She had a razor blade smile and gunshot eyes and was looking for someone to hurt. Dressed head to toe in black New York chic, she was a wolf among the sheep. The flashing lights filled her sight as she walked unnoticed through the underground club. The miasma of despair lay like a pall of smoke and blanketed everything, making her soul sing.This was her Heaven, this was her Nirvana, this was the point where she ceased to be a solid form and like a shadow of mist expanded to touch every soul there, drinking their sorrow and hopelessness in an orgy of gluttony.

Suddenly the smoke of her essence recoiled, snapping her back into a solid form so quick there was an audible pop. She had touched someone, a memory of pain and being cast back to the outer darkness. She shuddered. She sniffed and found the thread of a scent that led her to a man sitting in a chair with his back against the wall. She passed the bodies swaying to the hypnotic beat, still unseen because she chose to be unseen. Standing before the man she came out of the shadows and watched as his eyes widened in surprise. Before he could move she straddled the unremarkable man, pinning him in the chair. She grabbed his face with both hands and pulled it to hers; his forehead against her cheek, like long lost lovers. She held him like that and took a long and audible sniff.

"Oh McTeague," she moaned, "I remember you. I remember being flung into the darkness. I remember your strong hand reaching into that young girl's soul and pulling me out. I spent years in pain after that, trying to claw my way back to this plane, and now I find you here, of all places."

She looked at him then in puzzlement. "You are not wearing the black crow suit?" Then it became apparent. "You are not here to save their souls are you? Look at you; no collar, no cross and.." She licked him, her saliva burning a trail across his horrified face, "...no faith."

"Get off me!" The man was able to whisper as the demonic spittle burned him.

"Oh, I think not, little man. Where did you leave your protection? What has left you so open to this? Not that I am unthankful, mind you, just curious. Where is your God now?" She finished.

John McTeague struggled to free himself to no avail. Her frail-looking hands held the strength of steel just as her breath held the hint of brimstone and sulfur. "I am not a priest anymore," he admitted. "I come here to forget and lose myself for awhile."

She laughed and her laughter was the whine of a heart monitor that had flatlined and the rumble of angry thunder all rolled into one. "I can not tell you how happy I am to see you, John. I am going to enjoy making your flesh sing for casting me out."

She dropped her hands from his face and wrapped them around him and the chair in a vice-like embrace. Her hand phased out and slipped through the chair and his flesh to grab his heart. Massaging it, she sent blue-tipped spikes of electrical agony through his body. He tried to scream, but her other hand moved to his throat, crushing his airway.

Suddenly she jumped off and stood up. "I have so many people to tell little man. So many eager to hear how the mighty have fallen. You know who I am going to tell first John? I think Legion would be the most overjoyed to hear. I am sure he will be visiting you very soon." She laughed as she disappeared into the night, leaving John gasping in pain and crying tears no one heard or cared about.

Tony Mirelli hadn’t run like this since high school track,‭ ‬but the knife in his side was preferable to a bullet in his head, so he ran because his life depended on it.‭ ‬Puccino’s‭ ‬goon was no more than thirty seconds behind him,‭ ‬and Tony’s only hope of sanctuary was the abandoned brick factory‭ ‬where he had once misspent many a youthful evening.

Sure enough,‭ ‬the gap in the fence was still there‭ – ‬and silenced bullets‭ ‬pinged in the barbed wire as Tony sucked in his gut and jumped through.‭ ‬A‭ ‬half-open loading bay beckoned him to safety,‭ ‬but Tony shivered as he ducked under the remains of a roll-up‭ ‬gate.

The warehouse interior was a picture of neglect.‭ ‬Crumbling walls‭ ‬formed a maze of storage areas;‭ ‬some empty,‭ ‬some overflowing with broken masonry and rusted machinery.‭ ‬Ancient cranes sat frozen on warped tracks,‭ ‬their chains and hooks dangling despondently from their sagging gantries.‭ ‬Fingers of sunlight‭ ‬poked through the tin roof at irregular intervals,‭ ‬forming pools of light and oceans of shadow.‭ ‬Every surface was liberally carpeted with dust,‭ ‬and‭ ‬Tony left choking clouds of it in his wake as he dodged sunbeams and took cover in the‭ ‬gloom behind a pile of shipping pallets.‭ ‬He grimaced as an unsuppressed cough echoed from wall to wall‭; ‬so much for hiding quietly.

