Sean Robin Hughes

“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.

I followed Meryl for miles and miles and miles.  I thought we were lost more times that I could count.  But the sun usually stayed in front of us or behind us, and we kept heading west.  We eventually strayed away from the highway, veering ever so slightly north, and the cars and trucks feel behind us step by step.

The sun was an avenging angel far above, radiating outwards in a language of heat and blinding light.  The pan of the earth started to look baked into iron, the few weeds and bushes here and there struggling to survive under such bright scrutiny.  Somehow Meryl found shelter here and there, in hollows and ditches that we came across, barking at me with little yips.  We would travel at dusk and dawn, and avoid the worst of it.  As soon as we lost the sun, we usually had to stop no matter what.

We survived, somehow.  A stupid, stupid, kid on the run from everything, and a little dog willing to show him the way to nowhere.

In the morning, more than a few days out from Ses staring blankly up at a sky she could not see, a slight fog started to clear, and for the first time, I could see the mesas starting to rise from the pan that crunched meekly under my feet.  Our water was getting thin, so any change was a welcome one.  I felt something rise in me, a push in my feet, a swell in my heart, and the desire to reach that thing standing like a monolith in front of us.

I found myself speeding up.  Slowly at first, then a jog, then more of a run.  I wish I can say I could sprint like the wind for as long as I wanted, but the landscape surrounding me had its own plans. We picked our way through the gullies and culverts cut by rain fall long since forgotten, and the began to wind our way to the base of the mesa that had peeked through its shadowed misty veil to reveal itself to us.  Ever leading, Meryl found the easist way for me, up this hill, down this corner, up this ridge.

As the sun started to pull its way downwards as a shade in the sky, revealing the twilight of the long west, we finally reached the top of the mesa.  There were a few trees around a small spring, the water seemed fresh and clean, and I quickly doused my head.  The heat of the climb was radiating off of me.  Meryl just jumped in.

I laughed. She huffed and shook off… and I was soaked by my own personal canine water sprinkler.  I stopped laughing.

“Hey, I was laughing with you, not at you, you silly dog.”

She smiled with a pant and headed towards the edge of the mesa, to a dark shape huddled among the unbroken edges of the future tumble weeds, and I thought I saw a small crackle of fire reflect of their edges.

That was not right, because when I climbed up here, there was hardly any bushes, and definitely no fires.  No ominous lumps of shadow either.  I was starting to spook myself out. With the sun going down, the light must have been playing tricks on my eyes.

“Come over to my fire, grandson.” The ominous shade turned his head and looked right at me with wide white eyes. The went from edge to edge, an unbroken field of milky white, with no pupils that I could see.  A small fire was crackling in front him merrily, while the little wolf pranced over to the man, accepted a friendly pat on the head, and curled up next to the fire.   “I mean you no harm, young one.  Come sit. Sit.”

“Sorry.  You scared me.  I didn’t see anyone up here.” I said timidly.

“No need to apologize.  Come sit.”  He motioned over to the fire.  He smiled widely. “If I say it a third time, you wont have a choice.”

I believed him.

“Not that I would get up from my little fire to make you sit down, but the universe has its rules, and when someone like me says something three times, there are… repercussions.”  He chuckled.

I sat down across from him at the fire, and looked up as the sky started to deepen from its oranges and pinks to a darker, colder purple.  The north star started to shine brilliantly as a wisp of cloud pulled away in regret. I think Venus was up early.  It was a jewel set up in the desert sky.

“She is beautiful, isn’t she?”

“Who?”

“Our lovely evening star, Anani.  She is a part of the cycle… birth, life, death, rebirth.  Her and her brother, Masi, on opposite sides of us, one for morning, one for night.  Tonight she looks down on us.” He smiled up at the sky, his leathery withered neck stretching out.  He was wrapped in a simple blanket at the shoulders, his hair in a single gray braid that fell down his back, and his bare feet poking out from underneath.  They were gnarled and weathered feet, bare skin that had seen hundreds of hard miles.  My traitor of a wolf laid near his foot, smiling in her sleep.

“She is beautiful.  Although I call her Venus.”  I smiled.

“You would, grandson.”  He smiled again. “It is a clumsy name.  Anani is better, don’t you think?”

“I suppose.  Yes.  Anani is better.”  I frowned slightly as he met my eye. “I am sorry sir, but I am not your grandson.  I just walked up here.”

“Yes you did!  Following young Waha’e here.  She had to lead you a long way, did she not?  She cared for you.  Let her sleep now.  She has earned a good rest.  Look at your legs, then look at her legs.  Long way for short legs.”

“Waha’e?”  I cocked my eyebrow.  “Funny, I was calling her Meryl.”

He grunted and shook his head with a smile. “You and your poor names.  Waha’e is better.”

“I suppose it is.”  I came back to my point. “Are you expecting someone?”

“Not any more.”  He reached out and patted my foot.  Then he reached into the bundle of stacked tumbleweeds and tossed a few branches onto his small smokeless fire.  “With those long legs, I would think you would walk faster.”

“Wawa the puppy over there has stumpy legs, remember?  I was following her.”  I joked.

“Ha. Yes, I suppose that is true.  I should fix that.”  He reached over and petted Waha’e three slow times, and the third pass of his gnarled hand, where the little wolf puppy slept, a large graceful wolf slept in her place.  I would have jumped up if I had not seen it in person.  It wasn’t jarring, or unexpected in the way you would think.  It was gradual and instant at the same moment, and she didn’t even wake up. “There.  When she wakes up, she will feel more like her old self.”

“Her old self?”

“Would you have walked up to a full grown wolf?  Especially one of the Old Ones like Waha’e?” He winked.

“I suppose not.  Probably would have soiled myself.”

“Waha’e has answered my calls for many generations.  She is a Blessed One.”  He smiled.  “She does a good job when she is called.”

“She’s a spirit guide.”  I said.

“Ah, my grandson can think for himself.  Perhaps one day, you will think of good names indeed.  Very good.  Waha’e is.  Blessed.”

“She definitely helped.  She knew where she was going, whether I wanted to go or not.”

“Indeed.”  He looked up at the stars as they started to come alive in the deepening dark.  I followed his gaze, feeling the warmth of the fire on my knees, and the crackling of the dry tinder fitfully spitting its way up between us.  The curtain of night was expansive, the brilliance of a billions stars opened above us.  The majesty of it all spun above the mesa like a top, as flashes of light traced its fingers across the atmosphere far above.  “You are my grandson.  Perhaps not the child of my daughter or son, but a child of mine.  Your spirit is strong, Jonny.  And any child that has such a spirit is mine to claim as my own.   You are my grandson.”

“And why am I here?  Ses, Jack, Benny, even Hanks… I shouldn’t’ve ran.  Why did you tell Benny to make me come?”  I said.  I felt the desire to just, understand…  Something.

“I did not tell you to come.  Water is a messenger, but it is not a spirit.  Someone else sent the message to you.  There are many powers at work in our world.  I did know that your time was coming, and I let it be known that you are mine.  I would think that many would want that to happen…”  He said.

“So you knew I was coming, but you didn’t know when?” I furrowed my forehead.

“Skepticism?”  He winked again. “It will make sense in time.”

“What will make sense?”

“Everything!”  He laughed.

I was starting to get pissed, I knew it showed on my face.  I glowered at the fire. Why did my anger always flare up at the wrong times?  My emotions always seemed to be just below the surface of my skin, waiting for a moment to rip itself free.  I was a shitty teenage disguise of skin and meat for an emotional rage beast inside.  My “grandfather” sat there watching the fire, the small flickers reflecting off his expansive white eyes.

“And what is your name?” I challenged.

“You can call me Grandfather.”

“If you say so.”

“I do.”

“What do I…” I started, but he waved my question away with a curt gesture immediately.

“You are sitting on a rock in the middle of the desert.  A great vulture lands in front of you and says, ‘You must die, I need to eat.’  You look at the vulture and say ‘I am resting, then I am going on my way. I have no plan to die’.  You get up and walk away, the vulture flies on, to find some other meal.  The small mouse that was under the rock saw both your shadows and heard your voices does not understand.  He saw what must have been gods.  He doesn’t think about it and goes on with his life.”

“So I am the mouse?” The parable made no sense.

“That is not the point, my son. Sometimes we don’t understand things around us.  Sometimes the mundane, like a man resting on a rock, can be misunderstood.  Sometimes, the powerful forces of life, like the vulture needing to survive, are not understood. Sometimes, big things are happening right next to us and we just don’t have the ability to perceive it correctly.  That is ok.  I am here for that reason… to help you understand.  Not everything right this moment!  You cannot have all answers all at once.  Like a starving man, if you eat your fill all at once, you will just vomit it all up again.  It won’t help.”

“Why did Ses have to die?”  The rage had turned to grief.  The push and pull was going to rip me apart.

“Ses did not have to die and she did not choose to die, true.  However, no one chose for her. Ses was not murdered, Jonny. It was an accident.  A horrible one that you must grieve, but it was just an accident.  An opportunity that arose that others were able to perceive and it all came together into a set of circumstances that brought you to me.”

“That doesn’t help.”  I said while I wiped at my nose and eyes, ashamed.

“It shouldn’t.”  I could see the empathy in his face. “But next time you see something bad happen, you can help.  That is why you are here.”

“Next time?”

“Think of a spider.  He sits on his web, at the center of his threads.  He can feel the wind, the rain, the arrival of his next meal.  He can tell when something is trying to eat him.  He can feel everything through his web.”

“Ok?”

“Think of a battle.  Men on either side, fighting for what they think is right.  Defending their home, protecting their loved ones, fighting to ensure their future, or whatever cause is given to them.  Think of each fighter moving across a battlefield, fighting their way until the enemy submits or they are broken themselves.”

“What…”  Again, he cut me off with a gesture.

“Now.  Think of the battle, and the soldiers are spiders.  The battlefield is a great web.  The spiders can add to, they can take from, and they can manipulate the great web.”

I sat in silence and thought about that.  Spiders fighting each other, feeling each other, working their way across a web. Adding threads to get to enemies, taking threads to cut off enemies, while the enemies do the same.

“I think I get it.  But how does that apply to me? Or Ses? Or anything?”

“You are one of those spiders.  The web is the world.”

“And I can?  How does that change anything next time?”

“You can affect the world around you in a different way.  With a little learning, patience, and luck.”

“How?” I said meekly.  I could sense some truth in this.  Something profoundly powerful.

“I can show you. You just need to take my hand.” He offered a weathered and gnarled hand to me from under his blanket. His palm was facing up and I could see the fire catch on the lines and cracks of his skin.

I grabbed his hand without hesitation.  And in that moment, he unfolded from himself and became a curtain of night, the brilliance of galaxies spinning opened up from within his blanket.  As it was cast aside, he stood up to be the night, the sky full of stars, and the billions of shining flickering dots of light hanging in the unlimited distance far above me.  The universe unspooled in front me, and made me witness the enormity of it all, compared to the insignificance of my own life.  I heard my grandfather’s voice in my ear, as I reeled from being made an observer of the universe around me.

“You are a weaver of fate.”