Category: Short Story

I once met a guy that told me that I could live forever.  I was eighteen, out drinking with my friends for the the first, ahem, legal time ever, and the night was slowly coming to a close.  We had hit every pub in the township, starting out at the Twin Harts and working our way up to Miller’s Stop.  All in all, ten pubs, each more seedy than the last, of which is where I met the man that would forever change my life.

His name was Mueller, and according to him, he was approaching his 400th birthday. Of course, I believed it.  I was drunk.  I bumped into him, accidentally I might add, and one thing lead to another, and well… its better to show you.

******

“Oh, shit mates.” I said.  I was on my tenth beer of the evening, not counting the shots, so I was fuzzier than a week old crotch shave.

“Oh, shipmates!?  You aren’t in the Navy, Nick!  Your in a pub, drinking with your mates.”

That is Jeremy, he is a right cunt, but the best mate I had ever had and the source of the plan to drink our way through the township.  He was good people.

But still a right cunt.

“Not shipmates.  Oh. shit. mates.  Here, hold the fag, I need to go piss.  Look at Beatty, damn that dress!” I said.

“Don’t try anything on Larry’s sister, he will take offense to it bruv.”

That is Miles, he is smarter than all of us put together, and likes to style himself as the leader of our ragtag band of assholes.

“I have to pass her on the way to loo, mate.  I will just tap her shoulder and give her a kiss.”  I hitched my pants up and tossed the hair out of my eyes.  I thought it made me look more mature.  Probably didn’t.

“Yeah, good luck with that.  I wouldn’t worry about Larry, I would worry about Beatty.  She is still pissed.”

And finally, that was Grants.  Not Grant.  Or Grant’s.  Like a possessive noun in a declarative statement.  No, that was Grants.  It was a nickname to commemorate an event a few years back involving a bicycle, a local sheep, and an unfortunate misunderstanding over on Grant street.  He was banned from the post office because of it.  Less said the better, but the name stuck.

“Right, wish me luck.” I said.

“ASSHOLE!”  They all said in unison.  (Its a ritual.)

I walked towards the hallway leading to what may have been the dirtiest men’s room this side of anywhere, but all I had an eye on was the tight vertical stripe and patterned skirt literally clinging for its dear life off the backside of a girl that was on-again, off-again, somewhere-again kind of fling that never seemed to end.  It was my fault.  Maybe it was her fault.  Maybe it was God’s fault.  I had no fucking idea.

“Hey, Bets.” I slurred.

“Oi, Nicky.  You look right pissed.  You not coming over here to ask me to take your drunk ass home are you?”  Beatty said.  She was hot, but in a conventional way, I suppose.  I had known her my entire life, so it was like talking about a cousin or something.  And in this township, she may have been a long lost cousin as it was.  Not the prettiest girl I had ever met, but she was fine enough to turn most heads, and the pinched look she was giving me was cute.

“No, Bets.  Just looking for a fondle.” I grinned.

“No way, you ass.  You still haven’t apologized for the thing last weekend.  My parents were there.  You were mental.”

In all fairness, I may, or may not have, smoked a bit of weed prior to that little get together.  So I took the offense instead. “True that.  I have not said I was sorry, but your brother was being a dick.”

“He was only being a dick because you were stoned, Nicky.”

“Fair enough.”  I sauntered on by. “Fuck it, Bets.  See ya.”

She yelled at my back as she turned back to her giggling friends.  “Yeah, fuck off Nicky.  Come back when you have your head on straight.”

I took the longest piss of my life for the next few minutes.  My head was resting against the wall, and I think I emptied the contents of Lake Victoria right into the commode.  That happens to be the largest lake in Africa, in case you did not know.   I zipped up, pretended to wash my hands, headed to the bar for another lager, and slapped Bets on the ass as I walked by.  She glared, but it was a cute glare.  She gave me the finger, I blew a kiss.  So it goes.

As I was taking my drink back to the lads, I accidentally stepped on the foot of an elderly gentleman in one of the snugs.  I nearly spilled my drink too, which would have been a real shame.  I did not feel too bad about the foot.  But I apologized any way.

“Sorry about that.” I said.  The old man that owned the foot that I had so rudely stomped upon looked up at me, smiled and invited me into his snug.  If you have never been in a snug, it is private-like booth with windows and the like, turned away from the bar to give a bit of privacy to the occupant.  It was a way for the minister or the parish ladies to enjoy a drink out of sight and out of mind.  Something about the way he smiled caught my attention, and I don’t know why, but I sat.

“Not a problem, lad.  What is your name?” He asked.  His voice was silky, smooth, soothing.  I felt a wash of familiarity with him, something that was strange, but at the same, very nice.  Like seeing your favorite grandmother after a few months of absence.

“My name is Nicholas.  Friends call me Nicky.” I said.

“Good name, Nicholas.  Strong.  Poetic.”  He said.