A‭ ‬loud clatter and a curse announced the goon’s arrival as he stumbled on a broken two by four.‭ ‬Tony risked a peek at his pursuer,‭ ‬and his heart sank.‭ ‬Puccino had‭ ‬sicced Hard Mickey‭ ‬on him.‭ ‬Nothing but the best for me,‭ ‬he thought.‭ ‬Mickey had stopped to reload his gun and unscrew the unwieldy silencer,‭ ‬and was‭ ‬staring intently in the opposite direction of Tony’s hiding space.‭ ‬Something about‭ ‬his demeanor made Tony uneasy.‭ ‬Idiot,‭ ‬he’s trying to kill you‭!‬ Yet the goon was not behaving like a hunter.‭ ‬Rather,‭ ‬he had adopted a defensive posture‭ – a ‬two-handed grip on his gun,‭ ‬shoulder pointed towards the perceived threat, body‭ ‬hunched over to‭ ‬offer a smaller target,‭ ‬back against the solid‭ ‬girder of a loading crane.

Movement flickered silently in Tony’s peripheral vision.‭ ‬Mickey saw it too and spun around,‭ ‬forcing Tony to duck back behind his pallets and rely on his ears to fill in the details.‭ ‬The goon yelled a startled obscenity.‭ ‬Something hissed in response.‭ ‬Two shots rang out,‭ ‬but their echoes were buried by the‭ ‬clank of a chain.‭ ‬Feet scuffed the dust and something metal skittered across the floor.‭ ‬A surprised yelp.‭ ‬One more terrific rattle of the chain.‭ ‬A terrible scream.‭ ‬A wet‭ ‬swish,‭ ‬the light patter of rain.‭ ‬Silence.

A lifetime may have passed before Tony‭ ‬leaned past his pallets.‭ ‬He wished he had waited a lifetime more.‭ ‬Mickey’s body was hanging upside down from the crane,‭ ‬suspended by a hook buried in the small of his back.‭ ‬His open neck smiled from ear to ear as the last of his blood drained into a pool of red mud on the floor.‭ ‬A‭ ‬dusty sunbeam lit him up like a spotlight,‭ ‬as if to salute his passing.

In the distance,‭ ‬a door slammed shut.‭ ‬A heartbeat later,‭ ‬the roll-up gate over the loading dock groaned,‭ ‬creaked,‭ ‬and crashed down with the finality of a portcullis.‭ ‬Something hissed on the other side of the warehouse,‭ ‬and Tony’s skin crawled as he realized that his unmet obligations to Puccino‭ ‬were officially the least of his worries.‭

Janie huddled in the corner of her closet. She could hear furniture being overturned and glass breaking downstairs. At least her father had stopped making those pitiful mewling sounds; she thought she would go mad hearing that. She stayed where she was as the tears slipped down her cheeks. She knew she couldn’t help him.

The noises had stopped below, and now she could clearly hear the creak of the stairs. Janie wanted to run, to scream. I didn’t take your stupid book! she thought angrily. I just looked at it. Why are you here instead of at Eric’s house? He’s the one that… She put a hand to her mouth in sudden realization. Oh, God! I’ve got to tell them! Tell them that the story is true!

***

Stupid boys. Janie rolled her eyes at Tammy, who giggled. Eric and Michael were trying to force a window open, but the wood had swollen and the frame wouldn’t move. They were in the backyard, where the untrimmed hedge would shield them from any passers-by, not that many people came this way on purpose.

The Loftin house was close enough to town that it should have been absorbed into some housing development by now, but small-town infamy keeps an ice-cold grip on the heart of the people that were there. The older people. The people who are most likely to serve on building councils, and can politely suggest that the developers look to the South end of town for their office park or mini-mall.

The sound of breaking glass made the girls jump. The two boys had used an old broom handle to lever the window up, and the sudden stress had shattered the few remaining panes. Michael made a cup of his hands, and boosted Eric inside. There was a short yelp as he landed.

“You okay, Doofus?” Michael asked.

“Just cut my hand, is all. It’ll be alright.”

“Well don’t just stand there and bleed, get the door.”

“Yeah, yeah. Hold your horses.”

