Arrival - Chapter 1, Part 1

The Follower Ignores the Signs - 31"x40" Inkjet Print

Little Cory stared down at the hard plastic dinosaurs beneath him. They looked back without emotion. The collection had become extensive and the characters were very well-rounded for a five-year-old’s stage plays. The tyrannosaurus had just learned to cross the blanket ravine in search of food. The stegosaurus recently defeated a pack of raptors which were squatting in his under-bed lair. Even the pterodactyls had finally learned to fly with the help of some yarn. But something had happened and Cory wasn’t sure what.

As far as he could tell, nothing had changed about the toys. Their strange painted eyes were as dead as usual, but he could still imagine them looking up in terror at his looming shadow. Their collective number had reached two-dozen individual figures and they were all present and accounted for. Cory let no one touch the figures; his friends were too careless with his subjects and his parents never asked to see them. Cory never realized the change in his interaction with the dinosaurs. At first he played – T-Rex would hunt down triceratops and their landscape was rather bleak, but it evolved and he no longer played. Instead he watched. The lives of these toys became intuitive and if anyone cared to notice they would have been impressed with the intricate relationships between the figures, a level not naturally possessed by a five year old. His watching became passive and the story evolved.

What had happened? Cory wondered. His shadow moved over the figures as he looked at each piece.

The change was not something you could see, not something Cory could see. He was simply bored with them. He was done. Their drama had played out and it was time to end.

Their demise crept over him, even if he couldn’t understand why he could feel that a drastic change was necessary. He stood and padded around the room idly looking, but for what he did not know. His sock-clad feet carried him out into the hall. The living room. The front door. The garden.

On hands and knees Cory searched through the dirt. His tiny fingers pushed aside grass and bugs and woodchips before he found what had compelled him so.

He considered the stone and its smooth surface. He needed both hands to wrench it from the earth’s grasp and cradled it like a bowling ball as he carried it back inside.

In his room, Cory rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet, suddenly less sure this was the right choice. 

Could he undo this if he went forward? The consequences of his actions weren’t easily grasped under normal circumstances; five-year-olds might be able to understand that turning a screw would make it go down, but the exact ramifications were a little too abstract and the brain-function wasn’t yet there.

But it didn’t matter, he hefted the stone like a shot-put and hurled it down on the unsuspecting plastic dinos beneath.

The phone rang.

“Hi darling. Lunch time aleady?”

Cory’s mother didn’t hear the crash from his room.

“Yeah, okay baby. Which news? …Okay! Okay! Stop yel-“

The broadcaster’s terrifi ed voice came in over their surround sound.

“-has simply remained stationary as National Guard and Coast Guard continue to arrive at Liberty Island and shuttle tourists off via ferry.”

“John, what is that?” Cory forgot his toys and peered into the living room. His mother stared transfixed into the TV, phone loosely held near her head. She was in her Time to Clean clothes that Cory associated with his being forced to do chores.

“John?”

The broadcaster continued: “For those of you just joining, this is Harris Fields for NBC New York 4 coming to you live from our broadcast helicopter, hovering in New York Harbor. National Security forces and press have surrounded Liberty Island as we watch and wait. A …  what I can only describe as a “figure” has appeared at the base of the statue – witnesses saying it has been present since early this morning…”

“John!” Cory’s mother was losing color, already pale skin turning to stretched sheets of milk, “Don’t scare me like that… I don’t know - you could be right there in it.”

Cory felt disquieted by his mother’s voice, so he returned to his room. The plastic corpses were cast across the floor like a frog’s insides after a journey through lawnmower blades. The pieces – to a less familiar eye – would be unidentifiable bits of green, yellow and brown. Cory surveyed the destruction and was satisfied. The stone dented the floorboards but it was a necessary sacrifice. Time to start over.   

Muffled words would drift through his door, “… you… No!... of there…”

The broadcaster talked back: “we’re being told… the area… -tional Guard…”

Maybe Cory would ask dad for new toys when he got home.

