Chapter 36, Part 2: Blood in the Wandering Market.

Howdy folks, thanks for dropping by! The usual warnings apply: This is a rough draft so expect questionable grammar, hackneyed dialogue, adult language and situations, dropped plotlines, continuity errors, and the occasional typo. If, despite all these things, you still find yourself enjoying the story, consider sharing with your friends.





Aristarchus raised an eyebrow and his eyes darted to the people flowing in and out of the gate. “Well then. You’d better come back to The Armoury,” he said. “Doesn’t sound like the kind of conversation we should have out here.”

“You might need more people on the gate. You might need a lot more.”

He looked to the other black-uniformed members at the gate and spoke to the gear. “Miranda, run ahead and let Duke Penhold know we’re on our way. Bring twenty more constables back with you—” He saw the expression on Aleph’s face. “Thirty more,” he amended.

He gave Aleph a questioning look. She shrugged. “That might do it. I’m not trying to tell you what to do, but you might ask the SWAT and SMAT teams to begin gearing up as well.”

“SMAT?” asked Sam.

“Special magics and tactics,” said Alpeh.

Aristarchus cocked a white eyebrow. “Really? Is it that bad?”

“It’s worse than that, but we’ve got to start somewhere,” she said tensely.

Aristarchus gave Miranda, a nod. “Get them back here double-time.”

“By your command,” she said in an oddly musical voice, and the gear sprung off into the crowd and out of sight.

Sam did a double take at the construct’s back as she wove through the dense crowd and looked at Aristarchus in question. “Did I? Did she just…?”

“Noticed that? They think it’s funny as hell to mess with the rest of us. Fracking toasters,” he said with a smile that contained no trace of malice.

“You might want to start paying overtime to the members about to go off shift and bring in anyone who can work on their day off,” said Aleph.

Aristarchus shrugged. “No phones, no network, no overtime.”

Aleph looked to Dimitri.

“What?”

“Can you help with that?”

“I’m talented as fuck,” began Dimitri.

“And modest,” said Sam.

“And modest,” agreed Dimitri. “But there are limits. I can’t just make a high-speed network out of thin air.”

“I don’t need a high-speed network, I need basic two-way communication. I’d be happy with two cans and some string if it meant I could get in touch with people.”

“Oh, yeah, I could probably arrange that, then,” he said reaching into his pocket. “Gimme a sec.”

“We’ve had our people working on the problem for the last three hours,” said Aristarchus. “The hardware at the network towers has been sabotaged. How are you able to do what our own technomancers cannot?”

“Thank you!” said Dimitri, pointing at Aristarchus. “Thank you. At least someone can manage to not call me a Webmage.”

“I’ve had sensitivity training,” said Aristarchus without missing a beat. “Please answer the question.”
“Well, your guys could get in trouble for, say, co-opting someone’s device without their knowledge, right?”

“Yes.”

Dimitri swiped his screen and spoke quickly and quietly into his phone. “Oh, look! A bird,” he said pointing up at the black sky and tapped his screen.

There was a chorus of chimes and chirps around them as the notification beeps of other phones and devices immediately around them sounded.

Dimitri’s shoulders hunched and he turned to face the two officers who had been standing silently behind Aristarchus. “Not that there’s anything wrong with birds,” he said, careful not to make eye contact with the constable who had red feathers for her hair.

Aristarchus gave him a level look before reaching for his pocket.

“Don’t bother,” said Dimitri. It’s just going to show that an app updated itself.

There was another more faint chorus from devices further away. Then another. Then another, the chirps, quacks, and dings spreading in an expanding ring until they were too faint to hear.

“It might take a couple minutes, but you three should be able to text in a couple minutes.”

“What about you?” asked Sam.

Dimitri cocked an eyebrow at him. “I’d be a pretty shitty technomancer without connectivity, now wouldn’t I? Unlike yours, my device has some special mods.”

“How long will it last?” asked Aleph jiggling her phone at him.

“As long as I want it to. The outage is affecting the network, not the devices themselves.”

Aristarchus turned to Aleph. “Should we be alright with this?”

“Not normally, but I’m willing to let it go for now.”

Aleph turned to face him. “With all due respect, I’d suggest that it’s time to start tracking down the duty officer to start getting in touch with members who can be brought in.”

“You sure about this?” Aristarchus asked, looking worried. “The overtime is going to be worth a king’s ransom.”

“It’s not my call to make, but I’ll make you a deal. If we end up not needing them I’ll pay the overtime myself.”

“You’re starting to worry me, Aleph.”

“You have no idea how much you should be.”

Aristarchus turned to the remaining two constables. “Grab the barkers from the gate to keep you company until the reinforcements arrive. They’re used to cracking the odd skull. Stay here as a visible presence, but don’t hang around if things start to get dicey.” They nodded, the avian constable’s red feathers puffing slightly as she did.

Aristarchus motioned for the rest of them to follow and began to quickly make his way into the bustling market. The gate opened onto a wide avenue packed with shoppers and semi-permanent vendors. Sam could just make out the rise of the Whitebridge over the heads of the crowd and walls of the Armoury a kilometer distant.

The stretch of cobbled avenue between the gate and the Armoury was known as The Armoury Walk. It ran straight as an arrow between the Black Market on the left side and the White on the right. It was one of the most walked stretches of cobblestones in the Aether and it was only the very tip of the iceberg that was the Wandering Market.