The back door opened, and the three friends went inside. The house was mostly empty, and smelled of mildew. A few battered chairs occupied the front room, their charred legs in the great stone fireplace. Janie could see the marks on the floor people said were made by Mrs. Loftin’s fingernails as her husband dragged her towards the hearth. She could almost hear the screams as the woman was borne backwards, feeling the fire engulf her legs.

Something grabbed her shoulder, and she screeched. Michael laughed.

“C’mon, J. Eric found something.”

“What?”

“Just c’mon.” He headed upstairs.

Eric and Tammy were in the old master bedroom. Eric sat on the floor cross-legged, an enormous book on his lap.

“Isn’t it cool, J?” Tammy gushed. “I bet it’s worth a whole lot of money, an old book like this.”

“Yeah, if it’s so valuable, how come nobody else took it before now?” asked Michael.

“Maybe ‘cause they didn’t find it,” Tammy retorted. “It was hid under the floor.”

“Well how’d you find it, then?” Janie asked.

“I didn’t. Eric did. We came in here to look around, and he went right to it. Just pulled up a plank and reached in.”

They looked at Eric, who just sat there, turning the pages of the old book.

Smearing his blood on them.

***

And now Janie had the Whistling Man in her house. She hoped he would give up looking for her. No sooner had she even dared to allow the thought, the closet door was flung open. Janie screamed as a rough hand grabbed her ankle and dragged her out. She smelled smoke.

She begged, she pleaded, she bargained. All she got in reply was that soft whistling. The sound of a man happy in his work. They approached the stairs.

As she was falling into the inferno raging downstairs she realized what they should have done. She knew how to stop it.

I’ve got to tell… was as far as she got.

In the main auditorium of Miskatonic University, an awards ceremony had just ended and the evening's festivities were starting to wind down. Honors had been handed out, speeches were made, jokes attempted, and one persons' breaking point had been reached.

The auditorium was an imposing Gothic structure. Large granite columns, twenty feet from the walls, and 120 feet across from each other, supported a vaulted ceiling eighty feet up. Heavy tapestries and candelabra were plentiful, the latter to deflect attention from the pedestrian electric lights high above. There were several arched openings here and there, leading off to other parts of the Byzantine campus. A raised platform was located at one end, with a now abandoned podium, and food-laden tables lined the perimeter, constantly tended to by impeccably dressed wait staff.

The black marble floor, veined by a spiderweb of silver, was nearly obscured by close to a thousand attendees, who now had coalesced into small knots of people, all talking about one thing or another.

There was, however, a lone figure cutting a path through the crowd.

Professor Philip Lynne used to joke that he was up for tenure rejection, but after repeated denials his sense of humor on that subject withered away. He had prepared for this nights' disappointment; he already had another job lined up in another state.

He was brilliant, yes, but also vindictive.

He thought he'd gotten the point through to the Dean that when your field, traditional human biology and physiology, also deals with necrotic reanimation, sooner or later you're going to need to experiment on human cadavers; his only response was censure.

He made his way to a back hallway, ignoring consoling pats on the back, some of which came, he knew, from colleagues who again voted to reject his tenure. With only his echoing footsteps to accompany him now, Philip proceeded to a freight elevator; he was now in a little-used part of the university.

As he rode the elevator down he withdrew from a pocket a small walkie-talkie, and pressed a button.

“Are you there?”

A voice came back, crackly with static: “Yes.”

“Lock the doors.” Without waiting for a reply, he switched off the device and returned it to its pocket.

Continuing on, he made his way to his laboratory, visited over the months by fewer and fewer people; he no longer allowed even his own students down here.

Walking on grimy white tile, spattered with dark, rust-red stains, he made his way to the back wall where a small cell housed his greatest success to date.

Peering through the bars of the door, he gazed upon the reclining form of a corpse, plucked from the grave two months ago.

The ghastly automaton had followed the approach of Professor Lynne with lidless eyes, one protruding slightly.

The grotesque horror now stood expectantly. It was a pestilential, squelching nightmare, an affront to all that is natural and pure. Its gangrenous flesh was torn in places, revealing glistening muscle, ropey tendons, and putrefying organs. As the creature breathed in raspy, wheezing breaths, its lungs could be seen working like a bellows.

Almost as difficult as the actual re-animation was the conditioning of the creature to obedience, an adventure in which the professor discovered his creation was obscenely strong.

