The Vinyl Effect

The ticking of the clock made him nervous, each tick seemed to be harping away at him telling his senses what his brain failed to acknowledged.

His cellphone rested on his lap as he puffed away at another cigarette; it was his fourth in a row and this one was down to near the filter. He was thinking of lighting up another one when his cellphone came alive.

"Yes," he said as he brought it up to his ear.

"We're in some serious shit," the voice on the other end told him. "We need Pretty and we need him bad."

"I will find him," he replied. "Is there anything in particular you need him to get?"

"Vinyl," the voice on the other end said.

"Vinyl?" he repeated the word.

"Pretty knows what it's all about," the voice said.

The Egress Action

"It's raining," Frank said. "Damn, why does it have to be rain today."

"Maybe mother nature is at war?" Goner replied. He had his gun sitting on the dash as if it were a coffee cup cooling down. He was getting tired from all this waiting.

"You might have a point there," Frank noted. He rolled down the window and threw out the butt of a cigarette. Then rolled it back up again.

"So, all we have to do is wait for the signal?" Goner asked.

"Anytime soon," Frank answered after checking his watch. "He's running a little behind schedule."

They heard the sound of glass breaking and looked to see that Max had vacated the building through the easiest egress he could find. He was firing blindly behind him as well.

"That's our cue," Frank said as he switched from neutral to drive.

The Sound of Bullets Dancing

Bullet casings fell to the cement floor making metallic notes to the ears. A symphony of metal, sweet to some but sour to others. The conductor of this particular song was sweating and tired, but he kept the music going.

Max kept pulling the trigger on the guns until the last bullet left. Then he ducked down to reload. He glanced over at Mags who had torn a strip of her shirt.

"No matter how many fall there seems to be two more that spring up," he told her.

"Crap," Mags said. She was bandaging up Frank's leg.

"Well," Frank said. "Talk about being between a rock and a hard place."

"You giving up already?" Mags asked him with a wink.

"If you guys want to chat on your own time that's fine by me," Max said after sliding the reload clip into one of his guns. "But there's another pressing matter going on here."

The Gates of Door to Doors Ritual

Prison, somewhere in Central America.

"We're screwed," Tasso said. He was hot and tired and pretty sore from the beating. His fingers felt like they were splitting apart.

"Not yet," Max replied; he glanced around the room as if he was studying it.

"What do you mean?" Tasso questioned. He sat on the edge of the bunk and put his head in his hands. "When they get back here they are going to drag us out and put several bullets into us."

"They might," Max replied. He felt along the edge of the south wall, and he put his head to it and closed his eyes.

Tasso looked at him as if Max was going crazy and shook his head slowly; he knew he shouldn't of trusted the man in the first place. But no, he had to follow his gut instinct.

Max's eyes opened and he cracked a smile. He dug through his pockets and picked out a match and lit it and then blew it out, as the smoke was still burning he blew it towards the wall.

"Tasso, get me some water," he said.

"You get it yourself," Tasso shot back.

"There's not much time, Tass. Just get me the fucking water now."

You're a Long Way from Home

Max opened his eyes and closed them again. He was on the verge of throwing up. He had lost count of the number of shifts that they had gone through in the past few days. It had thrown his internal clock off kilter and that had made him feel disoriented.

Max opened up his eyes again, taking slow deep breaths and fighting the urge to vomit. 

"Shit," Max muttered. "I'm getting to old for this."

Max glanced over to see her sitting up and stretching the kinks out of her body. Her wingspan was quite impressive.

"You got that right, lover," Mags told him. "You thinking of retiring?"

"What and leave all this," Max replied.

"This one is pretty bad," Mags said. "The others are still out of it."

"Whoever is causing these drastic changes is going to pay dearly," Max said as he sat up and noticed the others were still laying about the floor like a child's displaced toys.

Mags sat up against a wall, her wings folded back and draped over her shoulders like a cloak. A fleeting thought went through his mind, so fleeting that it was like a dream in a blender, but looking at Mags like that only made him mutter something he wasn't sure he said.

"What?" Mags questioned.

"What did I say?" Max asked back.

"You were having a Frankie Goes To Hollywood moment," she told him.

"Oh really?"

"You said Pleasuredome."

Barbarian Poet

The room was dimly lit by a single candle. Hunched over the small table sat a very large man clad in worn leathers. He tossed a small white projectile over his shoulder; it struck the floor softly and came to rest among a gathering of similar looking objects. The great shoulders rose and fell with a sigh that sounded more like the growl of a bear. A large calloused ink-stained hand more accustomed to the grip of a sword delicately held the tiny writing implement. A trail of black droplets led from the ink well to the new sheet of paper at the center of the wooden table. There the big hand held the quill to the clean white sheet, a stain of black grew slowly on its surface. The hand began to move, the penmanship surprisingly light and eloquent for one with such a brutish appearance. The story began. 

“In the darkness of his cave sat the barbarian, the day had been long and full of great toil, but no…….” 

The quill snapped; fingers struck the paper smearing the words that only a moment ago were the beginning of his tale. The warrior threw the broken implement aside and stood quickly slamming both fists into the table as he did. A low growl was audible from his massive form. His scarred muscular arms moved, slowly he lifted the ruined sheet of paper from the table and crumbled it tight with both hands. Turning towards the door he tossed the small ball of black and white onto the floor where it came to rest among its’ brethren. Ignoring the fur cloak that hung to his left he threw open the iron bound wooden door. Wind and snow rushed into the tiny room. 

