Seeing Stars

I wanted to burn down the darkness, alighting it like a black stage curtain. Beneath and behind, well lit by the blaze, mystery turned to beauty would dazzle me. The promises of the faint starlight kept me piling on kindling and soaking it in accelerants, while the lighter weighed ever more in my pocket, an anchor waiting to be lifted.

For tonight, I picked the tiny cottage at the edge of town, too small for the invading weekenders and not worth a damn to locals paying new taxes. The cottage needed purpose, so I made it the central piece of fuel to make sure the night caught, lighting up at the border between town and wilderness. Among the trees I could see shapes moving, squirming images that passed effortlessly between tricks of my eyes and actual disruptions of the stars' faint light.

I wondered how bright and terrible the stars would be once no night separated them from me.

Sweat covered me, making my fingers slick as I pulled the lighter out of my pocket. The burnished metal stayed put in my hand, knowing it belonged there, knowing I gave it purpose. Although so close it ached, I took a moment to look back at the town. Night rested heavy on it. Faint shapes poked through the surface, and a few pin points of light appeared from windows facing towards where the night came from. I turned and gazed straight into that black miasma emanating from untamed tracts of land. Indistinct forms filled it, merging into a single impression of potential sight before vanishing into the center of night. I hoped to char that heart, leaving only the thinest black ash beneath stars so close you could touch them.

My lighter lit well and it set up the first piece, which set up the second. Like dominoes, flames fell, lapping up everything around them. The night began to burn. Flames raced into the very heart of night. Hot winds blew black, as if beyond the night a storm waited. I felt sparks and soot settle on my skin, and heard panic from the town.

They were perhaps unready to see the orange and blue of the stars so close to the earth, unready to step back into the endless light whence we came.

Diving, Before

The keys sat next to the laptop. Mitch scrolled down, rubbing his chin and muttering to himself. Behind him, Kathy paced and looked over his shoulder when she passed, taking in bits and pieces of the sites he read.

"This isn't a major excavation. We just need to check out the property." She went to grab the keys, but his hand closed on them first. Her fingers closed on the back of his hand.

"People go into abandoned places like this, some of them to look around or scrounge things. Sometimes homeless people set up shop in them. We want to make sure that we can get around safely."

"There won't be any homeless people." Kathy walked over to the love seat and stretched out across it.

"Maybe not, but it's still an old factory, filled with rotted out sections and rusting machinery. If we're going to look it all over, we'll need to be prepared." He turned around to talk to her. The screen flashed with some promise of prizes, or free porn. Kathy had seen enough of those ads running alongside columns of text describing modern day looting.

"Then let's bring the police to help us make the first round through. Or just ask them if they ever have any problems with the building." She smiled, tapping one of her pink nails against her lips.

"No. Not right away." He turned back to the screen.

"Then, let's just go and do it."

"I'll put together all the stuff we need, and we'll go Friday."

She sighed. "One of these weeks you will need to take me on a proper date, you know."

"This will be. After checking out the abandoned factory we'll get dinner, and maybe catch a movie. In, out, and then on to a fun night."

"Is there time for a shower in there?"

"We won't even break a sweat."

Headhunters, Part 2

Stuck in traffic on the way home, I wished I had a Blackberry. I shuddered even as I made the wish, and looked around the inside of my car to make sure that it hadn't come true. I could remain blissfully unaware of e-mail, even this one. Without even knowing the offer, my brain sizzled with the prospect of escape. As I crawled along Brock Avenue, I knew that it wouldn't really be escape--I'd be trading one brig for another, still shanghaied by life.

The traffic drifted apart, breaking gradually until the flow became even once more. From the corner of my eye I saw a police car and what might once have been a sedan. I kept my eyes ahead of me, careful for the speed traps they set up at the end of the month.

Along the side of the road, the office buildings gave way to stores, which turned into apartments. These came further and further apart, until Brock joined cleanly with a wide swatch of road that took me into the hinterlands around Larch. I peeled off of the road five minutes later, into a dusting of buildings that rose up into what would soon enough be a proper commuter city.

There was plenty of space in the building's parking lot, leaving my car stopped alone on the cracking concrete. I'd gotten an unshaded space, so the car always ended up hot and the tar around it suffered the worst of the freeze-thaw cycle. The management office never had time to handle things like spot change requests, but they did have time to tag your car with annoying fliers and adhesive reminders to not park in an unauthorized spot--what else was security supposed to do out here? There was, after all, a mall near enough that the lot looked appealing to those cruising in.