Philip had also discovered that his rejuvenated subject was still decaying, though at a very slow rate. He figured that within 10 months or so, the former corpse would finally disintegrate irretrievably.

He only needed it to last through the night.

Reaching into a pocket, Professor Lynne produced a key. Twisting it in the lock, he told the creature, “It's time.”

He pulled open the door and stood aside.

“You know what to do.”

I think I’m finally getting used to my cage.

When he first stuck me in here I thought I was going to die. Of course I didn’t go without a fight. I was bruised and achy when he finally kicked me in and snapped the lock. But I think he might have lost an eye.

My fingernails aren’t long and pretty anymore and I don’t know how long it’s been since I’ve had a bath. There’s barely enough room for me to sit up straight, but there is a hole in the corner where I can… Well, you get the idea. I think I’m finally getting used to my stink.

He keeps me in pitch blackness. I can’t remember when I last saw the sun. I guess there are creatures that like it like that. They sometimes come and tickle me when I’m asleep. I think I’m finally getting used to their scratchy little legs.

I’m hungry most of the time, but every once in awhile I find a tin plate outside my cage. The smell alerts me to its presence. I feel lucky that I’ve never considered myself a picky eater. Even so, I can make a meal last for hours. It gives me something to do.

It’s really hot here in my cage. If I had to guess I’d say it’s in an attic. A basement would be much colder. I can imagine the sun beating down on a dark tar roof. It gives me some comfort thinking that I’m high up in the air, not deep underground.

I used to dream about the day I would be rescued. My dad would smash open the door in a blaze of blinding light. His entrance would scare me, but I’d manage not to scream. He would fumble with the lock and eventually use an iron bar to pry an opening large enough for me to squeeze my way through. I’d be weak and trembling, but take comfort in his strong arms. I haven’t had that dream in quite some time.

I’ve counted the bars of my cage a hundred thousand times. I run my finger around the perimeter and listen to their dull metallic twangs. It’s the closest thing to music I’ve heard in ages. Each bar has its own personality and I’ve given them each a different name. There’s Rusty and Bendy, Twisted and Sharp. They’re all good listeners and keep me in fine company. I sometimes even feel content sitting here in my cage.

But I don’t think I’ll ever get used to the times he comes back to get me out.

The hospital room wasn’t particularly exciting. There was no reason why it should be, really - the nicer rooms were saved for the patients who were awake to notice them. If it weren’t for the regularly spiking heart monitor there would be no evidence to suggest that the woman on the bed was alive - she lay perfectly still, her eyes closed, her dark hair lank and greasy from months without proper washing, just as she had for three months.

Slowly, the nothingness inside her head gave way to vague awareness. With difficulty she opened her eyes, and automatically her hand went up to shield them from the unfamiliar light. The movement caught the eye of the man sitting in the chair beside the bed. She knew that man. She remembered him. That was her husband.

His face brought back memories. The crash. Geoffrey driving too fast. Why had he been driving fast? She couldn’t remember. She remembered the truck that had smashed through their car though.

Geoffrey was speaking now. “Darling? You’re awake! And Monica, Monica sweetheart…you have a baby boy…Monica we have our baby!”
Her baby? That wasn’t right. She didn’t have a baby. But Geoffrey was shouting now, calling the nurse. He kept talking about the baby.

And suddenly the nurse was there, holding a baby. Monica’s baby, presumably. More memories were returning to Monica now. She had been pregnant, she knew that. That was why Geoffrey had been driving so fast – he was getting her to the hospital. She had gone into labour almost two months early. She forced her mouth to open and croak out some words, asking about her baby, asking if it was all right. Asking how she could wake up and have a baby she didn’t know about. The nurse smiled. “It was an emergency caesarean. As soon as you arrived at the hospital. You were unconscious, but we managed to save your baby. We weren’t so sure about you, though – you’ve been unconscious for three months. Do you want to hold him?”

Monica smiled and nodded. She did want to hold him…wanted to hold the baby that she hadn’t known she had. The nurse checked the monitors and left, muttering something about giving them privacy. Monica looked up at her husband. “What’s his name?” she asked. That was better. Her voice was getting stronger now. “He doesn’t have one yet,” Geoffrey replied. “I couldn’t name him without you”.
Monica frowned. That wasn’t right. You shouldn’t leave a child for three months with no name. Everyone deserves a name. She looked closely into the baby’s eyes. They didn’t seem right, somehow. Nothing about him felt right. “Geoffrey, sweetie…could you fetch me a drink?” she asked, keeping her voice light. He nodded and left the room.