It was common knowledge in the Community that different parts of the Aether were known for different things. If you wanted interior design, you went to Fey for custom-grown furniture and living wallpaper. If you needed dental work, you went to see the Shojo and got fixed up for the price of a kiss and a bottle of good whiskey. Had a craving for the best noodles in all of known existence at three in the morning? No problem, you took a trip to visit the Panotii and made certain you brought your own drinking water. If, however, you needed to find the impossible—or at the very least the improbable—on a tight budget, the only place to go was The Wandering Market.

The Market itself occupied a square exactly two kilometers on each side. It was often said it this size, not for any love of the metric system, but because the beings who originally conceived it realized that the area of four square kilometers is the perfect size one needs to become utterly lost.

The Market was packed with every sort of creature that the human brain could fathom, and a healthy assortment of others that it tried its very best to ignore. Intelligent colonies of fungus bartered with the sentient shadows cast by divinities long since forgotten for the best price on a case of macaroni and cheese. A family of octopus-like beings, out for the day to shop and see the sights, piloted conveyances of glass and metal through the crowds, the largest with a garland of tinsel strung around the clear pilot’s dome. Vendors of every description attended wheeled carts, collapsible tables, and fabric-draped stalls of all possible configurations. Strings of fairy lights made with real fairies, hissing kerosene lanterns, and glowing glass vials of different hues and brightnesses propped the market up against the surrounding darkness.

Fragrant smoke rose into the still air like weeds rising from the bottom of a mill pond to be consumed by shoals of giant, luminous, goldfish who flashed and swam lazily through the rising columns. As they passed overhead they cast golden disco ball light onto the rows and stalls beneath them. As Sam watched, one of the enormous fish attempted to eat another’s gently glowing poop, only to spit it out a moment later.

It was The Market in all its filthy, noisy, smelly splendour and Sam was so caught up in his surroundings that he completely missed the assassin. They passed her, just another Christmas shopper inspecting a selection of Fey silks, completely failing to notice anything unusual about her. None of them could be blamed since there really was nothing unusual about her. Until she drew the gun
Whether one of her crows had spotted the gun or if Aleph’s instincts were just that good, Sam would never know, but the goddess reacted so quickly that by the time Sam realized anything was happening at all it was over. Aleph spun on a heel and slapped at the woman’s hand. The gun went off with a cough of compressed air and Aristarchus collapsed to the ground without so much as a grunt.

Chapter 36, Part One: Blood in the Wandering Market

Hi all! Thanks for stopping by. The usual warnings apply. This story has adult language and situations. It's a rough draft so expect any / all of the following: Grammatical errors, pacing problems, hackneyed dialogue, gratuitous swearing. If you find yourself actually enjoying the story, please consider sharing it.

Sam, Dimitri, and Aleph kept their heads down while pretending to inspect a fruit display at a Panotii ethnic market on Kingsway. Thankfully, Kingsway was one of those streets that had the same name in Sam’s Vancouver as it did in Senak, so at least he had a notion of where he was.

Getting this far hadn’t been easy. It had been a constant game of running hide and seek with the KSDs, both singly and in groups. Sam’s shoulder ached where he’d been tagged him with a baseball bat during an ambush nearly an hour ago. The bat had been aimed at his head but he’d been able to roll with the strike and his shoulder had taken the worst of it.

Aleph led them in a roundabout route through the city, occasionally doubling back, occasionally prodding them into a run, but always on the move. Whenever he looked up there was a crow winging overhead or perched on a nearby roof.

Their destination was the Armoury, and if it had been as simple as that, they would have already arrived. No, the Armoury was smack in the middle of the Wandering Market and the thing about the Wandering Market was that it wandered. Even if you knew generally where it was on any given day, it still took some time to track down the entrance.

“Let’s go,” said Aleph in a low voice, putting down the pale spiky tuber she’d been handling and moving away from the market at a walk. She kept her head down looking at her useless smartphone, yet somehow managed not to jostle or bump into anyone. She moved through the crowd like a bead of mercury. Even with his head up, Sam was still shoved and knocked as he made his way through the press.

Floating in the air ahead of them, Sam could see the two giant bug-eyed goldfish, Abeam and Windward, marking the location of the Wandering Market in the near distance. They were getting close. Sam could hear the calls of the Market Barkers funnelling people toward the mouth of the Market like a Basking Shark devouring krill as it made its plodding way through the city.

They wouldn’t need the barkers to direct them today, Aleph had lined them up perfectly with the main gate. Farther down the street the crowd parted and he could just make out the black uniforms of the Duke’s Own keeping an eye on people going in and out of the main gates. It would be a straight shot down the street with no hiding places or stalls to duck into.

The Market stretched reality down the centre of the wide front gate, buildings, people, and anything else that got in the Market’s way, elongating like taffy and zooming off to either side like water at the prow of a ship.

 Anyone caught in the wake of the Market would notice absolutely very little beyond a faint tingle as they were warped around the perimeter. Sam had tried it once, and had been so underwhelmed by the hour and a half-long experience that he hadn’t even bothered to buy the souvenir t-shirt at the rear gate, “I Got Warped by The Wandering Market, Senak.”

An underground industry, wholly invented, promoted, and perpetuated by the same t-shirt vendors, had been created around the myth that children conceived while being warped by the magic of the Market would be especially talented. Nobody really believed it, but the one thing it did do was provide an excuse for public exhibitionism. For many who visited the market, an excuse for illicit sex with a random stranger in a place far from home was all that was needed.  Engaging in the activity was known as “getting twisted,” and in Senak it was the equivalent of joining the mile high club without having to worry about airsickness or nosey flight attendants.

