A Game with Death

White the train of smoke that followed him as he walked, even preceding by a step or two to mask the footfalls if there were any that his legs set down in trackless step through the wastes around the lone city.  Lone was its lot, for all the other cities had fallen or grown so old to die off as man did in his old age.  Only one needed to prowl the wastes there for there was not enough for him to do let alone two of his kind.  One by one as cities had fallen and the men hiding inside their ramparts departed to kneel before the white-shrouded masters those same masters had gone on their way, guiding men in flocks like sheep deep into the earth by way of easily sloping stairways.  Perhaps the echo that resounded up from below was a stream or a river. Still, many resigned themselves to the thought that the screams from below just distorted and climbed the tunnels until they formed one low wail.

One city stood midst the wastes, grey walls against a bright blue sky, cheery in the heat it rained down and harsh in the lack of rain it tossed out for almost as long as the figure patrolled the edge of sight from those within.  Each soul had seen a speck once or twice and some refused to remember it, infighting over its existence being a key talking point among the trapped men and women, each day finding their sanctuary more and more barred in like a jail.

Those who in a crazed fit never came back.  Those who left confirmed the smoke trail to be very real, and in some ways pleasant for his company.  Waiting would take longer than just one escapee's journey, so the habit he had gained in his absence from the depths he called home was to play a game with those who might linger in his care before being sent on down.  A game of chess at times, yes.  Men and masters were somewhat of a sentimental lot, remembering their fears and little jokes that had been made over the years.  Sometimes baseball, the master fashioning more than mere pawns out of the sand and gravel, but golems to play the pieces and set their art against the gifted pairs that were in thrall to the man, or woman as it might have been.  Basketball, soccer, checkers, poker.  Each had some preference yet the lone figure never seemed to mind or voice an opinion.  Each time he would smile, if that was a face that held his mouth and then begin his preparations, newly exposed white spears glinting in the sun in twice opposed rows like a shark on a good day.  There were no more sharks, just sand.  Then the game, whichever one it might be, and with whatever quirks and rules to fit the players as were needed.  It never took more than a day, and as the sun went down, the defeated would sit, looking up at the alien, almost marble features that still grinned down and find themself accepting their journey down, the newly opened spiral of glinting grey steel inviting to them in a dreadful way.

If the men on the walls watched and listened closely enough, they might have caught a small idea of the sights and sounds that went on out in the desert, yet none were that attentive, preferring to frown and mutter about the state of things inside.  Less water pumped up from the well every day.  Talk was of boring another down on the other side of town, but nobody was exactly sure how to go about starting, so the topic stayed as a black spot on the agendas of those who felt the need to say that they were "in charge" of all the rest of them.  In practice, nobody really bothered to listen to them anyway, so it was pointless in a very necessary way.

When eyes did drift out into the desert, it seemed that it was less to find something out there that was real and more to project silently the own inner turmoil that all the people there secretly shared, yet knew with a certainty that every other person knew what it was like, and so they didn't talk about it.  Time would pass, sunrise and sunset.  Some days a body would be found curled somewhere on the ground and covered with the only other thing besides humans that really lived there.  Flies being ever so happy to nest and land around the squalor that the heat and laziness wrought.  The bodies were dragged up the walls and pushed over, no fanfare about it or anything, no real ceremony.  Nobody thought much about how they disappeared come morning, no trace on the sand of dragging or walking or burrowing.  The last might have been true if there were anything left that burrowed out there.  Grown man and grown women each disappearing one after another until there was but one man left.

He sat on the throne in the hall at the center of the city and thought all day, sleeping in the same place and accruing many aches and pains for his trouble, stone seating being bad for the back and the hips the way it had been designed so many centuries ago.  No name was left him, and the title of king was very vague in his mind, and at some point he had the conscious thought that even the throne he had taken was pure vanity without subjects.  He hadn't taken to the quirk until the second to last man had left, so he wasn't sure how that would have felt either, being king over anyone.  It was around then that the white master came to call, knocking on the door and letting himself in unannounced, giving ever so little of a bow as to seem quaint to both the man and his visitor.  Neither really took it seriously, neither was surprised much at the other's presence there that could be found from their facial features, if they both could be said to have them.  It was a pure acceptance of the type that inevitability looks like on a book cover, books being a thing to last that long in the decay of the land, not in a pristine figure since it all had decayed a little but still there.  It wasn't as it had been for each other soul who passed the white master's way, a challenge and a game to play, even if riddles and the like had certainly been among the games that he had played in his long years.  The old man on the throne sat there and watched as somewhere from the smoke that trailed the white master a thin shiny hand fished out a blank white cube that was tossed him in a lazy arc.  A bow, answered after a moment from the stone throne and the trail of smoke circled around and left.

