SONS OF SINNERS Excerpt

This is a bit of my novel I was editing today, and I really liked how it came out. The interaction between Josh and Galen feels really real to me here. Id like to bring out more of this in the rest of my book.

Fourteen

“Christ,” Galen said. He bit down on the tough leather of his belt and closed his eyes.

Joshua held held the bloody bullet between his fingers. He regarded it briefly and then tossed it aside, focusing on closing up the coin sized tear in Galen’s shoulder.

Galen felt the tug on his flesh as the needle and thread burrowed through again and again. It was hot and unceasing. He wanted to lash out, to strike Joshua away. But he knew to just bite the belt and endure it. They’d done this before.

When at last he felt the final tug he opened his eyes again. Joshua was kneeling over him, sweating, his hands caked in blood.

“All done,” the boy said.

Galen panted. “All better?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“But it’ll hold me.”

Joshua nodded. “Until we get out of here, yeah. You’ll need someone professional to look at it, though.”

Galen sighed and let his head rest against the hard earth of the salt flats. The sun was as unrelenting as it had been yesterday. Had he expected it to change? No. Not really. But he’d hoped it would.

He felt Joshua’s fingers on his collar bone. He tilted his head up and saw the boy pulling his already open shirt farther off his chest. Joshua was looking at Galen’s pale flesh. More accurately, he was looking at the demon tattoo.

Galen batted his hand away. “Stop it,” he said.

Joshua looked him in the eyes. “Does it still hurt?”

“I just got shot. Course it still hurts.”

“No,” Joshua said, looking at the black wheel on Galen’s chest. “The mark.”

Galen sat up, a motion his body was not happy with. He grunted in exasperation, panted for a moment, and then looked over at Joshua. The boy was still kneeling next to him, and their faces were only inches apart.

“What have I said about talking about that?” Galen said.

“But I thought—considering what we just… with the angel, I mean. Shouldn’t you tell me now?”

“No,” Galen said. There wasn’t even a trace of playfulness in his voice.

Joshua blinked and leaned away from Galen’s rancid breath. “But I just—”

“You have an angel inside of you, Josh. That’s what you believe. And if that’s true, then I’m even farther from telling you what this is. Just drop it.”

“But—”

“Josh,” Galen said. He put a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Thank you for patching me up. Now I don’t wanna waste no more breath speaking about things that shouldn’t be spoken of. We got no water and even less food. You follow me?”

Joshua stared at him for a moment, and then he sighed and nodded his head. “Okay.”

Stagnancy

Been having a lot of trouble writing lately. I'd like to say it's because I've been so busy with work and things, but that doesn't really feel like a valid excuse when I've had plenty of time to dick around on the internet and play video games. In actuality I've just not been pushing myself as hard lately, for whatever reason. It could be because I'm just growing weary of editing my book; I've been doing so for about nine months now, and-- if I'm going to be honest-- it hasn't really improved from the first draft since then. I mean, it has, but the changes are so small when compared with what I've still got to  fix or improve. I've grown so much as a writer since my rough draft, and every time I look at my book I see things that I really need to change. And that list keeps growing the more I learn. Will I ever be happy with it?

Short Story- PRETTY LITTLE GIRL

The little girl in the mirror was almost pretty enough, except for her shoulder. Her eyes were bright and piercing, her hair was done up in the way it was supposed to be (Mother insisted that she practice putting it up twice a day), and her skin was flawless. Well, almost flawless, if it weren’t for the scaly thing on her shoulder. She’d first noticed it yesterday after lunch—a little grey thing that jumped out at her when she removed her dress. At first she thought it was a smudge of makeup, or just lint from her freshly cleaned clothes. But it didn’t come off when she rubbed it. It moved with her skin, like sea foam. It was rough and cold to the touch.

Now looking at her reflection in the mirror, examining it carefully, she saw it was bigger than yesterday. It had grown to the size of a quarter. She bent over the sink and leaned her shoulder in closer to the mirror. It pushed out of her skin just to the right of her collarbone, where the muscles of the chest and shoulder met. It looked to her kind of like a scab, only a little greyer and perfectly round. And, unlike a scab, its edges weren’t the soothing pink of scar tissue. The skin was an angry, puffy red, curling around the edges of the thing as if in protest to its presence.

It made her feel sick looking at it. She got off the sink and slipped her dress back on, making sure the elegant yoke of it was covering her shoulder. It had to be. Mother would not be happy if she were to find out that she had any blemishes.

#

When she got downstairs she found Mother sitting at the kitchen counter. She was watching the small white TV that stood at the end of the granite countertop, a lit cigarette dangling from her lips.

“Good morning, Susan,” Mother said without looking up from the story on the screen. She nodded towards a plate on the counter. The plate had nothing but half a hardboiled egg.

Susan walked up to the counter and got onto a stool, being careful to fold her dress under her legs so it wouldn’t crease. She regarded the plate skeptically. “Breakfast?” she said.

“That’s all you need,” Mother said, her eyes still on the silent TV. “Can’t let you be getting fat so close to the big day.” She looked up, and her eyes filled with that biting disgust that Susan had gotten so used to seeing first thing in the morning. It was normal, but it still filled Susan with such shame.

“Christ, what did you do to your hair?”

Susan’s hands immediately flew to her head and she felt the lock that had fallen free. “I—It must have been when I put on—“

“When you put on your dress?” Mother sighed. “You always put on your dress before doing your hair. Never… Christ, look at this mess.” She stood up and walked around the counter. She began to run her spidery fingers over Susan’s scalp. “Look at this. Imagine if this had happened Thursday. What then? Imagine if I’d left you backstage, and then you went to take a piss or something before the show. Look what you’d have done.”

Susan sat very still and let Mother do her work. The cigarette smoke stung her eyes and made her nostrils flare, but she dared not move.

Mother dropped her hands away and put them on her knees. “There we go. All better.” She looked over Susan’s face. “Now who’s a pretty little girl?”

“I am, Mother,” Susan said.

“That’s right,” Mother said. She patted Susan’s knee and then stood up, taking the cigarette out of her mouth to blow a cloud into the kitchen ceiling. “I saw Barbara Shilling this morning.”

Susan said nothing and waited Mother to finish.

“She had Kendra with her.” Mother sat back on the stool and looked across at Susan. “Dressed like a little slut. I’m talking wire thin shoulder straps and four-inch heels. Four-inch heels! Can you believe that? Four-inch heels on a ten year old. Jesus. And this was just what Barbara had her wearing for walking around town. I can only imagine what sort of slutwear she has in store for Thursday.”

Susan picked up her fork and touched the egg half on her plate. As she moved her arm, she felt the unmistakable lump of the thing on her shoulder. She’d forgotten about it for a moment, and a spike of fear shot into her heart as she remembered it. Should she tell Mother?