It wasn’t uncommon to find various and sundry species from across the breadth of the Aether squishing and otherwise getting their freak-on in darkened corners between buildings as The Market overtook them. Hotels that looked to be in the direct path of The Market would find any available rooms snatched up as The Market approached, and knew from long experience to make sure they had extra mops and buckets on hand.

On top of directing people to the entrance, the Market Barker’s job was also to evict the less discreet couples, trios, or spontaneous orgies they came across. As a matter of custom, they didn’t look too closely down some of the better-concealed niches and alleys. As the Market departed any given part of the city it always left a scattering of breathless and moistened beings, furtively grinning and adjusting their clothing in its wake.

The t-shirt vendors trailed behind in the wake of the market and were available for those wishing to commemorate the event with novelty t-shirts in cuts and sizes guaranteed to fit any being from the many worlds of the Aether. Most of the Ts were bought in a haze of endorphins that quickly passed. While it was usually a fun and harmless activity, most people didn’t want to advertise the fact that they got a thrill from bonking in public. For this reason, many of the t-shirts ended up at local second hand and goodwill stores days to weeks later. The vendors knew this, and could be often be seen scouring the shops to pick up the same shirt, usually for a fraction of the price they sold it for. In this way the circle of life, and the circle of commerce, both, ground on.

“Get ready,” said Aleph, jerking Sam out of his thoughts, “We’re going to have to run.”

Sam swallowed and cast his eyes from side to side. He couldn’t see any of the alchemical drones, but he also didn’t have a flock of surrogate eyes flying overhead. He’d have to trust her word for it.
“Run,” she hissed, leaping ahead and scattering a trio of Tengu carrying bags of blown glass Christmas ornaments. Sam had been readying himself for Aleph’s call and the pent-up adrenalin in his system made his thighs feel like they were spring loaded as he took off.

If he was fast, Dimitri was faster, he ran ahead of both of them, his long legs propelling him down the street like a state-sponsored Eastern Block Greyhound with an ass full of rocket fuel.

Sam swivelled his head as he ran, certain that at any moment he’d be tackled to the ground by a dead-eyed drone and shot. The drones, and more importantly, Knox, wouldn’t give up now. The Wandering Market wasn’t exactly safe, but The Duke’s Own had a small army’s worth of armed police officers patrolling it with a reputation for coming down hard on anyone making trouble.

To Sam’s relieved puzzlement, the ambush and consequent messy death he’d been expecting never came to pass, and the three of them made it to the gate without incident. Four black-uniformed members of the Duke’s Own met them there. They were a strange mix of different beings, even for The Market. Two of their number were nominally human, and Sam passed over these to instead focus on the other two.

The first had long red feathers for hair, a pair of golden avian eyes, and wore an ornate copper mask that covered her nose and mouth. Beyond merely decorative, it appeared to be some kind of filtering device. The final member of the group was one of the wood and brass constructs that the Duke’s Own had been using since the early nineteen hundreds. Brass sigils in a state of constant movement across her spring steel and mahogany frame. Her face was made of molded leather, and her body had the rounded hips, and bust that, while modest, clearly identified her as female. She nodded to him as they arrived. Sam grinned and nodded back.

One of the final two humanoid members stepped forward to talk with Aleph. Sam didn’t know much about rank, but he wore three silver bars on his epaulets, his name tag read, “Dane.” He was a grizzled looking creature, some variant of human from a part of the Aether that Sam couldn’t immediately identify.

His eyes were a bit too far apart and he was too wide across the shoulders to easily fit in back home, probably still a member of Homo Sapiens though. He wore a trimmed white beard across his dark, creased face, and his long white mane was tied back in a tail. 

“Aleph,” he greeted her, with a voice so deep that sounded like it originated from inside a bass cello. “It’s good to see you back,” he said enfolding her hand with one huge mitt. When he spoke Sam noticed his teeth were thicker, and his canines much larger than his own. Maybe he wasn’t quite as close to Homo Sapiens as Sam originally thought.

That was the problem with trying to figure out different species in the mix of The Market. You never knew what evolutionary lineage might have become dominant on any given world. All it took was for one sabretooth tiger to get peckish at the wrong moment and, wham! Your whole evolutionary branch got pruned. There was a good chance this person had more in common with Homo Neanderthalensis or Denisovans than he did Homo sapiens, and that wasn’t even taking into account the cross-breeding. If there was one thing Homo Sapiens was good at, it was getting it on with the neighbours, even when they weren't necessarily quite the same species.

Chapter 35, Part 2: Going Over the Top.

Hi all! Thanks for stopping by. The usual warnings apply. This story has adult language and situations. It's a rough draft so expect any / all of the following: Grammatical errors, pacing problems, hackneyed dialogue, gratuitous swearing. If you find yourself actually enjoying the story, please consider sharing it.

Thanks! -S





“Oh fuck.” Stirling aimed his ass into a nearby plastic seat, it was either that or he’d have ended up sprawled on the floor.

“Yeah, you could say that,” Rebbecca agreed, but now in the discordant three-part voice of a thoroughly pissed off ghost. “This is what happens when you fuck with the sanctity of people’s credit cards, Stirling!” indicating to her ethereal form. “Congratulations, I’m dead.”

She came to a complete stop and stared at him. “What the fuck did you do to your hair?”

Stirling put a hand to his bare scalp. “It’s a disguise. Do you like it?”

“Don’t change the subject!”

“Becca…” he began.

“Rebbecca! My name is Rebbecca!” she practically growled at him through her teeth. “When you get somebody killed the least you can do is get their fucking name right!”

