1,000 Dead: A Love Story-- Ch. 1 Hope Rides Alone

Been outta the game for a while. Here's the first scene of the longer piece I'm working on... This goes out to the supporters on r/Treewriting. Get it done, guys!

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           The squealing shriek of dying men would be categorized as “Sounds I’ll never get used to” in the man’s mind.

            Like a gurgling fire alarm, he thought.

            He was in The Forest. Great oaks and maples soared toward the heavens by hundreds of feet, dwarfing anything he’d encountered on Earth. Beyond the canopy, a tar black lightning storm was rolling in from the West. Blue tendrils arced across the sky, their light mingling with the amber blaze of sunset.

The air was thick with howls of desperate souls. From within the tree line, hidden in shadows, he watched carnage unfold. Hundreds of men and women had fallen upon the grassy clearing like a crashing wave, to fight for their lives. Makeshift spears and a stone knife cut ragged gouges through flesh and bone. A woman cowered, her wrist broken, hanging limp in her other hand. She cradled her pain like a newborn, sobbing softly as her attacker loomed. Men and women fought hand to hand, trading punches and grappling. There were no sides, and no quarter was given. Each fought to fill their quota. 1,000 kills and they could return to the lives they lost, The Maker had said.

            He was no longer sure he could remember his previous life. There were images and writings he had been able to keep and recreate in The Preparation Room. By all accounts, his life had been sweet and steamy and dark and innocent. He had been loved and had known things; had been a relatively intelligent guy, but had squandered his opportunities. Whenever he looked back, pouring through his old journals and memories, his self loathing grew.

            He put it all aside. Giving up the feelings holding him back, his metamorphosis began.

            Tyler Durden said, “It’s when we give up everything that we’re free to do anything.”  For the man, that anything was learning how to kill. He had turned himself into a beast. He had killed, and had died, and had slowly learned to survive so he could do more of the former.

            A death rattle shook the battle back into focus before him, and he stood, brushing loamy dirt from thin, linen pants. They were the color of mocha cream or cool sand. He had grown the hemp that made cloth which he wore. With the empty hours and days and months of training, he had built his own self-sustaining world. The Converse on his feet he had simply imagined into being from memory.

            The grass was beaten down by thousands of footsteps, circling, jumping, and shifting in the dirt. Lighting sparked again, a rumble reverberated in his ribcage. He sank into a stance, felt the movement of the small planet they all walked, felt the energy coursing up between his toes. It spread like electric fire through his being, whirling in his core. His skin tingled with goosebumps, hairs on end.

            Feel the energy.

            Above, the lightning forked through the trees as he drew its beam towards him. The resounding compression created an airburst that spread in all directions. His cry rose above the tumult and echoed in the treetops. Those on the outskirts of the melee were knocked flat, the others oblivious to the world outside of their current opponent. He stepped forward into the field, ice-blue energy sparking across his form, illuminating his path with a faint glow. In his hands, he held a searing light. The light pulsated and grew, his body coiling, preparing to strike.

            Behind his eyes, he felt a flash and pang of familiarity. He could feel a presence off in the distance.

            Could it be her? Please, let it be her.

            The energy crackled around his fingertips and he aimed his mind at the crowd. With a growl, he unleashed a sphere into the clearing, spinning out of his hand with a speed that blurred his vision. Wisps of smoke coiled from the ball. When it made contact, the shell encasing the energy split with a thunderclap and exploded. The after image of three bodies vaporized in incandescent blue seared his retinas. A thin sweat coated his forehead, a single bead running to the corner of his eye.

            547, 548, 549, he counted.

As one, the combatants shook awake, turning and glancing, as though from a daydream, temporarily mesmerized by the electric fireworks. He had his opening. They were twenty paces from the man when he pressed forward. He closed the distance while someone blinked, despair and disbelief written on their taut faces.

            He took a running leap, his right hand a careening hammerhead. The hammer’s face mashed a Hispanic man’s nose and mandible, planting itself within gristle. Its backside struck across a clavicle, felt it bend and snap, its owner crumpling to the ground. Fingers jabbed for his eyes, clawing.  The sneakers slid in the dirt in shallow crescents, shifting the man’s weight. He lowered his base, levered the arm, and released his attacker to fly through the air, crashing heavily into the backs of unprepared fighters like a human wrecking ball. Turning to face the crowd, he laid in with a left cross, teeth rattling behind his every blow. He used his forearms and shins like clubs, beating bodies into heaps on the blood soaked ground.

            On the heel of his sneakers, there were two words stitched in Turquoise thread: BIGGER KNEES.  When the crowd began to writhe again with combat and press in and around him, he began creating distance with his legs, stomping into faces and abdomens, mashing skulls on his steel-hardened knee caps, crushing throats with the snapping of his feet. Grunting with the effort, he kept his breathing even, whirling his body through combat. He moved like a dancer through a crowd, aiming toward the middle of the floor. Throughout the fighting, he counted:

            554, 55, 56, 57…

            Ahead, combatants were slapped aside by a tall man wielding a bamboo staff; hardened and treated. The large grass strand cracked against faces and bodies were knocked clear from his path. On the man in Converse’s back hung a similar length of bamboo, this one treated and inked dark and foreboding, slightly curved, about four feet in length. It rested along his spine, tied across his chest, heavy with a hidden strength. Crouching now, he drew its length from the ties and felt them fall to the ground.