It was the first and last time the old man had seen the figure, a creature of legend some had said.  He had always accepted the existence of the white masters as a fact, expected to see one when he himself went away like all the others had gone.  Yet he was left with a present and a sense of curiosity that had not been felt in the city since before the rain had stopped.  Moving the cube around, watching its smooth, featureless faces shine a dull reflection in the setting sun that peeked through the open doorway, he chuckled to himself.  Happiness was not what he had expected in the last days, but somehow it seemed right to him.  There was a riddle to answer in the gift and like all the challengers that had faced the lone figure that stood around the city, he felt a smile creep upon his face in anticipation of the game he was about to play.

It was dark, but he let his fingers probe at the cube, run over its semi-smoothed corners, feel the cold surface that never warmed up in his hands.  He did not sleep.  When dawn came, he looked down at his hands and the cube was gone and his hands were white as marble, and dimly reflective just like the lone figure who had brought him the cube.  A white mask stared back at him in his smooth, reflective hands.  He could think of nothing to do but wander out to the wastes, and when he did, passing through the decayed wooden gates and stepping into the sand, a great grey glistening stairwell formed, grains of sand running down the smooth surface before him.  The cloud of white smoke followed him into the depths.

A letter to Laurie: First news in two years.

Dear Laurie,

I'm writing to tell you of the dreadfully interesting events that have befallen me and my group of misfit friends in the recent past.  Also, I have not written you lately and have grown ever so guilty after receiving letter after letter about the life in the country that I miss since coming to the city.  You remember the Burbanks fellow who came back with me that one summer and we went on the carriage ride to the mill with when you'd run out of flour at your house?  Well, it turns out that he had an uncle down in Tillsbury that had recently kicked the bucket as it were and left a single suitcase of his to my friend that the family eventually got around to writing him about.  Me having nothing to do at the time as I'd lost my job in the paper business the week before, (a dreadfully boring story that involved a certain lady and her cat, I would have wrote you about it, but I anticipate to be back in the workforce shortly, and was waiting for good news to send back with the bad) I hopped on the train with him and rode down to see his section of the country.  Much less of a cheery place than out old woods and fields, I can tell you that.  Everything has a foggy shady quality about it, somewhat like corner pond, but all the time instead of after hard rain when it gets mucky and steams up the place so that you lose your way and have to call out into the mists.  Still, it was charming in its own way.  Little carvings into the tree-trunks and mossed over signs pointing to landmarks like "withering crown fountains" were just wonderful to see, as well as the quiet beauty of the place itself.  Waking up in the morning and seeing the mists slowly ebb back from the house walls and then around sunset creep back in to the point that curtains were almost superfluous was just grand.  I am not sorry to be back in the sun however, and when we were back at the inn that the gang takes its free time he finally consented to open the package considering that it was a nice and sunny day out.  I must remark that through the trip he had been as quiet as the weather, and so it was hard to get anything out of him in guidance for a good tour of the place.  He'd refused to open it there on the grounds that he would sleep better if it were sealed until we had come back to the city.  The gang, including Billy Underfoot and Long-Rag Murry were all around and were as interested in the happenings as much as I had been, but they had steel work to deal with that week and couldn't join in the trip.  I wouldn't have even known about it I suspect, but the mail came when I was visiting him and he looked quite glum when he saw the address on the letter that I told him he should surely need traveling company to keep him from going comatose.  His uncle must have been in dire straights for him to have suspected the news so fast, perhaps also because he never seems to have mail from the relations much at all.  More to the point, the suitcase was beautiful black leather, worse the wear for a lifetime of travelling it seemed.  little scuffs and scratches and a big laceration that went down one side but didn't quite penetrate both layers.  His uncle worked with animals I'd heard so it seemed to be a product of his job.  When the brass key turned in the lock and the sun got own into the bag it was a sight to see, let me tell you.  In there was a bottle of old aged rum that seemed to have a peculiar maker's mark that in all honesty I couldn't match with any that I'd seen before.  It was like a stags head but with the detailing of a snake, fangs and scales and eyes, all wrapped in a laurel leaf and molded into the dark amber glass.  He didn't open that, just set it aside and told us that it wouldn't be wise to have a drink, I suppose because it was worth more than it would taste in our bellies.  He never did talk about it again.  The other thing inside was a silver inlaid knife, the type that you would use to cut up a deer or mountain lion after hunting one down and hanging it out in the smokehouse.  It was of fine craftsmanship the type that was just as practical as it was beautiful, and I know that your father would have sold the entire estate to get at something so fine, so I would take precautions to keep this part secret if you relate the details to him over dinner at some time.  Do be sure to give him my regards as I haven't seen him in years, having missed him as you know that summer I came back in the recent past.  The knife sat upon a letter and the whole of everything was packed in snugly with black fur, I wasn't sure of the specific animal, but it was from some sort of predator I'm sure.  I did not get a look at the letter, as he said it was private, but he did pull me aside later that night and tell me that he should be glad of company again as he needed to make a trip to the coast where his uncle had been found before being taken back to his home town.  I leave in the morning, but I am not sure when next I will be given a chance to post of anything of note that would amuse you as I hope this does.  Little else would interest you in city life as you have always said, it being a stuffy place that is a "drain on the heart and soul of the common man."