“Um,”

“Say it!”

“Rebbecca. Your name is Rebbecca.”

“You will fix this, Stirling, or by god, I will haunt your ass until the day you die, then I’m going to haunt your pathetic ghost.”

“But you’re dead, how am I supposed to fix that?”

“Not dead,” Lloyd put in. Our bodies are still at least partly alive.”

“And what am I supposed to do about it? I’m not Miracle Max.”

“You will try,” Rebbecca hissed.

“Fine. Where do you think I should start?” he asked.

“It’s not hard, we just need to be revived with a dab of Panacea, but that’s not going to be the hard part,” said Lloyd.

Stirling waved his hand in a gesture indicating that he should move it along.

“They started reviving people today but their spirits are still stuck on the outside. I think they spiked the revival dose with something that stole our place. It’s contaminated our bodies with some kind of spiritual taint.”

“Taint?”

Lloyd nodded earnestly.

“So I have to get rid of this taint?”

“I don’t think there’s anything we can do until it’s gone,” Lloyd confirmed. “We’re stuck outside of our bodies.”

“So, to clarify, you want me to destroy this guy’s taint?”

Lloyd was beginning to look confused. “Um. Yes.”

“Would you say then that you would like me to savage his taint until he squeals,” Stirling asked, trying hard to keep a straight face.

Rebbecca sighed and rolled her eyes.

“That would be great,” said Lloyd slowly.

“His taint won’t know what hit it,” said Stirling warming to the subject. “It’ll be like I took a cheese grater to his taint.”

Rebbecca looked at Lloyd, then at the grin that Stirling was unsuccessfully trying to keep from his face.

“Oh grow up.”

“Come on, it’s a little bit funny. He asked me to destroy some guy’s taint.”

“I was just murdered. My body is resting in a barrel of preservative crap in the next room. Not finding a lot of things chuckle-worthy today, Stirling.”

“Sure, you died, but here you are. It’s not all bad, you can still speak with me.”

“Well there’s the stormcloud to my silver lining, but now that we’re on the subject, why is that?”

“Why is what?”

“Why can I speak to you, you fuckwit!?”

“It’s a thing that I’ve been able to do for a while,” he said modestly. Even though he knew she was dead, he was having a hard time feeling as bad as he should. It was hard to grieve for someone who was yelling at him.

“He’s a Necromancer,” Lloyd helpfully put in.

“A what?”

“A death magician.”

Rebbecca turned to him. “Is that true?”

“Technically,” he shrugged. “I like to think of myself as a living-impaired magician. Death is so negative sounding.”

“When were you going to tell me?!”

“What? Was I supposed to have a coming out party to let everyone know that I’m the ghost whisperer?”

“Yes.”

“Of all the knacks, necromancy is the most hated,” said Lloyd. “He would have been hunted and killed by the Alchemists.”

“Yeah see, you aren’t the only one having a bad day,” said Stirling, pointing to his battered face. “See this right here? Alchemists.”

“Oh, boo hoo. You got jumped by a bunch of chemistry nerds and You’ve got a couple bruises that will be gone in a few weeks tops. I’m dead. I feel soooo bad for you.”

“Whatever. Let’s make sure the coast is clear then go and see.”

“Don’t you ‘whatever’ me… See what?”

“Your body of course.” He cast a glance at her. Unless you’re naked. You aren’t naked are you?”

“No!”

“Let’s go and see then. I can see what I’m up against. It’ll be like a thirty-second version of Stand by Me.”

“Not everything needs to be broken down into a pop culture reference, Stirling.”

“Since you’re dead you can be River Phoenix, and I think we both know I’m Wil Wheaton,” he continued blithely.

“You are so twisted.”

“No, twisted would be asking you to wanted to pet the leech.”

There was a long beat before realization hit and her face twisted in disgust. “Ew!… that’s just… ew! What is wrong with you!?”

The spirits began tricking back into the lunch room. None of them could locate the homicidal duo, though with the uproar in the warehouse getting any information was difficult.

Stirling decided that would have to be good enough and began to move toward the door to the lunch room again, now with Rebbecca and Lloyd following behind.

On the other side of the door, the air was chill and rank with the smell of preservative and shit. Rows of barrels stacked two deep on heavy-duty steel shelving racks went from one side of the warehouse to the other. Most of the barrels were empty, their lids tossed onto the floor which was wet with a slurry of different coloured fluids.

Stirling nearly gagged at the smell. It was beyond anything he’d never hoped never to experience.
“I let my apartment get messy from time to time, but holy crap.”

Rebbecca led him to a rack on the far left side of the warehouse where a single plastic barrel remained sealed.

“I’m in there,” she said pointing to a blue barrel resting on a wooden pallet.

On the thick plywood shelf above it, there was an old-fashioned green bottle with a medicine dropper screwed onto the top.
Stirling grabbed the bottle and gave its contents a little shake. Whatever was inside looked black and viscous through the green glass.

“That’s the revival dose,” said Lloyd. “It looks like Panacea, but there’s something wrong with it.”
“Huh.” Stirling unscrewed the stopper and gave the bottle a sniff. What hit him wasn’t a physical smell, so much as it was a feeling of greasy decay and red hunger. The most worrying part was that it resonated through his entire being like his soul was a bass string being stroked by a broken bottle.

“Blah!” He moved his head back.

“What is it?” said Rebbecca.

“Smells like taint,” he replied. He put the bottle in his jacket pocket and zipped it shut.

“So this is you?” he said, gesturing down at the nondescript barrel.