Chapter 1 – Arrival

Dusk had shown its orange face to the Upper Bay, the Statue of Liberty’s long shadow draped across the island like a rook dominating its corner in Chess.

The Guard brought in spots and started flipping them on one by one. It helped that Lady Liberty already demanded a small corona on any given New York evening; there would be no darkness there tonight. The press had been fully cleared off the island, but they kept up pressure with boats and choppers. The last civilian ferry made it across the water two hours before.

The statue has a live-streaming camera on her crown. It faces down her front like a tall guy trying to sneak a peek at some cleavage. Thousands of New Yorkers and even more Americans at large had their computers, phones and tablets displaying the same screen as they watched a thirty foot monster lay waste to dozens of men and women on Liberty Island. The camera was hundreds of feet in the air, but the images it displayed were crystal clear, outlined by countless lights beneath. The collective silence across the harbor – in apartments, penthouses, ghettoes and subways – was one of complete dread, peppered with rage. The husbands and wives of those soldiers, the mothers and fathers who sat down at their desktops and gaped at the flying bullets and exploding bodies were paralyzed by the massacre in the harbor.

They had all heard the words: “…claims this island of Manhattan, it is no longer the territory of Man.” But no one understood why or how or where this monster came from. The few who could rip their eyes from the screen would call relatives and text friends from places near and far. Boyfriends in LA and children in Houston, most of them didn’t respond because they had crises of their own.

Henry Pierce watched his two desktop monitors – the one on the left showing the LIVE Torch Cam from Liberty Island and the one on the right his basic cable news in the City of Angels – with growing pleasure.

The pier in Santa Monica had a similar being standing near the shore, still draped in daylight and setting the boardwalk on fire. The banner across the bottom of the screen told him that the islands in Lake Erie were under siege, parts of London, Tokyo and Dubai were meeting similar fates. Small bits of the world were being taken from humans and it looked like our reaction time had been a bit slow.

Click. CNN. The President says he’s mobilizing troops to New York and LA. That’s a shame. Pierce read on with dismay: “… our nation has come under attack from an unknown foe and will be met with the force and strength of Amer-…” Boring. A video clip on the same article showed past footage of remote controlled drones commencing air strikes and speculated on their presence amongst civilians.

“So, I bet the police won’t be looking for you much longer; they’ve got their hands full.” Pierce let the monitors go on amusing themselves and turned back to his guest.

The girl – tied to a wooden chair, bolted to the ground – looked on with her own brand of confusion and disappointment. Pierce had been letting her watch the news stories unfold as the legend of her kidnapping grew: Hannah Walker, daughter of multi-millionaire industrialist Bernard Walker vanished from her high school Wednesday afternoon. With signs of foul-play littered around her abandoned Civic, police investigators and hired detectives have begun a city-wide manhunt for the sixteen-year old heiress. The effect of twenty-four-hour news coverage was the saturation of small details and their subsequent exaggeration and transformation into myth. Hannah got to sit back and absorb the grey-haired newscasters tell her how the police found her diary detailing her depression and thoughts of suicide (planted), how her friends thought she had an older boyfriend (lies) and how she may have been experimenting with designer drugs (… maybe that was true).

Each story made her seem more desperate, more likely a runaway even with evidence to the contrary. More and more people were convinced she was some snobby rich girl who just wanted to piss off daddy, slowly media covered died off and she got only a few mentions a day. It took only three weeks for her to go from precious victim of deranged kidnapper to filthy slut who deserved it. 

But then this happened. The appearance and attacks from these interlopers demanded immediate and full media attention. National coverage of Hannah Walker would vanish over-night and local fascination would fade soon after. Of course it was disappointing to Pierce who hadn’t fully convinced Hannah that she was forgotten, but it certainly had an amusement level all on its own. Pierce lived near the 405 between LA and Santa Monica, he could probably get in his car and be at the scene of the devastation within ten minutes, but Hannah had to be fed soon and watching from a distance was okay.