“Really, I don’t know what the fuck Barbara’s thinking,” Mother said. “None of them know what this is all about. They think you can just win the judges with sex appeal, like their daughters are goddamn streetwalkers. But no, it’s about elegance. It’s about beauty. Refinement. Not sex.” She leaned over the counter and touched Susan’s chin. “But you understand, Susan. You’ll win. And why is that?”

She met Mother’s eyes. They were dark and fierce; caring in a way that seemed real but Susan always felt was probably not. But most of all they were old.

“Because I’m a pretty little girl,” Susan said.

Mother smiled thinly. “That’s right.” She went back to following the silent lips of the people on the television.

Susan stabbed the egg with her fork and lifted it up. The skin of the egg was off-white, almost a light grey. It reminded her of that thing which sat imbedded into the valley between the muscles of her neck and the muscles of her shoulder.

She set the egg back down.

“Eat it,” Mother said. “I can’t have you getting too thin, either.”

Susan nodded, but could not bring herself to touch her tongue to the egg. She picked it up again and held it in front of her, deciding that that was a fair compromise. The more she looked at the egg, the more she thought of the thing on her shoulder. And the more frightened she became. It was hard like wood, and she could feel a slight numbness around where it sat in her skin. She desperately wanted to bring Mother’s attention to it. But she knew that would not be wise.

Pretty little girls are blemish-free.

#

Susan felt a wet thud on her upper back. It wasn’t enough to make her stumble, but definitely enough to make her notice. She pivoted on the sidewalk, holding her books close to her chest. A clump of dirt and grass lay on the concrete behind her. She gasped sharply and nearly dropped her books as she reached a hand to swipe off the dirt on her back.

She looked up when she heard a boy’s laughter. Another dirt clod flew by her, disintegrating as it tumbled across the concrete. The boy had come from behind a tree in the nearest yard. He skipped towards her now, smiling broadly and patting his hands together to get the dirt off them.

Susan scrunched her face up angrily. “Bobby Marlow!”

The boy stopped as he reached her, bouncing up and down. He was a few inches taller than her. “Morning, Suze,” he said.

“Don’t ‘morning’ me,” Susan said, summoning her best Mother’s voice. “What’s wrong with you? The pageant’s in two days. What if you’d gotten your dirty dirt in my hair?”

“Oh no!” Bobby threw up his hands and then began giggling. “What ever would you do then? Not your hair!”

“It takes hours to do my hair right,” Susan said. Her blood was boiling. She felt like crying. She didn’t know why. Bobby was just being Bobby, after all. “This is why Mother says not to play with you.”

“Your mother says that because she’s a mean old witch.” Bobby reached out a hand to her. She flinched, but didn’t stop him. He patted the dirt off her back and then smiled again. “What’s with the sweater, Suze? It’s like a million degrees out.”

The sweater must have looked very odd, Susan realized. And she was sweating underneath it. But when she’d woken that morning and looked in the mirror, the thing on her shoulder had grown to the size of a golf ball. Also like a golf ball, it was now pocked with dozens of small indentations—little shallow holes with jagged edges that were bisected by squiggly lines, like barnacles. The entirety of the thing was rougher and more developed. When she chanced to touch it, it didn’t move on her skin like it had yesterday. It stayed firm on that point between her shoulder and neck. Anchored. Most terrible of all, it protruded enough out of her skin for it to show under all of her dresses and blouses. Everyone would see it if she didn’t hide it. The sweater was her only option.

“I’m cold,” she said.

“You’re a liar,” Bobby blurted out. “Is this a thing that your mom’s doing? Is she making you wear this?”

In truth, Mother had objected heavily to the sweater. She didn’t want any of the other girls at school thinking that her Pretty Little Girl had anything to hide. So Susan had worn it over her shoulders like a scarf, a gesture that Mother described as “classy.” She immediately donned it proper upon leaving the house.

“Mother doesn’t like it,” she said.

Bobby’s expression changed a bit, but remained mirthful. “Well I think it looks pretty,” he said.

Susan blushed, and was surprised to find herself smiling a bit. She was glad that Bobby had caught up to her. She really did like him, even if he was what Mother called “a dirty little shit.”

“Will you carry my books for me?” she asked.

Bobby, still smiling, took them from her. They continued along the sidewalk. The lack of books was freeing to Susan, but the sun’s heat was plenty heavy. She really wished she had kept the sweater as a scarf. Too late to change it now, though, with Bobby right there.

“I went to show my brother that weird flower,” Bobby said.

Susan’s heart sunk. She stayed quiet.

“It wasn’t there anymore,” Bobby continued. “Really weird. The ground was all black where it was. Like it got burned up or something.”

“Maybe it flew away,” Susan said quietly. She expected Bobby to reject this notion as ridiculous, but he only nodded.

“Maybe,” he said. “Does it still hurt? Where you touched it?”

She felt the firm presence of the thing on her shoulder.

“I didn’t touch it,” she said.

“I saw you touch it.”

“No,” she said. “I fell on it. Remember? I fell and it touched me. Why would I touch a gross thing like that?”

Bobby shrugged. “I don’t know. All I know is I came over that hill after I heard you screaming and you were pointing at that weird flower like it bit you.”

“Well I’m fine,” she said. “Nothing’s wrong with me.”

“I didn’t say anything’s wrong with you, Suze.”

“I said I’m fine!” She could hear Mother’s voice in her head, shrill and angry. Just look at your skin! What did you do? Just look at it! You touched what? You were out playing with WHO?

Bobby held up a hand. “Okay! You’re okay. Cheese and rice.”

“And it wasn’t a flower. Flowers don’t move.”

“It didn’t move, Suze. You got scared, is all. It was just a weird flower and it stung you. No need to freak out.”

Susan heard the doubt and slight pity in Bobby’s voice, and she realized that that was what she had wanted from him. It was compassion, in a sense. More so than what she received from Mother. And it comforted her. After all, if Bobby Marlow said it was okay, then shit was okay.

#

“Susan!” Mother called. “Susan, what is taking you so damn long?”

“I’m almost ready,” Susan said. For a moment Mother’s fists stopped banging on the bedroom door, but seconds later they started up again.

“Susan, I swear to God, if you step out here and your blush isn’t properly—“

“I said I’m almost ready, Mother.”

Silence for a moment.

“Two minutes,” Mother said. “Two minutes and then I’m breaking the fucking door down.”

Susan listened for the sound of Mother’s receding footsteps, but she knew that she would be waiting right outside the door until the moment that Susan stepped through. Two years ago Mother would have never allowed her to prepare herself before a show. But she was ten years old now, and Susan supposed that granted her some level of agency. Perhaps Mother was realizing that she was old enough to take on responsibilities of her own now. More than likely, Susan knew, it was so she could tell all the other mothers that her Pretty Little Girl had prepared herself all on her own, like a refined lady. Even if she had been shouting instructions through the door.