Rebbecca nodded and Stirling wrapped his arms around the lid and twisted his whole body to break the seal. His head throbbed even worse than usual and he saw black spots in front of his eyes before he gave up.

“Fuck. I feel bad for laughing at women who struggle with pickle jars now,” he gasped.

 On his second attempt, the lid finally let go and he nearly fell over as he twisted off balance. Stirling rested his aching head on top of the lid, the fumes in the room were beginning to make him feel lightheaded. He lifted the lid off and could see the crown of Rebecca’s blue-haired head bobbing just above the level of the preservative.

“That stuff is going to be hell on your hair,” he predicted, looking down at the murky preservative.
It was only Rebbecca’s yelled warning that gave him time to crane his neck around to see the knife sink into his back. He didn’t cry out, but it wasn’t for lack of trying, he simply couldn’t. Every time he tried, the pain made him gasp and hitch in a breath.

“That was for Elanor,” said a voice in his ear.

Stirling barely heard the words, his world had narrowed down to the white pain in his chest and the effort to take in his next breath. He staggered around to face his attacker. It was the woman from the scene of the crash, still dressed in her grime-spattered outfit complete with courier bag strapped across her shoulder.

“Elanor? Who?” he managed to wheeze on a pair of outgoing breaths.

“I thought you might have been innocent. When you fought to save those people, I thought they might be wrong about you,” she said, not looking at him as she spoke.

Stirling’s brain finally put the pieces together and he remembered where he’d seen her. She was the cardio goddess who was fighting off the invaders at Strangefellows.

“You. Strangefellows?” he managed to gasp before staggering back to rest against the rack of plastic barrels. “Ow.”

“But then I followed you here, and I find you working for Knox,” she continued, staring down at the knife in her hand.

He shook his head in denial, “Friend,” he managed to get out, throwing out a limp arm to point halfheartedly at the barrel where Rebbecca’s body lay.

The courier finally looked up at him, “And that tells me all I need to know about you. The only friends Knox has are monsters.” She came at him again, but this time the impact was muted, almost like someone winged him in the side with a bean bag. Stirling thought that she must have missed until he looked down and saw the hole in the front of his jacket.

The courier stepped back again and stared at him. He shook his head. “Friend,” he gasped again pointing at the barrel. His legs were beginning to feel even more rubbery than they had, and there was a tickle starting in his throat, coughing was going to suck. He revised that opinion as she brought the bloody knife to his throat.

The sound of a heavy door scraping open echoed through the warehouse, breaking off any meaningful conversation they might have continued to have, like “That’s my throat, I need that part," "Quit putting holes in my jacket,” or “Call me an ambulance, you crazy bitch!”

Before Stirling’s brain could absorb what was happening, he was lifted with strong arms and stuffed into one of the newly-empty barrels. Between the stab wounds and the residual car crash injuries, he was introduced to whole new vistas of heretofore unimagined pain. He came to from his momentary blackout just in time to hear the lid twist onto his barrel, and for the last crack of light to disappear.
Rebbecca’s luminous face came into view through the side of the barrel. She examined him critically. “Fine,” she eventually admitted, “maybe you are having a bad day.”

Chapter 35, Part One: Going Over the Top.

The usual warnings apply to this week's installment. I'm not trying to offend, so if foul language and adult situations are not what you are looking for, read no farther. For those of us who don't mind that kind of thing, thanks for stopping by. I hope you enjoy!




Stirling sat on a cement crash barrier in a Safeway parking lot feeling wretched. He’d already downed more painkillers than it said was safe on the bottle, but given how his head and neck felt, his kidneys start could do their part for the cause.

He’d never been in a serious car accident before, and up to this point had no way to fully appreciate what smashing two tones of steel into a stationary object did to the human body. He ached everywhere and his head was pounding harder than the worst three hangovers of his life.

When Magnon arrived ten minutes later, things hadn’t improved to any noticeable degree. Tylenol might be hell on wheels for headaches, but lacked the needed strength when you’ve had seven shades of shit kicked out of you. In those circumstances, you needed something stronger, morphine, high proof alcohol, Tylenol Threes, or failing any of those, an enormous joint. Until all this was all over though, he needed as clear a head as he could manage, so Tylenol it was.

The crow swooped down from a lamp post and alighted on the barrier next to him.

“Find them?”

“You look like a panda who went 13 rounds with a jackhammer.”

“Yes, yes I do, but did you find them?”

“It wasn’t far. They stole a car and drove to a warehouse.”

Stirling carefully rose to his feet. “Let’s go take a look, shall we?”

“Shouldn’t you be going to the hospital instead?”

“No time for love, Dr. Jones. We know where they are right now. If I go to the hospital I waste a perfectly good car crash.”

What he didn’t say was the longer they held Rebbecca, the more opportunity they would have to do something permanent to her. If they hadn’t already.

He withdrew five hundred dollars from a nearby ATM deciding that the less he did with his credit and debit cards, the better. It wasn’t paranoia when Rag and Bone wanted to eat his face off. He hired one of the cabs parked outside of the grocery store and directed it drop him at an empty lot near the bottom of the hill at First and Clark.

The land on the west side of Clark was filled with warehouses, including the one he’d visited a few days ago for a false rat infestation. The building that Magnon directed him to was an old narrow warehouse with closed steel shutters installed over the windows. It squatted next to a recycling depot that was noisily converting old washing machine parts into compressed blocks of steel. The noise of tortured steel did little for his headache.

“So what now? Going to knock on the front door?” Magnon asked.