“Thoughts?” He removed the cotton gag he kept fed in her mouth.

She tried to spit on him, but Pierce kept her fairly dehydrated and all she managed was a light misting.

“Now, now, be nice.”

“I hope they come here and kill you.”

The embers still glowed in this one. Pierce was technically known as a serial kidnapper, but since his victims came from such diverse backgrounds there was little or no speculation that they were connected. Girls he took usually broke down quickly, they saw their family and friends turn on them and just wanted it all to end, which Pierce was more than happy to do, but Ms. Walker here looked like she still had hope. “What do you see in this?”

He offered her a squirt of water from his Camelbak water bottle.

“They’re coming for you. All the rest of it is just for show. These monsters were sent by God.” Oh, come on. Only in the last few days did she decide that God would save her. There was no God, at least not in Pierce’s basement.

“But will they save you? Or will they be too late?”

“Doesn’t matter. You get your eternal punishment whether I live or die.” The monitors dimmed because of Pierce’s inactivity. “I will watch you burn from the right hand of Christ.” It was weird because this girl didn’t seem the God-fearing type. She did drugs, messed around with boys and was overall the prime example of a contemporary teenager – an archetype which thoroughly bored Pierce. That was the whole point of this exercise after all, wasn’t it? To show how fragile such an easy life is to shatter and how pointless it all becomes.

Upstairs, Pierce’s house phone rang.

“Excuse me.” He stuffed the gag back in her mouth and hustled to beat the four ring time limit.

“Hello?” Who was calling him at a time like this? Sure there was a world-shattering event happening, but really…

“This is an emergency broadcast recorded message. Citizens in your area are being asked to evacuate to your nearest shelter. Your nearest shelter is… the Los Angeles Convention Cent-“ Pierce hung up the phone.

“Waaaay too busy for that, sorry telephone robot.”

*******

Texts from Manhattan, New York:

Hey, can you see the island from your roof?

-Ya, I found my telescope. where are you?

OMW, I shouldn’t have to tell you, but traffic is fucking fucked

-You think the Cash Cab is running?

Lol yeah someone is getting trivia’d right now, question for our contestant?

-Uh, ya, ‘what the fuck, bro? get out of my cab’

LOL.

-‘RED LIGHT CHALLENGE!!! Name all the places you’ve shit yourself in the last two hours!’

Oh, Ben Bailey. How I loved thee.

-Holy shit, stuff – STUFF – is happening. I’m calling you.

 Texts and Voicemail from Kelley’s Island, Lake Erie; Cleveland:

Hey Mom, you didn’t answer your phone so I hope you read ths or get my voicemail. W/e. Some other residents and me have driven into the east quarry and are just hiding out. The rest of teh island is burning and most of the police are here wi-

(continued)  -th us, they look just as scared. Someone brought a bottle of wine and is now completely drunk. Im scared. I just wnted to see what you knew from the outside and tell you I love you. I know we’ve been a little fucked up and being apar-

(continued) –t didn’t help, but I still love you. Call me.

(Later) “Krista, Krista! Call me back immediately. I don’t know when your text was from, I can’t…I can’t figure it out. The news said the Coast Guard was moving to the island, but they spend all their time on New York and Los Angeles and those stupid, stupid places. Baby, oh c’mon call me back. Please. I love you.

Texts from Ota, Japan:

(Translated from Japanese) Send me that picture again, I accidentally deleted it.

-the one of the titan?

Titan, whatever, yeah. I want to show it to my brother.

-(Picture, from the vantage point of a high window showing a three-story tall figure wading through burning cars and debris on a well-lit street. Covered in flowing fabric and metal plates, the giant is splattered with dark stains) Here ya go.

It still blows my mind, you’ve gotten out, right?

-Ya, we’re clear. We got to the train before they stopped running.

What time is this photo from?

-14, a few hours ago. Why?

Just trying to imagine what the hospital looks like.

Texts from Houston, Texas:

Are you at the airport yet?

