“I remember it like it was yesterday.”

The voice was weak and reedy, as if it’s owner had had little use for it in recent years. Sally rolled her eyes and sighed. It was the same story, every day. She had long ago lost her empathy for her patients; after so many, she couldn’t help but grow jaded, her sympathy tainted, her manner brisk and efficient.

“Okay, Mr. Sullivan. It’s time for breakfast, and after that, how about we move you over to your rocker and look outside for a little while?” Sally knew she was talking for her own benefit, but it helped her work through her tasks. Mr. Sullivan was staring into oblivion, his eyes vacant, his jaw working occasionally as he tried to speak. Sally pulled the tray to his bed, and sat Mr. Sullivan up so he could eat.

“Well, now, what do we have here? Look, a nice bowl of oatmeal, and some orange juice. Are you ready?” She tucked a napkin under his chin and slowly began feeding him as she would an infant. “And, if I remember correctly, we’re having burrito pie for dinner tonight. That’s your favorite.”

Mr. Sullivan ate slowly, still staring off into the distance. The smell of the oatmeal clashed with the antiseptic smell of the room, and made Sally faintly nauseous. She finished feeding Mr. Sullivan and wiped his chin, then began the task of moving him to his chair.

“She was so beautiful. So beautiful, with the flowers in her hair. The wind was blowing, and she looked…” Mr. Sullivan paused here as Sally moved him to his chair. He settled into the rocker and continued, his voice emotionless, his features etched in stone. “…she looked like a goddess.”

Sally cleaned up the breakfast tray and took it down to the nurses’ station, and returned to Mr. Sullivan’s room a few minutes later with new sheets for his bed. He was still talking to himself, and Sally found she could say the words with him, she had heard it so often. “…and I knew right then that I wanted to marry her. I asked her then; I had no ring, no money, no way yet to provide for her, but she said yes.” He stopped for a minute, his breath rasping slowly. “She said yes. Can you imagine, her saying yes to a boy who was shipping out the next week for the war? But she did, and we got married that Friday. She was my wife, and we spent our honeymoon in a ratty motel near the base.” He paused and breathed again. “It was the best time of my life.”

Sally finished making the bed and set to the task of checking Mr. Sullivan’s blood pressure. The story was at an end. Mr. Sullivan stopped at the same place every day. He didn’t have much longer; his health was quickly declining, and every day his voice grew fainter and fainter as he retold his story. Sally helped him back into his bed.

“Okay, Mr. Sullivan, I’ll be back to check on you in a few minutes. Do you need anything?” She asked the question every day, even though he ignored her. When he didn’t answer, she turned to leave.

“I shipped out on Monday.” Sally whirled around, shocked by his voice. It was stronger, less reedy, and she walked back over to his bed. “I’m sorry, Mr. Sullivan?”

He continued, “I was gone for four years. She wrote to me every day, and I wrote back when I got a chance. She waited for me, worried for me, and kept me warm on the nights that I thought I would die. I stayed alive for her.”

Sally sat on the edge of his bed, intrigued by his sudden extension of his story. “I was wounded by enemy fire two weeks before my tour ended. I shipped home early. She was supposed to be there. She was supposed to meet me.” His face never hinted at his emotions as he continued. “She wasn’t there.”

Sally sat quietly, but Mr. Sullivan didn’t speak for a long time. Against her better judgment, and knowing he probably wouldn’t hear her, she asked, “What happened?”

Mr. Sullivan looked directly at Sally for the first time. “She died the day before I got home. She never saw the car coming, they told me. Excited about my return, they said.” He blinked slowly. “I lost everything I had fought for that day.”
Sally wiped a tear from her eye and squeezed his hand briefly. “Thank you for telling me, Mr. Sullivan. I’ll be back later to check on you. Why don’t you take a nap?”

He acknowledged her words for the first time. “A nap would be nice.” He closed his eyes, and immediately he began snoring lightly. Sally turned off the light and closed the door softly.

***

The wind was blowing, and he turned his face to greet it. He heard a laugh in the distance, and opened his eyes. There she was, her hair blowing in the wind, a flower tucked behind her ear. He laughed, for the first time in many years, and ran toward her as the sunlight grew brighter and brighter, and as he swept her in his arms the light blinded him. She kissed him and whispered, “I never stopped waiting for you.”