Best wishes,

your cousin, Clark Winsington.

Salvage Rights on the Down Low

Coarse sand, jumping as it slid down the smooth metal ramp.  The sun a hair's breadth from subsuming itself beneath the earth, eaten before being vomited up on the far side of the plains.  Heat traveled between it all, more real than the air you breathe and the ground you stand upon.  That's the picture of the ship as it was when I saw it.  The thing was half buried, and only half because of the desert wind scraping off a thin layer that had disguised it as a sand dune the night before.  

Lucky of me to have camped right next to it you might think, but the coordinates the locals gave me were good.  Most of the time they lead you right to the site.  Only when they have somethin' to hide does it get tricky.  Hard to hide a giant metal hulk like this one for too long though, and that might be what made the chief give us the directions right away instead of putzing around for a tribal meeting.  Might have been a monarchy for all I know, though.  

Was surprised the sand wasn't turned to glass where I stood there though, long shadow stickin' out beside me to parallel the beached whale of a thing where it lay.  If I'd just walked up and touched the hull my hand woulda been crisped, burnt down to the bone with the way that it reflected light off at just the right angle and soaked up the rest for its own personal use, black skin fueling the little whirring and clicking that went on down deep inside.  Couldn't hear it from there 'course, much too thick of a hull for that, but this wasn't my first salvage, that's for sure.  

Gettin' in was almost always the hard part.  Only time I got in clean with no fuss there were bandits in there 'fore me, seein' as how they didn't need no particular set of skills to blast open the doors and head for the larder.  Once you get in, you just gotta climb and crawl your way around to see how it looks, maybe poke a few things, and that takes time, not effort or cunning.  Gettin' a hole in this one without fillin' with sand, well, that was a mite bit tricky, since they only ever send me down with a hull knife and some sticky-gloves.  Can't give official reasons why a recon man needs more, really, 'least without the captain makin' it painfully obvious what he's been doin' down on junk planets like this.  Enough of a trail with the 'porter logs and don't need more recon things cleaning a trail for inspectors to get at.  

So I got to think of a way and get into the shell while maximizing the ability to keep the thing fresh as it came.  Some of them it don't matter if you let a bit more in, but this one was sure sealed up there.  Nothin' pokin' holes in it 'fore it landed, and the model that done clunked down there was sturdy 'nuff that no mere desert coulda more'n dented it.  Two options really to do for me then.  Either I gotta cut in through the side, cover it up real quick, and hope it holds when the thing gets scooped up again, or I try and tunnel down through the sand to get to the real door and manage to keep my hands un-seared as I pop the lock and get in.  Problem was that the sand was a bit too shifty and hot to really get around to diving in and huntin' around for a door, 'specially with no light to see by once I was under.  On the other hand, wasn't anything really strong out here that I'd seen.  Tent's the locals had made from some sorta leather only managed to bend around the sand, and they dug 'em out every morning from what I saw so they wouldn't break under the stress.  That an there wasn't any adhesive to attach it with anyway, gotta tie the stuff down and that was mighty leaky.  No bottoms on the tents, so those worked with it, just couldn't expect it to work as a real sorta doorway.  