            The weight of his shorter bamboo rod felt reassuring. He had treated the material himself, hardened over fire, lacquered, resealed. The tall man was fast approaching, crimson glistening on the staff’s edge, matted tufts of hair and gray matter clinging to crevasses. A horizontal swing came in from his right, threatening to knock his head from his shoulders. In a flash, his guard was up, there was a clatter of wood on wood, and the staff deflected toward the sky. In the open air underneath the staff, the man swept closer to his opponent. The dark length of bamboo was at his left hip, his right hand in a leading grip. The tall man had hardly reacted from the block, but he could see the start of shock ringing his dark eyes.

            The man in hemp clothing twisted his hands slightly and felt the sheath release from the hilt. The blade hummed as it leapt into the world, shimmering golden with the sunlight and black with the storm clouds. It flickered through the tall man with ease, a mist of arterial blood puffed into the air. A seam grew through the tall man’s chest from hip to collar bone, and he folded into two slopping pieces.

            As one, the crowd recoiled from the scene. The weapons the people of Purgatory usually encountered were all handmade, mostly barbaric parodies of clubs and spears. The katana that gleamed before them was also handmade, it was forged in his Preparation Room and not created from memory, and so The Maker allowed it. The man had always been fascinated with Japan’s culture and had studied texts during his life, never actually visiting the country. With this remembered knowledge, he forged his own steel, a hard shell with a cavity of softer steel encasing the heavy core of the blade. His folding and treatment of the sword brought out a sawtooth pattern along the edge, beaten into the steel till the layers became a single homogenized entity. The technique was used by Goro Masamune, a legendary Japanese swordsmith, called Shoshu Kitae. He had read about it once, in a life that seemed eons past. Crystal structures in the steel itself seemed to dance along the blade like stardust.

            “Get him!” one of the fearful yelled and the man refocused.

The crowd lurched forward, a desperate tide clawing to end the sword bearer’s life. His dance became different, but his movements were still fluid. Limbs and bodies fell around him. Blood rained to the forest floor, the dirt turning to a warm soup of viscera and earth. Many lost their footing on fallen warriors. Screams erupted from armless and legless, soon-to-be corpses, sobbing, wrapped in the agony of bleeding out to open air. He cut swathes through the crowd, sprays of blood slathering those around him.

A guttural cry echoed off his lips, charged by his eternal energies, booming throughout the Forest. It was lamentous and feral. There was a voice in his head, and it howled in reply.

He felt the same pang of recognition and realized the other powerful entity was closing in.

577, he counted.

A headless black man fell to his knees and toppled underfoot of so many others. Above the crescendo of screams and shouts and curses, he heard a battle cry. Forlorn and cutting to the core.

“For Jeremy!” the shrill echoed all around them, shaking eardrums. The sun was all but gone, when he finally saw her. A robed figure flickered in and out of reality on the edge of the battle, men and women falling from knife-like slashes to the neck.

Damn, she’s fast. He couldn’t follow her movements. A fist caught him across the side of the face awkwardly, turning his head and cracking his vertebrae soothingly. He turned and cut the man down quickly.

“Thanks,” he rasped from a dry throat, feeling looser and more relaxed. The crowd was reeling at the second major threat, and many ran for their lives.

He let them go, conserving his energy.

The few stragglers who hadn’t fled, tripping in the slop around their feet, were screaming the same slaughtered pig sound he had learned to recognize.

The hooded figure jumped back into the visible plane, long enough to kill three more with a single strike, disappearing again.

A sheet of crimson mingled and hung above the failing bodies, their legs unsure as to how they were losing strength, the dumbfounded look that plastered all of their faces.

His heart fluttered and a smile crept along the crook of his lips. There were six left, and he watched them run. The battle had lasted all of ten minutes, and yet the clearing would never be the same. Blood clotted and soaked into the roots of short grasses and pooled in footprints of the fallen. He felt alive standing over the macabre sight; a graveyard of limbs and slowly cooling bodies.

There was a sound like cloth tearing and the hooded figure apparated in front of the man with the sword. The cloak looked heavy, as though pieced together by strands of thick wool and leather. The sleeves hung heavy with dark, damp stains.

He knew it was blood. It was all around them, the smell coiling up his nostrils, tickling receptors with an aluminum tang. It covered his khaki clothing, spattered on his shoes, soaking into the ground. The thunder rolled again, the storm almost on them. Off in the distance, the sound of raindrops sifted through the treetops, moving closer. The figure in the robe, head down, made a clucking sound.

“Tut-tut-tut. Not bad,” an arm waved lazily at the massacre around them. The man saw the glint of steel poking from the confines of the robe; saw the sharpened fingertip caps his enemy preferred to wear. They resembled the hooked talons of a winged raptor. The steel nails hooked the inside of the hood and began to draw it back. Gleaming cinammon curls fell and sprang in the fading sunlight. He saw the face he had been waiting for, yearning and searching for.