That was better. Now she was alone and she could have a proper look at this baby that felt so wrong. It was his eyes, definitely. What was it about them? They were brown, for one thing. Her eyes were blue, and so were Geoffrey’s. Surely their child shouldn’t have brown eyes? She felt the hysteria wash over her. This was not her child. She didn’t know how she could be so certain, but although she hadn’t even been conscious when he was born she knew it for sure. This was not her child. This was not her child. This was not…

But there was even more to it than that. He didn’t have a baby’s eyes. Monica remembered hearing once that babies learn to recognise their mother’s faces before anyone else’s, but he looked at her with too much recognition in his eyes. They were not the nearly blind eyes that babies should have; they were clear and sharp and focused. Focused on her. She held back the scream that threatened to burst out, forcing herself to breathe deeply. Then she picked up the child that was not hers, that didn’t seem like a child at all, and headed for the door.

The young man walked the path through the woods, jumping at every frog’s call or owl’s hoot. The air was dank and warm. It reeked of the swamp that came to the very edge of the narrow track. The only the intermittent glow of the full moon as it passed in and out of the clouds lit his way. The phosphorescent glow of decay shone without illuminating its surrounding. Occasionally the frogs and the owls would fall silent, and the boy would strain his ears to hear something in the deafening silence. With extreme care he placed each foot on the path, making no noise himself

John would have preferred a clearer night, but this was the first full moon after midsummer, called the Sturgeon Moon. It was the only chance for him to become a member of the Sturgeons. That group ruled the little community that surrounded John. It was this night’s ritual that would make John one of them.

Once a year, one person had the chance to visit the tree in the light of the Sturgeon’s moon. The Sturgeon’s tree was unique. It was ancient beyond imagination. Its tortured trunk was twisted and bent almost to the ground. Deep cracks in the wood reached in farther than the length of John’s arm. He had seen the tree during the brighter light of the day. It was scary enough then. Now, John’s knees were already shaking, and he had only made half the trek to the tree.

A frog jumped into the slime of the swamp, releasing stinking bubbles. John started and almost missed his footing. The bog had no bottom here that anyone had discovered. A fall could mean that he would join those who never returned from this quest. He took a brief moment to breathe deeply of the rank air before moving on.

As he penetrated deeper into the woods, the light became worse. While the sky had cleared the trees had thickened, hogging more of the light for themselves. Now vines hung like gargantuan spider webs, and moss dripped fetid liquid on his head. Just as the moon reached its zenith, John arrived at the clearing that was the setting for the Sturgeon Tree. It twisted and contorted in a wind that blew in some other universe. Branches scraped at the mucky soil, and roots lifted and quested like snakes. Cold phosphors gleamed from deep with the tree. It creaked and groaned with an animal agony.

Now was the true test. He untied a ribbon from his wrist. It looked black in the moonlight, but John knew that it was scarlet, with darker red from his own blood smeared upon it. This ribbon was his offering to the tree. He watched the writhing limbs until one errant branch came close to his feet. He darted in and looped the ribbon around the wood. It slashed at him and scraped his arm from elbow to wrist, but John scrambled back out of reach. The tree paused for a second, then leaned and grasped with its whole twisted length at the boy. He squeaked and rolled back out of reach, not caring what black water was darkening his clothes. He caught a vine and used it to pull himself to his feet.

He had been told to offer the ribbon, then leave, but John was mesmerized by the awful movement. Creaks and snaps sounded loud as thunder while the tree seemed to tear itself apart. Then it did tear, decaying light poured from its center as a hand thrust itself through the bark. Sap, black as blood in the moonlight dripped from fingers that grasped at the blooded ribbon. A face followed the hands and John looked at his own face, fanged and evil. He whimpered and the tree-John looked at him and smiled. John screamed and ran crashing, uncaring back along the path. Yet even in the tumult he could hear the sound of footsteps gaining on him.

The first time I died, I didn’t feel the cold – I didn’t even feel dead as I stumbled away from the twisted, screaming metal of the wreckage, glad to be, as I thought, alive. But today I died a second time, and now, as I sit huddled to myself on this iron bench in a deserted park in a doomed world, I feel every freezing, silken breath of the cold, as the wind blows through the body I no longer have.