That year had been a good year though, really great for us so I thought I might as well go for a risk.  Most ships have some sorta hull-breach sealant, leastways most good ships.  That gives it moderately alright odds that a beached one would too, 'specially a sealed one like this was.  Figured I'd cut myself in, try and get to a cabinet or somethin' and get back to seal 'er up before too much got in.  Don't like takin' chances though, so I wrote this one off my list 'fore I started so I wasn't too attached headin' in.  Anyway, I get some more substantial padding for the close up cutting, jam the knife in and get a little gap open real quick like.  Didn't even flatten myself with the new door as it fell,  some fellows don't remember that bit of caution.  I've ran into at least three door-squashed varmints in my day, all a while later than the date, and they just look a whole bit foolish is what it ends up as.  

Whole lot of black inside.  Even with the big black body should be pumpin' the place with juice it's all quiet as the grave it is and dark as the outside was, minus the reflections that is.  Floor's slanted down a ways so I put the sticky-gloves on for the climb in.  Creepiness don't get to ya after the first few, least not for me.  That's in a normal wreck though.  'F you climb in a normal onea these you just get a big can fulla dead guys.  This one had extra atmosphere.  Little trickle of sand comin' in the new door, wind doin' an eerie impression, and no lights at all.  My hair was at full attention tryin' ta look out for me as I crept around in there.  Took me a while to get to a storage area, found me the sealant but I wasn't sure I really wanted to seal myself in there by that point.  

The Button

"So what does this button do?"

"Nothing.  Don't touch it."

"But it does nothing so why not?"

"It does nothing that you'd like to see."

"That's what you said last time before I poked the alligator with a stick, and I thought that was interesting."

"This time I'm serious."

"Just letting you know that I actually like explosions and going really fast."

"It is neither of those things.  Don't touch it."

"But it's RED!  You have to push red buttons!"

"The bright color is supposed to deter you; a warning that bad things happen if you touch it."

"Why even have a button that only does bad things?"

"Because maybe it fixes things if they've already gone bad."

". . .Is boredom bad enough?"

"No."

". . .how about. . .superboredom?"

"No."

"Ultraboredom?"

"No form of boredom is ever bad enough."

"Borelexia?"

"What did I just say?"

"But it's a condition, not a type of boredom!"

"Stop making things up."

"Okay, then tell me what the button does."

"No."

"But there's nothing else to do here!"

"Then take a nap or something."

"I'm not tired."

"You've been up all last night, how are you not even a little tired?"

"I stole the last of your coffee at the last rest-stop."

"The coffee you said a hobo stole?"

"Yep."

"That's also why you had to go to the bathroom right after, huh?"

"Mmhmm."

"That's one mystery solved."

"So what's the button do?"

"Just wait for the coffee to wear off."

"But I'm bored!"

"So be bored."

"I'm gonna push the button."

"Do it and I take away your dessert for a week."

"Awww.  Please?"

"No.  Have you tried looking out the window?"

" 's just sand."

"And cactuses."

"Yeah, but those are lame too."

"Clouds?"

"Boring."

"Read a book."

"Don't have one."

"Look in the backpack."

". . .A complete history of the park bench?"

"Yes, it's educational."

"Bleh.  That's worse than boredom."

"Try it."

"No."

"What about the other book?"

"Other book?"

"In the other pocket."

"Oh!. . .It doesn't have a title."

"It's about trees."

"Sounds boring."

"Try it."

"No."

"Just sit there then."

"Are you suuuuuuure I can't push the button?"

"Yes."

". . ."

". . ."

"Fine, I'll read the book."

"Park benches?"

"No, trees."

". . ."

" 'For many long years there were Ents in the forest that roamed and kept the trees. . .' "

Garden of the Gods:Interlude 1

Where the sun came up there was no grass, just rock, bare and plain as rock can be.  The light that filtered down into the valley, or perhaps a more accurate term for the place would be basin, touched upon enough verdant life that a bit of missing grass and moss up at the top didn't trouble it at all in the grand scheme of things.  It did however trouble the robed figure that bent over, whisking at the ground with rich, tanned fingers, turning a duller shade of brown as they scratched.  Nothing but dirt and rock remained up at the top, though years and years ago there had been flora practically overflowing out of the basin, threatening to spill forth in leafy waves upon the outside world wherever it touched it.  Now a barren, brown rim separated one set of trees and plants from the other, the hot ground dissuading the climbing vines and the floating grass seeds from finding purchase on the steep rocky walls.