“I suppose.”

“My name, since you have not asked, is Mueller Von Ossman.  How splendid to make your acquaintance.”

“You talk like silver-spooned royal.” I smirked.  Being drunk made me a smart ass if you had not noticed.

“Which I am, so that makes perfect sense.” He smiled.  His teeth were very white.

“Oi, a royal?  How so?”  I took a sip of the lager.

“On my father’s side, actually, twice removed from the King of Austrian Empire.”

“Austria?  They don’t have a royal family.”  I said.  “Do they?”

“Not anymore, of course.  It was different when I was younger though.  How old are you, Nicky?”

“Eighteen today, in fact.”

“Splendid!”  He smiled again. Showing me his pearly whites.  I swear his eye teeth were vampiric.  Were they actually longer?

“How old are you?” I said cockily.

“Year four hundred myself, today in fact.”

“Bullshit.”

“Manners, Nicky.” Mueller admonished. “Manners maketh man after all.  Your words are the best representative of who you are.  Don’t wear a tattered coat when you should be in tails.”

“Aye, duly noted, your highness.” I said. “Again sorry about the foot, I will get back to my lads now, they are probably wondering where I am.”

“Nonsense, Nicky.  They aren’t looking for you.”

“They aren’t looking for me.” I repeated.  It was kind of against what I was thinking, but I repeated it anyhow for some strange reason.

“I am four hundred years old today.  And I believe it providence of the good Lord that you and I were meant to meet today.  You see, Nicky, I am in a bit of a quandary, and I need a young man like you to assist.”

“Oh, your a pervert.” I said raising an eyebrow.  “That explains a lot.”

Again, he smiled.  I am almost positive he has fangs now.

“No, just an old man knowing that it is my time to pass on.  But you, Nicky.  You could live forever.”

“How?”

“By being greater than you are and living the life that most people dream of.  Living.  Experiencing.  Taking everything life can give.”

“Sounds like a line.  If I could live forever, why aren’t you going to live forever?” I said.

“Because I am tired.  I could keep going, but I truly believe that I am not meant to.  When you are as old as I am, one gets a feeling for such things.   I am ready to move on.”  He took a sip of his whiskey and looked me in the eyes.  “I must admit that I am impressed Nicky.  You just find out that you are sitting across from a man 382 years older than you and you are asking about my motivations.  Most people would ask how I reached the age I have, or ask about my history, or any other multitude of questions and you only want to know why I want to stop.”

“I suppose.”

“Back to the point, Nicky.  I need some help.  I was given a gift, but honestly, I don’t want it anymore.  I believe it is the time to give it to someone else. Someone deserving.”

“And I am that someone?” I asked.

“In my long time on this earth, I have learned to how to measure people.  It comes with the gift, you get a sense of what a person is or more importantly, is not.  I know for certain that you are not only the best choice, but my only choice.”

“You are mental.”

“Perhaps.  All I ask is that you give me five minutes to explain, and you can walk away.”

“Five minutes?”

“Five minutes.”  He leaned back and took another sip of his whiskey.

“Shoot then.”

“It may be a shock to you, but I am a vampire, Nicky.”

“I noticed the teeth.”

“Ah.  That is another testament to my choice.  You noticed.  Most people do not notice my teeth.  But it may surprise you that the teeth are not used to suck blood or anything.”

“What’s a vampire that doesn’t suck blood?  That sounds like a setup to a lame joke, if you ask me.” I said.

“To be more technically correct, I am actually a Dhampir. That is pronounced d’ham-pier, but spelled D-H-A-M-P-I-R.  I tell you this because you will want to ask your phone later when your hangover wears off.  A Dhampir is a very odd sort of vampire… how we came about is a strange story, and not one that I will share with you tonight, but we do not suck blood or drink our prey.  That is morbid.  In fact, my energy is derived from water and food just like any mortal man.” He lifted his whiskey in proof.

“Than what is the difference?”

“I drink… talent. Ability.  God-given gifts to the human race is the energy that sustains me.”

“So what, you find a really good violin player and kill them and eat their talent?”

“Lord no, son.  That is morbid.  I have never killed from feeding.”

“But you have killed.” I grinned.

“Of course I have, I was born 400 years ago!  We had these things called swords.”

“I have heard of them.” I said sarcastically.  One would think having a conversation with a vampire would really tilt one’s worldview and lead to a panic and vomiting, but the pleasant heavy buzz of excess drinking put a damper on that.

“I find the strongest, the smartest, the most talented people on the planet, then I absorb small amounts from each of them.  In turn, they lose a small measure of their talent temporarily, but they practice harder, it comes back.  They also lose a small measure of their life, I think, but I have never been able to prove that outright.”

“And what do you get out of it?”

“I get their talent.  If I feed off a violinist, I can play the violin. If I feed off a polyglot, I can speak many langauges with ease.”

“But after a while, it fades away?”