The man took a step forward, arms wide, sword resting loosely in a half-open palm, dangling towards the ground.

            “We really need to stop meeting like this,” he joked in his dust-dry rasp. Deep mahoghany eyes ringed in purple fire locked onto his glacial blue stare.

            “You could’ve left a few more for me,” she quipped, whipping her long curls away from her smiling face. She blinked her large eyes, freckles dotting her copper cheeks and forehead. He reflected how with other people a smattering of freckles may look unnatural or offputting. He found her’s sexy. His gaze softened, embarassment warming his face. He gave a slight bow.

            “Constance,” he addressed the beauty. She let the cloak fall off the sharp edges of her bare shoulders.

            “Evan,” she nodded. The cloak crumpled at her heels. Beneath the heavy fabric she wore the tattered remnants of an emerald prom dress. What was left of the silk body had been torn in strategic places to show bits of her caramel skin, her muscular torso, the sweet curve of her hips. The excess strips had been resewn to the skirt, falling in a feathery sheath around her smooth thighs. She twisted her hips gently, thunder echoing above, silk strands dancing as she swayed. “You like?”

            He planted the sword firmly in the mud at his feet.

“Beautiful,” he breathed, “as always.”

            Now it was her turn to blush.

            “Though, you already knew that,” he continued, teeth flashing.

            “True,” she giggled, “but oh, how I do enjoy the flattery.”

            “Jeremy’s a lucky man.”

            “You’ve said that. Lily’s a lucky lady.”

            “So you’ve said, as well.” There eyes locked, and he felt himself drawn into the deep recesses of her pupils. They grew like deep wells in the failing light, two voids drawing him in. For a brief moment he remembered the nights they shared together in the crook of an ancient willow tree. A whirl of desperation and emotional longing. The Proving Grounds had worn them down to beasts, and they clung to their humanity the only way they had been able to find: through eachother. Deep within the blackhole of her stare, a look he had lost himself for hours in, he saw their passions unfold again by the firelight, thrust out into the night air for the world to witness. She caved and lost the staring contest for a brief moment, then she looked back.

            “How many have you got now? 525? 550?” she asks, a hand gently snaking to her exquisite hips.

            “578. You?” he returned.

            “Seven hundred eighteen. You’ve caught up quickly,” she seemed impressed.

            “The Shadow taught me well,” he admitted, shrugging.

            “I hope we won’t be seeing him anytime soon. Too vulgar for my liking.”

            “I think I’ve finally got him contained.” The voice in his head spoke, sounding as though it came from Evan’s right.

            Like hell, you do. Evan turned his head to the origin of the sound, glancing away from Constance.

            “Shut up.”

            She laughed. It had a resonating roundness that made her that much more attractive to him. “Contained, eh?”

            “Well, I’m workin’ on it,” he chuckled. They shared an amiable moment, and then her features began to sharpen. Her legs lowered her frame into a fighting stance. “Wait,” he motioned, palms out again, “one more question that’s been bothering me.”

            “Shoot,” she relaxed.

            “Well, two actually.”

            “Yes?”

            “If we really do get home again, do you think we’ll remember all of this, fighting and killing… meeting eachother?”

            She considered for a moment. “I’m really not sure, but aside from that last bit, I would gladly do without any memories.”

            “Fair enough. Last one. Let’s say that we do remember. Would I be able to get in touch with you? Would that be okay?”

            “I wouldn’t mind a double date,” she laughs.

            “I’m serious,” he says.

            “So am I,” she snaps back, the smile drained from her features. “Despite all of his shortcomings, despite everything you and I have been through, I loved Jeremy. I still love him. Just like I know you still love Lily.”

            “But…”

            “Uhn-uh,” she waggles a steel claw at him. “Two questions is enough for today. Let’s get to this.”

            Business time, the Shadow whispered behind his eyes.

            Evan watched, unmoving, as she lowered herself back into a stance, her feet staggered, hips forward, hands up in front of her body and face, elbows tucked in to protect her abdomen. The muscles in her legs coiled, waiting for the first strike. He quickly assessed the distance between them, knowing that he could overtake the area with three strides. Their gazes were unmoving, locked onto the other’s looking for any sign of weakness. With his right hand, he gently reached for the hilt of the sword. Her coiled legs sprang.

            He barely had time to bring the sword up to bear, flinging a spray of sodden earth towards her face. It plastered across her skin and around her closed eyes. He aimed a slash for her torso, coming in from her right. Before the blade sunk into her flesh, she flickered away in a blur. The sword chopped through her afterimage, cutting through the greasy wisps of her leftover energy.

             He stood in the darkness, eyes adjusting to zero light when he felt a pressence behind him. The leg sweep was already in full swing, and he barely had a chance to react, pushing himself into the air above her. In middair, his left hand found the hilt of the sword and he turned his defensive jump into a downward slice.

            She flickered away again, the blade squelching into the coagulating earth deep enough to holdfast. Before he could muscle his weapon from the earth, she had pounced back in.