-No, they won’t let us pass Tiki Island. We’re stuck on the causeway

Okay, try and find a way around. Get back to me within the hour.

(later) – We left the van, took one camera and made it past the barriers on foot. Keep an eye on your computer for our footage.

It’s about time, I almost sent out another team.

-Have confidence, Tom. We’ve got this.

********

KHOU’s monitor bank was sprawled out in front of Tom like a sci-fi monster with fourteen glowing faces. Each screen showed various footage and camera angles of the anchors as they discussed – obviously – the impending doom of mankind, or whatever. Tom tapped his pen rapidly on the one blank screen to his left, a black and glossy depths that should contain award-winning images of destruction, death and heroism on the part of a reporter and his cameraman. Rafe Dillinger and his chubby cameraman Terry have had all fucking day to get across a single bridge and onto Galveston Island where one of the interlopers has made camp, so to speak.

The last text from Rafe was at 7:33, forty minutes earlier and Tom – not normally the sentimental type – was starting to worry about them. He didn’t expect those two idiots to do anything particularly courageous, but they’d surprised him in the past. The entire broadcast evening – interrupting all regular programs and commercials and everything was coverage of this debacle. The Houston HQ for KHOU was a decent distance from the island and – even after requests to evacuate – the bare bones for operating the station remained: two anchorpeople, one meteorologist, two cameramen and Tom – single handedly filling the roles of three technicians. Hard work is in the dictionary as a picture of these six people with a footnote mentioning Rafe and Terry. Of course, KHOU – the Houston CBS affiliate – was telling viewers to evacuate and where their shelters were, but they all decided together that they were safe enough and they were responsible for manning the station in a time of crisis.

The grey-haired former jock on screen at present was babbling about the extent of the damage thus far, according to a National Guard Intelligence source, and pontificating idly about the origin point of the –what he calls – “invaders.”

It’s probably a good word for it, but Tom felt it was a bit terrifying (not that these circumstances aren’t terrifying).

“- claims that these invaders are visitors from another plan-“

Wow. Aliens. Tom wanted to just shut the whole thing down. The anchorman (broadcast name “James Wulff”) was pulling from his imagination and his imagination alone about these creatures being aliens. The station had no speculative influx so far, their only information came from their military source and he was confidential.

The abyssal depths of the screen filled with an orange glow. “-we ready? C’mon I don’t want-“

“Jimmy, JIMMY!” Tom blared into his microphone – patched directly into “James Wulff’s” ear bud, “we’ve got incoming footage, get ready.”

“Ladies and gentlemen I’m being told that our field correspondent - Rafe Dillinger – is filming live from Galveston Island. Rafe are you there?”

Tom hit one of a million buttons and the broadcast image flipped to Rafe standing in front of a dark body of water with a rolling wave of flame on the landmass across.

“Yes, James, we have bypassed military blockades and managed to travel on foot across the darkened roads of Galveston Island. We’re here near Jones Park and behind me is the Scholes International Airport as it burns. The interloper has arrived here on Galveston Island and claimed it as its own, from what we’ve seen the military presence here on the island is extremely heavy and –“

Automatic weapon fire popped in the audio of the footage. Rafe and cameraman dropped to their hands and knees, yelling expletives which Tom will try to snag with a bleep. The viewers would see the camera eat dirt and grass and hold for a moment before rising back up, zooming in on the rising cinders in the distance.

“Rafe? Rafe are you there?”

“We’re here, gunfire has erupted behind us. We need to get closer. We’ll keep you updated.” And the screen went dark.

“Powerful, frightening imagery. We’ll return in a moment, please stand-by for a list of emergency shelters and facilities in the Houston area.” Wulff held a somber face as the cameraman counted down from two. One. He gave the O.K. signal. “What the fuck, Tom? I swear it feels like my fucking ear is bleeding!”

Short Story 11 Parts 1, 2 and 3

The Worker Gives up on his Dreams [in progress]

This is all probably a dream, but if I never wake up it won’t matter. In fact it would be better that way.