Every night starts out as though it were an ocean. I hang on to the daylight strangely, absently, not recognizing the trickling away in rivlets of time until I'm pressurized by the darkness and pleasantly bathing in the vastness of light's disguise. Where only an hour before life would drone on past me in a muddled vortex of sounds and images that trail off into a blurred oblivion, now it serenades me. The strain to locate the source from which a sound will come, the strength my eyes will use to differentiate a shadow from an empty space, these are exercises in divinity. I see more truth in the darkness than I have ever seen in the tainted cover of daylight. The night washes over us in safety and we stop pretending to behave the way we see ourselves in the mirror. The night has no reflection and it doesn't understand fear.

I swim in the darkness with brief visits ashore in convenience stores with flourescent lighting and stranded, uniformed counter clerks. They're doomed on dry land for an eight-hour shift full of antiseptic cleanser and microwavable burrito pies. Whatever apathy they convey in their voices as they say "thank you" or "have a good night" after counting out my change is overshadowed by the envy behind their eyes as they watch me turn away and dive back into the current of the night.

The current leads and pulls me in a way in which I have only the illusion of control. I can stop, of course, and pull myself up and onto an island of light but as surely as the air is drawn into my chest so am I drawn into the lure of the eventide. I become part of night's circulation; a single corpustle in the bloodstream of this massive organism. I give way, I crumble, my will seems lost as I become a small part of night's own consciouness.

The transition to morning is different from that to night. I feel every drop vanish as the sea in which I'm submerged evaporates into the sunrise. I'm left soaked in it and still filled with longing, like a fish drowning in the open air. The only rescue I ever find is the sound my blinds make as I shut them before I collapse into the world behind my closed eyes. The last comfort is knowing that the hours will dissolve away and again I'll be able to swim.

"Stop, thief!" Two guards chased the masked man down the dark corridor.

"Thanks for the gift, officers!" The unmistakable voice of Chase Jackson echoed back to the two men. Of course, it wasn't a gift; it had been stolen from Chase Estates a week back, and all clues led back to this abandoned building. He had come to return the favor.

Chase continued down the hallway, he heard guns loading behind him. At the last moment, he dove to the right. The bullet flew through the air; little clay shards from the vase he had been carrying clattered to the floor. Enraged, his eyes shot backwards to the two men, who quickly dropped their guns and began to back towards a large wooden door. As soon as Chase had gotten up and began towards them, the two men ran through the door and slammed it shut. Chase kicked the door in and entered, but within a half-second he had frozen where he was standing. The room, which appeared to be a library, appeared normal...of course, barring the gigantic gun turret aimed at Chase's head.

"Mr. Jackson, we meet again!" A shrill voice, unmistakably tainted with evil, came from the turret's operator. The woman sitting in the seat was dressed in culinary wear, colored brown and complete with hat.

"The Bronze Chef! I should have known!"

"You should have, but it's a bit too late for that, eh?" She fired a shot from the gun, hitting Chase in the arm. Blood began to trickle down his arm.

"What do you want from me Chef? I have nothing for you."

"Ah, but that's where you're wrong. Guards! Take Mr. Jackson to the...kitchen." Two heavily armed men came from the sidelines, and escorted Chase out. The Bronze Chef followed after.

---

"Here we are, Mr. Jackson." The Chef walked to the front of the party, and opened a large metal door. Inside, an enormous hangar held what seemed to be a giant burrito pie, easily reaching a hundred feet across and dozens of feet deep. Staircases and walkways made it possible to walk over the uncooked, soupy concoction. Countless scientists stood in the room, taking temperatures and adding various ingredients. The Bronze Chef took Chase and the guards up a staircase, over the giant entree.

"Now, Mr. Jackson, it's time for you to decide whether to help me or not. Either you tell me where to find the rest of your agents, or you become the newest addition to my creation here. What will it be?"

Chase waited, looking desperately for a way out of this predicament. Sure enough, a man in a lab coat came by with a bottle of antiseptic liquid, probably to clean a spill. With lightning speed, Chase grabbed the bottle and clubbed one of the guards with it. Chase, who was easily stronger than the lone man left, easily dispatched him.

"I see that you've chosen the latter," said the Chef. "Prepare to die, Chase!" He pulled from his chef's garb a large steak knife, and began to close in on Chase. Up against the railing, Chase had no choice but to wait for her to make a move. The Chef lunged at Chase's throat, going for the kill, but Chase knew better. Ducking to the side at the last second, his opponent lost her balance and flew over the railing. Dangling from the balcony by her hand, he gave her a kick and knocked her back into cheesy oblivion.