“Only if I let it.  Somethings become tiresome after awhile, so you learn to let them go.  I once feed off of a very famous composer, and I had hundreds of pieces bouncing around my conscious thoughts.  I couldn’t do anything while I harbored them, so I let that go very quickly.  It was tiresome… honestly, I was not surprised when he killed himself.  His state of mind must have been torture.”

“But you feed off of them, their talent fades… you could have feed off of him and saved him from killing himself, right?”

“I suppose.  But then I would have mental indigestion for a long while.  It wasn’t worth it.” Mueller admitted.

“Harsh.”

“Life is.” He nodded.

“So you go about, traveling the world, rubbing elbows with the best and the brightest, and what?  Just blend in.”

“That about sums it up.  I help them meet others like them, I help foster their ability and their talents.  I have been called a muse, a demi-god, the greatest philanthropist that has ever lived, a progenitor of the worlds’ greatest, a prognosticator of the up and coming, the father of a movement or three… but in the end, I am just a vampire that happens to want a steady food supply.”

“Brilliant.  And what, you want to make me a… Dhampir?”

“That is the idea.  I don’t make Dhampir’s though.  Its the reverse of feeding. Its a gift.  I give it to you, like it was given to me.  Once it is yours, I am just an old man, and you are the Dhampir.”

“No sun?  No garlic?  Sleep in a coffin?”

“Don’t be absurd.”

“But the teeth. Your chompers are longer in the front.”

“I have always considered them a badge of office.”  He smiled widely and showed them off.  “They do come in handy for eating steak.”

“So I can think about it?”

“You can.  I will be here tomorrow night for your answer.”

“How many?”

“How many what?” He replied, an eyebrow going up theatrically.

“How many Dhampir?”

“As far as I know, seven.  There used to be nine, but it seems we have lost track of who is who.  Clio keeps track, but she admits that perhaps they don’t want to be tracked any more.”

“Are they ok with you leaving the ranks?”  I frowned.

“Of course they are.  It is expected to happen time to time.  We get a feeling, and we comply.  It is just the way it is.”

“So if I come back tomorrow night, you make me one, what happens?”

“Anything.  Everything.  It is up to you.  But our time is up, so I will bid you a lovely evening.  I hope to see you again, Nicky.”  He stood up from the snug, polishing his whiskey off in brief swallow.  With a nod, the impeccably dressed Mueller Von Ossman turned and left.

******

That is how it started… what happened after I took the gift, well, that is where I cocked it all up.

“Do you understand your rights?” The detective said.  He was at that stage of his life where he was steadily going to seed, with the slowly sagging neck skin that had seen too few razors the last couple weeks, and a soft sallow complexion that comes with the unyielding glare from the overhanging yellow sodium lights.  He probably had been handsome once, but the job had worn on him down like an overused pencil.

“I do.” The criminal replied, chained to the metal table on his side of the interrogation room.  He was a nondescript man, the kind of man that could seen by many and dismissed by most.

“You have the right to have a lawyer present with any questioning.  Anything that you say can be held against you in a court of law.” The detective said as plainly and obvious as he could.

“I understand my rights.”  The criminal replied again, smiling just slightly, as if amused in the detective’s thorough manner being a complete waste of everyone’s time.

The detective leaned forward and clicked his tape recorder on, but it wouldn’t start.  He pulled the case apart in an assured single motion, switched out the batteries, then tried the the record button again to no avail.  “Well, shit. Guess I am using pen and paper today. Hmmm… State your name.”

“I have no name.”

“You have to have a name.  What do people call you?”  The detective insisted.

“People call me nothing.  I do not have any… people.”  The criminal pulled at his bonds slightly, the thin prisoner gown crinkled as he moved, the chains sang against the metal rings in strange harmony.

“Fine.  Mr. John Doe it is.  We took your fingerprints, I am sure something will pop up.”

“Nothing will.” The criminal sighed, shaking his head with exasperation.

“Well, we will agree to disagree.  You do know why you are here?”

“Yes.  I shot a presidential candidate twice.   The first round entered his right eye, the second entered his forehead, one inch above the bridge of his nose.  He died instantly.”

“So candidly explained. But yes, we are alleging that you shot David Falkes, but what we don’t know is why.  Would you tell us why you would kill a presidential hopeful almost a year before the vote?” The detective said.

“I could.  But it doesn’t matter.” The criminal shrugged.

“It does matter. especially to his family.  His wife and his daughter are now without him.  They care.  His employees care.  His campaign probably cares. All the people hoping to vote for him, they all care.  I think that makes it matter.”  The detective put his pen to his paper again.  “Now, tell me what I want to know.”

The prisoner sighed.  “My only regret is the third shot.”

The detective flipped open the folder on the table, and started riffling through the papers.  “There was no third shot.  Your gun was only fired twice.”

“I know.”

“What do you mean then?  You had another target?”