Before I got to the door, I heard a long, labored "Ahem". It was like someone trying to clear drying caulking out of their throat. I turned and saw a hunched over young man smoking. He leaned against one of the pillars that held up the section of the building that shaded the nice spots in the parking lot. He didn't look like a bum--and I'd never really seen a bum out here.

"So," he said, voice a ruined mess of tar and blood, "you given any thought to the job offer yet?"

Headhunters, Part 1

I set the phone down and began my wait. The only other person left in the office worked upstairs, so she couldn't have heard my phone conversation. My personal e-mail account would be a good way to get the details of the offer. Jumping ship meant sailing in the same ocean, but it might also mean docking at better ports and getting finer hauls. Sighing at my failure to include a pirate metaphor to my florid self justifications, I returned to actual work, with my eyes always on the tab along the bottom that told me if I had new gmail.

Five-fifteen rolled around, I still had a few loose ends to tie up and no e-mail from the headhunter. I thought about when Cynthia, the upstairs coworker, got a job offer from one of the cable companies. She said she'd have passed it on to me if I had enough experience, mostly to get them off her case it sounded like.

My cellphone shrieked its awful chorus of rings, sure to attract my attention no matter how deep into work or interesting stuff I got myself. I picked it up. "Hi Margaret."

"Planning on sleeping there tonight?"

"What are you making for dinner." I scrolled through my spam folder, looking at the fifteen new, useless messages that came in since the headhunter called.

"A surprise. A very yummy surprise." The faint sound of cars passing came over the line.

"Getting ingredients for it now?" I flipped back to the actual inbox, still no message. I looked over my shoulder, but I hadn't heard Cynthia moving around upstairs for awhile. She was probably locked in place in front of her computer, handling whatever they handled up there.

"Possibly. Anyway, I'll let you get back to work so you can get home."

"I have something to talk to you about when I do, I think I'm being headhunted already." I let it out in one awful rush, straight into the speaker.

More faint sounds of cars passing came over the line. "Let's talk about it when you get home."

We went through our hang up rituals. I looked over the haul for the day: statistics on international migration, the price of pop in various countries of interest, and performance predictions for web-based multimedia conferencing services. Typical stuff for Looking Glass Research. With nothing left to do, and no owners around to keep me in the office, I turned off my machine and straightened up the office.

On my way out I flipped off a few of the lights and headed halfway up the pine stairs that had been shoved into the house after its construction to make a single office area for Looking Glass Research. When I got up high enough to hear Cynthia in her office, I cleared my throat and then yelled, "Anything I can help you with today?"

"No, thanks Max, I'll see you tomorrow."

Cleared I left, closing the security door behind me.

Diving

"There won't be any homeless people." Mitch's voice cracked.

Kathy frowned. "Don't be so loud."

In front of them, the rag-man kept still. His eyes opened wide into their lamplight, drinking it in like a desert nomad encountering a waterfall. The light didn't flatter the rest of him, showing off the layers of dirt over ruined cloth and flesh.

"He sees us." Mitch took a stiff step backwards.

The rag-man kept still.

Mitch worked his hand slowly to his side, where he had all his emergency gear holstered. "We should come back with police."

The whisper carried across the empty factory floor. It bounced off of the high walls that bordered the gloom, giving the hints of boundaries to the blurry darkness that their head lamps barely disturbed.

Kathy took a step backwards.

The rag-man took a step forward.

Kathy scuttled back four steps.

The rag-man kept still.

Mitch stepped backwards, fumbling with his emergency gear as he did.

The rag-man took a step forward.

"I understand." Kathy whispered, taking out her flashlight.

She turned off her head lamp.

The rag-man moaned.

She turned on the flashlight, and the moaning stopped. The rag-man's mouth stayed open. Behind him, more bright eyes emerged from the gloom. Kathy waved the flashlight, and the rag-man's head followed the light. She took a step towards him.

The bang froze her in place, flashlight in her fingers and eyes unfocused. In front of her, the rag-man swayed and mewed. Those other eyes closed and vanished, a wail raising up from the distance. Mitch pointed the gun into the gloom and fired again, over the rag-man slumped body.

"We'll need the police to clear the rest." He said, taking Kathy by the arm and leading her out of the building

Introduction

The horror fiction on this blog will tend to be short, and some of the pieces will be linked. My basic idea is to just get out some tiny pieces of writing based on things that I encounter in my life.