God was saying to me, “You’ve seen the movie Bruce Almighty, right?” Which I thought was a stupid question. He’s God, he should know a fact so simple. I said something to this effect. “Yes, of course you have. Well, I wanted to try something similar.” God looked like Nathaniel Lees, the Samoan guy who played Captain Mifune in the Matrix movies: light brown skin, greying, but once black hair and playful eyes that told me he was amused no matter what his expression said.

“I’ve considered this for years, what would happen, and even being omniscient it becomes hard to tell. Interacting with another divine being so similar to myself is without precedent and thus the enigma we are at.” He stood amongst the infinite crossroad of some desolate nowhere, I don’t know how we got there, but I supposed we had to exist somewhere to have this conversation. “What do you say? Play God for a while?” What was I talking about? We didn’t have to exist anywhere, here was a being claiming to be God - I could feel that he was God – and I was trying to come to logical conclusions. It was pointless.

“Go for it, I’ve got some ideas.” Which was true. I’d considered this before, what I would do if I was God. It seemed like a cushy gig: all-knowing, all-powerful and capable of manipulating time and space. I could dig it.

I can only say now that God made a terrible choice by selecting me for this particular position.

Aman was seeing red, his wife was being such a stubborn bitch and she tried again to kick him out of the house. But not tonight. The garage was a living inspiration, swallowing him with ideas of how to get inside and show that back-stabbing whore how he felt. Her car – her car bought with his money – looked like a crouching dragon waiting on the concrete floor staring at him with its glossy red and yellow eyes, threatening to open its mouth and devour him in metal and engine parts. Aman’s truck was outside, lurking around the corner so she wouldn’t know he was fucking around in the garage.

He didn’t turn the light on, letting the moonlight bounce off all the metal to show him what tools he had. The surface of the blades and wedges were like diamonds and he wanted to grab them all and just throw them through windows, but the house didn’t need to suffer just because his wife did.

Screwdrivers. No.

Hammers. No. 

Drills, wrenches, shovels and saws. No.

And then he saw it, resting on its head and hiding in the corner, a wooden handle worn and flawed with time and use. The dull silver head flirted with the ground and tried to hide amongst its embrace, but Aman saw it. He saw the axe. It still fit perfectly in his hands as it had for fifteen years; a tool – no, a weapon – that could show him love like he loved it. Its head wanted to pull away, its weight reluctant to leave the garage floor, but he would show it that they belonged together. The axe and Aman.

Out of the garage. To the side door. He took the handle off the door with the flat side of the axe and kicked it open. Two screams. Aman’s daughter was home, she didn’t need to be here for this, but he was too far along. He was too far gone. He hefted the axe above his head and found his wife gripping the counter top with bone-white hands and struggling to find her feet. Her eyes were locked on him, she forgot her legs and how to run.  He swung downward with a strength he had long forgotten, a vigor of his youth. It felt so good to see the metal bite into her shoulder, then again into her neck; her back; her legs.

His daughter came at him and shoved him to the door, pushing and fighting to try and save her mother. She almost got the axe, his fury was unchecked and what would happen if his daughter got the axe didn’t matter, but he wanted it. He was in love with the metal and wood. Gripping it in a stranglehold, he fell backwards out into the garage. His daughter got the phone, 9-1-1 probably.

Fucking whore! Just like her mother.

Aman got to his feet again, the axe now his best friend, lifting him and lifting his spirits, ready to follow him in to battle. To die with him. The axe came down on his daughter, but she was smarter than her mother. She raised an arm to deflect it, but it split her hand in two. Blood flecked Aman’s face and the white and green linoleum; it looked like the freckled skin of a giant Irishmen. Her screams matched the wail of her mom’s, another trait shared between them. Aman hated it, the link between them was too strong; she had nothing of him. That was why it was easy to bring the axe down again.

He tried, but someone else was there, someone had heard the commotion. The pool of red around his wife was eight feet across and growing, she garbled some plea and flailed like a caught bass on the line. Aman was in a choke-hold, the axe clattered to the ground to be photographed later.