“No.  I was to kill myself, Detective.  A single shot under my chin at an axial tilt of eighty-five degrees.”

“But you were tackled before you could take your own life?”

“Obviously.”

“Why tell me this?  This doesn’t help you.”

“You are correct, it doesn’t help me.  It helps you.  It helps you understand that there is no deal that you can give me, there is no threat you can deliver to make me comply to your demands.  I was willing to take my own life, and I still will make that attempt every chance that I get. I am here against my will.  I was shocked to be taken down, but… it seems the… circumstances lead me to you.  I am here.”

“Yes, and I really want to know why.”

“Why I shot and killed David Falkes.”

“Yes.”

“Would you believe I did it to save the world?” The criminal sighed.

“No.”

“Would you believe I did it to save other lives?” More serious.

“No.”

“Then what would you believe, Detective?” He had moved on to resignation.

“A true motivation.  I would know it when I heard it.”

“I killed David Falkes because he was what you call a ‘blow-hard’.”

“That sounds true.  So you killed David Falkes because you thought he was a blow hard.”

“No, I killed him because of his attitude towards the rest of the world.  I killed him to protect you and every single person in this country.  I killed him because he was the wrong person in the wrong place.”

“Wow.  So you are a bona fide hero, huh?  A regular guy-pops-another-guy-twice-in-the-melon kind of hero?”

“Save your sarcasm for the next arrest, Detective.  Right here, and right now, I know my actions were for the greater good.  The fact that I am still alive is a source of disappointment, but the act itself carries none of its own.”  The criminal frowned.

“Then why? Why did you do it?”

“You already said you wouldn’t believe me.  I think you wouldn’t believe me even if I told you the whole truth of it.”

“Fine.  Fine.  Try me.” The detective raised his hands in the air in resignation.  “Give it your best shot, Mr. Doe.”

“I am from a… subsumed… a nonexistent timeline. That is to say, once I acted in the way that I acted, the timeline was changed and my future, the future I knew, became inaccessible to me.  From my frame of reference, it no longer exists.  I traveled through time and space to kill a man.  It sounds simple.  Perhaps it is simple.  An elegant truth.”

“You are a time traveler?”  The detective shook his head in dismay.  “Fine.  I said I would try it.  So I will play along. Why David Falkes?  Why not Hitler?”

“I’m sorry?” The criminal frowned.

“I mean, why kill a blow hard like David Falkes?  When you could travel back to World War Two and take out Hitler?  That would save, what?  Millions of lives?”

“Oh, we did.  The agency did fix World War Two.  The current history is the best outcome there is.”  The criminal shrugged.

“The best outcome?  How would you know you fixed it?  How would you know if the timeline changed?  I am not a dumb man, Mr. Doe.  I can put what you just said about your what, your lost timeline? I can put togehter with what we are talking about now.  It’s simple math, right?  If your ‘agency’ fixed WWII, then the timeline your agency was in would be gone.  Right?  It would be another lost timeline.”

“True.  If one is going to manipulate time, then one needs to ensure that the timeline is adjusted in such a way we know that time has been manipulated and exactly how.  So we leave markers.”

“Markers?”

“There are multiple forms of time intrusion.  The first and most dangerous is what I did… actual event adjustments. The second type is less so, they are minor course corrections, if you will.  Cleaning up the major events, and that sort of thing. The last type is not intrusive at all.  It is so absolutely minor that no one ever notices, and if they do, it is passive and has no affect on the minor and major casual threads.”

“So Hitler.  You blow him away.  And what?  Some super-Hitler comes to power?”

“Oh it is far worse.  The entire course of the 20th century is changed drastically.  Without Hitler, the German people wither in some ways, but advance in others.  The world war one armistice was only a delayed guarantee that another war was going to happen.  And it happened.  It started in April of 1954, and the resulting nuclear exchange in 1961 wiped out over half the human race.  Imagine a truly world-wide war, not constrained on the European continent and the Pacific ocean. Imagine a huge War fought on every single continent, in every single sovereign nation, and the potential loss of life.  We know.”

“So you fixed it?  I supposed you are from that timeline as well?”

“No.  But we keep records, passing on the records of the Agency’s changes over the millennia to the next Agency.”

“How?”

“Oh, yes, that makes perfect sense. Let me answer every question you ask.”  The criminal said sarcastically, while he shook his head.  “No, detective, I am explaining David Falkes to you, not the matters of the Agency.  I am not going to impart any info to you that has any chance of changing this timeline outside of my assigned adjustments.”

“So David Falkes was the next Hitler?”

“He was a stupid prideful man. A man that could bluster his way through a thousand meetings and make deals that would make him a billionaire.  That is not the ingredients for a leader of this country. He wins the election because Americans are so very sick of the politics of a failing system.  Most people think it is funny.  A way to insult the very system that runs their country.  Its a lark.  But David Falkes is not a ‘lark’ kind of man.  He uses the little power he has as president to insult, isolate, and further damage relationships with other countries around the world.  In thirty four years, the US is invaded by a conglomeration of powers because of the mistakes that David Falkes makes intentionally during his limited, yet disastrous four year run.”