Chase looked over the balcony into the now still ocean below. "If you play with Chase, you're going to get cooked."

There was a tense electricity in the air as he worked, hunched over a table full of boiling liquids.

It was almost complete.

“Now where is my vial…”

Mumbling words to no one except the caged rat sitting on the table next to him, he fumbled with the cork in the test tube, almost spilling the liquid contained inside. He let out a sharp gasp as few drops escaped onto the tabletop. “Mustn’t spill… too dangerous…” he whispered, as he frantically scrubbed the area with antiseptic. The vial’s contents were then emptied into the glass bowl, fizzling as it was accepted into the concoction.

“You will see… they will all see… I’m no fool!” he suddenly burst out, his eyes wildly darting between his gooey mixture and a piece of paper on the table. It was full of handwritten notes, diagrams, and multiple stains of unknown origin. He snatched it into the light of the window to get a clearer view.

“That’s the last time they’ll taint my formula. Those traitors!” The lab rat shrunk into the shadows of its cage as he slammed his fist on the table, still clenching the tattered paper.

After pausing a moment to scribble some notes, he continued working.

There was nothing that could break his concentration. He had been up for three days and nights, engrossed, always hunched over his bench. Having no friends or family, there was no one to interrupt his work. It was better that way.

Although he was angered by them, his mind continued to wander back to his colleagues’ jeers. “Fade into obscurity… Pah! They are the ones that will know oblivion! Not I!” His blood boiling once again, he began to work even faster, almost dropping a second vial. The rat watched as he frantically grabbed this and that, adding heaps of some things and minute amounts of others. With every ingredient, his expression became more and more deranged.

Suddenly, he stopped.

He staggered back from the table. “It is complete!” he exclaimed, wild-eyed in excitement. The rat crept out of the shadows, its red eyes gleaming.

He grinned, and his yellow teeth saw light for the first time in days. “They all laughed at me. They said it couldn’t be done… but I have proven them wrong!”

Overcome in excitement, he fell to his knees, tears streaming from his sleep-deprived face. The paper floated to the ground in front of the only window, disturbed by his swift motion. It landed in a puddle of water, but he didn’t notice. It didn’t matter anymore.

The scribbles and stains were more prominent in the bright light, and the only legible text on the disheveled paper was the title. Scrawled crookedly across the top, it read:

Recipe for Burrito Pie.

Detective Search Jackson eats his Burrito Pie as his mind started to get flooded with strange conspiracies about the strange case that he saw that morning.

The room was filled with blood . A crazy antiseptic paranoid kind of person would die if he saw it. The crazy obvious looked for hours into this oblivion of madness and raised his madness level at every point as he realized that his drawing of the ritual was getting complete!

Search stopped for a second as he realized that he spilled burrito all over his shirt. He cleaned it and stopped a few seconds … time enough to realize that some maniac walked in streets with a giant red coat. It would be an average coat …. If it wouldn’t be making red trail as he walked.

RED TRAIL!!!! His mind got a little confused with a “wtf? Too easy!” feeling … but isn’t always that you need to be a Sherlock. Now he needed a reason to arrest him …. “I think of that as I make justice”

He runned stealthless to the guy’s direction and jumped on his neck! They fight for some time …. and the police stopped both. With his hands on the air, Search tried to get a confession ….. but it was a completely waste. He even started to think that her blood smelled like paint.

He got home that night and seated in the couch. He phoned his cousin in a search for the truth.

-Hey …. About that case … have you thinked of something?
-A little …. And you?
-No .. I found the guy on the street… but I didn’t find relation to the crime…. I mean … he was there … all red …. Filled with anger and lust…… and I couldn’t make it.
-Well … sorry to hear that … not my problem that you not get the “Jackson gene” …
-F**** you Chase … that guy smelled like a constructor painter …
-WAIT! Is that the reason! The only piece of the puzzle left!
-Hm ?
-This guy …. He was tainted to do it! Don’t you remember that the girl was an artist? He smelled the poison in his body and saw blood’s color in his arms …. He felt like he founded love… his twin soul …
-What?
-Search … you are a useless piece of sh**! The last word is TAINT ! He was tainted to make it because of the paintings ….
-Yeah …. I sux on this … maybe I must look for another job ….
-Well … I heard that google needs some help, Search …

That night he feelt like every secondary character in a blookbuster movie.... and smiled peacefully :)