In the back of her mind Susan thought about these things. At the forefront was the thing on her shoulder. Although to say it was on her shoulder was no longer completely true.

The thing had become her shoulder.

It had grown exponentially over the last night. The crusty grey mass stretched from her collarbone to her armpit, and then almost completely over her shoulder and onto her back. Red skin had peeled back and died, folding over itself at the edges of the thing like thin bark burning off wood. It was cemented deep into her body, she could feel it. Its knobby, barnacle-covered surface stuck out over an inch from her flesh.

Susan could not avoid looking at it in the mirror. Every time she would turn to apply her makeup or replace a loose strand of hair, her eyes would drift to the scabby thing. She didn’t want to; laying eyes on it made her stomach twist in disgust and fear. But a strange, morbid curiosity kept returning her eyes to it. She stared at it with an almost objective gaze, as if the thing wasn’t actually on her, but only on the girl in the mirror. It didn’t hurt, after all. It was still numb. The thing in the mirror certainly looked painful, but she felt nothing.

And if it didn’t hurt, it was probably fine. Just like Bobby had said. What did mother always tell her? Grin and bear it?

The dress that Mother had chosen for her to wear tonight covered only half the thing. So she had made a wardrobe change without Mother’s consent: A billowing, white ball gown with huge poofy shoulders. Ariel’s Wedding Gown, she called it. She put it on (a tricky task what with the rock-like thing on her shoulder) and looked at herself in the mirror. The thing was completely invisible.

When she stepped out into the hallway, Mother’s first reaction was a look of horror. For a moment Susan thought that her dress had slipped and Mother had at last discovered the thing, but then she noticed the way that Mother’s eyes went up and down her body, scanning the dress itself.

“What in the hell are you wearing?” Mother said. “We don’t have time for this! Where’s the other dress?”

The rising irritation in Mother’s voice was unhindered, and it almost boiled over into ineffable fury. She took a step closer, her brightly colored fingernails ready to tear Ariel’s gown apart and reveal the hideous barnacle-thing that lurked beneath.

“I thought it made me look more elegant,” Susan said.

Mother stopped. Her expression changed, and she looked Susan over. Clearly this notion intrigued her, but Susan could see that she was not completely sold.

“Not like those other sluts,” she said.

At this Mother smiled, and then immediately frowned. “You watch your mouth, young lady.” She gently touched the poof over Susan’s right shoulder, and for a moment that icy fear of discovery gripped Susan again.

“Elegant,” Mother said. “I believe you’re right, Susan. This will definitely set you apart. I just wish you’d discussed this with me first.” She flourished a hand. “But you’re becoming your own woman, making your own very fine decisions.”

Susan forced a smile, knowing that Mother was working on her speech for the other parents. See that ELEGANT look my Susan is sporting? Yeah, she chose that her self. My Pretty Little Girl is also my Pretty Fashionably-Minded Girl.

#

Mother licked two fingers and ran them over Susan’s scalp, no doubt taming some rogue lock. Susan stood still and waited for Mother to lick twice more before stopping and placing her hands on her knees.

Mother looked over her work and smiled. “Very pretty,” she said. “Very beautiful. Did you see Cindy Straub?”

Susan knew it didn’t matter whether she had or not.

“Rampage boots,” Mother said, scoffing exasperatedly. “Rampage boots. Can you fucking believe that? Why would they even design rampage boots for ten year olds?”

Susan remained perfectly still as Mother plucked at the poofy shoulders of the dress.

“This was the perfect choice, Susan. You’ll show them. Now, what are we going to do when we walk up to the judge?”

“Curtsy.”

“Curtsy,” Mother confirmed. “And then when he asks if you’d rather be pretty or smart?”

“Neither,” Susan said. And then in tandem they said, “I want to be exactly the way I am, because I am beautiful and clever and powerful, and I can do anything that I set my mind to. I don’t need to limit myself to ‘eithers’ and ‘ors’. If I strive to be all, then I will be all, because I am beauty manifest.”

Susan didn’t know what most of that meant, but she said it every year and every year she lost. They never changed their strategy, even though the other girls said something different every year. That was just the way these things go. Mother smiled and touched Susan’s chin gently, so as not to muss up her makeup.

“Good girl,” Mother said.

“Mrs. Franklin?” a man’s voice said from the other side of the dressing room door.

“Come on in,” Mother said.

The door creaked open and a tall bespectacled man poked in his head. “The pageant’s about to start. I have to ask you to get on out to the auditorium.”

Mother looked to Susan. “Who’s my Pretty Little Girl?”

“I am,” Susan said.

“Yes you are. You always will be.” Mother nodded and then stood up. She stepped by the man with a smile and then disappeared.

The tall man visibly relaxed after Mother left. He stepped completely into the dressing room. “Are you almost ready, Susan? We’re starting soon.”

“I am, Mr. Baker.” Susan smiled wide, showing a mouth full of almost perfectly white teeth. “I just need another second.”

“Of course. Just don’t take too long, now. We need all the girls up on stage for the start of the show.”

“I know.”

Mr. Baker nodded, and lingered in the room for another moment. When Susan smiled again he left.

Alone in the dressing room, Susan gently pulled down the poofy sleeve over her right shoulder. The thing reared its ugly head into the vanity mirror. It had begun to itch on the ride over, and during the talk with her mother it had started to sting. It wasn’t quite painful, but it was alarming all the same. She bent over the bottles and brushes and tweezers to get closer to the mirror, to inspect the bulging grey mass one more time before the show.

It was as it was that morning: Pocked like pumice and crudely imbedded in her flesh like a Halloween prosthetic.

One of the barnacles blinked.

She gasped and fell back from the vanity mirror, sending the stool skittering across the room. She turned fully to the thing, engaging it not through the mirror but directly with her eyes. Up close she could see the organic, sandy lines of its surface. Her heart raced, and she stared at the nearest barnacle-like structure.

The jagged line in its hole opened for a split second, and something wet gleamed within. Then it closed.

She would have screamed if there hadn’t been a knock on the door right at that moment.

“Susan?” Mr. Baker’s voice came. “Miss Franklin?”

Susan heard him, but she could not find the courage to respond. She looked back at the thing. It was burning now, like a hot knife. She stared for what felt like an eternity, waiting for the barnacle to open again.

“Are you alright?”

The thing didn’t move. The stinging stopped.

“Susan?” Mr. Baker opened the door, shielding his eyes with a clipboard out of decency.

Susan yanked the poofy sleeve back over her shoulder. “I’m okay.”