            There was a moment in each of their fights, where Constance moved with a speed and ease that Evan could barely follow. He watched and was unable to react as she chopped the inside of his right forearm toward the wrist, causing his fingers to involuntarily spasm open. She raked her fingers across his chest, stripping flesh and fabric alike. He growled, twisting his left side in to jab at her face angrily. With a sweep of her hands and a smooth rotation, he was airborne, wheeling end over end. As his face was about to make contact with an armless cadaver, Evan tucked and rolled back to his feet. A gurgle erupted from the body’s mouth as the weight of his somersault squeezed the air from stagnant lungs.

            Back on his feet, he wheeled in time to block her first strike. Her fists contorted to the shape of beaks, stabbing for his eyes, throat, solar plexus, his collarbone, his nether region. Evan’s frame stayed solid, blocking each of her strikes, feeling the flow of her energy, anticipating her next moves, but it would only go so far. For all the strength and skill he possessed, he knew Constance had the advantages of speed and precision on her side. Her strikes flowed over him like a torrent, crashing uselessly on his carved forearms and callused palms.

            “You going to join this fight?” she goaded. He took the opportunity to gain inside control, her strikes redirected above her head.

            Evan took a short step forward with his right and layed into her with a double fisted palm strike to her firm chest. Her bare feet glided along the muddy forest floor, carried more than five feet from the force of his strike. She flickers and reappeared another several paces further away, still facing him. His wolfish grin was back. She touched her chest softly, deep purple welts already forming beneath her hand. A drop of blood fell from the corner of her lips.

            “More like it,” she wheezed, drawing the back of her hand across her mouth. They stood, addressing one another for a few moments. The sun had dropped beneath the treeline, and the storm was hissing its way toward them. There was a flash of lightning, and she disappeared. Flickering in and out of reality, she juked towards him across the battlefield: Left then right, left then right. Vanishing in front of his eyes. Instinctively he brought his right knee up in a Muay Thai block, as a newly reapparating crescent kick cracked against his shin. The force sent him skidding back in the muck. Evan kept his balance, but the throb in his leg was fierce. They both knew that the end of this fight needed to come before the storm hit them. Quickly recovering from the delivered blow, he felt her energy begin to shift again.

            She launched herself at him with a cry, flickering out of existence in middair. His eyes fell closed and he felt her movement through the immaterial world around them. He dropped his head to the left, and a beaked fist that would have pulped his skull shot over his right shoulder. She hung in middair behind him, attempting to deliver the final blow. His training took over and he clamped her arm, shifted his feet and a coiling snap reverberated through his body as he levered her body up into the air. He swung her hard into the ground at his feet, her face plastered with waste. This was his opportunity.

            He dropped to the forest floor after her, arresting her attempts at escape. Clamped tight in a wrestler’s lock, Constance could do little more than squirm in his arms. The rolled in the mud, till Evan held her tight, his back in the mud, her lithe body against him. She swung her elbows back, mashing his ribs, he felt at least two of them give way with sharp snaps. She felt like fire incarnate in his grip, her energy radiating off her skin and body. She arched her hips into his groin, snapping her head back against the bridge of his nose, it broke easily, but it was the moment he was waiting for. His own blood poured down his throat and into his mouth, threatening to choke him.

            Evan snaked an arm underneath her pointed chin and wrenched upward, clenching her carotids. He made a sound as he exhaled like a tire losing all its pressure. She broke another rib. He clenched harder, her face blushing.

            “You dough, you haff my birffday,” he managed with his pulped nose.

            “What?” she gurgled.

            “Sevedd huddredd deighteed. Sevedd deighteed’s my birffday,” he sprays. Her curves pressed against his body, slowly sopping wet earth on their clothing. He never felt more alive.

            “Well, aren’t I the lucky one,” she manages on her last dregs of air. Her face started to make the transition from beet red to violet. “Finish it,” she says, her eyes looking up for his pleadingly.

            “Di’ll seehd you soond.” She nods. His right hand curled around the point of her chin, the other arm around her neck and braced against her shoulder. He grunts, pushing down with the left, wrenching up and back with the right. There’s a soft pop and she goes limp.

            Gently, he rolled her over onto her back, taking time to cross her arms over her chest, brush the muck from her beautiful face. He hacked a throatful of snot and scabbing blood, dark as a liver. Between his thumb and forefinger he clamped the bridge of his nose, feeling the broken area gently.

            He drew a sharp breath in through his mouth, then rerighted his face. The sound echoed hollowly in his throat, and the blood began to pour freely. He ripped a strip of silk from Constance’s skirt, tearing it again to plug his nostrils.

            For some reason, it brought back an old memory from his past life. Evan tried desperately to grasp for the thought, as they were less and less frequent with so much time having passed. He said a silent goodbye to the slowly cooling corpse of the girl of his dreams, retrieved his sword and scabbard, and turned to walk toward the treeline. Everything was still and silent as he reached the hiding spot where he had watched the beginning of the melee. There was a shoulder slung messenger bag, laying against a large root of an immense oak. He rummaged through it and returned to standing with a cigarette case and a battered silver Zippo.