“I might.”

Stirling walked the perimeter of the building, a high chain link fence with barbed wire running along the top circled the entire property and the wheeled gate was locked tight. It didn’t look like there would be an easy way in.

He found the part of the fence he thought would be the least conspicuous point of entry. It was a section shielded one one side by a parked cube van, and on the other by a dumpster and outbuilding. He scaled the fence and did his best to arrange a damp cardboard box he’d found slumped next to a telephone pole over the rusty prongs of the barbed wire fence. Much as scissors beat paper, galvanized steel prongs beat soggy cardboard every time. By the time Stirling heaved himself over the fence he had new tears in both his jacket and pants with the bloody scratches to match.

“That looked painful,” the crow commented.

“You know, I’m not sure what I did before I had you to tell me these things,” said Stirling, dabbing at a smear of blood on his calf. He idly tried to remember the last time he had a tetanus booster.
The back side of the warehouse had a number of bays for shipping and receiving, their rolling doors all closed tight. It wasn’t until he tried a steel security door half way down the building did he finally catch a break. The door itself was locked, but thankfully hadn’t been pulled closed far enough for it to latch.

"I'll stay out here and keep a lookout," said Magnon. I won't be any good to you inside."

Stirling nodded his agreement and went to work on the door. It was jammed with grit and it took some effort before it reluctantly began to grind open. He winced at the sound of metal scraping on cement, took one last quick look around and entered.

Inside was a darkened office with a wooden desk pushed into one corner with old boxes stacked on top. A dusty Rolodex sat mildewing in the corner. Judging from the Swimsuit calendar still tacked to the wall, it looked like the place hadn’t been used since the mid-eighties.

A door with only a hole where the knob should be was slightly ajar at the far side of the room. Stirling made his way to it as quietly as he could. Outside the door was what looked to be an old lunch room. It was lit by a bank of humming fluorescent tubes, flaking butter-cream coloured paint scabbed off the walls and a mop handle angled out of a long disused stainless steel sink. Another door led out on the far side of the room.

And there were the ghosts.

Though the room wasn’t large, it was packed with at least a dozen of them. The ghosts were dressed in clothing that appeared to be chosen randomly from fashions of the last half century. There were bell-bottoms,  butterfly collars and gold chains. There were thick glasses and shaker knit sweaters from the 80s and even some flannel from the 90s. Regardless of their clothing, they were all agitated, and their echoey voices made goosebumps spontaneously erupt on his forearms.

One of them, a man wearing polyester slacks and a sports jacket with leather elbow patches, looked over to where Stirling stood. “Hey who’s the new guy?” he said jabbing a thumb in Stirling’s direction. “He looks like he got run over by a steam roller.”

“Says the extra from the Brady Bunch,” Stirling shot back. “I’ll heal, you’re stuck wearing that outfit.”

“Holy shit, can you see us?”

“Yeah, see, hear, touch and sometimes smell. You guys are a veritable feast for the senses.”
The ghost strode toward him, his face alight, holding out a hand for Stirling to shake. That was a first. Ghosts usually just swore at him.

“Lloyd Michaels, good to meet you!”

Stirling held up his hands and backed up a few paces. “Woah there, buckaroo. I don’t think you’ll be wanting to do that. Necromancer here, your kind have a habit of exploding when they touch me.”
The ghost pulled up short, a look of horror on his face.

“That’s better. I’d love to chat, but a friend of mine was taken here and I’d like to make sure she’s alright.”

Despite his obvious fear, Lloyd let out a quick laugh. “Nobody who comes here’s alright.”

“No shit. You’re all ghosts.”

Lloyd looked around the room as though he was hoping someone would step in. “Um, no. We’re not ghosts.”

“Fuck off. You float around, walk through walls and don’t have bodies. If that’s not a ghost, I don’t know what is.”

“We still have bodies, we just can’t use them. We’re souls.”

Stirling looked around the room. “I don’t see any bodies around here, Lloyd.”

“They’re in the warehouse,” he said pointing at the doorway on the far wall. “We’re Gin.” He looked at Stirling expectantly.

“You say that like it should mean something to me.”

“You know, Gin.” He waited again for some sign of recognition.

Stirling shook his head. “Nope.”

“Suspended animation?”

“I’m a bit new to all of this, Lloyd.”

“Oh. Well, being a gin means you magically preserved. Some of us came here because we were sick and needed a few more years for medicine to come up with a cure for what we had. Other folks were taken from our homes or just grabbed off the streets.”

“Let me guess. Grabbed by a big guy? Skinny blonde lady?”

“Madame Rag and Mister Bone,” Lloyd whispered.

“No one can hear you but me, Lloyd, no need to whisper.” He casually looked over his shoulder just to make sure no one had come in behind him. “That said, you wouldn’t happen to know where they are, would you?”

“If you’d seen the things they’ve done you’d whisper too. They aren’t people, they’re monsters.”

“Yeah, they’re badass alright, but are they here?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t seen them since they got back a half hour ago.”

“Any chance any of you fine folk could find out for me?” he asked addressing the room. The ghosts had gathered in a loose circle to listen to the conversation. “I’d be a lot happier with a snatch and grab than I would with a stand-up fight.”

The spirits exchanged glances, shrugged, and a good half of them disappeared through the back wall.
Stirling turned back to address Lloyd. “So, have you seen her, Lloyd? Blue hair, lots of eye makeup, looks kinda like a vampire cheerleader?”

Lloyd looked at the floor. “Oh, yeah, I seen her.”