Mr. Baker peaked from behind the clipboard, and lowered it completely when he saw Susan was fully dressed. He frowned. “Let’s go, Miss Franklin. All the other girls are already on stage.”

“Sorry,” Susan said, standing up hurriedly. Grin and bear it, she thought. Be a Pretty Little Girl.

#

Cindy Straub flipped her overly wound curls over her shoulders and cocked her hip too far to one side, lifting one of her rampage boots so that only the toe remained on the stage.

Susan squinted at the bright sequins that glittered off Cindy Straub’s dress. Tacky, she heard Mother say in her head. She looked out into the crowd to see if Mother agreed, but the all-seeing beam of the stage lights blinded her to the audience. She could imagine, however, the look of judgmental disgust on Mother’s face when Cindy Straub placed a gloved hand on that sequined teal hip.

“Now, Miss Straub,” Mr. Baker said, “which would you rather be: Pretty or smart?”

“Well,” Cindy Straub said, pitching her voice an octave deeper, “if I had to choose between being smart or pretty, I would rather be pretty. Being pretty is more than what our body says. ‘Pretty,’ for me, means cleanliness in body and spirit, pureness in heart and soul, and goodness in actions and deeds, and by helping out those who need it. By that definition of pretty, I think that being pretty is much more important than being smart.”

She finished with a flourish of her hand, and the dress sparkled. Everyone in the audience clapped wildly behind the curtain of light at the end of the stage. Everyone, Susan knew, except for one person.

“Thank you very much, Miss Straub,” Mr. Baker said. Cindy Straub blew him a kiss and then walked back to her place in the line. The other girls smiled at her and giggled, whispering about how pretty she was and how big of a crush Mr. Baker has on her. Susan watched them. All were dressed similarly to Cindy Straub, with shiny flashy dresses and extravagant accessories. These were the kinds of girls who wouldn’t talk with her at school. The kinds of girls who told the boys to stay away from her because she dressed weird and spoke weird and her Mother was weird and she was just weird all over.

On any other day, at any other pageant, Susan would have felt a sinking jealousy in her heart as the other girls congratulated Cindy on her miraculous performance. But right now all she felt was the burning in her shoulder. It had stopped for a few moments while she got on stage, but here, under the hot stare of the lights, it began its stinging again.

“Up next we have the lovely Miss Franklin,” Mr. Baker said. People applauded softly, inviting Susan to Mr. Baker’s side.

Susan had heard, but her feet wouldn’t move. The stinging had suddenly grown unbearably intense, and she closed her eyes and bit her lip. Her blood pounded in her ears.

“Miss Franklin?”

A hand from behind shoved her forward, accompanied by a barely audible ‘weirdo’. She stumbled out, very nearly tripping, but she caught herself and stood up straight by Mr. Baker’s side. The clapping started up again. A strand of hair hung before her eyes, and she could almost see Mother’s fingers twitching in eagerness to brush it out of her face.

The thing was throbbing now. She began to breath heavily.

“The lovely young Miss Franklin,” Mr. Baker said. He looked down to his clipboard and flipped a page before making a quick mark with his pen. “That’s a, uh, very unique dress you have, there.”

“It’s…” Susan heard a ringing in her ears. Her skin felt greasy, clammy. The thing was pulsating faster. “It’s… Ariel’s Wedding Gown,” she said.

The girls behind her giggled. Someone in the audience made a patronizing awww. Mr. Baker nodded and made another note.

“So, Miss Franklin,” he said. “Would you rather be pretty or smart?”

Susan breathed in rapidly, held her breath for a moment, and then breathed out. She repeated this twice more before trying to speak. “I… I’d neither… I’m… I want to be…” The muscles on her face began to twitch. Her shoulder was very warm now.

“I’m sorry?” Mr. Baker said. “Miss Franklin, you need to articulate your—“ He looked up from his notes. “Miss Franklin, are you alright? Susan?”

“I’m… clever and… and I’m power…“ Tears were beginning to form in Susan’s eyes. “I’m powerful. I’m… I’m a… beautiful—“

Mr. Baker screamed and threw up his clipboard as a spray of red blood erupted from Susan’s shoulder. She felt an incredible rip in her skin, and then heard the split of the fabric of her dress. She fell completely silent as six silvery tentacles tore from her shoulder and reached across her body. The scabrous thing pulled free of her flesh and screeched out of three mouths filled with razor teeth. She fell to her knees as the silver tentacles wrapped themselves around her face and neck. She saw the eyes of the thing—all five of them—buried in the barnacle structures of its exoskeleton. They were hungry.

The tentacles entwined head entirely and the thing descended onto her face. It began to bite and rend and feed, but Susan felt none of it. Her body gave up, collapsing onto the blood-streaked stage while the thing feasted on her.

She heard screams everywhere around her. She heard Mother’s scream above it all, high-pitched and full of primal despair. But Susan knew it was not for her safety that Mother screamed. Even as she died on the pageantry stage, she knew that her mother was in anguish because this terrible alien thing was destroying her Pretty Little Girl face.

Excuses!

So I don't have a short story for you today. Three in and I'm already failing my schedule.

But I have reasons! Or excuses, really, as they're not incredibly valid. But I think reasons sounds better, so I'm going to go with reasons. Even though I clearly wasn't confident in that enough to change the name of this post. In any case, here are some reasons that there is no short story today:

-I have been working a ton on my edits for SONS OF SINNERS. I've told some folks who I want to have as beta readers that I'm going to be getting my manuscript to them soon and that's ignited some spark in my brain so now I can't stop working on it. I'm going through my edits for probably the sixth or seventh time, and I'm still finding things that I want to change. Pretty soon I'm going to just have to brush off my hands and say "done! Done, that's it. Not gonna... Nope, just givin' it out, now. Yep." But for now my mind is still wrapped around working on it.

-It's been crazy nice outside and as a result my restaurant has been really busy. So I've been working a ton of hours a ton of days, which is a terrible excuse to not be writing. Reason. Terrible reason, I mean. Not excuse. An okay reason. Confidence. I don't see work slowing down any time soon, so I've just got to tweak my writing schedule so I stay consistent.

-I've been reading like a mad man lately. The kind of mad man who has gone mad because he reads too much. So rather than putting words to paper I've been reading words that someone else ha put to paper. So that's something good at least, right?

I could've vomited out a story in the time I had this afternoon just to make the deadline, but I didn't really want to do that. It was crazy nice outside, as I said, and when I got off work I walked down to the water with some whiskey and my dog and read a good book for five or six hours, which is something I don't regret at all. So that happened instead of writing today. I think that's fine.

tl;dr
I'll post a story sometime in a couple days. I have a few things running through my skull that I want to show you.