The people that walk the streets of this city – the living people, I mean, the ones with warmth and breath and hearts beating down to a time when they’ll beat no more – have no idea they’re doomed, that all this will come crashing down soon, and I have no idea of how to tell them. How can the dead speak, after all? And why would the living care to hear? It’s not as if the knowledge would do them any good. Most of these people no longer believe in the things that are coming to destroy them, and the scattered handful that might have the slightest chance to stand against the coming storm seem to have the good sense to crawl down into the deepest of deep holes, and hide from the ill weather; at least, I’ve not been able to find any daring to put their heads above ground, and God knows – there’s an ironic phrase for you, He knows so very little these days – I’ve walked for hours now on the feet I don’t have, looking with eyes that exist only in my memory for anyone who can help me, or at least help the world.

Days ago this began, or weeks, or perhaps years – it’s hard for me to see time now as the living do, a thing of neatly-ordered logical units marching from past to future like soldiers on parade – with the accident. In this city, or another – place seems as fluid as time to me – I drove through unfamiliar streets, on my way to a job interview. Plunging heedless through a red light, I never saw the bus until the last second of my life, catching only a glimpse of the driver’s bulging, terrified eyes before the massive vehicle crushed me from this world and into the next.

My arrival in Heaven was a mistake, of course – but I walked through the gates just as the Morningstar, the Fallen One, launched an attack on his former home, and no one had time to send a lost and bewildered wretch like me down to where I belonged. Sulphur-breathing demons protected from the sweet, dreaming air of Paradise by hermetically-sealed suits and masks poured through the lanes and fields in their gibbering, screaming thousands. Choirs of angels, accustomed to dividing their time between lording it over merely human souls and gazing in fawning admiration at the brilliance of the Throne, were ill-suited to fight them, and were torn apart like so many shrieking rabbits. Then those who used to be human fell before them, as God the Father abandoned his children and fled. I ran back to the gates, thinking to slip out unnoticed in the confusion, but a clawed, gore-clotted hand whipped toward me in a single, blurring motion, tore my throat out, and cast me into the outer darkness.

I woke up in this nameless city. The army that conquered Heaven will be here soon, hungry for the flesh and souls of the living, and I’ve tried to warn people, tried to tell them of the whisperings of red doom I hear on the wind, the visions of coiling tentacles and scaled flanks streaming with blood that I see when reality wavers and slips aside for a moment – but they can’t see me when I run up to them, can’t feel it when I grab their shoulders, can’t hear me when I scream desperate warnings into their ears.

I’m dead, and utterly alone – but not for much longer.

Late one cloudless summer night, in a darkened room of a hospice an old woman lay upon her bed. Wires and tubes run from her body and out to the various machines that keep her alive. The steady beeping of the heart monitor and the soft hissing noises of the respirator are the only sounds at this late hour. On the wall a small digital clock says it is just past two in the morning, its pale green numbers brilliant in the darkness.

Outside her room in the similarly lightless hall, a man suffering from the late stages of senile dementia sits in his wheelchair repeating nonsense syllables to himself. His eyes remain focused on a small dent in the wall near the floor.

Out in the lobby the lone attendant is reading a used, paperback, fantasy novel. She is settled in for another long night. Nothing exciting happens during the graveyard shift except the rare nightmare and the occasional death in the night, and those are problems for the two orderlies out making their rounds. She just has to sit by the phone and make sure no one goes in or out that isn’t supposed to.

She never looks up from her book when the man dressed in the long dark jacket passes silently through the entrance and whispers past her desk like a ghost. The cameras mounted along the walls go black as he moves phantom-like down the deserted corridors of the sleeping institution. Up in the security room the guard fails to notice this since he has long ago fallen asleep. His dreams, which started pleasantly enough begin to take on a darker edge at the same time the dark man makes his entrance.

In his wheelchair the demented man stops babbling as the dark figure approaches from the opposite end of the hall. He stares up at the tall being in front of him. A thin stream of saliva runs from the corner of his mouth and his hands reach out. One of the dark figure`s gloved fingers reaches out and brushes the elderly man’s temple as he enters the room of the comatose woman. The old man reacts as if he has been shocked. He curls up into a fetal position and closes his eyes. Low whimpering sounds come from his throat.