The cloaked figure sank down further, leaning to peer far below to the green canopy of trees that stretched out across the expanse of the basin, pushing up against the walls in some places even.  A glint of a river pulled the robed figure's eyes sideways following its path as it lazily wound towards the very center of the forest where a small stream of smoke rose, tickling the sky like a long thin feather.  It was too far away to resolve details, but the robed figure knew it must be from a campfire, set up early with the intent of cooking what supplies had been left in the campground.

Humans were hungry creatures, the figure had found in her life.  Give them food and they tended to behave a bit better.  Not to say that she or her kind were any different, really, it just so happened that food was less of an issue of nutrients and more of delicacy.  Perhaps she would get to try some exotic foods on her trip even.  Staying to watch and maybe poke around a bit in the upcoming fun would have delighted her, but it wasn't her place to interfere or spectate.

That was for them to keep as secrets or tell as enchanting tales afterwards, as she had done when she set up camp in the basin so long ago.  It wasn't until the sun crested the sky, lighting up all the bare, stone walls that the robed figure turned and walked off into the woods on the top of the cliff, humming to herself.  She would be back when the basin called to her, but for now there were things to do, some of which might even qualify as important.

Field of Iron Littered with Steel

One last cut of his shining blade and he let it fall to his side, dangling in the exhausted arm that had sliced through metal and bone more than a thousand times that day.  Earlier the blade had glinted a grey-white in the sun but now the length was hidden in a vivid, red film.  Bodies littered the field around him many fallen from his sword. Spaced randomly his fellow guardsmen stood as blood spattered pillars in the evening sun, casting shadows in long lines over severed limbs, slashed necks and perforated torsos, along with the battered arms and armor that belonged to once-living men.  They and their gear would mix with the bones and rusted steel that also littered the field, pounded deeper into the dust and ground with the clash of battle, every year more buried than the last.  The guardsmen left in unison, converging into a group as they walked the length of the plain, trudging towards the black stone walls of the castle they protected, the lord they served even after his death, and the secrets that lay beneath the surface in the dark catacombs not even those brave men dared trod.  In their wake the field came alive with skittering, small black bugs drawn to the scent of fresh gore that seeped into the iron-stained earth.  None of the guardsmen watched, too familiar to their eyes the sight of the ground seeming to rustle and move, then swallow the work of their strong arms like it had for decades before and would continue so for as long as their impossible oath stood unbroken.  The open portcullis lowered behind them as the last of their number passed through the gate, some splitting off to the kitchens and others seating themselves in the courtyard to clean their weapons off for the next day of killing.  A few made their way up to the ramparts on sharp-cut stairways to take up the night watch, though none ever came during the night.  Crossing the mile-wide plain that stretched out in all directions while the bloodsucking beetles claimed their meal dissuaded even the most gallant knight from trekking to the sealed gates without the sun's protection.  Still, vigilance was their strength, the force behind their blows and the breath that filled their chest.  Not one of the fifty-three guardsmen had fallen; the thirty that went out each day, drawn by lot, were still as fit as they had been sixty years past when they took this field of battle on the first rising of the sun.  The cup they passed each morning, filled with the courtyard well-water and blessed with their oath, each sip of its chill liquid filled the men with renewed vigor as it passed from hand to hand, lip to lip in the dawn's light.  The portcullis would raise and they would walk out, tall and strong to face any foe the marched or rode against them as they had thousands of times before.  Unbroken by faithful servants to a good king that once sat upon a charred-black throne: none looked upon the corpse entombed below, and none woke the dragons that kept it.

