shadows across the asphalt road.
The even rows of streetlights shine stagnantly ? tainting the sky near the horizon with a dull orange ? muting the speckled wash of shimmering stars.
The clear sky is broken far to the west by an unassuming swell of cloud ? barely visible against the orange-stained sky.
New leaves teeter delicately in the breeze whose cool, reviving touch is healing the sun-burnt scars of day.
A second later the light in the window disappears.
?
The light snapped off.
The inverted image of Edward Hampton?s cluttered bedroom remained momentarily on his retina before fading into the darkness.
The light snapped on again.
There was his desk, loosely bound in stacks of paper and books.
Off.
The image faded.
On again.
His empty bed, the sheets thrown back welcomingly.
Off.
One one hundred.
On.
In an instant he saw the whole of his room reflected in the window glass across the room, and his own reflected image, too. A half unbuttoned shirt hung loosely over his shoulders; dishevelled hair hung limp across his forehead; worn grey eyes squinted out past layers of sleeplessness.
Off.
The reflection vanished and he could see through to the glass to the deserted street beyond. A figure passed smoothly beneath, dressed in a Marlowesque long coat and brimmed hat. Edward blinked. The figure was gone? blocked by the tree, or was it ever there at all? He rubbed his eyes and shook his head.
On.
Off.
On.
He flinched yet again against the sudden brightness and let his hand drop from the light switch. He didn?t know exactly how he came to be repetitiously flicking the light on, off, on, and off again. His parents had always chided him, and said that type of constant switching would wreck the light, he?d always thought they were just being overdramatic, as they were with so many other things. He thought perhaps the mind-numbing pattern of light-on-off-on-off provided a regularity that kept him from slipping into madness during these seemingly interminable stretches of tedium. Then he thought it quite possibly might have the opposite effect.
Edward abandoned his position by the bedroom door and ambled back toward his desk to stare incoherently at the mess of papers, pamphlets, and books collected there.
The clock?s overbearing tick always gained volume as the night went on, jarring his mind from any rest or focus. He glanced toward it, hanging above the desk, but his eyes were too weary to focus on the blurred hands. He grimaced as the clock clacked particularly loudly. And again. He gritted his teeth and reached up, and plucked the contraption off the wall and set it face down over some annual performance report on his desk. Sloppy but determined, he fumbled with the finicky lid of the battery compartment and when he finally got it open, popped the compact cylinder out and flicked it off the corner of the desk.
He managed a faint smile of fulfilment and went to turn off the light one final time. He moved over to the window and looked out, across Alexandra St, down Herkimer St to the deserted school yard, and up to the far away construction cranes at the hospital that rose above the line of trees and houses.
?
Dark lines between sidewalk tiles passed evenly beneath the stranger?s feet as he strode past. His long trench coat fluttered quietly with each step. His leather shoes left the sidewalk and passed down the mouth of a driveway and across the street.
After continuing down the sidewalk and past several houses, he came to a halt. His head turned towards an empty backyard barely concealed by knee-high row of hedges and a high wooden fence beyond. A mellow orange glow and vaguely hushed muttering escaped from the fence?s narrow slits.
He remained there for a few short moments, the wide brim of his hat shadowing the faint smile that moulded his steely face. A moment later he continued on his way.
?
Almost everyone who knew Henry Rozman thought he was a madman. Originally he figured his friends would identify with the new philosophy he?d discovered. But they had all just nodded politely as he explained to them the basis of his newfound beliefs, and never for a second believed any of it. Some were amused; some were horrified. He could easily tell which were which, and resented that none had the conviction to speak an ill word to his face about it. When communication between he and his old friends stopped, it was an entirely mutual termination.
His wife had been a different story. Emily refused to accept his new state of mind and battled hard to return him to the way he?d been when they fell in love. Counselling, books, her version of logic constantly thrown at his ear. He was a tough nut to crack, though, and in the end she had given up and moved back to Kelowna. At the time, he was extremely distressed; but looking back now he respected her for standing by her values.
So, society as a whole and he had parted paths. He didn?t play golf or go to potlucks every Tuesday as he had imagined a sixty-eight year old retiree might do. He rarely talked to anyone at all, and only left his property to purchase supplies or visit various wildernesses nearby. Even so, he would gladly wager money on the fact that he was the happiest, most carefree individual on his street.
All that memory and history was of little concern to him now, though.
Everything was in order ? the stones arranged precisely in rows across the back yard, the ring of candles evenly spaced and burning properly, the pungent incense aligned to the satisfaction of all the greater spirits of nature.
Nude except for a wide array of beads hung about his neck and wrists, Henry finished uttering the incantation he?d spent the last week memorizing. He took a slow, deep breath and closed his eyes.