“So one man without any actual power, just a figurehead for our government, screws it up so badly that the US is invaded?”

“And two billion people die.”

“Bullshit.”

“Its the truth, Detective.” The criminal raised his hands plaintively, the chains kept the movement to a fraction of what it would have been.

“Uh-huh.  I think that is enough of that. I will ask for a psych eval for you.  Not sure how long it will take.  But with your confession on tape, we should be able to arraign you.”

“There is nothing on tape.”

“Everything you just said is on tape.  Not the one on the table, since I can’t get it to work, but the cameras behind the glass caught everything.”

“No they didn’t.  My subdermal implants prevent any electronic device to work in my surrounding area.  Like the cell phone you have, or that tape recorder, or the surveillance gear behind the glass.  Its all rendered functionless. But that does not matter. Because what is about to happen is far more important than David Falkes.”

“What is about to happen, Mr. Doe?  You are locked up.  Your craziness won’t hurt anyone any more.”

“I am about to bite down on a poison capsule in my mouth.  It is in a hollow tooth that was inserted during your Police department processing by a fellow agent in disguise.  He is also the agent that tackled me and prevented me from killing myself like I was supposed to.  He is also the agent that I was so glad to see when I had thought I had failed.”

“Who?”

“It was me.  A different me, but me.  See, I can kill myself, but I go on.  It is the benefit to working for the Agency.  I have seen myself kill myself many times now.  It gets easier every time.”

“What if I stopped you?”

“Then the message would happen some other way.”  The criminal raised his hand as a signal of calm. “You have a daughter.  She will be brilliant. What I am about to tell you, you need to tell her.  And you will.  When you realize that what I said is true, when that seed of doubt you have now blossoms into something great when you realize that all the proof of my existence seems to run through your fingers like smoke, when all of that culminates in a single far fetched story you mention to your daughter someday… and it makes a very important impact.”

“How do… what… my daughter… now what a goddamn minute.  Why would I do that?”  The detective’s face went red, his eyes bulged.

“This message needs to suffuse your brain and your being, Detective.  So… listen… very carefully.  ‘Remember that life is finite, but in the case of the past, the present, and the future, there is no such thing as a closed loop.'”

“What does that even mean?” He blustered as his pen rolled off the table, unnoticed.

“Remember that life is finite, but in the case of the past, the present, and the future, there is no such thing as a closed loop.”

“A closed loop?” The detective stammered.

“Like me.”  The criminal bit down hard, his face went slack, and he died.

I had lost everything.

My wife, my children, my home, my friends… everything that ever mattered to me was lost to the war and the ideologies of cowardly old men sitting in well lit safe places. I somehow survived it all.  The marches, the hunger, the endless terror and strife that sat about us like a cloud of flies.  When it was over, some of us could not believe it.  They thought it was another terror to push us over the edge, so they would take their own lives, which after the abject nightmare we had survived, was irony defined.   I stumbled out of the ashes of the old world into a world I did not know.  The daily ins and outs of living a mediocre life after what I had seen and felt was an insult above all others.

So I packed a bag, gathered what little things I had and left for the mountains.

I didn’t pick a direction, other than west, and I didn’t take anything to protect myself other than a camp knife, a small hunting bow, and the desire to die.  I think it was time for a reckoning of my account against what God had tallied for me so far.  I would avoid all others, and just walk, hoping to find the un-askable question and the unspoken answer that plagued my dreams.

I walked for weeks.  Stopping only to sleep or gather water and food.  I never went thirsty or hungry as I traveled, and I didn’t worry much about where the next bed or meal would be.  At least the war had taught me something useful.  Something other than how to be a victim of other men.  I walked sometimes awake, sometimes asleep, letting my feet carry me as I wove in and out of consciousness, watching the mountains pass around me as a morning fog before the sun can do anything useful. Somewhere along the way, I must have stepped in a shadow of a shadow, or behind a curtain of rain, or took the fifth turn at an animal crossroad… because when I awoke, I was stumbling among rocks that were not of this earth.

The mountains around me where at once brown and red, the trees upon them gray and green.  The trees flowered here and there, great boughs of white flowers sinking towards the ground, waving gently in the mountain breeze that kissed them gently.  The mountains towered far above, thousands of feet higher than what I had been hiking through, many of their peaks subdued in cloud, hidden and deep among the secrets of the sky.  The sun was setting behind me, a clear sign that I was no longer headed the never wavering west of my travels.  The orange velvet of the setting sun lit a crevasse between two mountains, as if a single peak had split in two by an axe of an elder god looking to cleave the world.  Something bright shone from deep in the crack, a small sun opposite the one setting behind me, obscured by mists and living things.