            Evan took one last look at the clearing, the severed limbs, the puddles of human waste and lifeforce, piles of the dead. Atop the mangled dogpile, he made out the emerald silk. He knew he would see her again soon. He turned toward the treefort he called home, brought a cigarette up to his chapped lips, and lit it.

            And then it started to rain.

In another life...

       In another life, I would have listened to my mother. I would never have spoken to you. You wouldn't have scraped your way into my head and effected my every decision since High School. I would have not felt tainted by my urges; driven toward the darker side of my psyche.

       In another life, I would have stayed as innocent as I believed myself to be. I would not have jumped from relationship to relationship, seeking for the unattainable 'true love' that you once made me believe I had with you. I would have been content with what I found.

       In another life, I would have taken school more seriously. I would not have treated it like a hotel and resort, always willing to party; looking for my next love. My potential, the one I've always been told about, may have been reached, and I wouldn't be stuck on the "8-year plan", counting my pennies to see if I have enough for the upcoming semester's tuition. I may have finished my Bachelor's before the banks decided it was time they needed me to shell out my entire paycheck to barely cover my student loan payments. I would not be stuck at the dead-end, part-time job, not even scraping by.

        In another life, I would listen to my heart. I would paint the images in my head. I would unleash the spigget holding back all those words that rattle in my brain. I would create worlds with those words and entertain the masses, showing them new views of their lives. I would simply unleash my right brain upon the world. I would make a change. I would leave my mark in history.

        In another life, I wouldn't be so caught up with the big picture. I would find myself in the woods, on a farm, in the mountains, by the beach, the waves crashing ceaselessly scrubbing away my pain. I would explore and discover the world for myself, instead of searching for pictures and words on the Web.

        In another life, I would be a Warrior for Justice. I would right the wrongs. I would show the world that those in power have hidden behind the curtain. I would seek the truth, and I would find it. 

        In another life, I would be the best version of myself. I would take advantage of the limitless possibilities we each take for granted and squander over time. I would have found myself in a different situation. I'd make my own niche. I'd find my own corner of the world. 

        In another life, I would let everyone know how much I care about them, how much they've meant to me. 

        In another life, I would be your first. 
        In my life, I work everyday to make sure I'm your last.

Shadow. Pt. 2 (Fuck yea, ganger beat down time)

Collapse.

            The rocking chair almost overturned backwards when he fell into his own body. In a flash he was on his feet, grabbed his heavy duster off the coat rack, and stepped out onto the fire escape. Thunder rumbled above as he vaulted into empty air. The leather holsters lining his coat jostled against his side with the weight of heavy metal. He dropped several feet toward the asphalt before he was able to catch and support himself, suspended five stories in the air.

            Another flash of electricity and it looked as though he disappeared.

            One second, two second, and three. The thunder rumbled as his Converse slapped the top step to the subway station. He shifted in the shadows and slunk down the staircase.

            “I don’t have any money,” he heard her squeak.

            “Oh, we’re not lookin’ for your cash, bitch,” The Cowboy chuckled, tossing his blade to the other hand. From his hidden place at the bottom of the staircase, he projected out into the gangers’ minds.

            Stop this now and walk away. If you do this quickly, I won’t be forced to break all of you. His voice was stern and even as it resonated in their skulls.

            “Who said that?” the Cowboy demanded. They were glancing around the empty platform, at each other, listening to echoes. They didn’t see him slip into the shadow of one of the tiled pillars. He could feel that one of them had been forced into the gang out of fear for his life.

            Still as guilty as the rest.

            It’s going to be alright, he whispered in her head. In her thoughts he saw the trigger of a Tazer pressed against her finger, hidden within her purse. Let me take care of them, he reassured, I promise it’ll be alright. Her finger relaxed and straightened onto the trigger guard. It twitched gently. He unbuttoned the clasps of his holsters. His hands smoothed over the athletic taped grips of his weapons.

            The Cowboy stepped forward, knife still brandished.

            “Who the fuck said that!?”

            When I tell you, hit the ground, Okay? She nodded imperceptibly. Beneath his own drawn-up hood, lips parted and flashed a white wolfish grin. He sifted through the gangers’ minds, searching for their fears. Homelessness, drowning, life in prison, and spiders. His smile widened as he squeezed fear inducing chemicals from their own brains into their circulatory system.

            “Oh God! They’re all over me!” one hollered, dancing into the light, brushing off invisible arachnids. He bumped into the other next to him, and they scuffled to keep balance. The Cowboy’s heart raced and his voice broke.

            “I-Is this some trick?” he questioned the woman, stepping ever closer. He made a move to grab for her wrist.

            Now, he commanded, and she dropped to her stomach on the cold floor.

            The man in the shadows revealed himself, sweeping from behind the pillar, loosing the weapon in his right hand.

            The steel pipe wrench turned end over end with a dull whistle, controlled by his will, and crunched The Cowboy’s fist, mangling nearly every bone in his hand. The knife clattered uselessly to the floor; the wrench hung suspended in the air. Clutching his ruined hand, their leader fell to his knees, a defeated whimper growing in his throat.