Fried Chicken

Smoke seethed out of the crack between his eyelids as he sat in the wreckage of what had once been a moderately sized barn.  He was listening to the sound the charcoal made as it settled, smelling the charred flesh and feathers of the dozens of dead chickens that had hours before been crisped into cinders in the night.  Every so often the skeletal beams that still stood would see one of their number weaken, slump, and then fall crashing into the black and grey muddle that sat in the middle of the farm.  Little fires, spitting out small crackling sparks in the mid-morning light mixed with the silence of the place.  He was naked besides the ashy coating that covered him and the dregs of what had once been his zippers and buttons that still glowed a dull orange from contact with his skin.  It was a tan color, the brown of paper just as it starts to burn, covered with wind-applied streaks and washes of white and grey that burned at the edges with a sharp orange glow that tightened in a ring to turn grey into white.  His hair was still there, shoulder length and a deep, dark black that also played host to the ash.  More smoke billowed out of his eyes and mouth as he looked around, sighing as the scene took its toll on him.  Even though the corpses had burned away almost entirely, the piles of ash that stood, each a point in a triangle, hemmed him in, still trapping him there.  He hadn't hated them, just disliked their style of fun, always putting him down as the days wore on.  Burnt to a crisp, and they didn't even deserve it, and he hadn't deserved to live.  Fleeing might have been an option, at one point, when he didn't really feel the weight of responsibility that his living gave his conscience.  Daniel would have to bury the ashes, or scatter them.  He would have to make up for it.  Exhausted as he was by the ordeal, he still remembered seeing the first spark flit out from between his lips, a firefly darting out into the darkness, preceding the inferno, the storm of flame and spark and smoke that followed it, also bursting out through his ears and eyes and nose.  Steams of intensity that warmed and didn't burn, that burst forth to consume but not consuming him.  Emptiness and smoke filled him now, the smoke leaking out to leave the emptiness alone inside him.  Inside where a part of him felt burned away, cleansed, charred, and oh so dry.  He needed a drink, but he still couldn't move himself to leave.  Shock was what it was, a part of him thought, shock for the death, for the little bit of him that felt relief at the fire, for the beauty of it all when it was a room filled with glowing flames, for the pure unreal quality of it all and the speed it had happened.  A car door, truck door, slammed shut off to his right, toward the road. Out of the hazy detachment he was feeling, Daniel registered a man walking over with a lit cigarette, black trench-coat shifting a bit in the wind as he came closer with a glum, stone-like demeanor.

"Don't s'pose you know what you did here, son?"

Blankly, Daniel stared at the man.  He was speaking with a tinge of sadness in his voice, a disappointment that emanated outward without really pointing at anything in particular.

"No, you wouldn't have, not with how clean you got off.  Prolly don't even know that was magic."

He stopped a good 30 feet away from Daniel, looking all around at the whole area, just taking it all in.

"Folks call it a Phoenix, though it's not anything like the mythos most people hear about.  Inspired by the real beast, yea, but even that critter isn't the flaming chicken that kids hear about today."  The man sniffed at the air, then nodded to himself in satisfaction at something he thought to himself.  "The main similarity is how all the magic inside gets burned up.  When the fire runs out of magic, it moves on out of the body, trying to find suitable things to latch on to.  If there was any magic residue on you it'll catch there, eatin' up skin and bone, stone and wood, water and air.  Then it spreads, fast.  Lucky if you get a full body burn out of this type of thing."  He took a drag on the cigarette as Daniel watched him, not really sure what was going on any more than when the barn had burned down.

"Gettin' out untouched, well, that means you didn't have anything on you for it to catch on, and you got lucky that it all went out and away.  Still, might flare up again and you mightn't be quite so lucky again.  Lightning don't strike twice an' all."  He fished around in the pocket of his coat, eventually pulling a small, leather-bound flask from inside.  Popping the lid off to smell it for a second, the man nodded again, thinking to himself before screwing the lid back on.  "Drink this," he said as he tossed it into Daniel's lap.

He Stared down at it, slowly moving his shaky arms toward the place where it sat in his lap, cool against his legs.  It was letting a little steam off from where it made contact, the leather shrinking in protest.  His fingers closing in around it brought out larger clouds of the stuff, accompanied with a slight burning smell.  It took him a while to unscrew the cap with his fingers, wobbling back and forth as the man stood silently, watching.  With a quick look up, he saw the man nod, slowly and shallowly at his silent question.  As the liquid his his throat, it steamed up, as if he were quenching the mouth and the throat like an iron nail tossed into a bucket of water, but reversed.  It formed into droplets, running down the walls of his trachea in freezing-hot veins.  It hurt, but only for the second where it was at the boundary of fire and water.  Each little coal-hideaway that still smoked inside him felt in its turn a swift demise.  The ashes he was sitting in seemed to ward up, slowly as the process went on, finally to the point where he stood up, uncomfortably, almost falling face first into the ashes in the process.  He staggered over toward the man, out of the ash pile, clutching the bottle and feeling his slowly cooling hands sinking into the leather, searing a print in.  When he reached the grass, he collapsed down, feeling stiff and sore, and finally registering the waves of heat that were still billowing out of the wreckage.  Everywhere inside of him was cooling with the liquid he swallowed, feeling harder and stronger, and down in the bottom of it all was a little puddle of water left.