There were two trees on either side of the vertical crack, each as a tall as a skyscraper, from the miles away that I was, I could behold them in a single glance, but I lose all perspective of them if I traveled closer.  The trees were more than trees, they were monuments in and of themselves, and I felt a deep terror in my mind by perceiving them.  But that strange power worked upon me and through me, building a perception of what I saw.  In the boughs I could see many hands, some held in anger, some held in deference, some held in gestures of peace.  Across the two trees, what I thought as a single branch between them, was actually a great staff being pulled in opposite directions.  The great tree on the right pulled with its hand towards itself, the great tree to the left did the same with one of its own great hands. The staff was a great winding wood of itself, a massive bristle cone pine of a sort, older than all the ages of the world, wrought by gods of the first forest to be a balance.  Between the cleft of the mountain, the two trees standing in great opposing strength, the two hands pulling upon the bones of the unimaginably old staff between them… the picture formed a gate, framing the whitish glowing sun deep in the vertical crevasse behind it all.

I did not know how I knew these things.  Seeing it for the first time with my humble human eyes, but the understanding fell upon me like snow, small illuminations gathering in strength and speed until they achieved a greater clarity in a momentous single thought.   I could see the great trees for what they were… guardians of the worlds, the balance of all fates pulled between them in a contentious battle of non-movement.

I stumbled forward, still trying to grasp the thing that I had seen.   I found myself exhausted, and I stopped for the night, with a camp fire illuminating not far into the dark, but the moon and the stars lighting up huge, spindly trees walking towards the gate.  They where tall men-shaped trees, with find willowy limbs attached to a wood like body, wrought in the color of old dead vines.   The closest that passed my small fire regarded me without any emotion, only for a moment, its glowing blue eyes landing upon my features, surely wrinkled in fear.  The creature meant me no harm, and I was nothing but an idle curiosity as it passed, silently taking its delicate steps, striding tens of feet with every step.

I ate what little I had left, and decided to push on in the direction of the Gate along with the quiet mammoth supplicants that still occasionally passed me in their wide walks.  I pushed on for the most of the day, the clouds never really broke above, the overcasting clouds roiling slowly only occasionally gave notice of where the sun sat in sky as it crawled far over head. At times I despaired, for the Gate came no closer to my small eyes, among the rocks and rubble of the angry mountains around me.  The ocher pall of the dust soon coated my clothing and gear, giving me the look of a long rusted blade.  When the sun started to set again, I could hear the walking tree giants around me start a song of sorts, a cascading lilt of dreams lost and futures realized.  They were thicker now, and the only measure of my progress as I plodded ever-onwards to my destination.

On my third day of hiking these mountains, in a place far from the dreams of any mortal man, I finally reached the foot of the gate.  The trees, the giants that had been walking through the valleys around me, knelt in silent supplication before the great trees and their quiet struggle with the staff between them.  I looked straight up, dizzied by the very height presented to me, and I could barely see the massive hands pulling on the great staff far, far above.  It was if two trees, tall as as skyscrapers, fought over a fallen ancestor’s bones, trying to justify their own birthright and not yielding to their beloved brother.  The supplicants, their glowing eyes closed, paid no mind to me or my investigations, but they themselves stayed at a safe distance from the Gate itself.  They formed a wide half circle from one tree to the other, staying well away from the center.

I stepped into the circle, the hallowed ground, and a great wind came from deep in the crevasse past the gate.  It was a mighty and powerful gust that nearly sent me tumbling back into the crowd assembled.  Again, not a single one raised their heads to see what the fuss was about, and again, they remained in their subservient posture, kneeling and bowing towards the great trees and their burden.   The wind was more than just air, it was a question, spoken by something older than time itself.

“THE BALANCE IS.”

I brushed myself off, and stepped into the circle again.  The wind nearly picked me up and sent me flying like a leaf on the wind.

“THE BALANCE IS.”

Again, I brushed myself off from ground and stepped again into the circle of open earth between the worshipers and the targets of their silent affection.  As I stepped in, I braced myself and leaned into the oncoming storm.  I leaned into the breath of God.

“THE BALANCE IS.”

“There is no balance!” I yelled impotently into the void between the cloven mountain. “There is nothing!”

The wind shook for a moment, and then redoubled its violent push.  I cowered, falling to the ground to scratch at the stones and grasses as to not be dashed across the stones.   The voice found me still, as low as I was, rattling my teeth and shaking my bones with its voice.

“THE BALANCE IS FOR ITSELF NOT THOSE THAT ARE MEASURED AGAINST IT.”

I found something deep in myself, my tears streaming from my slitted eyes in the wind that assaulted me, flaying me with its almost tenable whips of violent air.  It thrashed me, tearing at my clothes, pulling my hair, scratching my face as the loose gravel sprayed across me.  I yelled back in defiance, pulling myself forward by scrabbling fingertips, fingernails cracking and bending in the soil.