Tonight he would invoke the greater spirits Makkak and Ulungi. If his dance impressed them enough, they would heed his call and bring rain as a salve to the parched and dying land. Henry could only hope that his one small voice would not be lost in the mess of greed and negligence around him.
He began.
He moved with astonishing agility for one his age. Twirling and leaping through a frenetic dance, his bare feet hardly seemed to touch the ground. From his mouth poured a stream of jumbled words, half spoken, half sung, alternating from whisper to bark. The large circle of candles projected a ring of gigantic indistinct shadows dashing and rippling across the lawn, the fence, and walls of neighbours? houses.
After several minutes he came to rest, legs poised in a catlike stance, arms stretched toward the clear dark blue sky. He let out one shrill, echoing cry before subsiding to his knees and pressing his face against the cold, lush grass.
The neighbours would be upset, again. But like they say, everything worthy demands a sacrifice of some sort.
He raised his head and looked up at the clear sky.
?
Across an intersection toward a conspicuous dark brown brick house surrounded by a wide lawn broken by a rock garden. Crickets chirped their night songs. The stranger?s gait was smooth and uncompromising. Across the street a scrambling shadow disappeared behind the low peak of a house, the black-coated man acknowledged it with a slight flick of his eyes and continued past.
?
?Shit! You think he saw us??
?I dunno. Not like it matters anyhow. What?s he gonna do? Call mom??
?Or the cops??
?And what? We haven?t done anything illegal.?
?Yeah, true?
?Sure, Mom finds us up here she?d go nuts and like kill us, but the cops wouldn?t even really care.?
The two boys fell silent. From their vantage point on the roof of their house they watched the back of a trench coat sliding down the sidewalk across the street. Ricky, younger by three years, broke the silence.
?Man, who is that guy??
?I dunno. Just some guy. What?s it matter anyway??
?Doesn?t. I guess. He just seems really??
?Really what??
?Spooky. Freaky. Something like that.?
Dan rarely agreed with anything his younger brother said. ?Yeah? A bit scary.? They exchanged serious glances, and then Dan snorted with sudden laughter.
Rick smiled hesitantly. ?He looks like he thinks he?s a special agent or something.?
?He sure looks like he takes himself pretty seriously. He?s probably on his way to save the hotdog stand from a squeaky wheel or something.?
?I have no idea what he?s doing, but his clothes is really cool. I want a coat like that.?
Dan chuckled. ?If you?re fast, maybe you can ask him for his.?
Ricky looked at his brother incredulously and then turned toward the stranger, who had already almost reached Tom?s house a ways down the street. ?Hey, man!!!?
Almost before the words were out of his mouth, a hand clamped over his mouth and another gripped his arm. He felt the weight of his assailant pressing down on his back.
Dan spoke in a fierce whisper directly into his brother?s ear. ?Quiet, you dumbass! You wanna wake mom and get us in shit? Cause that sure was loud enough to do it.?
Eventually Dan released his wayward sibling; Rick shook himself free, took a deep breath and glared at his admonisher. Then suddenly his eyes widened as he started to fall from view over the peak of the roof. Dan?s hand shot out, grabbed the striped t-shirt?s collar, and roughly hauled his flailing brother back to the roof?s ridge.
?Holy?!? He checked his yell. ?Shit, man! Be careful! Maybe we should get down before you kill yourself.?
?Don?t worry, man, I just lost my footing. I?ll be more careful.?
Dan shook his head slowly. ?You better be.?
The boys were silent for a while, looking out over the roofs of houses and past trees and up at the faintly starry sky. They winced in unison as a frightful shriek echoed over the rows of quiet houses.
?What the hell??
They looked at each other.
?Maybe it?s that nutso raindance guy,? suggested Rick.
?Maybe. I wouldn?t put it past him. I talked to him one time a few years ago. He seemed pretty cool. Definitely an oddball though.?
They both shrugged, and fell silent again. Eventually Dan spoke.
?It?s pretty late, maybe we should get inside.?
?Yeah, I guess. Hey, you think I could jump over to Mr. Tindall?s house from here? It?s not that far.?
?I don?t think you should try.?
Rick shrugged. After a while, Dan, about to move toward the edge of the roof, stopped and lay once more on his back. The stars glimmered faintly and the white moonlight suppressed the orange streetlight glow. ?I guess a few more minutes wouldn?t hurt.?
?
A tiny pebble skittered across the dim sidewalk and came to rest at a driveway?s angled mouth. The stranger paused and somewhat stiffly bent to pluck up the stone from where it lay. He turned it over slowly and slowly, letting his fingers trace the minute grains of sediment. A delicate toss sent it arcing feebly toward a lawn before a low-roofed house. A light was on in a window toward the back. A shadow moved behind the white curtains.