Short Story- THE ANIMAL

It was dusk by the time I’d found the animal's trail.

I’d set out a week before with three dogs, three weeks after the delivery of the animal to the valley. Immediate signs of the animal’s presence were abundant. Patches of grass where it had slept were still matted down; broken twigs and trampled earth showed that it had spent much time in the clearing where my helicopter dropped me off. The signs were so fresh that it seemed highly likely that the animal had cleared out only moments before I had arrived, possibly fleeing because it heard the terrible chop of the helicopter blades over the trees. I was certain that I’d find it by the end of that first day.

But the natural cunning of bestial instinct had other plans.

Beyond the clearing there was no sign of it. It had disappeared entirely, leaving nothing for me to follow. I presented a handful of the slept-upon grass to the dogs, hoping that the lingering scent would lead them to my prey. They took off with energetic fervor, their sharp angles and bristling fur contrasting starkly with the rolling tall grass of the meadow. They returned that evening with nothing to show for their efforts but exhaustion. The smaller two dogs devoured their meals the moment I presented them, but the largest of the three– a graying, gold-eyed hound that I had named Charlemagne– denied even the smallest scraps. As the others ate he only looked out into the woods. Every now and then he looked to me, and I saw the fervor was still there in his gold eyes. He hadn’t found the animal for me. Charlemagne knew that he had not earned the right to eat.

That evening, while the other two dogs slept, Charlemagne sat with me by the fire. He had been with me on every hunt for the last twelve years, and even in his advanced age he was the best hound that I had ever had the pleasure of taking into the field. Just before dawn a wild rooster crowed and stirred me from sleep, followed quickly by the excited barking of the two younger dogs. Charlemagne remained quiet. He would not bark over such trivial things as wild birds. He reserved his voice only for the times when it was most pertinent, for the times when he found something. There was no point in barking if it wasn’t for the hunt. As far as Charlemagne was concerned, there was no point in anything that didn’t revolve around the hunt. It was in this way that the two of us were alike, and how we had become such a deadly pair. He didn’t yip like an untrained pup when he heard the rooster. He only watched as the sun came over the distant mountains, no doubt seeing a chance to redeem the previous night’s failure with the rising of a new day.

But that day was as fruitless as the one before. Days passed as we left the clearing and explored the woods beyond, finding not even the scarcest sign of the animal. I found indicators of deer, of rabbit, but nothing of the beast that I sought. It was as if upon my arrival in the valley that it had simply taken flight and fled. A ridiculous notion, I knew, but all the same it was the only explanation I could think of for the absolute lack of a trail.

It was on the seventh day when I heard Charlemagne bark. I ran to him, leaping over a wide stream and finding the gray dog at the base of a tree. His back was ridged, perfectly level, and he was pointing at a wet spot at the roots of the giant spruce. He stopped his barking as I approached. I knelt down and touched the spot with a gentle finger. It was very moist, and remarkably fresh. I lifted the finger to my nose and smelled ammonia. To me this indicated dehydration, a sure sign of a creature that was running scared and staying away from bodies of water where it might be easily found.

But more than the smell, I trusted Charlemagne. He smelled things in this urine that I could not even fathom. If this had been from a deer or rabbit he would have said nothing to me. But he barked, because he knew it was important. He knew it belonged to our prey.

“Good boy,” I whispered to him.

I stood up and felt the weight of the rifle across my back. I scanned the hill above. At dusk it was impossible for me to make anything out of the shadows that webbed between the trees. Charlemagne seemed uninterested in the direction I looked, and in fact seemed eager to go. The urine was fresh, he was telling me, but the animal had moved on.

But we had found its trail. It was scarce, but it was there. The issue of finding the animal was no longer in question. Now it was only a matter of time.

I whistled for the other dogs and set up camp under the giant spruce. Charlemagne ate heartily that evening.

#

I awoke late in the night to find Charlemagne standing up straight at the flap of my tent. His ears were perked and he was staring into the opaque brown of the canvas, almost as if he could see something through it. I rose silently, being careful not to wake the other dogs. If Charlemagne had indeed sensed something in the campsite beyond, I could not risk the commotion that the others would make. I reached a hand out to touch Charlemagne’s haunches. He twitched his left ear, acknowledging that I was awake and with him.

I leaned forward on the balls of my feet and listened.

I heard it faintly: a delicate shuffling through the bushes as something stealthily encircled my camp. It was sizable enough that I heard the low branches of the trees being brushed aside. There were few animals out here that were as large as this sounded, and only my prey would know not to enter the campsite. It knew we were here, and it was trying hard to make itself unnoticeable. If Charlemagne hadn’t heard it then I wouldn’t have ever known it was there.

I sniffed, and smelled the remains of my campfire. The lingering scent of cooked meat hung in the air. The animal was hungry as well as dehydrated, then.

I heard the shuffling stop, and then felt Charlemagne’s chest go still as he held his breath to listen. I reached slowly to the rifle sling at my feet, and felt the fur of one of the other dogs. It had rolled over in the night and was lying atop my gun. I gritted my teeth in frustration and reached a hand under the dog to lift up its rear, and then I felt the dog move. It woke with a start, ruffling the edges of the canvas tent as it sat up.

The cautious shuffling outside resumed, and the newly awoken dog cocked its head. I lunged for it and wrapped a hand around its snout, but not before it had let off a shattering bark.

The other dog woke at the sound and began barking as well. It sounded off like a klaxon, and between its splitting barks I heard branches snapping and bushes being trampled. Charlemagne barked twice, demanding to be released from the prison of the tent so that he may give chase.

I unzipped the tent and Charlemagne shot out like a bullet. I grabbed my rifle and exited after him, kicking one of the other dogs in anger as I left. I hefted the rifle to my shoulder, looking down the scope and seeing nothing but darkness. I had night vision optics in my bag, but by the time I’d attached it the animal would be long gone. It probably was already at this point, anyway.

I swore and lowered the rifle. The other dogs came barking out of the tent, and I kicked one of them in the side. It whimpered as it tumbled through the dirt. The other one froze and quieted up, smart enough to know when to quit. They crawled back into the tent, heads hung low.

These dogs were turning out to be a liability. Charlemagne was aging, and as much as it pained me I had to acknowledge that he would no longer be an efficient hunter in a few years. I needed to begin training his replacement. I had bought these two dogs from a breeder named Martin. He had insisted that they were of the finest stock, and that they’d be the greatest hunting companions I’d ever had. I doubted this at the time, knowing that no hound could ever match Charlemagne. But if Martin was to be trusted then perhaps these dogs would come close.

They were only pups. Impulsive, imbecilic, purebred pups. Terribly trained and barely even aware of their own existence, let alone the commands and subtle cues of their master. Martin was a swindler, and when I got back to town I’d make sure he never sold another dog again.