            Before it could escape his lips, the Shadowed Man stomped a Converse into the Cowboy’s face, pulping his nose and rattling broken teeth. Spurred by a telekinetic burst, the kick propelled the kneeling man back into the shadows. There was a wet crack! as the back of his skull fractured on something thicker and harder.

            One.

            The Shadowed Man grasped the suspended wrench in his right hand; in his left he held a hard oak Military Police baton from way back during the Vietnam Conflict. It had been his father’s.

            So had the wrench, he lamented silently. Slashing horizontally with the right, he connected just above the collar bone of the closest ganger. The young man crumpled under the hit, an immediate gout of blood sprayed from his mouth as he fell gurgling.

            Two.

The others barely had the sense to react before he was on them. Spinning the wrench from his hand like a Frisbee, he felled two more of the youths. One would need the support of a cane for the rest of his life; the other would never be able to raise his arms above his head. They fell in broken heaps, a knee cap shattered, ribs, collar bones and shoulder blades ground to powder underneath the repeated thrashing of the steel slab. The wrench circled off into the darkness like a bird of prey taking flight.

Three, Four.

The youngest member of the gang was still frantically attempting to brush off the last of the spiders. His friend, who had witnessed the instantaneous and brutal carnage, reached for a pistol in the back of his sagging pants. He brought it up swiftly and fired a single shot. The bullet deflected off the rotating wrench, which appeared from the shadows, and ricocheted harmlessly into the darkness. The wrench remained, and shattered the man’s arm severely in four locations. He fell sobbing to the tiles.

Five.

Finally the youngest realized what had just happened around him. He stared in awe of the Shadowed Man, his thoughts pleading forgiveness. For the first time that evening, the Shadowed Man spoke,

“Do you plan to beg for mercy?” The youth collapsed to his knees, sobbing. “To beg, like all those women you six have brutalized?” The sobs grew louder. “I’m not going to kill you,” he finally admitted. The youth glanced up, eyes shrunken red with tears, and sniffed a mouthful of snot into his throat.

“Y-Y-You’re not?” he asked.

“No,” the Shadowed Man replied. The kid’s shoulders drooped in relief.

 He raised the baton above his head, pulling the youth’s neck back with a telekinetic grasp of hair, and smashed it into the kid’s mouth. “But you’ll never smile again, just like those women.” He leaned in close to the kid’s ear as he spit a mouthful of shattered teeth upon the tile. “Rapist. Murderer. I know what you’ve done. I can see it all unfold in your mind. Don’t think that I won’t find you if you ever even consider trying it again," He probed the youth's mind as though flipping through a book. "You’re a smart kid, Derrick. Wouldn’t want to snuff out such a potential.” He brought the baton up between the youth’s legs sharply. The kid fell over sideways, shock shuddering through his body, triggering it to sleep.

Six.

            Up above on the street, the sleeping cop grumbled and rolled fitfully. His dreams filled with images of the gang they were staking out. He watched from a distance as they were beaten severely and left to twitch and bleed in scattered piles. He could feel that someone was showing him these images, was trying to gently coax him awake.

That’s right, buddy. Up and at ‘em. His eyes shot open, and he tore out of the car, sprinting on legs made of pins and needles. Behind him, his partner stood in the rain by the driver’s door, yelling after him as he disappeared around the corner.

The woman was face down with her hands covering her ears. She stayed that way until she heard footsteps. Looking up, she was blinded by a flashlight.

“Hello?” called out an unsure voice, made of equal parts of sleep grog and trepidation. “Oh my god! Are you alright?” The police officer pounded over to the woman. He panned his flashlight over the groaning and unconscious bodies that littered the platform. “What the hell happened here?” he inquired. Thin puffs of steam rose from the mouths of the gang, fogging and dissipating in the cavern-like station. For the first time, she spied the aftermath of The Shadowed Man’s assault.

“I-I have no idea…” she trailed off. “Something…” she paused again. “Someone saved me.”

Up on the rooftop of the brick apartment building, The Shadowed Man waited and watched as paramedics and police trickled into the subway station. He took a deep breath in through his nose, filling his chest. Allowing the adrenaline in his system to ebb, he drew a twisted cigarette from a battered holder in an inner jacket pocket. Deftly he brought a silver Zippo toward his lips and struck a spark. A thick finger of oily flame licked the tip of his smoke. He pressed against the storm with his will, creating a pocket of open air for himself.

And he watched them walk the woman out of the station and place her in the passenger seat of a police cruiser. He smiled. They would question her, but there was no way she’d be held responsible.

Hell, they may even congratulate her. Helping to take down The Cowboy and his cronies. Far below on the city street, he could have sworn that she gazed up at him. The warmth radiated from smiling mahogany eyes and a deep shell inside his being melted. For a brief moment, the rain petered out and ceased. As she gently placed herself in the cop car and closed the door, a solitary rain drop touched his face and ran down his cheek like a cold tear. His glacial-blue eyes panned over the stream of activity far below.

There was a single flash of lightning far above, and he disappeared.

Shadow.

Not posted in a while. Doing too much reading, not enough writing.

This is the first section to a short I'm currently working on about a telekinetic in future

Stamford, CT.