?
Gregory Hamble fumbled for the light switch above his bed.
?Are you sure??
His neck was twisted to cradle the cordless phone firmly between his shoulder and ear. He found the switch and squinted as the wash of sharp white light startled his eyes.
?Shit!?
He lifted yesterday?s shirt from the floor with his toe, pulled his arms through the sleeves and scrambled to slide his legs into a pair of jeans.
?If I had to guess. Yeah. Definitely yeah. Damnit!?
On his hurried course to the kitchen he almost stumbled over his orange cat, Maxi, as she purred and tried to rub his leg.
?I mean, it all points to it, right??
He?d tacked the ?i? onto her name when he discovered his knowledge of feline anatomy was not as broad as he?d believed. But he sure as hell wasn?t worried about that now.
?Yeah, we thought we had this one in the bag. Sometimes it?s not so easy. I had some doubts. Can?t really say I?m too surprised. Just pissed.?
In the kitchen, he grabbed a new filter from a plastic bag on the counter and located the tin can. He needed his coffee. It kept him sane?something waking at 3:30 AM to rush to a violent crime scene didn?t facilitate.
?Yeah, I?ll be down there. Where?d it go down??
He dropped a scoop of brown, rich-smelling grinds into the filter, plopped some water in the receptacle and flicked the switch.
?Damn, that?s pretty close to home. Is forensics there yet??
He left the kitchen and banged through his front door toward his car. He snatched open the door and double-checked the glove compartment for his badge and his gun.
?Just gimme a few minutes. In the meantime, tell me what you know. Let me call you back on my cell.?
Satisfied, he returned inside, watched the regular gurgling drip as it filled the clear coffee pot, and waited.
?
The street met with a perpendicular road and, blocked by a line of monotonous carbon copy duplexes and a blocky grey three-story apartment complex, came to an end. As the stranger stepped beneath a streetlight, it flickered erratically and went off. He glanced toward the window of a top floor apartment, then up toward the streetlight, which sputtered dimly but didn?t go back on.
?
A cool breeze floated the curtains in the open window languorously back and forth, and gently caressed her face and naked body. She watched the pale moonlight spread across the mesmeric rise and fall of his chest. She heard her own breathing louder in her ear than it possibly could be.
If she let her eyes close, it all came back to her in vivid disconnected flashes. His body rising above her. His lips pressed against hers. His hands over her entire self. Her hand lay beneath his back and she felt her pulse hammering her wrist.
The stun had not yet worn off. Her mind was scattered, her feelings precarious and confused. Moments of elation traded with regret or contentment and gave way to terror or serenity. She lay virtually still, unable to hold her mind and heart securely enough to bring them to relax.
With a faint cadence of voice, she pulled her stiffened arm from under his back and slowly sat up. She wrested her chin on her knees and wrapped her arms around her legs.
She sat there, swinging between fatigue and exhilaration, until her body was wracked by an immense yawn. She slid her legs over the bed and stood up, her seized muscles tensed and stretched. The cool night air slipped into her open mouth.
As the yawn subsided, she found her pants, her top, her underwear, her shoes and mechanically pulled them on.
She stood for a moment, watching him. Then, her lower lip gripped by her teeth and her mind and feelings still contradiction, she moved with hesitance and determination through the bedroom door and the front room.
At heavy wooden door leading out, she placed her hand upon the cold brass doorknob and began to turn it. She paused. Then retraced her steps into the bedroom, looked once more at the recumbent figure on the bed, and stood by the window staring out at the night.
?
The stranger crossed the crumbling asphalt and moved to his right, past a red mailbox, toward a tiny dead-end street that branched out to the east. Behind him, the orange streetlight flickered on.
?
A wash of flickering television glow filtered through the living room; the patterns of light danced over Ellen?s shirt and pale skin.
A debonair, colourless man got out of an antiquated black Cadillac, accompanied by shrill strings. As he approached another man who waited at the entrance of an office building, the strings took a turn for the dramatic.
Here came the payoff. It was almost over. She should think about sleep.
But instead she thought about Richard.
One month ago today she had woken up to an empty bed, and an empty driveway. She hadn?t seen him or heard from him since. At first she?d tried to believe his departure had nothing to do with her?some emergency of some sort. But even then she had known she was only fooling herself. With all the shit that had been building between them, she shouldn?t have been surprised. A week later she?d found out he had moved to New York and refused to talk to her.
His desertion had been unquestionable and absolute. So why did she still stay up late in the front room, thinking he might walk in the door? Why did she feel giddy and apprehensive every time the phone rang because she imagined it might be him? Why did she spend so much time staring blankly at nothing while her mind slid backwards, recalling all the moments, his subtle facial mannerisms and particular way of speaking?