But for now I was stuck with these dogs, and they just scared off the prey I’d been hunting for the past week.

I whistled for Charlemagne, but I knew he would not return. Not until he had either caught and killed the animal or the sun rose and illuminated his failure.

#

I found the animal’s tracks the next morning.

Charlemagne came back with the dawn, exhausted and full of pride. He held his head high as he approached me, mud clinging to his wiry coat. I knew he would not boast unless he had achieved something, so I gave him a strip of bacon from the pan that I held above the fire. The other dogs looked on in despair.

I ran a hand over Charlemagne’s face as he savored the crispy morsel. His beard was rough and matted with more than just mud. I drew back my hand and examined my fingernails, seeing dried blood underneath. I inspected Charlemagne’s snout for wounds, and finding none I scratched his ear.

“Good boy,” I said, giving him another strip of bacon.

He’d not killed the animal. If he had, he’d be deep in the forest howling and standing over his kill, waiting for me to find him.

No, he hadn’t killed it last night. But he’d wounded it.  It had fought him off, and he’d dealt it a fearsome blow. Now it was even weaker than it was before.

I packed up the camp and followed Charlemagne out into the woods. He led me and the other dogs to the place where he’d fought the creature. Trampled brush and kicked up earth were spattered with blood. At the edge of the scene, returning into the dark morning forest, were the tracks.

They were long and deep, curved and lithe, as should be from an animal built for running. These were the feet of a fast creature. I judged by the depth and shape of the print that the animal was the largest of its kind that I’d ever hunted. Easily two hundred and thirty pounds; probably much more.

One of the smaller dogs ran in front of me to investigate, tromping across the track in the process. I shouted and shoved it aside. It turned to me, hurt confusion in its dumb eyes.

I brushed the dirt out of the print. I tried to salvage it, but the monstrous four-toed mark of the dog had crushed the whole thing. I swiped the track clear in anger and looked up at the pup. It cowered under my glare, knowing it had done something terrible but not knowing what. Charlemagne would have known what I was angry for. Then again, Charlemagne would never have been so careless as to destroy the only track of the animal I was hunting.

I cursed Martin’s name and stood up. I walked in the direction that the track was headed, Charlemagne and the dogs in tow.

I found some of the animal’s blood on a leaf within the hour. It was thick and bright red, glistening off the sun through the trees. It was twenty minutes until we found the next drop on the root of a spruce up the valley. It was bleeding less than I’d have figured, considering the ferociousness of Charlemagne’s bite and the ragged edges of his teeth. I’d seen the blood on his jaw, and so I knew that the animal must have been bleeding more than the signs were telling me. It had, somehow, slowed its bleeding. This told me that it possessed some sort of healing ability, and the thought intrigued me. This animal was proving to be quite the challenge. It filled me with a bubbling cloud of excitement.

#

I saw it just before dusk that day.

I’d come to a river and let the dogs drink heavily. If not for Charlemagne’s sharp eyes (even sharper than mine at his age) I would not have known to look up. I followed his stare and there it was: across the river and climbing a rockslide towards the ridge of the low mountains that surrounded the valley.

My heart jumped up into my throat. I could barely make it out from our distance. It was almost at the top of the ridge, at the edge of the effective range of my rifle, and in just a moment it would be over and lost again.

I slung my rifle off my back and onto my shoulder. The smaller dogs drank, blissfully unaware. Charlemagne stared at the movement on the rockslide.

I found it in the scope. It was huge, as I’d surmised. I studied the powerful muscles of its forelimbs as it grasped onto ledges and crags, pulling itself ever higher. Black hair fell down its powerful back. The animal kept its grizzled head forward, locked on the goal of the ridge above. It hadn’t seen me yet.

I glanced down to make sure the pups were still ignorant. The last thing I needed was one of them barking and alerting the beast.

I returned my eyes to the rockslide. The animal was nearly at the top. I settled the crosshair on its broad upper back and held my breath.

The pups jumped in fright at the lightning crack of the rifle. Charlemagne perked his ears slightly.

The rocks above the animal’s head exploded. I swore and yanked the bolt back on the rifle, catching a whiff of gunpowder as the empty casing flew from the open breach. I saw the animal falter through the scope. It lost its grip as rocks clattered around it, tumbling down the rockslide five yards. It stopped itself, digging its limbs into the rocks. I dropped the scope a few clicks and fired again.

There was another blast of powdered slate as the bullet passed clean through the animal’s leg. This time it did not catch itself. It crashed down the rocks and fell into the trees bellow.

I lifted the rifle above my head and forded the river. I’d hurt it, no doubt, but it had happened too fast for me to gauge the severity of the wound. Perhaps my shot had shattered its knee and it was lying crippled at the base of the mountain. But it was just as likely that the bullet had pierced only muscle, and even now the animal was healing itself and getting ready to move. I could not allow a moment’s hesitation.

The dogs bounded into the river after me. I entered the trees on the other side and moved to where I’d seen the animal fall, always keeping the tops of the mountains lined up with the sun so as not to lose my direction.

The smaller pups picked up on what was happening and took off into the woods. I whistled, but they paid me no heed. Their hunting instincts were kicking in, and they grew excited for the kill. Charlemagne, having once cornered a wounded stag and having his leg broken because of it, knew to hold back with me. Last night the animal was relatively healthy and looking to flee. But today it was bloodied, with its back to the sheer wall of the valley. There was safety if we stuck together. There was safety near the gun.

The other dogs were not so cautious, and within seconds their barking was a distant echo ahead of me.

It took me seven minutes to reach the base of the mountain, and by that time the pups’ barking had ceased. Charlemagne and I came to a rock filled clearing at the edge of the trees, and found the sight was painted red. A Morse code line of blood ran down the wall of slate, terminating in the clearing where we stood. A small pool of the stuff filled an indent where the animal had come to rest, with more spread out from there. Not all of it belonged to my prey.

One of the pups lay perfectly still, its skull crushed by a large rock. The other was near the edge of the trees. It pawed at me as I entered the clearing. Blood dribbled from its whining lips, and the broken accordion shape of its spine explained its inert hind legs.

The animal was nowhere to be seen.

Charlemagne regarded the crying dog briefly, and then traced his eyes along the tree line. He was only concerned with the hunt. As if on cue, there came a howl of pain from the woods. The animal was not far.

I left the broken pup in the clearing. I would not waste a bullet on it.

#

The forest was quiet, but to my ears it was a deafening cacophony. Hungry insects filled the air, birds threw their mating calls at each other from treetops, and above all my bones felt the heavy drum of my heart. It filled me, surrounded me, made up everything that I was. Under the darkness of the canopy and the thickness of the underbrush, I wished for nothing more than for the chorus of bugs and birds and my anxious heart to quiet. I could only imagine how Charlemagne must be feeling, with his hyper-attuned ears.