The barbarian stepped forward and was instantly swallowed by the darkness. The sound of his boots mercilessly crunching the thick snow could be heard for many moments and then was gone. The door remained open. Snow was drifting into the small chamber. On the floor the many crumpled balls of paper had blown about, and a skiff of snow now intermixed with their pattern. Had anyone been there to see it, they may have thought that the paper and snow had come together to form the image of a small northern island. An ancient land, a distant land, a land of three nations and one Queen… 

The wind blew again and the image was gone. So too was its creator.

A Coin in a Cup

The wind was bitter and cold, and he stood over the subway grate, thankful that a subway pulled up and sent a warm blast of air up towards him. 

He was cold, but the warmth comforted briefly from the bite of the arctic wind.

"Gotta save the world," he mumbled. "Have to save the world." 

He turned as he heard the sound of some coins dropping into his cup. He looked over and smiled at the young lady who did so. She smiled back; that was an added bonus.

Max brought up his fingerless gloves to his face and blew on his fingers, to warm them up. He wished that the shelter stayed open throughout the day so that he had a place to be protected from mother nature's harsh breath. 

"Am I a saviour?" he questioned no one in particular. He waited over the subway grating and heard the hiss of the train as it started again. It was like music to his ears. "Gotta save the world. They will come if I don't."

Out of Sync

"What makes you think that it's a trap?" Suki asked; she stood behind Max, looking past him down at the street. "It seems fine to me."

Max held up a finger, and then he pointed to an alley further down the street. "Watch the shadows," he said softly to her.

Suki was about to say that it was night and there was no shadow to begin with, but that's when she caught movement in the darkness.

"Is it them?"

"They are waiting," he replied.

Watch

Things come here from backwards and forwards. Events occur in sideways, shockwaves happen like illnesses or car crashes. Here's where everything has been a threat or will be a threat. Where the fork in your potatoes was used to stab someone, where the blue wallpaper matches the sky on the day of his funeral. The scent of lilacs is how her perfume smells the day she leaves. Monsters can take the shape of anything, their claws becoming a song on the radio, their fangs unanswered phonecalls, their wings spreading vast over childhoods filled with  suns. Things twist here and become knives. Things turn breath into acid here. 

Magriel floats above the hundred horizons, eyes focused between everywhere and anywhere. She gently raises the crystal vial from around her neck to catch the latest tear falling from her cheek. The flames of her sword snap in the cold then hot wind. In these moments between attacks she sometimes imagines slowly emptying the vial into the wound of a man who has been shot protecting her. It is another monster, she knows, but it feels warmer than the rest.

It's Only Make-Believe

The man on the bed began to come to.

Well, it's about time. The man heard as his eyes flickered open to a bright fluorescent overhead.

Two men and a woman, all dressed in white smocks, approached the man as he began to regain consciousness.

"Welcome back stranger," the woman said with a smile. "I thought for sure you were a goner."

"His recovery is amazing," one of the men said.

"Why wouldn't it be," the other fellow interjected. "After all he is the perfect specimen."

"What's going on?" the man on the bed asked. "I'm... who am I?"

"This is not a good sign..."

"I told you we shouldn't have taken him off just yet," the younger male said. "His mind is a blank."

"Just give him a moment or two," the woman interjected. "It could be the effect of the serum."

Impaired Visual

EXT. CAR - MORNING
Two LEGACY members sit in a black sedan in a parking lot outside a rundown building. Cell 1 is a bald black man holding a strange pair of binoculars. Cell 2 is a young latino woman sitting behind the steering wheel.

CELL 1:
Unable to maintain visual. Switching to ultrasight, now.

CELL 2:
Verification Niner-One-Oh.

CELL 1:
Unable to locate. Targets must have shifted.

CELL 2:
Informing HQ. Relaying negative.

The Art of Being

He meets her gaze tentatively.

They look into each others' eyes for what seems to be an eternity.

"No," Mags finally says."No, it couldn't be..."

Her hands go to his cheek. He steps back. "This doesn't make sense," she adds with a whisper.

"Look lady," Max said. He looks around for any sign of security. "You are starting to scare me."

Brainwash Interruptus

"Not all of consciousness is this strange," the Fokkerbot assured the young woman, its synthetic voice approximating a soothing tone. "Of course parts are stranger." 

"This... It's like one of the stories the Eighth Tribe used to tell," Tatterdemalion said, her eyes roving about the polished-steel surfaces of the Lab. Her eyes were lined with tattooed lace-work, thick like goth eyeliner. Her black hair was still damp with goo from the bizarre extraction pod that had swallowed her off the planet.

The Fokkerbot angled its polished-steel head. "The abduction legends of the Eighth Tribe are actually based in fact. Although they themselves do not realize it." Tatter rolled dreamily onto her side. The long polished-steel table felt oddly comfortable. Clean. 

"Can you make... Can you make me like this place?" she asked. "I want to..."

"You're tired of feeling soft and dirty. I can make you like polished steel." 

Tatter tried to focus her gaze on the other person who had just quietly entered the room. The Fokkerbot continued. "I will forge you into a weapon. And you will hunt my prey." The lights on the robot's face blinked some more as it called up an image of a man, stubbly and tired looking, on a screen. The pic was labelled 'Cube'. 

"Oh," Tatter said. "You mean the guy right behind you?"