She knew the answer to those questions, but it hardly helped. She tried to focus on the awkward moments, the fights, the blockheadedness, and the insults to comfort herself, but it never worked.
One of the men was brandishing a gun at the other now. It took her a moment to discern which was which. Thumping percussion had joined the strings. There was a great deal of shouting and intense facial close-ups. It almost succeeded in regaining her attention, but after a moment or two it failed.
She missed him. From the very moment he was gone she had felt it clawing in her chest. It seemed like she hadn?t seen him in five years, even though it was only three since she?d first met him. Now, practically everything reminded her of Rich, from the lyrics of almost every song, to fragrances similar to his, to any place they?d visited together?and there were many of those. Sometimes she could swear he was sitting there, his arm comfortably around her shoulders, watching along with her. With ever little success she achieved, she imagined sharing it with him. So many little things?opinions, thoughts, news?at the beginning she had catalogued them all in her head and even considered making a list so she could tell him everything when she saw him again. Forget all roads leading to Rome?
One of the men was leaning up against a wall, crying out in pain and clutching his heart as dark grey blood spread over his chest.
It was true how they say you don?t truly realize what you have until you?ve lost it.
The credits rolled.
?
One polished leather shoe at a time, the stranger moved down the middle of Fairview Court and past the last house. A fenced walkway forged a tight channel in the leaning bushes and trees and zigzagged toward a single set of railway tracks guarded by a stark yet imposing crossing signal. After crossing the tracks, the stranger turned slightly left and scaled the side of a sizeable patch of scrubby elevation.
He turned toward the direction he had come. A tangle of leafy branches concealed the street and houses he had just wandered past. He stood motionless and stiff atop the embankment, gazing intently forward.
?
A cluster of starlings took to the air and fluttered overhead. A distant rumble lumbered forward?closer and louder, grinding intensely. Then, abruptly, it ceased.
The following briefest moment of silence echoed loudest. For an instant the cricket chirp, transformer buzz, and faintest drone of freeway traffic?everything?was muted absolutely.
A keening, whimpering whine quickly pierced the silence, growing in volume, heightening in pitch. The rumble joined in?a cacophony of scream and roar. The man waited, unmoving.
An explosion.
A white stucco house erupted in a globe of hot, yellow fire. Across the street, another house joined it?tearing itself apart, flinging bricks and furniture in an indiscriminate spray across the fracturing white asphalt street. Within a fraction of a second, every house in the neighbourhood was in some state of destruction. Walls crumbled and collapsed, their fragmented remains violently congealing with the spray of dirt. Heavy tree branches were ripped apart and spiralled indiscriminately through the turmoil. A coffee pot splintered against the bumper of a plummeting, stripped sedan. Flimsy figures dropped through windows and under fragmenting wreckage.
The ground trembled unsteadily. White electric fingers coiled and pulsed erratically, buzzing up telephone poles and sending showers of glittering sparks in arcs across the sky.
As one house and then another ballooned into flame and streaking shards of debris, a seething sheet of inferno wrapped closely around the neighbourhood and billowed up toward the sky. Black soot and smoke poured everywhere, capping the rising mass of broiling flame.
?
Through it all, the stranger didn?t flinch. He stood unmoving as the mess of dust and debris floated to rest.
And then a cool of wet lighted upon the brim of his cap, then another. Bloated drops plopped down, faster and faster.
He glanced up at the sky. An onerous grey. The moon and stars gone.
He smiled then, turned, and strode purposefully down the back of the embankment, down the dimly lit street. Away.
?
The wakeful few would raise their faces from the ground, turn off their televisions, set down their coffee cups, get to their feet, or move towards their windows?and pause. Then they would turn as one, and look to where the stranger had passed.
Rain.
If you have Word, then you might like to view it in its native habitat... it looks much nicer there so I recommend it... it's at the bottom as an attachment thingie.
And if you haven't read my (other) short story yet, which is perhaps likely, I'd really like it if ya did that too. It's here. If you don't want to of course, that won't cause me too much grief.
The Saint, The Ghost, And The Lunatic
Night. 17?. Light breeze.
At that time of night even major roads were very nearly deserted. Rush-hour commuter swarms had settled into empty fields of grey asphalt, interrupted sporadically, mostly by taxis. Indeed at that moment a black and yellow u-need-a cab swung loosely round an ample bend and continued on toward the intersection far beyond. An LED on the driver?s wrist blinked 3:27 AM. The driver stifled a yawn as he eased on the brakes, stopped, and waited for red to turn to green. In the back seat a teenage girl, hair dyed orange and eyelids painted blue, gazed silently at the intense white shining from plastic plaza signs and tapped a slim purple shoe in time to some soundless song that echoed in her mind. The light changed, and the taxi sped on down the street, away.