            He always felt a slight sigh droop his body as he detached his mind from its physical form. The world spiraled and unraveled around him. His body slumped into the rocking chair in his one-room apartment. His energy fled through the room’s solitary window. It was already open to the night.

            Rain lathered on the fire escape. Dark, roiling clouds hung just above the rooftops, blocking out the night sky. Street lamps burned sodium-orange glows up at the storm. The city shone to him in a dim evanescence. Lowering his thoughts into the complex’s back alley, he spied a homeless man shrouded in sopping clothing, half protected by an exit door’s overhang. Looking at the sleeping man, he forced a thin sheet of his concentration overhead, covering his remaining parts. The man turned over fitfully in his sleep, shrinking farther into the doorframe’s corner.

            Keeping the man sheltered from the downpour was simple. He did not need to concentrate deeply, but he could feel some energy expended in his thoughts, like the nagging tug of a name unable to be conjured up.

            Deeper in the alley, he brushed fingers that weren’t there and spooked a cat off the dumpster with a hiss. The waterlogged contents still clung with the smell of warm decay.

            The cold and the rain had fallen on the city for years. The cold had crept into everything. Some tried to explain the weather phenomenon; others merely called it “God’s wrath”.

            The rains had started the day she died.

            For six years it has rained. Frigidity crawled through the concrete and steel; into flesh and sinew. It soaked the city to its rusted bones.

            Into the air he shoved. He found that he had to travel further each night to crest the cloud cover. The storm simply whirls through, regroups, and without missing a beat, whirls through again.

And still, they continued to build, he thought.

            Each night he flew; past the tallest skyscraper and tower, rising miles through mist and angry fog. Slipping his way through pockets of electrical energy he burst out to gaze upon the stars. The moon was waning into a sliver of brilliant cerulean light that bore into his essence. Amidst the stars he didn’t linger for long, it was simply so he could see them again. It was nice to have a reminder that they were still there.

Back to work.

He slipped back beneath the rolling cloud cover. Red and blue lights bounced off the dull grey walls and obsidian sheen of glass. Above them all, he scraped the surface of their lives. He never entered another’s mind or body.

Never fully, he allowed.

He simply observed; jumping from place to place.

Shift.

He was a balding man sitting on a diner barstool. He was there to watch as the man poured oily, black coffee down his throat though it was nearly three in the morning. The bald man eyed the greasy cook toss something on the grill to sizzle. The waitress was middle-aged gone sour, and may have, at one point, been attractive. That time had passed, the years grossly unkind.

“Wanna refill?” she offered in a thick raspy voice, sloshing the pot.

He waved her away.

He sighed.

Shift.

He was a city bus driver, grumbling halfway through her shift, already weary from looping the same circuit for hours.

At least it’s warm in here, the driver surmised. Through her eyes he glanced at the four passengers staggered in the rear-view mirror. She ground to a halt at the next stop. Two passengers: a gray man and a plump woman, disembarked into the rain; a single rider clambered up the tall steps, shaking off the cold. The driver’s ebony hands were cracked and callused leather that clung to the steering wheel.

“Swipe right to left, please,” she repeated to the newcomer. The card machine chittered as it received the wireless transfer from whoever’s account. There was a slide and chime like an old lever-action register that reminded her of Pink Floyd and better days.

She reached out to close the accordion door, sealing in the heat. In the rearview the new rider shuffled further away to find a seat. There were three passengers now. The closest was a soggy-looking hood, his head slowly bobbing as sleep won him over. She sighed and put the bus back into drive.

Shift.

He was a cop staking out an apartment complex that housed a small-time gang and plenty of innocents.

Innocent enough, the cop muttered darkly in his brain case. The small group of youths had been peddling Coke and dishing out beatings in their neighborhood, but thus far, no one had come forward to help put them away. Their leader was a twenty-six year old schemer who always wore a cowboy hat.

He scratched at the back of his neck trying to shake the feeling that he, the Watcher, was himself being watched. His partner was an hour into his sleep shift, purring softly and fogging up the passenger side window.

He looked out into the night at the brick tower that clawed toward the clouds. The cup of coffee he had purchased from the dead-eyed, diner waitress was long since cold. He sipped anyways, grimacing and squinting out into the storm.

Can’t see shit, he thought. He turned over the car’s battery, attempting to enlist the help of the defroster; to no avail. He sighed.

Shift.

He was a drop of rain in mid free-fall. Together with billions of his cousins he was collected in drains and ditches. From there they were pumped to the series of steel-framed, aluminum-sheet sided warehouses in a place called Research Park; the only other occupants of the area was a scrap metal yard and a gritty strip club named the Hideaway, which the patrons called “The Office”.

The water was purified through an inventive indoor storm creation technique utilizing scalding steam and air-conditioned, temperature-controlled atmospheres. Thrice the water circulated through the system and then was bottled, packaged, shipped around the country.

If nothing else, the city of Stamford had been trying to take advantage of the downpours.

Shift.

He was a dog; curled up at the foot of a weathered couch to the sounds of the Late-Late Show and his Man’s sleep growls. He blinks a pair of russet colored eyes set deep in Irish coffee colored fur. His front legs stretch, paws splayed, as though grabbing for something.