Inside the room the dark man lays his jacket across the back of one of the naugahide visitors chairs. Underneath he is dressed in a pair of black jeans, worn at the knees, a long sleeved black shirt, and a pair of black leather gloves. His hair and eyes match his outfit perfectly. At his hips the grips of a pair of semi-automatic pistols can be seen in the dim streetlight coming through the gaps in the window’s half open Venetian blinds. Another pair of guns rest in the pits of his arms. His right hand drops to the butt of the gun at his right hip and draws the weapon silently from its well-worn holster. His thumb clicks off the safety as he moves to the side of the bed.

“May god have mercy.”

The words come from his lips in barely a whisper as he places the barrel against the old woman’s right temple. As his finger starts to apply pressure on the trigger the comatose woman opens her bloodshot eyes. For a second they are slitted and yellow like a cat`s. Then they change, becoming pale blue. They meet those of the dark man. A small smile crosses her weathered features and she speaks. The words come out in a dry croak but they are clear and calm.

“I know why you are here. But you don’t have to worry about this one. The evil within me will be cast out of this shell when I stand before my lord in his kingdom. When I pass from this world, I won’t be coming back. My time is soon.”

I gazed through the reddish haze in bewilderment as the sounds of life bustled around me like a rushing stream. Confused, I tried to rub the red out of my eyes, but to no avail.
I remember a woman…or was it a man, maybe a small child…trying to help me sit down.
I think the woman/man-child was trying to say something, but the only thing I could hear was the buzzing noise of the cold river rushing past them, drowning them out.
My name.
My name has eluded me for the moment, but I’m sure I’ll remember it soon. It’s not that important now. What is important is this gnawing thirst I have. My chest heaves, and my guts churn as I try to roll over, but the woman standing over me is yelling in my face.
She looks angry. I think she likes pudding.
Why doesn’t that make sense?
The man holding my legs is trying to say something to me, but a red haze that won’t go away surrounds him. I don’t like the haze, it makes me angry.
The woman curses something I don’t like and mutters in the man’s ear. Madness follows as I feel a prick in my arm from the woman’s hands. Her hands…long fingers and wavy knives that they are…her fingernails are painted red like hunger. The churning in my gut is being subdued but I haven’t eaten yet.

I want a taste of her.
Just a bite of the tender white meat that hangs over my eyes tempting me, is all that I want as I fall into unconsciousness.

Time surrounds my thoughts while a sharp wind blows through the window. I hear a voice in the distance asking someone, “How long has he been like this?”
“Almost a full day,” a second voice pitches in, “but he seems to be stabilizing now.”
“Good, this means it can be controlled then right?” says the first voice.
The second voice seems hesitant, “It means this one has taken to the meds, but it doesn’t lead me to conclude that this can be controlled yet, no.”
“Test a few others and get back to me with the full results within the next 36 hours, Dr Goldstein,” the first voice fades off in the distance behind a fog of air conditioning and other incoherent background noises.

*****
Dr Goldstein stood beside the ice machine on the second floor of the motel, smoking a partially crushed menthol, while gazing out over the crowd that had gathered below in the parking lot. He glanced towards the pile of shopping carts and bed frames that formed a barricade to the stairs below where the people stood patiently waiting for the residents of the Flamingo Resort to come down from their hiding place and join in their ranks.
“Not today, filth.” Dr Goldstein muttered as he flicked his smoldering ashes into the hair of a ragged man standing six feet below him.
A pair of tired brothers sat on the balcony opposite of him, with their hunting rifles resting on their laps, a six-pack of empty beer cans strewn about on the ground around them.
The crowd bustled no more or less today than they have in the last six days, which was unnerving to the Doctor.

The brothers saw the resort as a place to relax and wait for the National Guard to rescue them, but they soon realized that help was far from close, and they most certainly were not going to risk helping a handful of regular people, when a clean line of napalm would be more cost efficient and risk-free.
Now they counted their ammunition and took clean headshots to the occasional miscreant that managed to climb the barricades.

*****
I opened my eyes and saw a bad copy of a Monet over the foot of the bed.
“Hello,” said a voice I recognized from before, “Do you remember your name?”
“Margaret…” so damned thirsty….”It’s Margaret, and I’m not dead anymore.”