It was far too late for anyone to still be up.
?
After watching the cab approach the traffic lights, a man, dressed rather conspicuously in a long dark coat and fedora, stepped from the curb onto Wellington Road and silently crossed. He carefully stepped over the metal guardrail and sauntered across a swath of grass toward a side street?s worn sidewalk. A sleek black cat stared toward him for a moment before scurrying along a hedge toward some backyard. The stranger moved east down Alexandra St between rows of low, snug houses.
?
A second-story light flicks on ? a foreign vibrant gold against the blue and grey dark of night.
A glow of mottled white-grey bleeds from the edge of the almost full moon ? into the heavy blue-black of cloudless night.
The pale lunar light falls across the lawn and sidewalks, shingled roofs ? extending dim streetlight shadows across the asphalt road.
The even rows of streetlights shine stagnantly ? tainting the sky near the horizon with a dull orange ? muting the speckled wash of shimmering stars.
The clear sky is broken far to the west by an unassuming swell of cloud ? barely visible against the orange-stained sky.
New leaves teeter delicately in the breeze whose cool, reviving touch is healing the sun-burnt scars of day.
A second later the light in the window disappears.
?
The light snapped off.
The inverted image of Edward Hampton?s cluttered bedroom remained momentarily on his retina before fading into the darkness.
The light snapped on again.
There was his desk, loosely bound in stacks of paper and books.
Off.
The image faded.
On again.
His empty bed, the sheets thrown back welcomingly.
Off.
One one hundred.
On.
In an instant he saw the whole of his room reflected in the window glass across the room, and his own reflected image, too. A half unbuttoned shirt hung loosely over his shoulders; dishevelled hair hung limp across his forehead; worn grey eyes squinted out past layers of sleeplessness.
Off.
The reflection vanished and he could see through to the glass to the deserted street beyond. A figure passed smoothly beneath, dressed in a Marlowesque long coat and brimmed hat. Edward blinked. The figure was gone? blocked by the tree, or was it ever there at all? He rubbed his eyes and shook his head.
On.
Off.
On.
He flinched yet again against the sudden brightness and let his hand drop from the light switch. He didn?t know exactly how he came to be repetitiously flicking the light on, off, on, and off again. His parents had always chided him, and said that type of constant switching would wreck the light, he?d always thought they were just being overdramatic, as they were with so many other things. He thought perhaps the mind-numbing pattern of light-on-off-on-off provided a regularity that kept him from slipping into madness during these seemingly interminable stretches of tedium. Then he thought it quite possibly might have the opposite effect.
Edward abandoned his position by the bedroom door and ambled back toward his desk to stare incoherently at the mess of papers, pamphlets, and books collected there.
The clock?s overbearing tick always gained volume as the night went on, jarring his mind from any rest or focus. He glanced toward it, hanging above the desk, but his eyes were too weary to focus on the blurred hands. He grimaced as the clock clacked particularly loudly. And again. He gritted his teeth and reached up, and plucked the contraption off the wall and set it face down over some annual performance report on his desk. Sloppy but determined, he fumbled with the finicky lid of the battery compartment and when he finally got it open, popped the compact cylinder out and flicked it off the corner of the desk.
He managed a faint smile of fulfilment and went to turn off the light one final time. He moved over to the window and looked out, across Alexandra St, down Herkimer St to the deserted school yard, and up to the far away construction cranes at the hospital that rose above the line of trees and houses.
?
Dark lines between sidewalk tiles passed evenly beneath the stranger?s feet as he strode past. His long trench coat fluttered quietly with each step. His leather shoes left the sidewalk and passed down the mouth of a driveway and across the street.
After continuing down the sidewalk and past several houses, he came to a halt. His head turned towards an empty backyard barely concealed by knee-high row of hedges and a high wooden fence beyond. A mellow orange glow and vaguely hushed muttering escaped from the fence?s narrow slits.
He remained there for a few short moments, the wide brim of his hat shadowing the faint smile that moulded his steely face. A moment later he continued on his way.
?
Almost everyone who knew Henry Rozman thought he was a madman. Originally he figured his friends would identify with the new philosophy he?d discovered. But they had all just nodded politely as he explained to them the basis of his newfound beliefs, and never for a second believed any of it. Some were amused; some were horrified. He could easily tell which were which, and resented that none had the conviction to speak an ill word to his face about it. When communication between he and his old friends stopped, it was an entirely mutual termination.