“If there was balance, all would see it.  If there was balance, all would know it.  Your balance is a lie!”

The wind stopped as if the breath of God had to pause before another long exhale.  I heard a crack.  A resounding and powerful, a lightening bolt of untold power thrashed the ground near me.  Then another, and another, until I was under a dome of pure awful light.  In the noise of broiling, bubbling ion soaked plasma, the voice that I heard before was almost a whisper.  I picked up a tone of sadness in it, a deeper regret than I could ever understand.

“Then you will bear witness to it.”

The flashing stopped all at once and without warning.  I pushed myself up slowly, my clothes and gear was shredded and utterly destroyed on the ground at my feet, yet I felt no remorse.  I was naked, yet I felt no cold or chill.  I looked at my hands, and saw the long limber fingers of a tree wave before my eyes.  I touched my torso and felt the braided weave of my wooden chest.  I looked down and saw the ground meters and meters away from me, yet I felt no change in stature.  I was myself, yet I was no longer the man I was.

I was another watcher, to observe the staff, and forces of the universe act upon it, for all the long ages of the world yet standing before me.  I thought my loss was complete, but now I understood it was just the beginning.  My loss was something to birth something new and to make me a greater thing than I was before.

I was given purpose.  I am purpose.

I am.

He walked into my office like a tornado praying to meet an unsuspecting trailer park.  He was all bluster and sucking air hard from the run up the short flight of stairs that lead to my office.  I would have said that he was on the verge of a heart attack, but that heart in his chest was probably so confused by the exercise, it wouldn’t be capable of failure any time soon.  There is no telling about his next bowel movement though… that actually might kill him.

His name was Norman Falkes, and ‘Stormin’ Norman’ was a bit of a blow hard in a myriad of other ways.  As the local cheap car salesman in the town, his commercials consisted of him dressed up as a superhero advertising his ‘super’ prices.  Honestly, he looked like a fat bastard just trying to get the idiots of our town to drop some good money on some bad cars.  I didn’t even know the guy, and he left a sour taste in my mouth.  Especially when he spun in place and slammed my door so hard the glass almost cracked.  He spun wildly back and slumped against the door, shoving all three hundred plus pounds of his fat ass against it.  I could hear the wood groan.

“You all have to help me.” He shouted at everything in my office.  I calmly looked over my shoulder pretending to look at the invisible coworkers in my office filled only with a single desk, and then looked back at him with the most condescending look of confusion I could muster.

“As you can see, its just me and the roaches, sir.  But I am afraid the roaches don’t work for me.” I smiled sweetly.

“Yeah, yeah.  You have to help me.”  His eyes were wild, a foaming at the mouth kind of wild, the eyes as a horse has after running from a burning barn.

“Help you with what?” I said.

“I am being chased by something… something bad.”  He swallowed heavily and farted at the same time.  I tried not to laugh, but the smirk definitely flashed.  He was so busy trying to look over his shoulder, through my frosted glass door no less, that he didn’t even catch my attempt at restraint.

“Something… something bad?”  I repeated.

“Don’t you make fun of me.”  He snapped. “I dropped off a deal, and it went south.”

“And now the other party is chasing you?” I sighed. “Sir, I am not the police.”

“I know who you are, babe.” He spit.

The way he spit the word ‘babe’ sounded like an epithet.  I tried my damnedest to not let the abhorring disdain color my voice, but I am pretty sure it came off dripping with condescension anyway.  Fuck him.

“Sir, my name is Laura Samson. And if you ever call me babe again, I will bounce you down those stairs you just walked up.”

Don’t get me wrong, I am a babe.  Totally.  But that doesn’t need to be said to me like I am a nameless peon from the secretary pool coming into his office to pour my boss a scotch.  I mean, really, babe?  Who says that any more?

“Uh, sorry, ba- Ms. Samson.”  He coughed wetly through a developing wheeze… his body was catching up already.  Amazing.  I could expect the puke at any moment. I stood up from my desk, with one hand pulled my subcompact from the holster under my desk and discreetly tucked it into my concealed belt holster, and with the other grabbed my trashcan and walked it over to Norman Falkes.

“What kind of deal, Mr. Falkes?  Drugs?  Guns? Something worse?”  I pushed the waste basket roughly between his quaking arms.  I could smell sweat, some cheap cologne, and desperation rolling off of him in waves.

“Nothing like that; nothing illegal.  A simple deal, big money.  The customer was looking for something specific, I got it for him.  A custom car, I have done them before.”

“So what went wrong?” I took a few steps back to clear the potential impending vomit radius.

“The, uh, client was burned?  Like toast. Crispy. He had asked for a very specific window tinting on his car.  The stuff he asked for was really expensive…” He trailed off.

“…And you wanted to bump your margin, so you skimped.” I finished for him.