“Do you feel anything?” God was like a curious child in that moment. We stood across a black hole, staring into the darkness but still seeing each other and the billions of stars that surrounded our bodies. I could feel the dark matter of the universe between my fingers and the pulse of life itself on the edge of my hairs, like each follicle was responsible for a galaxy of lives. I told him I felt nothing, lying. “Really?” He seemed legitimately perplexed, which is what I wanted. It was all a test to see if the one true God could read my thoughts and see my future.

We stood on the surface of a star, a white dwarf somewhere in the depths of space. I knew – somehow – that this star was farther out than humans on Earth could see. Men in the twenty-first century estimated the universe to be sixteen billion light-years wide and we were farther. In the infinite depths of space I tested the gifts God gave me.

As homage: Light. We stood on the surface of a planet revolving around the star and the light grew brighter, the surface became tepid and comfortable.

Life. The ground swelled and up came water. A geyser like Old Faithful erupted and my feet; in its flows I could see the smallest bacteria, the single-celled organisms that thrived and crawled over the scalding hot water.

Darkness. The entire thing plunged. The black hole appeared in the distance and consumed the new planet and then receded into my memory, lost until I called upon it again.

Stealth. I didn’t want God to hear my thoughts. I wanted to be able to plan and scheme, to alter the world without his censorship.

Power. God would have no sway over me, now we were two. In the singular universe we were two Gods now. His was the first, mine was the second. He was the beginning, I was the end. Alpha. Omega.

The power to end God. A dagger appeared in my hand. I looked upon myself from outside and saw I had changed. I was a scrawny white man, short cropped brown hair and blue eyes that were cold as the depths of space. Now I was light, I was the burning energy of a life-powered dynamo. The dagger was darker than the black hole, it spat out lightning and the screams of the damned, I heard Satan laughing in its blade.

Time stopped and I stared at the first God: unmoving and frozen in time.

In 1996 a man left his father. Bob started the car and Pam sighed, “We’ll go back next week.”

“Yeah.”

His father, John, had been diagnosed with colon cancer long before and he lay on his bed. His death bed. Bob and Pam – his wife – had been at the house for a few hours, talking with family and trying to penetrate the blazing wall of sickness that surrounded John. They wanted him to know they loved him and they wanted him to get better, but by then he had been on Hospice and had outlived their services. He was still dying, though. He forgot his children, he forgot his wife and all he could talk about was his friends from 1945, during the war but while he was still too young to serve. John served in Vietnam. Navy.

“It’s fucking stupid.” Bob gave the same rant on each journey home. “I don’t get it.”

John had been a devout Catholic for sixty six years since his birth in 1930. He raised ten children, made payments on three different mortgages and worked until his diagnosis in 1994 for General Electric. When he did emerge from the fog that his mind had become, he only ever wanted to ask God for forgiveness, to forgive him his trespasses and deliver him unto salvation.

John’s grandchildren never got to see him, even though they were present. “When can we see grandma and grandpa again?” They asked from the back seats.

“Soon.”

They rode the rest of the way in silence. Bob, Pam and sons lived ten minutes away. They’re automatic garage door opener welcomed them with its normal vibrating hello and signaling their dog that they were home. The routine was comforting, familiar: opening the door, petting the dog, checking the answering machine.

A small red 1 blinked on its black screen, “Somebody loves us!” Pam trying to be funny.

The voicemail: “Bob. Pam. I’m sorry, can you come back to Arlene’s? John’s… Dad…He’s gone.”

Like lead-footed zombies they piled back in the car. 

Short Story 10 Part 3

There was always information not given to me. I stood outside my car and let my third cigarette burn down to a stub as I contemplated what was inside the darkened storage container. The shipping yard was dotted with stacks of colored metal boxes and most of them weren’t worth shit.

The Glut’s was not one of those.