His wife had been a different story. Emily refused to accept his new state of mind and battled hard to return him to the way he?d been when they fell in love. Counselling, books, her version of logic constantly thrown at his ear. He was a tough nut to crack, though, and in the end she had given up and moved back to Kelowna. At the time, he was extremely distressed; but looking back now he respected her for standing by her values.
So, society as a whole and he had parted paths. He didn?t play golf or go to potlucks every Tuesday as he had imagined a sixty-eight year old retiree might do. He rarely talked to anyone at all, and only left his property to purchase supplies or visit various wildernesses nearby. Even so, he would gladly wager money on the fact that he was the happiest, most carefree individual on his street.
All that memory and history was of little concern to him now, though.
Everything was in order ? the stones arranged precisely in rows across the back yard, the ring of candles evenly spaced and burning properly, the pungent incense aligned to the satisfaction of all the greater spirits of nature.
Nude except for a wide array of beads hung about his neck and wrists, Henry finished uttering the incantation he?d spent the last week memorizing. He took a slow, deep breath and closed his eyes.
Tonight he would invoke the greater spirits Makkak and Ulungi. If his dance impressed them enough, they would heed his call and bring rain as a salve to the parched and dying land. Henry could only hope that his one small voice would not be lost in the mess of greed and negligence around him.
He began.
He moved with astonishing agility for one his age. Twirling and leaping through a frenetic dance, his bare feet hardly seemed to touch the ground. From his mouth poured a stream of jumbled words, half spoken, half sung, alternating from whisper to bark. The large circle of candles projected a ring of gigantic indistinct shadows dashing and rippling across the lawn, the fence, and walls of neighbours? houses.
After several minutes he came to rest, legs poised in a catlike stance, arms stretched toward the clear dark blue sky. He let out one shrill, echoing cry before subsiding to his knees and pressing his face against the cold, lush grass.
The neighbours would be upset, again. But like they say, everything worthy demands a sacrifice of some sort.
He raised his head and looked up at the clear sky.
?
Across an intersection toward a conspicuous dark brown brick house surrounded by a wide lawn broken by a rock garden. Crickets chirped their night songs. The stranger?s gait was smooth and uncompromising. Across the street a scrambling shadow disappeared behind the low peak of a house, the black-coated man acknowledged it with a slight flick of his eyes and continued past.
?
?Shit! You think he saw us??
?I dunno. Not like it matters anyhow. What?s he gonna do? Call mom??
?Or the cops??
?And what? We haven?t done anything illegal.?
?Yeah, true?
?Sure, Mom finds us up here she?d go nuts and like kill us, but the cops wouldn?t even really care.?
The two boys fell silent. From their vantage point on the roof of their house they watched the back of a trench coat sliding down the sidewalk across the street. Ricky, younger by three years, broke the silence.
?Man, who is that guy??
?I dunno. Just some guy. What?s it matter anyway??
?Doesn?t. I guess. He just seems really??
?Really what??
?Spooky. Freaky. Something like that.?
Dan rarely agreed with anything his younger brother said. ?Yeah? A bit scary.? They exchanged serious glances, and then Dan snorted with sudden laughter.
Rick smiled hesitantly. ?He looks like he thinks he?s a special agent or something.?
?He sure looks like he takes himself pretty seriously. He?s probably on his way to save the hotdog stand from a squeaky wheel or something.?
?I have no idea what he?s doing, but his clothes is really cool. I want a coat like that.?
Dan chuckled. ?If you?re fast, maybe you can ask him for his.?
Ricky looked at his brother incredulously and then turned toward the stranger, who had already almost reached Tom?s house a ways down the street. ?Hey, man!!!?
Almost before the words were out of his mouth, a hand clamped over his mouth and another gripped his arm. He felt the weight of his assailant pressing down on his back.
Dan spoke in a fierce whisper directly into his brother?s ear. ?Quiet, you dumbass! You wanna wake mom and get us in shit? Cause that sure was loud enough to do it.?
Eventually Dan released his wayward sibling; Rick shook himself free, took a deep breath and glared at his admonisher. Then suddenly his eyes widened as he started to fall from view over the peak of the roof. Dan?s hand shot out, grabbed the striped t-shirt?s collar, and roughly hauled his flailing brother back to the roof?s ridge.
?Holy?!? He checked his yell. ?Shit, man! Be careful! Maybe we should get down before you kill yourself.?
?Don?t worry, man, I just lost my footing. I?ll be more careful.?
Dan shook his head slowly. ?You better be.?
The boys were silent for a while, looking out over the roofs of houses and past trees and up at the faintly starry sky. They winced in unison as a frightful shriek echoed over the rows of quiet houses.
?What the hell??
They looked at each other.
?Maybe it?s that nutso raindance guy,? suggested Rick.
?Maybe. I wouldn?t put it past him. I talked to him one time a few years ago. He seemed pretty cool. Definitely an oddball though.?