“Yeah.  I skimped.  My tinting guy swore up and down that it was the same quality, just half the price.”  He said.

“Uh-huh.  And I have fairy wings.”  I did, in a jar, but no one needs to know.

“I delivered the car to him and his guys, he jumped in, and they pulled out of the garage down the street.”

“Carino’s Garage?” I said.

“Yeah, that’s the place.”  He kept swallowing.  Vomit comet in 10… 9… 8…

“Neutral ground.” I filled in a bit more.

“If you want to call it that.  Its just the place he wanted to meet.”

“No.  That is what I am telling you.  Its neutral ground.”  I said deadpan.

“Ground for what?” He swallowed again, and then he puked.  Righteous, deep, throbbing wracks of heaving slop into the trashcan.  I immediately knew I was tossing it in the bin on the building dock.  I don’t know what his last meal was, but I had the feeling it was half of the food available for a family of eight. He rolled to a close, and managed a breathless broken question. “… For gangs?”

“If you want to call them that.” I wrinkled my nose, glad my windows were open. “They don’t like the term gangs.  Especially since many of them are richer than some countries.  Who did you crisp?  Since it was Carino’s, I know it was Accords related, and since spontaneous combustion doesn’t happen to most folks, I would guess you aced a leader in the Pugilacci family?  That’s bad juju, Mr. Falkes.  Those are some old bloodsuckers.”

He swallowed again.

My silent alarm above the door started to flash, meaning someone was using something very powerful nearby.  Most of my charms were passive, but that one only went nuts when there was something heavy stepping on it nearby.  I would guess they have some of his blood… using a trace.  Traces were easy to do, but lost a lot of energy the further they spread out, an inverse bubble to the power they used.  Half the power at double the distance meant whatever they were using to drive the trace was old, mean, or demonic, which meant I had to get rid of Mr. Falkes asap.  He hadn’t noticed the simple red bulb flashing by the exit sign, and he probably wouldn’t.

“Tell you what, Mr. Falkes.  Put down the trash can, drink some water. I can pick up the phone, call a few people, see if I can help you out.  But it will cost you.  My services aren’t cheap.”

“I will pay anything.  Anything!  Just promise me they can’t force their way in here.”

“Oh, they won’t have to.”  I walked back to my desk and pulled my gun out.  I had loaded the mag with snappers.  I made them myself and was quite proud of them.  They were subsonic, were able to follow targets based on my will, and made very little mess when they snapped a large portion of the target into the nether. “Just watch out the door and let me know if anyone comes up the stairs.”

“Ok. Yeah.  I will watch the door. Who ya going to call?”  He asked, cracking the door to peek out.  I turned on my heel, took very careful aim, and shot him in the back of the head.  His head rocked forward as the snapper made contact, there was a soft ‘snap’ noise and the bulk of his head was no longer there.  His body slumped to the floor, the wounds perfectly cauterized like a sun-hot ice cream scoop had cleaned out the back of his skull.

“Who am I going to call? Yeah right. You couldn’t afford me anyway.”

There was a soft knock at my door.  Three taps.  A pause.  Then three more soft taps.

“Come in.”  I called.  I sat back down as the door opened, making sure my gun was back in the holster under the desk.  I was inviting him in, so the chances of any problems going on were nil.

“Ah, Ms. Samson. And you have our poor unfortunate business associate.  Dead.  What a shame.”  A very tall, very white man entered my office and stepped over the body.  His face was carved from pure marble, and he his smile was a myriad of very sharp teeth, with the eye teeth much longer than the rest.  His eyes were black and white, no irises at all.  “I had looked forward to my dinner.”

“He was bargaining to run, but I think a chip from your esteemed family is worth the hassle.”  I said, honestly.  I am not honest all the time, but when it mattered, it mattered.  Plus with these types, they could tell.  Probably why they were so pissed with the late Mr. Falkes.  He had duped the near undupable.

“A poor assumption for some, but considering your services, I would think it would be beneficial to the both of us.”  He handed me a white card with a phone number on it. He didn’t have to explain how it worked.

“Thank you.”

“The pleasure was mine.”  He smiled.  He looked back at the body. “It is still fresh, perhaps I can have dinner after all.”

The lithe vampire bent and picked up the three hundred pound fat man with one arm and slung him over his shoulder. “I noticed your charms.  Very good work, Ms. Samson.  I am sure my familiar made it go off like a new years fireworks show.”

“It did.  Thank you for the compliment. May I ask who got fried by that idiot?” I said calmly, tucking the card into my bra.

“My uncle.  Not much of a loss to be honest.  He was old, but he was foolish when he was human, and being a vampire doesn’t help that.”

I smiled widely, showing my pearly whites.  “Have a good day, Mr. Pugilacci.”

“You too, Ms. Samson.  You too.” And he was gone, the door swinging softly shut in his silent, powerful, wake.