But you have no thumbs, a voice in his head whispers of a long ago memory.

His ears twitch involuntarily at the wail of a passing police siren. He follows the sound around the apartment until it fades into the deafening downpour. Years of rain had made him restless, had made his smell more potent. He yawns a wide mouth of jagged, yellowed canines, lulled to sleep by the hum of the television.

Shift.

He was out in the rain again, as himself, sweeping his essence down nearly-empty city streets. The storm picked up.

Then he sees her.

Down the front steps of a hospital’s emergency access turnaround, she glides. In his ethereal state, he sees her soul shimmer a fiery gold, illuminating her steps. For a brief moment, he sees his long lost Lily. His ghost heart flutters. She pulls up the hood of her goldenrod rain slicker and scoots toward the bus stop.

An elderly man creaks up the steps and the door closes with a pressurized hiss.

She’s running now, but the bus driver can’t seem to see the golden figure sprinting alongside the vehicle. The bus lurches forward and sends a sopping splash up at her; she’s howling for them to stop. She slows her run when it becomes obvious she’s not going to catch anyone’s attention.

But mine.

Her feet came to rest in one of countless puddles that litter the sidewalk. The grease and oil resting on the water’s surface reflect and twist her radiance. Droplets cascade and vibrate her reflected image, twisting her face into snapshot smiles and grimaces.

He watches.

She starts back to the bus stop, but pauses to check her watch.

The subway, he hears her think. She begins splashing down the sidewalk at a leisurely stroll, as though the cold had no effect on her whatsoever. Beneath her slicker hood he could see a thick auburn curl fall and begin to collect water. She rechecked her watch and swore aloud, pushing herself to a full sprint in just four strides.

He followed.

The giant clock steeple at Trump Tower chimed three times. The bells were barely audible beneath the blanket of rain, but he felt their vibrations. He dropped below the streetlights, sweeping behind her sprinting form.

With a miniscule brush of concentration he parted the slick puddles in her path, drying the sidewalk. She rounded a corner at Tresser Boulevard and Washington, pushing herself faster as the subway entrance came into view. At the corner, she spots an unmarked police car, parked outside a tall, brick apartment building. One of the officers inside was asleep; the other caught her eye briefly, and then looked away.

The tail of her sunbeam coat whipped behind her like a cloak of vermillion flame. She took care on the steps to the subterranean station; one at a time whilst fumbling through her purse.

He felt the whoosh of heat press through the underground tunnels.

The train was leaving.

Frantically he tried to Shade into the subconscious of the train’s operator. Muddled clouds, heady and sweet, blocked his influence. He could taste the bourbon on his own lips; the man was drunk, deaf to the urges he tried to plant.

She slid her found Stamford Transit card through the given slot and cranked through the turnstile. Pounding onto the empty platform, she was just able to see the rear, red lights disappear down the tunnel like a pair of retreating demon eyes into utter blackness.

She turned and walked to a nearby bench, sitting with a huff. Taking deep, calming breaths through her nose, her eyes slipped closed. He read her surface thoughts; saw the twelve hour shift she had just pulled at the hospital flicker by in a sped-up series of snapshots. She was an ER nurse, and the evening had been disturbingly ruinous. Despite the doctors’ best efforts, more than five of the serious cases they’d received had expired upon the operating table, spilling crimson life force on white tiled floors. He felt a painful twang of his own memories.

Acrid wisps of cigarette smoke swirled among the pillars that held the terminal’s ceiling from crashing down.

He realized that she wasn’t alone in the station.

His focus had been on trying to help her get the train, now he wondered if he had helped the lamb to its place in the slaughterhouse.

There were six of them, lingering in the shadows of the walkway that led to the opposite platform, breathing heavily. It smelled of piss and rat farts. Their hoods were pulled up over their heads, except for the would-be leader who wore a thick-brimmed cross between a cowboy hat and a fedora. He sauntered ahead of the others, still hidden in darkness, hands in his denim pockets, a half-burnt cigarette clung to the corner of his lips. He read their thoughts.

This is gonna be messy.

“Well, well, well,” he spoke with a voice like his tongue was swollen, the cig muffling half his mouth. She stood and wheeled toward him, both hands clasped around her purse handles. “What’ve we got ‘ere, boys?” A plume of smoke coiled from his nostrils, phlegm colored tendrils rippling around his head and into the shadows he once occupied. The others spread behind him, their palms sweaty, jaws slack. He could see them in the undercroft walkway, taking pulls from a bottle of whiskey and taking turns bumping keyfuls of cocaine up already-powdered nostrils. “Little kitty lost her way?” he purred as he stepped closer. Her grip tightened and her eyes flickered toward the staircase leading up into the rain. “Don’t you fuckin’ think about it,” he warned, snapping open a shimmering blade.

The blade itself was thick, partially serrated at the grip, with a single valley knocked down its center to allow blood to run off easily. He could see past experiences when the blade had been used. Most recently it had carved up a hobo who had intervened as the group had repeatedly raped a lady of the night in some forgotten alleyway.

He had to do something, and quickly.