Charlemagne came to a sudden halt.

His ears perked and he stared straight forward. If I were any other hunter, anyone else alongside him, then I would have followed his gaze ahead. But I knew Charlemagne, and I knew that that stare was unfocused. He released sight from his active senses and channeled all of his attention into listening. I stopped alongside him, and I waited.

I watched his ears twitch ever so slightly. Seeking. Searching. Finding.

With the calmness and grace of a hawk, Charlemagne turned his head upwards. I followed him.

The animal was directly above us. One of its muscular forearms wrapped around the trunk of the tree. Its long feet- built for crossing large expanses of land- awkwardly tried to grasp the branch upon which it stood. Blood streaked down its thick calves, staining its clumsy right foot a deep crimson. The hole that my bullet had made in its leg continued to spew forth a deep black.

For a moment none of us moved. Charlemagne locked his gold eyes with the blue ones of the animal, and I felt the life saving burden of the rifle in my hands. The animal had nowhere to go; it was not made for climbing. It had made a gamble going into the trees. Its next move would determine whether the gamble had paid off.

It crouched slightly, and Charlemagne barked.

Then it dropped. Not towards me, but on to Charlemagne. It must have seen him as the larger threat, likely not understanding the lethality of my rifle. Charlemagne tried to avoid it, but gravity brought down the animal quicker than he could avoid. He collapsed under the creature’s weight.

I fired too soon.

Charlemagne did not yelp as the animal rolled him over and crushed its forelimbs into his throat. He did not cry as it cut him off from air and pressed his neck into the mud. Charlemagne only growled and snapped, not even bothering to fight for oxygen. He spent every last reserve of strength trying to kill the animal on top of him.

Everything moved in slow motion. My hands fumbled on the bolt of the rifle, sweat sliding against steel as I desperately chambered another round. Charlemagne barked and clawed, biting in vain at the face of the creature that held him. The animal wrapped its hand around Charlemagne’s snout, closing his teeth hard on his tongue. Charlemagne did not yelp even as blood gushed from between his jaws. The animal jammed its finger into Charlemagne’s eye up to the knuckle.

I shouted and fired the rifle without even aiming. Blood exploded from the animal’s shoulder and it screamed. I racked the bolt again and stepped forward, kicking the animal in the chest and knocking it off Charlemagne. I stepped a foot on its throat and then brought the rifle up to my face, looking down the sites at the animal under my boot.

It struck at my boots with sweaty, hairless hands. But strong as it was, I was stronger. It had had three weeks to adapt to the valley; I had had a lifetime.

Tears streamed from its eyes even as it continued to beat and claw at my legs.

“Please,” the animal said. “Please… I—I don’t… please…”

I looked over at Charlemagne. Thick blood oozed out of his ruptured eye and stuck to his gray fur. His legs no longer kicked. His jaw no longer snapped.

No whimper had ever escaped his lips.

I looked back at the animal. The hair along its jaw line was scraggly and matted with dried saliva. The features of its face were shallow and poorly shaped. Its nose was too small, its brow too heavy. What a poor trophy it would make. I scowled. Martin had sold me yet another subpar specimen.

Its lips trembled. Its blue eyes looked up at me with that faint self-awareness that all prey seems to have at that moment that it realizes that its life is at an end.

“P—please…” It grabbed my leg now. It was no longer fighting. “Why would you… please don’t—why would you do this?”

I closed my left eye. The sights of the rifle and the face of the animal were all I saw.

It sobbed. “I have a famil—“

I fired.

#

I left the animal there in the forest along with the broken pups. I called for the helicopter and had Charlemagne’s body airlifted out. I arranged for him to be stuffed, so that he might stand in my parlor alongside all of the mighty beasts that he’d helped me defeat.

But I did not go with. Instead I gave specific orders to my manservant.

I made camp by the river, happy in the knowledge that my helicopter would be dropping off Martin the following morning. He was fat and inexperienced. I figured I’d have him bagged before the following sunset.

Short Story- FOUL TASTE

“Alton Colfax.”

He spun around, his heels crunching sleet and frozen dirt. His eyes flitted through the trees, seeing only darkness and the rhythmic shaking of dead branches. He held his breath to listen. The heaviness of the winter had settled in, smothering the life out of the world. No insects buzzed by his nose like they did in the heat of summer. No nightbirds called longingly for the sun to rise. He heard nothing but the faint shuff of the twigs scraping each other as the cold wind stumbled ceaselessly through the treetops. His heartbeat rose in his ears like thrum of a river: fast, steady, and threatening.

The weight of the silence forced his thoughts into focus, despite the whiskey that spun his mind like taffy. The wind was not enough to cause such a profound audible hallucination. It was faint and distant, cold and harmless. Like the threats of a beggar after being denied pittance. Even a powerful sudden gust would not conjure up such a direct and sharp sound as he had heard.

Had he heard it? He could smell the whiskey on his own breath. Rank and cheap. The kind that burned before his tongue had the chance to taste it, and then burned again instead of tasting. The kind that burned its way down his throat and reminded him that this was the only type of swill he could afford now. Acrid and smoky beyond any hope of pleasantness. Vengeful the next day like a god who saw all his sins.

He swirled the bottle slightly as he stared into the trees. His gloveless fingers couldn’t feel the bottle-- the dark blue of his skin told him that he might never feel it again-- but he felt its weight hanging from the end of his arm, and the muscles of his hand knew where to go. It was the lack of sensation and yet the presence of something that told him the bottle was still there. Touch was gone, but tactile functionality remained. A strange sensation, feeling without feeling.

He sniffed his breath again. The forest was quiet. No names being whispered. Not a sound.

It must have been the lousy whiskey.

He turned back to walk through the forest, his boots penetrating the silence with heavy crunching. Alton Colfax, he thought. It had been years since he’d used that name. Decades, even. How deep the whiskey must have dug in his mind to pull that up. Alton Colfax was a dead man, as far as he was concerned. Long dead, and no one missed him.

He sensed the treacherous weight of the whiskey bottle in his hand, knowing it was there without feeling it. What was in this damned pisswater that could summon up the name Alton Colfax? He drank to forget that man, not to be drearily reminded of him in the dark of winter.

He felt a fire sparking in his gut, coalescing into a searing spider of rage that clutched onto his spine and crawled its way up to his mind. There it directed his eyes to the bottle in his blue fingers, demanding justice be served to this betraying liquid. Cheap, labelless stuff. Sold to him by a Dutchman who wouldn’t know fine booze from paint thinner. The spider ran its burning legs across the folds of his brain, plucking at his strings and commanding him to hurl the deceitful poison into a tree. He lifted the bottle in compliance, once again experiencing that strange sensation of feeling the weight shift in his hand without the nerves of his fingers telling him it was there.