I was told to be at the yard at ten-thirty and wait for someone to come open the container. I didn’t know how long I would wait or who was coming, I just had to wait.

Levi was supposed to be at the yard, but the fat ass slipped outside her apartment and broke a rib. Apparently being a dangerous monster was not a defense against gravity. In the few months after her fall she became very humble – very quickly. For a time she even convinced me to come pick up her mail; she couldn’t walk without a great deal of pain. Once she was on the mend, though, it was back to business and her bite returned. I immediately regretted helping her out. Maybe if she starved because of her handicap she would gain some mobility. Hindsight. What a bitch.

So she wasn’t at the shipping yard that night, not a loss in my mind. Honestly she couldn’t even drive very well, it might have to do with her sloth claws, but I’d be fairly certain that she was clinically insane. Also color blind. This sort of job – especially when Levi wasn’t around – was the kind I enjoyed. I simply wait around, play body guard to some schmuck and his money and – voila! – paid. Mostly it was two or three hours of late night talk radio.

NPR was still plugging along and was – as usual – discussing Hybrid rights. The ten to twelve spot that night was a short segment featuring a right-wing Christian evangelist who was made famous by his declaration that Hybrids were not in the image of God and therefore did not make it into the big book that Christ held by the lake of fire and brimstone. This stood in opposition to a growing sentiment on the matter that Hybrids were people just like humans and should be afforded every such consideration, but this Christian nut job – Pastor Matthew Jacobs – was not concerned with their lifestyle. This messenger of God felt that his territory was that of the Lord and the one true God would not see his heavenly landscape polluted with Hybrids. They were the offspring of Satan, they had lain with beast and should be sacrificed.

I didn’t know what to feel on the topic, really. I mostly listened to the segment for the passionate rapport:

“Pastor Jacobs, how can you say God will deny these individuals when so many have accepted His word into their lives, even knowing they are not in His image? Doesn’t that sort of faith put them on His good side?”

“The creatures – the Beasts – of the earth were created for the express purpose of being lorded over by man. God gave us dominion over them so we could exploit them, so says Genesis. God gave Man dominion – not woman, not beast, not part man, but Man – and man is in the image of God. If the things that crawl over the earth are not permitted into his kingdom then their brethren shall be so denied. Amen.”

“And the fact that more than twenty percent of Christian congregations are made of up of Hybrids?”

“Does the existence of non-believers destroy the image of our Lord? No. So, does the corrupting of the image of Man change the face of God? No. Can these beasts choose to assemble and ask forgiveness of the Lord? That is their business. Will the Father accept them into his kingdom? No.”

“So you do believe that Hybrids have free-will, just as the gift of free-will was given to Adam?”

“They stole it! These imitation men – “

“How can a natural derivation of Homo Sapiens steal free-will?”

“- poison the well of our families and teach our children that it is okay to be monstrous!”

“What are they teaching?! I don’t know if you’re aware, Pastor, but our board-op behind the glass is a Hybrid and he’s the hardest working Man at minimum wage!”

“The children of Satan are here?!”

I could heard a small commotion on the radio.

“Where is it?!”

“Ladies and gentleman, Pastor Jacobs has left the studio! I have called security! I think he’s trying to break into the board-op office down the hall!”

The struggle was broadcast live to a few hundred thousand people. Father Jacobs became and even more prolific symbol for the anti-Hybrid movement and the board-op – a Hybrid named Shelton Gartier – got promoted.

As the segment came to a close, I saw headlight turn onto the row of containers. A light mist moved in off the water and the closing lights burred into fuzzy wisps.

As half the distance was covered, I leaned in the driver side door and flicked my headlights off and on. Off- on. Off – on. It was met with the same signal. I could see as it approached that it was a dark-colored Cadillac. An Escalade. Typical gangster shit.

It rolled up alongside me and dropped the passenger window. The interior lights were off and it was hard to see the driver in the darkness.

“Name?”

Almost everyone in the Glut’s crew knew me by name, but she made a habit out of being thorough, “Atticus.”