“Your tone isn’t filling me with confidence, Lloyd.”

“They got to her.”

“What does that mean?”

“Gimme a sec.” With that, he turned and walked through the back wall. None of the other ghosts, spirits, or whatever they were, in the room would meet his eyes. That just couldn’t be good.
After a few minutes, Lloyd appeared back through the wall. He wasn’t alone. Accompanying him as he passed through the wall was Rebbecca.

Chapter 34: After the Crash.

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Chapter 33: Time in a Bottle

As usual, warnings apply: This is the rough draft of a story with adult themes and situations. If you are offended by bad language and grammatical errors, gentle reader, read no further! For those of you who have decided to stay, thanks for reading. I hope you enjoy this week's chapter!



Existence as a spirit without a working body was normally breathtakingly dull. As long as there existed a single spark of life in their body, a spirit couldn’t move much more than fifty feet away in any direction. In the refrigerated warehouse where stacks of bodies waited in their preservative baths, for the first time ever, the spooks were becoming panicked.

They had watched with growing alarm as one after another, Rag and Bone had unpacked and revived their bodies. For a few glorious moments, spirit and flesh had been reunited only to have control yanked away by some other force. No one knew who or what had hijacked their bodies, but many of the warehouse’s insubstantial residents had reported brief impressions of a charnel stink and a red glow before they had been ejected.

Like a dog left too long on a chain, spirits could become peculiar over the years. Many of them grew anxious with any change to their surroundings, which was a shame since their once-orderly warehouse was now in horrible disarray.

Once-neat rows of stacked barrels were overturned and a slurry of effluvia drained into metal grates along the floor. Meanwhile, their stolen bodies stood in crooked lines, slack expressions on their faces, waiting for who knew what.

“This is bullshit,” said Desmond Sanders, one-time used car salesman and now full-time discorporated spirit. He gave the shimmering silver cord that still bound him to his physical body a good yank to no effect whatsoever. He was met with sounds of anxious agreement from the rest of the restless spirits in the packed room.

 The spirits in the warehouse knew each other well. Over the interminable years, they had played every possible iteration of 20 Questions, Charades, and I Spy. They had talked, traded recipes they would never eat, fought, and loved, all within a hundred foot bubble of their marinating bodies.

 Among the many down-sides to the situation was that any spooks whose mortal remains were separated by much more than a hundred feet needed to shout in order to hear each other. The warehouse was a loud place at the best of times. At the moment it sounded like a riot was in progress.

Desmond watched as a pair of hijacked bodies sloshed another naked resident out of its barrel in a stream of tea-coloured preservative. It was bad enough being bodyless and spending decades languishing in an abandoned warehouse with the other spooks, but now having your body pulled from the barrel, naked and dripping for all to see, was beyond mortifying.

“Someone’s wife must have been a good cook,” was all Colleen McAffey, Chronic Liver Failure, Crypto Druid, and ex-cosmetic counter manager at The Bay, had to say when he himself had been decanted in a gush of smelly preservative. Her barrel had been stacked next to his for nearly a decade and they had been on cordial, if not friendly terms. Sadly, the current crisis had revealed that under pressure the woman had all the tact and sophistication of a horny Rottweiler.

Desmond, Des to his friends, could admit he hadn’t been in the best shape in life and the preservation process had done nothing to improve the situation. Removing most of the water from a body had the side effect of making any loose skin even looser. Honestly though, what kind of shape was he supposed to be in with a terminal case of cardiac amyloidosis?

When he’d casually mentioned upon seeing her in the flesh for the first time that it was a good thing she knew how to use makeup, it had just been an observation. Nothing mean about it.
That was his burden. He’d always been a straight-shooter, telling it like he saw it. He couldn’t be blamed when people couldn’t handle the unvarnished truth. In some cases, like this one, the truth just revealed other’s petty and spiteful nature.

Once they had a large enough workforce, Rag and Bone had left to go about their own business and let the hijacked bodies continue the work of reviving. He hadn’t expected to see the duo again until all the barrels had been emptied. It was a surprise then when they returned with a young woman with her hands tied up behind her back and a gag in her mouth.

The warehouse had been backfilled with its barrels, and he was far enough toward the back wall that, beyond Rag, Bone, and Dr. Knox himself, he hadn’t seen a new resident or live visitor in nearly thirty years. His own barrel was vintage 1983 and so were most of the others around him. Because of this, the new woman’s appearance came as something of a shock.

She had cobalt blue hair, wore dark eye makeup, and was that a ring in her nose?! Her jeans were torn, but he didn’t think it was from any kind of rough handling on behalf of Rag or Bone. It was almost like they were supposed to look like that. Judging from how well she fit into them, Des guessed she was in her active mid-twenties.

Even if she wasn’t able to speak with the gag in her mouth, her eyes spoke for her. She was furious, not that it would do her much good. It had become clear soon after their bodies were interred in their preservative soup that Knox’s sales pitch had been lies. As many as half of the barrels in the warehouse were filled with the bodies of people who hadn’t volunteered to be put there. The only ones who were ever revived were the ones whose family or friends care enough to collect them.

Out of sight meant out of mind. Des wasn’t sure if Knox and his ilk knew they were being observed by the un-departed spirits of the warehouse, or if they just didn’t care. Either way, he’d been witness to enough over the years to feel a spike of compassion for the young woman. It wasn't going to end well for her.