"Now, Son, let's get ourselves some breakfast, there's a t-shirt and jeans in the back of the truck, and I have a feeling that I've got some stories to tell that you might wanna hear.  There's a Denny's down the road a ways toward town."

Superbia

By the time that Rick finally got up the nerve to walk down the alley and knock on his neighbor's backdoor, there was a distinct patch of flattened grass where he had been pacing for the past ten minutes.  The week before, Andrew Stone had told him he should come over and say something if he'd needed anything.  Rick had declined, politely.  It was good to have neighbors, but it seemed a bit or a paltry thing to ask.  Normally you wouldn't think twice about asking a neighbor to help you move your boat across the yard, what with the kids out of town for some concert or another without warning.  Normally you'd just peep over the fence, or like he was doing now, walk around to the back gate to knock on the back door.  Normally, you would have a thought that you might be interrupting a TV show, or an early dinner.  Rick just kept thinking back to a few weeks ago when he matched the picture of famed city-superhero Colonel Flash with the dirty spandex suit that was lying just inside the back door when he had glanced over.  They'd talked, after Rick had mustered the courage that time to go over and ring the bell to let Mr. Stone know that he may have accidentally left something in view of the alley.  Today, he would have just waited to move the boat, but the grass under it was getting a bit too brown from lack of watering, and he didn't want to seem unfriendly.  If he was interrupting some important crisis, or if Mr. Stone wasn't home, he would just head back and wait for the weekend to end and he kids to get back.  Walking up the sidewalk in the back of the yard, he couldn't help but wonder if there was, some sort of bat-cave structure under the house, just to the east of his own basement.  Superheros tended to have those sorts of things, he'd heard.  The yard itself looked normal.  Grill off to the side on the patio, green grass, lawn chairs, and even a nice sun-umbrella.  Mr. Stone sat out in the yard on nice days, and they had over the course of the year he had lived here had around five or six conversations about the weather and what a nice day it was before Rick had discovered his secret.  The door was a bit ajar when he got up to it, so he rang the bell and waited.  Footsteps, the door pulled open, and a man in a strange white lab coat with a lobster arm opened the door.  He had been in last week's newspaper.  The vise, or something, it had been.  Nasty fellow, always trying to take over the downtown area and turn it into a big fish tank filled with lobsters and sharks because of some deluded ecological ideal.  He was holding what looked like a ray gun in his human hand, and had a scowl that made Rick think that he might have wanted to start leaving sooner because now he was in trouble.  The ray gun was, non-coincidentally, pointed at him.

"Where is he, mammel?"

"You mean Mr. err, Colonel Flash?"

"Who else?  I don't go terrorizing the suburbs for kicks, now do I?  Who are you, anyway?"

"I'm just the neighbor, coming over to umm, see if, ummm. . ."

"Right, noncombatant, get in the house."

"Or you'll shoot me?"

"Or I'll punch you with my crab arm.  The gun is for the big guy."

"Sure I couldn't just come back some other. . ."

"No."

". . ."

Rick walked inside, was ushered into a very normal looking front room, and seated in a sofa.

"Don't move.  I forgot my ropes, but that would have been hard to manage on short notice without henchmen anyway.  We're working on an honorable system where you don't try anything and I don't resort to claw."

". . ."

". . ."

"Sooo, this place isn't very secret then?"

"Oh, no, it is, it was a damn hard place to find.  Had to stage five takeovers of city hall before I managed to slip the tracer into his suit."

"And then follow it back to this house?"

"Yes.  Almost wasn't sure it was the right one until I found the thing in the washing machine."

". . ."

". . ."

"Couldn't you have just not answered the door?"

"Well, I panicked a bit, besides, the back door doesn't have a peephole."

"Oh."

"Don't worry though, I'm just using you as a hostage until I fry him with this sun ray.  I'll let you go to call the police and other formalities afterwards."

"That's nice of you."