They both shrugged, and fell silent again. Eventually Dan spoke.
?It?s pretty late, maybe we should get inside.?
?Yeah, I guess. Hey, you think I could jump over to Mr. Tindall?s house from here? It?s not that far.?
?I don?t think you should try.?
Rick shrugged. After a while, Dan, about to move toward the edge of the roof, stopped and lay once more on his back. The stars glimmered faintly and the white moonlight suppressed the orange streetlight glow. ?I guess a few more minutes wouldn?t hurt.?
?
A tiny pebble skittered across the dim sidewalk and came to rest at a driveway?s angled mouth. The stranger paused and somewhat stiffly bent to pluck up the stone from where it lay. He turned it over slowly and slowly, letting his fingers trace the minute grains of sediment. A delicate toss sent it arcing feebly toward a lawn before a low-roofed house. A light was on in a window toward the back. A shadow moved behind the white curtains.
?
Gregory Hamble fumbled for the light switch above his bed.
?Are you sure??
His neck was twisted to cradle the cordless phone firmly between his shoulder and ear. He found the switch and squinted as the wash of sharp white light startled his eyes.
?Shit!?
He lifted yesterday?s shirt from the floor with his toe, pulled his arms through the sleeves and scrambled to slide his legs into a pair of jeans.
?If I had to guess. Yeah. Definitely yeah. Damnit!?
On his hurried course to the kitchen he almost stumbled over his orange cat, Maxi, as she purred and tried to rub his leg.
?I mean, it all points to it, right??
He?d tacked the ?i? onto her name when he discovered his knowledge of feline anatomy was not as broad as he?d believed. But he sure as hell wasn?t worried about that now.
?Yeah, we thought we had this one in the bag. Sometimes it?s not so easy. I had some doubts. Can?t really say I?m too surprised. Just pissed.?
In the kitchen, he grabbed a new filter from a plastic bag on the counter and located the tin can. He needed his coffee. It kept him sane?something waking at 3:30 AM to rush to a violent crime scene didn?t facilitate.
?Yeah, I?ll be down there. Where?d it go down??
He dropped a scoop of brown, rich-smelling grinds into the filter, plopped some water in the receptacle and flicked the switch.
?Damn, that?s pretty close to home. Is forensics there yet??
He left the kitchen and banged through his front door toward his car. He snatched open the door and double-checked the glove compartment for his badge and his gun.
?Just gimme a few minutes. In the meantime, tell me what you know. Let me call you back on my cell.?
Satisfied, he returned inside, watched the regular gurgling drip as it filled the clear coffee pot, and waited.
?
The street met with a perpendicular road and, blocked by a line of monotonous carbon copy duplexes and a blocky grey three-story apartment complex, came to an end. As the stranger stepped beneath a streetlight, it flickered erratically and went off. He glanced toward the window of a top floor apartment, then up toward the streetlight, which sputtered dimly but didn?t go back on.
?
A cool breeze floated the curtains in the open window languorously back and forth, and gently caressed her face and naked body. She watched the pale moonlight spread across the mesmeric rise and fall of his chest. She heard her own breathing louder in her ear than it possibly could be.
If she let her eyes close, it all came back to her in vivid disconnected flashes. His body rising above her. His lips pressed against hers. His hands over her entire self. Her hand lay beneath his back and she felt her pulse hammering her wrist.
The stun had not yet worn off. Her mind was scattered, her feelings precarious and confused. Moments of elation traded with regret or contentment and gave way to terror or serenity. She lay virtually still, unable to hold her mind and heart securely enough to bring them to relax.
With a faint cadence of voice, she pulled her stiffened arm from under his back and slowly sat up. She wrested her chin on her knees and wrapped her arms around her legs.
She sat there, swinging between fatigue and exhilaration, until her body was wracked by an immense yawn. She slid her legs over the bed and stood up, her seized muscles tensed and stretched. The cool night air slipped into her open mouth.
As the yawn subsided, she found her pants, her top, her underwear, her shoes and mechanically pulled them on.
She stood for a moment, watching him. Then, her lower lip gripped by her teeth and her mind and feelings still contradiction, she moved with hesitance and determination through the bedroom door and the front room.
At heavy wooden door leading out, she placed her hand upon the cold brass doorknob and began to turn it. She paused. Then retraced her steps into the bedroom, looked once more at the recumbent figure on the bed, and stood by the window staring out at the night.
?
The stranger crossed the crumbling asphalt and moved to his right, past a red mailbox, toward a tiny dead-end street that branched out to the east. Behind him, the orange streetlight flickered on.
?
A wash of flickering television glow filtered through the living room; the patterns of light danced over Ellen?s shirt and pale skin.