The bottle was still half full.

His eyes stared into the dark liquid, the faint light of the moon reflecting its dirty brown color. Wicked stuff, doing him no favors.

Just throw it and be done with it.

The spider began to shrink, pulling back its hairy red legs and retreating into his stomach. It called up its brother, a blue thing that reminded him of how cold he was, and how warm the whiskey in his belly felt. Half full. How much had he spent on this bottle? How much did he have left?

And he was no longer Alton Colfax, in any case. No one was. No reason to be angry at the name. Alton Colfax was dead, and the world was better for it.

He was suddenly aware that the wind in the trees had stopped. Dead silence penetrated his thoughts and brought the unwanted specter of focus back to the front of his mind.

He kept his eyes on the trees, barely breathing. He tried to recall why he had walked so deep into the woods, but his thoughts dodged left and right, making the trees sway ominously. He knew why other men had come here, in the past. They wandered here to be forgotten, to flee and get lost. They wandered here to die. Cowards and mourners came here to abandon the world. Their motivations were clear, but his were not. He could not fathom what he was thinking in coming out into the woods. It was the whiskey, no doubt. Damned stuff.

His wet boots began to bite at his toes, angry with him for keeping his feet in the snow for so long.

“Alton Colfax,” came the voice from the woods.

His eyes shot around. He was sure he’d heard it that time.

He stopped his breath entirely as something moved through the trees. No, not through the trees. It was the trees. A black, indefinable shape lurching amongst the shadows all around him. His eyes couldn’t make out any particular thing, but all the same he saw it. It groped through the canopy as the branches fluttered without wind, and at the same time it crawled beneath the bushes and slithered around the trunks. It was without form, and simultaneously everywhere around him.

“Why have you come to me?”

He would have dropped the bottle, if the cold hadn’t frozen his hand into a vice around its neck.

“Who’s there?” he said.

The branches shook and slowly bent towards him.

“You’ve found me, Alton Colfax. Why do you come? What do you seek?”

His mind screamed at his feet to run, but they knew better. He could feel the thing’s presence everywhere around him. Circling him, stalking him, surrounding him. But for some reason it did not fill the spot where he stood. It waited in the darkness just beyond his reach. This presence was hungry and ravenous. He knew that if he were to move, to step into this thing, that he would die.

“Who’ve I found?”

“What are you trying to find?”

Myths race around his skull. Stories of witches and ghosts and pagan demons rose and fell, frantically vying for the position of most logical explanation in his mind. But above all that, two names kept appearing before him. The first was his own, or the one he had once called his own in another life. And the other was the name that had forced him to abandon Alton Colfax all together.

“Johnny?” he said quietly.

The trees shook and hummed.

He swallowed. “Johnny Agincourt? Is… is that you?”

“No,” came the voice.

Again he felt the closeness of the thing all around him. It tasted him, he could feel it. He couldn’t explain how, but deep in his subconscious he knew that the thing was waiting to feed. To feed on him. But what was it waiting for?

“What are you?” he asked.

“Curious,” it said. “Who is this Johnny Agincourt?”

The whiskey came up in his throat. In stark contrast to Alton Colfax, Johnny Agincourt was a name that he thought of every single day. It was why he drank. Why he ran. Why did this thing care about Johnny Agincourt?

“No one,” he said.

“Not no one, I think. Is he why you came here?”

Was he? He couldn’t remember. He had come into the woods for something, and if the whiskey led him here then it was probably about Johnny. Johnny. Even thinking his name made his guts turn and forced his eyes closed. It had been ten years since he’d last seen the boy. He saw Johnny’s face, streaked with terror the night he died. The last look that anyone ever saw on him. And the terror? Its source? Why, it was Alton Colfax, of course. Alton Colfax with the gun in his hand.

But no. He was not Alton Colfax anymore. He hadn’t been for a long, long time.

And yet the thing was right. He had come here a reason, to this forest where men go to die. And if not for Johnny, then for what?

“Justice,” he said. “Met upon me.”

“I do not deliver justice. Tell me, why do you think you need justice?”

“Does it matter? It’s what I’ve come here for, isn’t it? Why I’ve come to find my death in this damned forest? Just be done with it.”

“I’ve found you all come here for different reasons,” the voice said. It stirred, and the trees stirred with it. “It amuses me to learn of them. What have you done, Alton Colfax, that makes you want to die?”

“How do you know my name?”

“I know much, but not everything. Now please, sate my curiosity. Why do you wish to die?”

He felt the bottle in his grasp, and a distant part of his mind remembered that it was still half full. Distant, but very real. His eyes scanned the trees, and still he found nothing but that black malevolence that existed within and around them.

“I’ve done terrible things,” he said. “Monstrous things that hurt a lot of people who I cared a lot about.” The memories, so long repressed, welled up and seeped into the cracks of his mind. He ground his teeth. “I took a good man’s life out of greed. I deserve punishment.”

“I don’t deal in punishment. I can promise no absolution. Only annihilation.”

“It’s what I deserve.”

“I must tell you that Johnny Agincourt will not be recompensed, no matter what happens to you. There will be nothing as primitive as justice met in the afterlife, because there is no such thing. Your actions are not righteous, nor are they wicked. You will be neither rewarded nor punished. Do you still wish to die, Alton Colfax?”

He thought of the gun, of the bullet as it entered Johnny’s neck and obliterated his spine, of the paltry sum that he did it all for. He thought of the rivers of whiskey that he’d drank in the time since, all the while hoping that some relief would be found in its foul taste.

It never came. It never would come.

“Yes,” he said.

“Very good.”

He felt the darkness closing in around his ankles, and the feeling left his feet entirely. It crawled up his legs and enveloped his knees. They went numb, but he didn’t buckle. He was kept upright by the unseen thing as it slowly moved up his body, sucking the life from his flesh.

“What are you?” he asked as his arms lost all sensation and shriveled into blackened twigs. “A demon?”

“I’ve been called many things, very few of them accurate. To call me a demon implies many other things that simply are not true.”

The strange loss of feeling reached his neck. He felt his lungs giving up, his heart slowing down beat by beat. It wasn’t painful, not like he had expected death to be. It was merely a cessation, like being turned off. Certainly less terrible than a bullet to the neck.

“What do you call yourself?” he asked.

“I do not. However, there is one name that your kind has called me that I’ve grown fond of.”

“What is that?” he asked as his jaw and tongue went numb.

“God.”

Then Alton Colfax was devoured by the darkness, bottle in hand, and the forest returned to its winter silence.