"Hostages don't tend to work unless people believe you'll let them go, it's a way of hedging my bets for other supers after this.  Not that it will help the revenge attempts."

". . ."

"I don't suppose you two were really close and you knew his special weaknesses or anything?"

"No, just neighbors.  I found out about it two weeks ago."

"After he got back from the last city hall thing?"

"Must have been, that was the friday, right?"

"Indeed, I was hoping to avoid too many deaths with the bomb, it being late afternoon.  He managed to disarm that one though, I was expecting him a little later that that, truth be told."

"He does have good timing, from what I've seen."

CLONK

"And a cast iron skillet, by the way."

Mr. Stone stood at the living room doorway, skillet in hand, lab coated adversary knocked out at his feet.

"Thanks for that, and good job avoiding eye contact.  Sorry to get you mixed up in this.  I really don't know how he found this place, I was fairly sure this alias was secure."

"Hidden tracker in the suit.  Said it before you came in.  I didn't hear the door?"

"I came in through the garage.  Set the groceries down when I heard the talking.  He forgot his rope, I see."

"Said it would be too much trouble."

"Yeah, has to get henchmen to do it for him, most of the time.  Would you like some coffee, I just got some new stuff in."

"Don't you need to tie him up or something?"

"Yeah, that first, but we do have some time.  For all of his gadgets, he has yet to start wearing a helmet.  Villain aesthetic I suppose."

"I'd love some coffee, then."

"Great, now where did I put that rope I had last time Clementine Von Gratin tried to capture me to power her hamster ball thingy. . ."

Mr. Stone wandered out into the hall, talking to himself.  Rick wondered if super-villains held grudges.

Ebony Charcoal and Ivory Ashes

The horizon looked like a piano to him as he stared out the window.  Large black tree trunks placed evenly on the ridge, separating the white snow into keys.  It was noon and overcast, a day where you wouldn't feel comfortable without a warm fuzzy barrier between your body and the cold, even from inside a house.  This was especially true for Kes as he sat in the living room, his fireplace a dark, black recess full of cold ashes and burnt memories.  Transformed into a new state of being, his father's will was scattered in there, gone.  Long gone, it seemed.  Last night he had watched it burn, watched the pages smoke and curl and blacken until they just fell apart, disintegrating into black and white clouds that fluttered up the chimney.  His eyes had finally rested when it was done, speeding him through time until he woke to stare out the window, catching a glance at the old grandfather clock that still kept ticking after all these years.

It had gotten a piece of machinery in it to wind it automatically, a cord snaking out the back unobtrusively to power it from the wall socket.  Standing next to the window like a metronome for the hillside, it swung back and forth to set the rhythm of a silent song hidden away from him.  Hidden from his fingers that once played song after song in this room on the old piano that was long gone now.  The will had said it all.  Not a cent had been left, not for him, not for his mother, and not even enough to pay for the burial, if they had needed to have one.  The one grace that had come on them from his father's boating voyages.  The boat had gone down too though, without insurance.  The old man's wooden coffin carried him down deeper than any hole he would have gotten on land.  It wasn't worth the piano that the old man had sold to help fund it, but it had stayed afloat a few years, enough for the debts to pile up.

A shiver brought Kes back to reality, back to the almost empty room.  Just the clock and the fireplace and the beat up recliner that he sat in.  This place had at least been his.  He had bought it off the old man before that final voyage, made sure that the memories he had here wouldn't get sold away for laughable delusions of grandeur.  Just the house though, he hadn't been fast enough to realize and save the piano.  It was empty and quite.  Last night had at least been filled with the crackle of the fireplace, a flashing heat that devoured the papers left to him.  He wouldn't have even gotten the boat, if it had survived.  It would have gone to some society that drank at a bar down by the pier, telling tall tales that had no possible anchor in reality.  The will was just a formality and a few quaint words to show how far he and his father had drifted apart since those days he had sat in his lap at the piano, hitting keys as his father played out song after song into the night.  Kes had burned all that up though, thrown it into the fire last night.  He had bought the memories back, and now he had burned them all away again, leaving the charred remnants to sit there in the house.

A slight shift in the weather brought snow to blur his view, gradually picking up until the window only showed a blank white window to nowhere, blending in with the white walls.  Recliner creaking as he rose, Kes set himself to starting up the fireplace once again, breaking him away from his thoughts for a few short moments.