A debonair, colourless man got out of an antiquated black Cadillac, accompanied by shrill strings. As he approached another man who waited at the entrance of an office building, the strings took a turn for the dramatic.
Here came the payoff. It was almost over. She should think about sleep.
But instead she thought about Richard.
One month ago today she had woken up to an empty bed, and an empty driveway. She hadn?t seen him or heard from him since. At first she?d tried to believe his departure had nothing to do with her?some emergency of some sort. But even then she had known she was only fooling herself. With all the shit that had been building between them, she shouldn?t have been surprised. A week later she?d found out he had moved to New York and refused to talk to her.
His desertion had been unquestionable and absolute. So why did she still stay up late in the front room, thinking he might walk in the door? Why did she feel giddy and apprehensive every time the phone rang because she imagined it might be him? Why did she spend so much time staring blankly at nothing while her mind slid backwards, recalling all the moments, his subtle facial mannerisms and particular way of speaking?
She knew the answer to those questions, but it hardly helped. She tried to focus on the awkward moments, the fights, the blockheadedness, and the insults to comfort herself, but it never worked.
One of the men was brandishing a gun at the other now. It took her a moment to discern which was which. Thumping percussion had joined the strings. There was a great deal of shouting and intense facial close-ups. It almost succeeded in regaining her attention, but after a moment or two it failed.
She missed him. From the very moment he was gone she had felt it clawing in her chest. It seemed like she hadn?t seen him in five years, even though it was only three since she?d first met him. Now, practically everything reminded her of Rich, from the lyrics of almost every song, to fragrances similar to his, to any place they?d visited together?and there were many of those. Sometimes she could swear he was sitting there, his arm comfortably around her shoulders, watching along with her. With ever little success she achieved, she imagined sharing it with him. So many little things?opinions, thoughts, news?at the beginning she had catalogued them all in her head and even considered making a list so she could tell him everything when she saw him again. Forget all roads leading to Rome?
One of the men was leaning up against a wall, crying out in pain and clutching his heart as dark grey blood spread over his chest.
It was true how they say you don?t truly realize what you have until you?ve lost it.
The credits rolled.
?
One polished leather shoe at a time, the stranger moved down the middle of Fairview Court and past the last house. A fenced walkway forged a tight channel in the leaning bushes and trees and zigzagged toward a single set of railway tracks guarded by a stark yet imposing crossing signal. After crossing the tracks, the stranger turned slightly left and scaled the side of a sizeable patch of scrubby elevation.
He turned toward the direction he had come. A tangle of leafy branches concealed the street and houses he had just wandered past. He stood motionless and stiff atop the embankment, gazing intently forward.
?
A cluster of starlings took to the air and fluttered overhead. A distant rumble lumbered forward?closer and louder, grinding intensely. Then, abruptly, it ceased.
The following briefest moment of silence echoed loudest. For an instant the cricket chirp, transformer buzz, and faintest drone of freeway traffic?everything?was muted absolutely.
A keening, whimpering whine quickly pierced the silence, growing in volume, heightening in pitch. The rumble joined in?a cacophony of scream and roar. The man waited, unmoving.
An explosion.
A white stucco house erupted in a globe of hot, yellow fire. Across the street, another house joined it?tearing itself apart, flinging bricks and furniture in an indiscriminate spray across the fracturing white asphalt street. Within a fraction of a second, every house in the neighbourhood was in some state of destruction. Walls crumbled and collapsed, their fragmented remains violently congealing with the spray of dirt. Heavy tree branches were ripped apart and spiralled indiscriminately through the turmoil. A coffee pot splintered against the bumper of a plummeting, stripped sedan. Flimsy figures dropped through windows and under fragmenting wreckage.
The ground trembled unsteadily. White electric fingers coiled and pulsed erratically, buzzing up telephone poles and sending showers of glittering sparks in arcs across the sky.
As one house and then another ballooned into flame and streaking shards of debris, a seething sheet of inferno wrapped closely around the neighbourhood and billowed up toward the sky. Black soot and smoke poured everywhere, capping the rising mass of broiling flame.
?
Through it all, the stranger didn?t flinch. He stood unmoving as the mess of dust and debris floated to rest.
And then a cool of wet lighted upon the brim of his cap, then another. Bloated drops plopped down, faster and faster.
He glanced up at the sky. An onerous grey. The moon and stars gone.
He smiled then, turned, and strode purposefully down the back of the embankment, down the dimly lit street. Away.
?
The wakeful few would raise their faces from the ground, turn off their televisions, set down their coffee cups, get to their feet, or move towards their windows?and pause. Then they would turn as one, and look to where the stranger had passed.
Rain.
Last edited:
