100 Words on Revenge - Laws of Motion.

Chuck Wendig ( http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2011/09/02/flash-fiction-challenge-100-words-on-the-subject-of-revenge/ ) issued a flash fiction challenge; those entering have to write a complete revenge story in 100 words or less. Here is my submission.


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The Laws of Motion.

LAW I: An object at rest stays at rest, and an object in motion stays in motion, unless acted upon by an outside force.

So humanity crept out into the stars. Ambition drove us to new suns. We were not alone. Those Others didn’t tolerate us.

LAW II: The change in momentum is proportional to the force applied.

Earth died. The surviving colonies hid in the void. They rebuilt, redeveloped, and discovered the others' speed.

LAW III: To every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction.

Then the Others' worlds died, cracked apart by missiles traveling faster than light.

Apex, 2

Step out from white, steel, warm air into spears of water escaping the sky. Drops steal light from street and city, then return to world as glitter and glow. Second skin and second skull clean, white, then both turn black as I move on to step road. Traffic – of prey, of prey that think themselves predators, and of steel and plastic just beyond stream of meat.

Dozen noses of second skull open, smell dread and desperation. Sick poison slipping into nose, onto tongue.

Caustic.

Disgusting.

Fear not of I, but of other nameless things. Countless things.

Dozen noses close. Second eyes and second ears open to the world, see and hear but not taste or smell. Hear toxic red coursing through shriveled flesh.

One hundred red rhythms is discordant orchestra. No common rate. Each product of separate doom.

Eyes focus on one hundred paradoxes. Worlds self contained but interconnected. Fates ricochet off fates. Origin, ray of meat producing more meat. End, corrupted red or of corrupted inside drinking meat of red.

Recursive lines impacting and redirecting themselves and each other. Forming fractal pattern, ultimate mass expression of fear and hate and rage.

Rage and hate and fear of self propel selves down countless individual vectors.

Fear and hate and rage of others angling those into countless more.

Memory of her drips through zero skull, through mind, through self. Fluid voice filling spaces in brain with cold inferno.

“The Kreuz building. Level ten, a restaurant known as Horizon.”

I am on knees, second skull brushing her thigh.

“Do what you will, so long as his head is brought here and you are not followed back.”

Her command brings face into second eyes.

Face of ultimate prey. Thin lips in smirk, brown eyes, tanned but not burned caucasian flesh, black hair, approximate age early forties. Muscles seen under skin. Image hammered into mind with target hunger. Gut twists, starving for his limbs to crack and red to flow free for world to see.

For I to see.

For her to see.

Her hands on second skull, nerves screaming for her true touch.

“Bring it back to me,”

yes, please, please say it mistress,

“and I will touch you, and you will touch me.”

Muscles roar and second skin shifts into blur. I run towards building, four miles twisting route through city. Starving gut and starving skin pull me through current of meat as they make meat noises and feel meat shock. Air shunted into second skull, through first skull and into lungs.

Muscles first burn.

Muscles then cool.

Cool with frozen target hunger.

Ran four miles through twisting phantom path. Left no trail in machine eyes of law and dying nation, only shadows without whispers.

Kreuz building entrance, double sliding composite doors into foyer ten meters cubed. Slate facade floor, siding, with lit water sheets flowing down along walls. Cameras evenly spaced on ceiling. Holographic directory inches off of walls.

Armed prey on both side of entrance, concealed body armor submachine gun and pistol each, see white second skull and second skin, watch motions but stupid and blind.

Want to use claws, kill one and see red flow as other draws weapon. Jump, flip, land and slice hands into useless bone and shreds, open second noses and smell crimson horror and adrenaline slip through fingers and chase after gun to floor. Fold back second skull and bite out throat.

But move towards stairs as meat in center makes noise at me.

“Would you like some assistance finding your destination, sir?”

Mind twitches, annoyed.

Second skin says in letters “NO.”

Reach stairs, climb swiftly as cold target hunger beats in muscle and vein. Spine alive and popping with promise of touching her.

Gums and teeth and hands shake. Body pulses with red flooding throughout, laced with aching, ecstatic power.

Second noses open, first nose smells stairs used by none. Dust and acrid mold leeching out of corners.

Reach twelfth level, open steel doors two point one by one point one meters into carpeted hall four meters squared by twenty long. Holographic panel displays word HORIZON over blue arc in front of doors.

Smell of prey's food. Bird, fish, beef, hundred plus additives. Sounds of clanking metal, glass, sizzling fat and dull words burning with desperation, spite.

Steps forced even. Cold target hunger turns into torture ripping through bones. Red thunders through body, demanding spill and jets and flow of other red.

Red filled with terror. Chemical screams for the nose, aural screams for ears.

Step through folded into wall double doors, eyes hunting as first mouth opens. Tongue licks lips as meat steps forward.

“Welcome to horizon. How many should we seat for your party?

Words ignored, eyes and nose piercing metal and glass grids, meat drinking and eating meat without red.

Mind clicks as threats are found and attack pattern embedded into muscle. So many guns. Cold, limp, clumsy. Imprecise here. Red pulsing and flowing, full of hunger sated and un. Arms and faces relaxed, backs and legs ready to jump into stupid clumsy meat massacre.

Bitterness. Dull senses. Tongues touching meat without tasting, smell in clouds of spice without smelling.

So blind. So limited.

“Sir?”

Heart and limbs ignite, surge with red as target is seen. Cold hunger releases, tongue and mouth wet, as it drinks out of cylinder and stares at me with blind eyes set in slack skull.

Red freezes, then shatters into motion as claws form.

Arm swipes at meat making words at me. He can no longer make words as throat rips open, strips of cartilage and bands of red flowing onto second skin and floor.

Follow through with twist, kneel to ground with legs coiled. Spring into jump over tables at target prey.

Land with spin, rise and grab target's guard's arm, tearing it off of torso through power of leg and arm and momentum. Table, target, self painted with burst of red.

It was beautiful.

Tears form in eyes.

Snap torso opposite direction, take meat and bone to slam into target's face. Falls over in chair onto floor.

Bitter surprise begins to fill room. Screams.

Beautiful screams. Fifty seven voices, each with a different scream.

I wish I could hear each one.

Too late now.

Red surges in the room, the smell, the sound, the sight of flushed meat plump near bursting.

Front flip onto target guard at other side of table, claws ripping into the cheeks, through bone, into eyes.

Land, neck snap. Fingers covered in red flow. Second skin, second skull splattered with red.

Red filled with terror.

Transcendent lightning storms through mind.

Chorus of screams. Running, fleeing, red flowing through meat and into open air.

Release skull, jump to side back next to target. Hunger pulls at my insides.

My eyes see its eyes.

Shock.

Rage

All the strength it thought it had ripped away from it in seconds.

Amassed over eternal labors and endless time.

Torn away.

Despair.

Fingers slice meat in arms and legs before it had a chance to stand. Powerless, sputtering on floor.

It makes words at me. I do not listen.

Its red seeps into shredded clothes and pools on floor.

Second skull folds away.

It sees my smile, my teeth, and my first eyes.

Its face loses its red.

Claws soaked in four flavors of red tear into its meat. It screams delicious screams that drive themselves into my mind. Limbs flap with the screams as I begin to feast.

The meat is lean, organs slick but soaked in chemicals. Bitter taste. Screams much better.

Red soaks us both. Gurgling now.

Ribs snap open.

One last scream.

I tear out its heart, so alive and shaking and pumping red.

Still pumps. Once, twice. Bite taken.

I eat the target's heart as I rip off its skull.

Screams gone. Doors shut, security inbound.

Room filled with the spray and smell of red. Red filled with terror and death. Throat and lungs crawl with pleasure, hunger for target gone, filled with red and meat.

Walk to standing table at entrance, take plastic bag, put head inside.

Second skull folds back closed as I walk to rear window.

Kneel, remove spike attached to cable from back of second skin. Embed spike into ground, kick out glass.

Shatter. Shards mix with rain and drop below, onto heads of meet.

Water splatters. Red splatters and sprays out of wounds.

Stare out at light and steel and glass. Stare at stolen light in water falling to earth. Stare at where dread and loathing and fury writhe and course through countless paradox fates.

Slide down on cable.

Water washes delicious red off of second skin and second skull.

Both blur.

Run home.

Run to her.

Run to her touch.

Apex, 1

(The End Is Here will be resumed after this 2-part short)

Light. Motion. Falling.

Falling to the ground, vision blurred.

Fell on the ground. Vision focusing, smell and taste nothing.

Hear words.

Hear her words.

Feel pain, of hunger and impact. Hunger pulls me tight, into ball. Muscles pulling myself inward, closer to starving pain.

Limbs strong as if after feast. Mouth dry, but not thirsty.

“Wake up Apex.”

Hear her say my name, hear her words drift through my second skull, tease second hunger. Breathe deep, quickly, gasping. No scent.

I can't smell her.

I can hear her but I can't smell her.

Her words again, through second skull and into first, filling first skin with fluid pleasure. Every note of her song wrapping around my muscles, pulling, releasing.

“Wake up my dear, dear Apex. Mistress needs you.”

Eyes focus from blur, morph into her. Eyes filled with tears and pain, like staring into sun. She is my Sun. I can't only look at her.

Eyes shut, head turns, I make low sounds of pain. Pain of too few senses to sense her.

Click open of second skull's dozen mouths, her scent, her true scent, under false smell she wears. Eyes open, refocus, see her, smell her, hear her.

See her, brown, rich, living, like Earth before and beyond concrete deserts and steel and glass canyons.

Smell her, salt and water of oceans too distant.

Hear her, force and ecstasy melted in melody.

Body tenses as she washes into my body, through my eyes and ears and nose. Electric liquid in every inch of body, replacing the red, beating through chest and gut and limbs.

“Stand up Apex. I know you are hungry and you will eat soon. You will hunt soon.”

Roll over to front and push up. Ascend into promises of feast, of meat and red.

Smell her red, under her flesh. Her forbidden red.

I stand as strong deserve to, as weak aspire to. Hunger remains but does not pull in. Only charges, winds up. Limbs ready to snap and release the red of others as muscles flex and tighten.

She turns and I want to taste every inch of her.

Except her red.

White fabric fails to hide her from me. Covers her flesh only to the weak and blind. I want to touch her and pleasure her and protect her and be her strength.

I am pulled to her, through second skin and second skull, as she walks out of silent and sleeping room. Lights white but dim, only walls and floor five meters cube, my bed set into wall we move away from. Cold Machine that deafens and numbs and blinds and repairs clicks and fold away.

Follow her through ten meters long by four meters square of hallway, only doors behind to room and Cold Machine, only doors ahead to her domain. She is the mind of ten thousand arms and legs that scurry and work and make empire within dying nation.

Source of so much noise. So long does empire keep her away from me. Hunger for her becomes pain, wracks and twists body until she touches me or I return to Cold Machine.

Pass through doors, measure two point five meters by one point three by fifty centimeters. Decorative plastic made like wood, curves and flower shapes in yellow-brown, titanium core and locks. Fall closer to her into room eight meters square by four meters high, one other entrance same composition as last. High traction thin fabric floor, dim amber illumination to beige walls with false decorated wood siding. Furniture is soft, we sink into chairs whenever I pleasure her. Eight concealed laser turrets in each corner, hidden in floor and ceiling. Large real wood desk in center of room, with rotating chair.

I move beside her, eyes tracing her movements, focus licking at curves and lines of body. She sits in chair and sings to me.

“Open the door for our guest, Apex.”

Limbs move but still coiled, each motion pleasing me as I obey her. Door opens, in steps single male caucasian, one point seven meters tall, approximately ninety five kilograms, white previously blonde hair, blue eyes, estimated age forty seven years, diabetic, casually aggressive stature, concealed pistol attached to arm slide, ate actual cow thirty four minutes ago, broken humerus before onset of puberty.

Would take one second for him to draw pistol and aim at her. Would also take point five seconds for me to dislocate arm.

He looks at me and sees second skin, spotless white composite flexible smart armor, and second skull, likewise but rigid. He sees me but feels fear. I smell it oozing out of his pores and see it dilate his pupils.

Weak.

Prey.

She gifts him with her attention as I begin to salivate. “Mr. Callaway, welcome. I do apologize for the measures I insisted.”

He turns to her. “It's no problem, not at all ma'am. I understand the need to minimize the chance of certain droppers of eaves.”

Chuckles nervously. American English, midwest accent with traces of south/southwestern.

“On that subject,” and I can not stand to hear him anymore. Words are ignored, tone is conciliatory.

“I assure you, he is my most trusted help. His silence is assured”

Her praise is ecstasy.

Conversation. Negotiation.. His words first amicable, then grow steadily more assertive. She humors him, but I feel in bones that meeting will be short. He comes to grate on her nerves.

Sweat polluted with stimulants drips down his neck. His red begins to flow faster. Her brow lowers as she gleans from him all she needed to know. Her slender, firm fingers rub her chin before she snaps other fingers.

Desire for flesh and her attention spring me into attack. His arm twisted out of socket, nerves pinched, thrown to floor, fist into throat. Microblade out of top of hand into carotid. His red spills free. His red paints his flesh and worthless cloth and my second skin and second skull, filled with fear and shock.

It is the red of prey.

Muscles surge with strength, claws emerge from fingertips.

“Feast,” she releases, words and self and mouth, dry and hungry. His eyes die, becomes it. Becomes meat.

Red flows and sprays, onto carpet to stain and onto my thirsty first flesh. Fingers rend and rip, flesh shredding and bones snapping as I remove meat from bone and consume. Meat laced with fat. Best meat on legs and chest, red spilling and spraying everywhere.

Hunger for meat ends it pile of broken bones and looping entrails. Heart most filling, very tough. Filled with delicious red.

Hunger for her present. Always.

“Very messy, my darling Apex. Also, very very good.”

Her words fill me with soft fire, I turn and smile with lips and teeth covered in red. Own heart beats faster, first skin alive and sparking. Blinding white pulsing through sensitive flesh, fills edge of vision.

“And I have one more for you to hunt down. One more to feast on, so long as you bring his head to me.”

I will be going outside.

I will hunt. For her.

Always for her.

The End Is Here 3: No

Roughly one hundred binary bells rang in a synchronized cacophony that signaled, at that time, the release of the internal springs of four thousand students. Boredom had acted to counterbalance their internal drive, priming them for outward motion. Their effects were bagged and their eyes watched clocks mounted on walls, phones, and wrists until that clarion call to the lunch room rang, and they finally filed out to follow the sirens song of what little freedom they had in the day.

One young woman with black hair cut no-maintenance short shouldered her backpack as she grew eager to replace the biting, moldy scent of trivial minutiae with the heady aroma of fried foods and sugary sweets. Her classmates rose as a hostile, antsy wave and choked the door out of her classroom. She pulled out her cell phone to distract herself from her stomach turning itself inside out from lack of nourishment. It was a poor distraction, and turned into an avenue of expression as her hunger seized control of her fingers.

'marc, get me 2 slices pepproni will pay u bak'

The clog budged, and progress was being made into that long circus. She capitalized further on the sloth of those in front of her.

'lin where r we meeting?'

She looked ahead and clacked closed her phone as her class picked up speed. She followed through and became swept up into the pulse of the arterial hallway. She could have picked up her feet and just drifted to the lunch hall were there any buoyancy to be had in the human stream. Her cell buzzed, demanding her attention, which she indulged quickly.

'Outside, center court. See you soon.'

Soon, but not soon enough by her measure. She had just passed into the blinding solar glare as her limbs started to feel hollow. Her jaw clenched, ready to snap off someone's head. She scanned for suitable prey and found the first member of her pack lounging at their table. She drifted over the looping, symmetrical pattern of pavement in the court.

“Handy dandy Randy. What's up?” she asked, taking the seat directly in front of her, opposite Randy. He rested his chin on his hands, fingers brushing the scalp stubble behind his temples. “Nothing much, mean clean Jean.”

She leaned over, then fell, onto the metal grid table. She rolled her head to the side as she spoke. “Mean? I don't think I'm mean.”

“Yes, you are Jean. Not often. But it's cool.” She remained still, reserving her energy for talking and keeping herself from eating the furniture. She suddenly felt significantly less clean as she realized what she was rubbing her face all over. She could almost hear the millions of cheering microbes thankful for a new home.

She pushed herself off the table as she continued talking. “Have you seen Marcus today? I texted him to get me pizza. I offered to pay him back with hot, sweaty bathroom sex and he's standing me up. Maybe he's gay.”

Randy's hands dropped into a fold as his face turned furtive. “If he's not, he will be. You've heard what happened, right?”

Jean's brow furrowed in curious confusion. “Why so serious? What happened, did he get an ultra butch muscleman stalker or something?”

She almost ignored the steps growing louder behind her before their origin spoke. “I sent you a message on [a widely used social networking site]. Didn't you read it?” Jean leaned back, body and head. A stranger was behind her, but seconds revealed features similar to those belonging to her friend Linda. They were obscured by the Clonifornian beauty standard, but Jean decided to run with the conversation anyway. “Apparently not. What's Marc's deal?”

Clonifornian maybe-Linda took the seat beside them both, setting down a tray populated by food in portions only fit to nourish the starving. Jean eyed her plate jealously. “Where's your food?”

“Marcus was supposed to get it, but since some mysterious event occurred he apparently isn't. What the fuck happened?”

“God, calm down. He got busted for possession and distribution, I think? Drug stuff.” Jean's eyes narrowed. “Bullshit. How do you know?” Maybe-Linda took a bite of celery before continuing, but was preempted by Randy. “His mom's been calling our parents, trying to find one of us to put the blame on. She even called the cops. I was questioned, locker searched, everything. So was Linda,” he finished by motioning towards her. “Nice tan by the way.”

“Yeah, I was taken to the campus cop office too. And thanks,” confirmed-Linda replied. “You haven't yet?” Jean shrugged, hands up. “Nope. But drugs? And Marcus? Why would he need to have drugs? Why would he want drugs? Dude has a cushy fucking life, always has bleeding edge tech. What more could he want?”

Randy sighed and shook his head. “I don't know man. I really don't. I hope he gets off easy for being a minor and it being a first offense, but I doubt it.”

“Yeah. God Jean, stop looking at my food and get your own, the lines are not that bad,” said Linda as she inched her tray away from Jean's advancing hand. “Oh fine. I'll be right back, unless I'm stopped by the S.S. For not wearing my yellow star.”

She left for the cafeteria, a measure of strength returning to her body as the promise of food became increasingly tangible. She passed through the open double-doors as her phone began to vibrate. She pulled it out as she found a place in line. 'Mom' was read on the small rectangular screen.

“I'm not doing drugs, mom,” she answered.

“That's wonderful, daughter. I'm going to have to travel for the weekend, but Victor is going to be at home. Is there anything you want from [a pretentious grocery store]?”

Jean felt black tendrils of fear flood her body and constrict her organs. Her joints flash froze and began to shake apart as the words broke through her skull. Memory and possibility wrapped around each other in a double helix of dread. Her throat seized, and the line progressed without her. She stood, alone in every conceivable way for reasons that tried to make themselves known to her.

“Jean?”

“No,” she wanted to scream, but only whispered. 

The End Is Here 2: Yes

EOD Specialist Roger Shepard opened his eyes for the first time in three months and saw green. The pale, sterile, septic, fluorescent green that had it an odor would be caustic and foul enough to dissolve the capacity for one to smell. It immediately made him regret his capacity to experience sight, and his first reflexive movements were to flail about for some kind of object that was pointy enough to jab through his irises.

It was not a conscious urge, just a silent propulsive idea that forced him to examine his surroundings. While his vision was too busy trying to murder itself, the senses of touch told him that he was comfortable enough to be extremely perturbed by his own motions. Sense memory kicked in and told him that he was wrapped in sheets as some manner of bleating interrupted his quiet. It was only a few seconds afterward that he remembered that language was even a thing and heard a man say, “he's waking up, notify his doctor.”

A pair of strong hands attached to a blur grabbed Roger's wrists, and he heard “hold still, man, I got you. Relax. You're in a hospital. The fact your even moving is kind of a fucking miracle.” Roger was no where near as eloquent as he mumbled incoherently.

“Hey, do you understand me? Do you remember who you are? What's your name?” The blur asked just before it started resembling a person. “Shepard. Roger.”

More blurs emerged from the blur behind the blur, all of them little more than blurs despite their gradual salience. The first blur turned to the other and said lowly, “He remembers who he is. Motor control, at least in the arms. I'm pretty sure the legs too, guy can squirm.”

The new blur moved closer, shifted, and shined a pale yellow light in his eyes. “Ok. What year is it?” Roger blinked rapidly, trying to reset his eyes and focus. “I can't fucking see right.”

“The year, Shepard. Stop blinking.”

“2011, the last time I checked,” he said, obeying both requests. His eyes followed the worn yellow light. “What is the last thing you remember?”

“I was deployed on mission. Baghdad. IED was smuggled into a government building. I, uh,” he broke, swallowing nothing in his dry flesh. “I was sent in.”

“And then, Shepard?”

And then he failed. The rigged explosive was made by a particularly cunning insurgent mechanic with a penchant for mind games and transsexual prostitutes. He constructed the bomb so that the obvious way to disarm it would in fact just detonate it. It turned an amateur's chop job into the last bomb EOD technicians would ever think they defused.

Shepard had time to realize this when it exploded in his face. He had time to think about it as everything but his own thoughts just froze. Pieces of shrapnel and incandescent gas just seized in place, just barely short enough to tear through his armor and pulp him.

He stopped thinking about it as a shadow rounded a corner and walked between him and the setting sun. A humanoid silhouette eclipsed that unforgiving star as it moved towards and knelled beside him.

It forced him to feel its words, on the skin between his mind and his brain. They were not carried by a voice. Their meaning was evident and unheard.

“Roger Shepard. I am not an angel. I am not a demon. I am not god. I am separate and outside.”

The shadow stretched to caress the frozen explosion, light and mass warping at its touch. “This is what can end your conscious existence in this world. Kinetic overload of your body.” It pinched a sliver of steel directly in front of his face, its glimmer retreating into nonexistence. “Steel. Aluminum. Oxygen. Nitrogen. Carbon dioxide. Pressure. Alloy and gas and mechanism,” it continued, turning the shard.

“I will let you choose your termination. You can choose here and now with this, or you can choose to extend your integrity into a future.”

“Shepard? What happened next?” the second blur in front of him asked as the first eased him back into the fabric.

“A future that you can not escape. A possibility made a certainty. A death delayed so that it will be in service to I.”

“Come on, buddy, are you still with us?”

“Will you choose to end your existence in a way that suits me?”

Roger Shepard whispered, “yes.”

The void's hand closed around the shard and tightened as arcs of burning silver light coalesced around it. Its triangular surface scarred and warped as the energy burned straight through Roger's retina. His nerves screamed, even though he could not.

Time and motion resumed. He didn't feel the piece of metal flying through his skull.

"I guess I screwed up, and wound up here," he said, relaxing. He figured that it would be easier to attribute the dialogue in front of the exploding bomb to near-death experience hallucination, than to divulge the absurd to his caretakers.

"You must have done something right. I remember the other guys in your unit saying that nobody should have survived that. I know you shouldn't have survived shrapnel in your frontal lobe, but hey, it's good to have you up."

The End Is Here 1: Old man and taffy.

The sun had decided to cut out the child and magnifying glass middleman and just cruelly bombard the entire desert with the heat that god reserves to cook the flesh off of a demon's bones. A single black strip of highway and a gas and service station bore the solar assault and stood as mute testimonies to the endless madness of the human race in two ways.

Firstly, the road provided evidence that humankind was crazy enough to even want to traverse the cracked and scaled dust plain to begin with. The service station demonstrated the psychotic greed that gripped the collective subconscious and justified the doctrine of original sin. On the part of the owners, that they would condemn people to work their for a pittance, and for the workers, that they would work there for a pittance.

Earl Samson, the sole attendant and mechanic currently present at that evidence locker/hate oven, was slowly coming to the above realization as he threw chunks of ice out of the station door and watched the transparent bricks nearly sublimate in the air. He was betting on how long individual blocks would survive (in seconds), with his opponent being a half-melted snickers bar.

And the candy was, of course, winning. It had already out bet the bag of skittles, who was just watching the proceeding and rooting for Earl to clean house.

This wasn't to say that Mr. Samson was a particularly dim man, far from it. He just always had a soft spot in his heart for the darker ones, and decided to go easy on her.

“Twenty seconds, for a dime,” he said, taking the silver disk and slapping it on the ground. His eyes narrowed as he regarded the brown, blue, and white wrapper. “Seven seconds? The smallest one I threw out there lasted fifteen. Pick something more realistic,” he said to the bar. He exhaled out of his nose before responding with a shrug, “All right, whatever. It's your money.”

It really was not the candy bar's money. It was a candy bar. He just lent her some so she could bet on equal footing.

He picked up the brick, letting it's freezing weight rest in his hands for a moment, before he wound back and tossed it. It flew through the air, a trail of now-liquid drops following in its wake, before crashing into the ground. The impact caused the corner that hit the ground to crack apart, kicking small shards out from under it before it slid to a halt in front of a gas pump.

Earl lifted the otherwise bare arm that was encircled by his watch and began to count down the seconds. In the distance, he heard the roar of an expensive sounding engine. At three seconds, the engine noise ceased, but he heard the car approach. At five, he heard the banshee scream of the brakes as the car began to decelerate. At seven, the car fish-tailed into the parking lot and screeched to a halt in front of the pump, the tires crushing the block of ice.

“Damn woman. You're going to clean me out.”

It was then that Earl remembered that he was paid to operate a store, not spend time with his melting friends. He picked up the candy bar and the bag of skittles as we made his way behind the counter, jumping his diminutive self onto the top and sliding on his ass over to the other side. He smoothed the wrinkles out of his smock and straightened out his name tag as he turned his attention to the car.

It was a blood-crimson sports car, an older model that make of which he couldn't precisely pinpoint. He stowed the bar and bag next to the register as he waited for any sign of activity inside the blackened windows. After a minute of waiting patiently, the driver-side door opened, and an aging man with long, gray-white hair framing a pair of large white sunglasses stepped out. The man looked down the road in the direction he came, and then turned his head to the direction where he was most likely going before he began hastily walking towards the entrance.

A white gloved hand touched the door-frame as he entered and looked around, the inside of the establishment. Earl raised a hand and inquired, “what are you looking for mister?”

The man turned to look at him, his expression neutral. “Ah, perfect.” he uttered, his expression changing to delight. “There we go. Twenty five gallons on pump two and two cans of Malice snuff,” he said as he made his way to the counter. Earl turned around and reached up to the chewing tobacco dispensary, standing on his tip-toes and just barely touching the can. “Oh, I'm so sorry,” the man said, his voice slightly hoarse. “It's no problem. It's the makers of these damn cabinets fault,” he said just before what would have otherwise been a normal customer produced a pistol and, holding it by the barrel, reached over the counter and slammed the grip against Earl's occipital lobe.

And now we go on to detail what the real protagonist of this chapter did.

Mr. Samson, now unconscious and suffering from a concussion, started to fall. The man grabbed him by the collar, and with a strength that insulted on the concept of 'old age', held him off the ground. He slowly eased Earl to the floor and followed him behind the counter. He knelt over Earl and checked his pulse, nodding silently as he made sure that Earl was still alive and strong. He then shuffled the body over to the corner and pressed it up against the counter before jumping back over, taking a moment to look around. He noted the security camera and decided that it was a non-issue, confident that his clever disguise would protect his identity.

The camera would come to relent its low resolution and inability to zoom, but at that time it dutifully recorded every moment that transpired in its field of view. With the devotion that only a machine could possess, it watched as the man grabbed some long-strips of molten taffy from the confections shelves. He tossed a crumpled five dollar bill onto Earl's unconscious body as he unwrapped a package of taffy and reached up towards the camera's lens, shielding his face with a gloved hand. The camera recorded him smearing the pink slime into the lens.

He removed the rest of the taffy from the packages and produced a small, plastic card identical in size and shape to a credit card. He smeared the card with the delicious sugary goop and stuck the card into each one of the card readers at the pumps, ensuring that none of them could be used for anything but providing a hidden treat for ants,

The long-haired man checked his stolen watch and performed some rough temporal calculations as he walked back to his stolen car. He placed his stolen gun back in the stolen car before he took a gas pump and began to pretend to refuel it.

He checked his watch again as he heard another automobile approach. This one, a loud, massive sage green pickup truck (the kind that serves as a status symbol for men with exceptionally small penises), drove into the lot and parked at the pump in front of the the stolen car and the demonstrably pilfering, vandalizing, not-so-gentleman.

This truck pulled into the gas station lot roughly three minutes earlier than the aging man calculated, which caused a knowing smile to crease the edges of his mouth. The windows were not as heavily tinted as his stolen car's were, and he could see the heads of two individuals moving above the headrests. The truck door clicked open and a skinny, shaved bald young man in a tank top and loose-fitting pants stepped out, producing a credit card.

The man who was stealing everything that day smiled even wider as he said, “Card reader don't work. Some kids thought it was funny to stick it full of gum or 'somethin. You need to pay inside.”

The truck driver ignored him and stuck his card into the slot anyway. He looked honestly surprised when he pulled it out and saw that it was covered in pink gook. He ducked his head into the cab and asked, “you want anything?” to the passenger. He nodded, saying “I'll get us both one.” He muttered an expletive under his breath and started walking towards the station, trying and failing to thumb off the melted taffy.

The man at the car watched the truck's driver walk through the door before switching his view back to the head of the passenger, noting the angle of its tilt. He was not watching any of the mirrors.

He grabbed his pistol and softly walked towards the truck, carefully concealing the firearm from view by placing it next and just behind his leg. His already nearly silent foot-steps where further obscured by clicks of the truck engine as it cooled. His approach was unnoticed by both the passenger, who was now seen as playing with his cell-phone, and the driver, who was going for the drinks. A semi-truck drove by on the highway, stirring the hell-hot air as the old man with the gun stepped into killing distance of the passenger.

He raised the barrel, aimed, and fired a single shot that punched through the glass, the head rest, and the passenger's brain. The last thing the now deceased passenger had on his mind was that he could save up to 10% or more on car insurance by changing companies, and that he was obviously not on the 'no solicitation' number list.

The old killer twisted his torso towards the store front before the pistol's report had even echoed once. He lined the sights on the shaved-bald driver's center of mass, who stood half turned in a pre-realization fugue. The man pulled the trigger, shattering the store front glass. Shards blew into the store and fell onto the ground in a fracturing cacophony , obstructing his vision of the target. He then crouched low and ran over to the broken window as the falling glass failed to reveal his previous target, alive or dead. He stopped at the waist-high wall and picked up a shard, listening to the shuffling on the ground. He lifted the shard up and over the wall and looked into the store with the reflection, seeing a foot being pulled into the salty snacks aisle, sliding over and smearing a scattered trail of blood. He scanned the rest of the store with the shard before dropping it and vaulting over the wall. He rose to the protest of the groaning and snapping glass under his boots, listening to the frantic gasps for air the imminently deceased let out.

He stepped into the aisle as the young man began to whimper in pain and desperation, as if any amount of all three would postpone or even negate his execution. His eyes, filled with panic and fear focused on the old killer as he stepped forward. His voice cracked with pain and torturous dread as he begged, “hey! Hey man! What the fuck man? Listen... fuck fuck just listen, ok? We'll give back the drugs. The blow, th-the money, it's all yours! Just fucking let me go man!”

The old killer stopped, the barrel of his handgun aimed at the bleeding man's neck.

“You don't need to kill me man I'll give everything back! I swear! Oh god please I swear!”

He thought long and hard for a reason to not execute the pleading, bleeding man on the ground, as if each ounce of blood purchased a single second of respite. The minute was filled with the perhaps not imminently deceased man's gasps for air, and repeated squirming on the ground.

The old killer pulled the trigger for three reasons. The first was because he was being paid to. The second, was because he could not come up with a good reason to leave him alive. The third, and most personal, was that that pathetic little man had wasted two minutes of the old killer's valuable time.

He walked out of the store and to the truck, opening the driver's side rear passenger door and looked inside. His brow furrowed in annoyance when it was populated with no less than ten identical suit cases.

He picked up and shook each one, trying to identify the contents. Seven were stuffed full of something heavy and tightly packed, which he was all but certain was the drugs the now dead driver had tried to bargain with. The eighth weighed as if it were completely empty, but it stopped and shuddered as if something was in it. Perplexed, he set the case down.

He did not blink as he cracked open the case and slowly let the searing sunlight in. It illuminated something metallic, black with irregular blue streaks sinking into the material as it it were transparent. He made out the bottom edge of the object and deduced that it was either rectangular or square in shape, to which he confirmed as the case finished creaking open.

The object, fully revealed, appeared to be a tome bound in that transparent black and blue streak metal. It was also floating off of the bottom of the case, gently drifting to the left. He reached out and touched it, noting that it was perfectly smooth and cold to the touch. He moved his hand to open it and looked at the front page.

It was likewise made out of a solid, transparent metal that flexed more easily than paper but without creasing. The page itself seemed more like a window into a room underneath the page than a solid object, and within were symbols of a make that he could not imagine identifying as something that even the most pretentious calligraphist could create. They looked like individual pieces of sheet-metal art – tokens with abstract meaning suspended in the depth of the page.

“What the fuck,” the old killer said.

Deduced Events

I was walking along the street, heading to the local barber shop that offered the only sane price for a haircut in town. Those kindly folk – and folk they where – charged no more than eight dollars trim the inches. They did not put goo in your hair. They did not have a paper rectifier, with paper, that had a list of people who were waiting in line to have their hair cut. They did not demand two digits of dollars to remove your hair. They were friendly, quick, and had a nice jar of candy for all ages, which I shamelessly plundered after each visit.

I heard a loud sizzling pop, and saw sparks fall and bounce on the ground, followed by the countless shadows of perturbed fowl crossing the asphalt. I started to turn my head up but froze as I saw a particularly lively power cable hit the ground in front of me. I did not move.

Traffic drove past me as I became aware of how uncomfortably hot the sun decided to be today. I did not increase my speed, because I did not want to anger the electricity gods, especially right before I was going to get a haircut and a lunch that was going to be more expensive than the haircut.

I heard the roar of an engine – one louder than you typically hear in the town's main streets, and the vehicle attached to it careening around the corner of the intersection in front of me. It was your typical totally-not-sinister nondescript white van, which was driving with it's right tires on the sidewalk. It screamed to a halt beside me after dodging an errant hamwagon, its passenger/cargo waving its disgustingly flabby arms in an obvious attempt to generate lift.

Something – ok, a great quantity of somethings – screeched and fretted inside the van. The door clicked, slid open, and I beheld a bulging wall of irate baboons. They were packed into the van illegal-immigrant style, and as the sliding door clicked into an open and locked position, they all came spilling out. It was a single mass of hair, muscle, claws, screeching, and bright red asses.

They rapidly disentangled each other and swarmed over the power cable that fell onto the sidewalk beside me. They were polite enough not to touch me, but still sufficiently impolite to scream in my ear. Their inchoate screeches were followed swiftly by a series of pops as they started to grab the cable and get electrocuted, one by one. Then they started to work together and die together, white arcs of electricity frying their little primate brains and stopping their hearts.

A pile of monkey corpses formed at the terminal end of the power cable, which only grew in size until one exceptionally stubborn wretch grabbed the end and, despite being continually electrocuted, managed to keep functioning. The others hooted and yelped in celebration as it spasm-sauntered over to the pole and began its ascent.

It now dawned upon me that these baboons were contracted by the El Paso Electric Company. It all made perfect sense.

The one ape that possessed the bright red ass of electricity immunity finished its climb and connected the terminal to its junction on the powerline pole. As it brought the ends together, its capacity for surviving murderous levels of voltage waned and it finally expired, but not before locking the ends in place and burning itself stuck to the line.

The remaining baboons whooped and cheered even louder. The one that was right next to me looked up and raised a hand. Not wanting to leave it hanging, I gave it a high-five.

The pack then climbed back into the van and sped away. I likewise continued to the barber shop.