“I am a monster. I have two sides, but only one face. I am green, but those who seek me are green with envy. What am I?”

Lately the Glut was big into riddles, especially when I was on assignment, “Money.”

Get it?

“Alright Atticus, back your car up a few containers and aim your headlights at the doors.”

So, I wasn’t allowed to see what was inside, that’s what his order mean. Obviously what was inside wasn’t heavy or bulky if one man was handling it and it was something valuable that I wasn’t trusted with. Maybe trust is the wrong word, the Glut trusted me, she gave me jobs and information that were delicate and dangerous, she had been for a few years. This storage container and its contents were simply something she didn’t want to burden me with, objects or information that I didn’t need to have, because having it would involve me in other jobs – larger jobs that use different crews. Division of labor in her own way.

“Yeah, holler if you need a hand.” I slid in behind the wheel of my junker and maneuvered around the Caddy, Parking about fifty yard away, just at the edge of the container yard. The twin beams of light reached their hazy yellow way towards the courier as he got out and walked toward the container. I pulled my hood up and stood outside the car to smoke. The gentle drizzle and the hum of the car engines were the only sounds I could hear, like a blanket of white noise that muffled the Cadillac driver and his business.

I could see in the distant silence the courier open the container door. At the same time a swift slapping sound came cascading towards me from the opposite direction. It was the same pattern of a horse’s gallop, but was soft and wet.

I couldn’t see it, not in the darkness beyond the yard, but I could hear it coming closer – very quickly. Trying to look calm, I let my cigarette rest between my lips and pull my gun from my waist band, pointing it into the darkness.

Something was coming. The shadow outside the headlights was almost a tangible force, like a wall of pitch that was draped across the night. It hid the approaching sound.

As it reached the ring of light, it stopped. Silent as if had never been there at all. An empty fraction of a second for me to drag on my smoke and then it came crashing down. The Hybrid was falling on me like a hurdling furry torpedo. It must have leapt out of the darkness to come hurdling down from above – poised to strike me in the chest.

I raise my gun but it was too late. .

It hit me in the gut and left me choking for breath. The whole thing was just a blur of fur and skin that I couldn’t follow with my eyes. The force of the impact knocked my gun from my hand, I grasped for it desperately.

We tumbled backwards in a torrent of limbs, my back and head slamming into the hood of the car. The hollow bong sound of the cheap metal bending in and my grunt of pain were stifled by the ambient sound around us. Fireflies flickered around my eyes from the blow and warmth crept down my scalp.

“Fuck…” I pulled my arms up and pushed against the Hybrid, “Off!”

Instead of me shoving, it leapt off and found all four of its feet – all four of its hands, it had human hands instead of paws – and landed facing down the corridor. The Hybrid was a dog, but it had very clearly defined human parts. She was almost a sphinx in my mind, with a soft-angled human face that was filled with anger, her furrowed brow made a deep V above her eyes and she glared into mind with a fire, burning into my skin.

“You’re in over your head,” She growled.  Atop her head was a crown, a casually fitting ring of dynamite that was tilting back above her ears.

I could feel the free-flow of blood from the top of mine, spilling over like a bathtub that’s been left to run for hours. Only then, in the stunned moment after impact did I hear the buzz – the whispering countdown of a timer on the bomb.

She took off down the corridor, her pale-white hands slapping against the pavement, kicking water as she closed on the courier.

“Hey!” My heartbeat was a fast black thunder in my ears, pushing more blood out of my head.

“HEY!” I fell on my gun and fumbled to get two hands on it. Suddenly I was all thumbs, aiming the gun like an ape holding a banana.

I finally got my finger on the trigger, but the night ripped open. A sharp white cloud came rolling down towards me, full of yellow and orange claws that carried pieces of the black Escalade. The roar of the explosion swallowed me and spit me out, leaving my bones shaking in my skin. It threw me backwards, grabbing me by the ankles and whipping me against my car.

I was flung to the ground and was helpless as the world around me burned.