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A quick request tonight: If you're enjoying the story, consider sharing it with your friends. At some point in the hopefully near future, I'll be publishing the edited and polished version of this tale. Growing an audience is going to be a big contributing factor in how well I'm able to do. Thanks for your time! -S

Chapter 32, Part 2: All in the Reflexes

As usual, warnings apply: This is the rough draft of a story with adult themes and situations. If you are offended by bad language and grammatical errors, gentle reader, read no further! For those of you who have decided to stay, thanks for reading. I hope you enjoy this week's chapter!


Stirling arrived, hot and sweating under his heavy jacket with only three minutes to spare. Magnon perched on the peak of an old schoolhouse on the other side of the intersection. There was no point in giving away the crow’s presence by having him on his shoulder when the music started. Magnon’s presence was the one small advantage that they still held over the set of murderous twats that were Madame Rag and Mister Bone.

Clark and Broadway was a busy intersection with squat three-story apartment blocks kitty-corner to each other, and an old schoolhouse and a Petro-Can gas station on the others. He wondered how many supernatural kidnappings happened at gas stations.

Stirling scanned his surroundings looking to see if he could find the distinctive form of Rag’s partner in crime. The man would be hard to miss. On a day like today, he’d be like a walking solar eclipse, blocking out half the sunlight as he went. Sadly, or perhaps not, there was no sign of either of the couple. Stirling loitered around the large ice chest that stood outside of the convenience store attached to the gas station to wait.

He didn’t have to wait long. A black town car with tinted windows, riding low on its rear suspension pulled into the parking lot of the gas station.

“Here we go,” Stirling sent to Magnon. “You know what to do.”

“Good luck.”

They didn’t have any time to chat further as Madame Rag emerged from the driver’s side door and glared at him.

“You look absurd bald. Get in the car.”

“You’ll have to do better than that, mon petite salmonella cupcake,” Stirling called to her, seeing no reason not to begin putting his plan into action immediately. “I’m going to need proof that Rebbecca’s still alive.”

Madame Rag’s glare intensified, and the rear passenger window hummed downward to reveal a petite brunette with a pixie cut. It was Rebbecca, but she was not alone. In an act that was part-contortion, part meat-based origami, Mister Bone had somehow folded himself into the back seat and had his economy-sized ham of a fist wrapped completely around Rebbecca’s neck.

“Hey WeetaBeks, how’s it hanging?”

Rebbecca glared at him over a cloth gag, lifted a tattooed arm into view, and fingered him with a well-manicured digit. Yup, it was her alright.

“Get in the car,” Madame Rag told him.

Stirling weighed his options, trying as hard as he could to think of some way to avoid joining this carpool of the howling insane.

“This doesn’t have to get messy,” Stirling told her. “Let Rebbecca go, and I’m willing to let bygones be bygones.” Rag just glared some more.

“I’d even be willing to go so far as to add you onto my Costco membership,” he said, as though offering up gem-encrusted unicorn that ate worries and pooped gold. “It’s not the cheap membership mind you, I’m talking a full business membership.” He pulled out his wallet and flashed his black card to demonstrate that he wasn’t just fucking with her, he could indeed deliver the goods. “Mister Bone can’t be cheap to feed, even with the really big bags of kibble.”

He looked around theatrically to see if anyone was listening and continued speaking in a conspiratorial tone. “Also, I know for a fact they sell personal lubricant by the pallet load.” He eyed her small frame up and down significantly. “You could be saving more than just money, if you know what I mean,” he said pointing discreetly at his groin with both hands and loudly whispered, “your vagina,” at her.

Rebbecca’s face reddened as Mister Bone started to squeeze.

“Get. In. The. Car.”

“Hurt one hair on her head, and I’m throwing down, right here, right now, you psychotic bottle-blonde size queen.” Stirling met Madame Rag’s glare with his own. He didn’t get anything more than a twisted smile.

“Is it lunch yet?” Mister Bone growled.

“Very nearly,” Rag replied.

Mister Bone continued to squeeze, and Rebbecca’s breath began to rasp in her throat.

“Stirling!” Rebbecca gasped.

“Fine! I’ll get in, but just you remember, I gave you a chance to back out of this all peaceful-like. When I’m done with you two they’re going to need to send a search party to find the search party that got lost trying to find all your pieces.”

Stirling opened the front passenger door and flopped onto the leather seat, his arms crossed over his chest.

Rag got in the driver’s seat and pressed a button on her door. The doors all made a chunking noise as they locked and she gave him a nasty smile.

“Watch out, we’ve got a badass here,” he said, holding up his hands theatrically.

Rag’s face transitioned from malicious to sour and she began to rummage in her purse. Stirling took the opportunity to securely buckle himself in.

“Put this on,” said Madame Rag handing him a black nylon bag.”

“Does Bone make you wear this? You know, when he’s feeling romantic?”

Rag’s jaw tightened. “Put the bag on now.”

He put a hand to his scalp. “But my hair!”

“Now!” Rag roared.

Stirling looked back at Rebbecca, her neck was still in the grip of the King Kong stunt-double in the back seat. He sighed, and put the bag on. It smelled like the vomit from a dozen different ethnicities.
“Fuck! Seriously?! Don’t you people ever wash these things out?! It smells like Bone shat a skunk into this thing!”

The car began to move and they bottomed-out on the way out of the gas station.

“I understand now,” said Magnon as Rag pulled into traffic. “Lull them into a false sense of security by doing exactly what they want. What a brilliant stratagem. You mad genius, how will they ever get out of this one?” 

“Go eat a bag of cold dicks,” said Stirling to the crow—and everyone else who happened to be in earshot.

It was the last straw. Rag cold-cocked him in the temple, bouncing his head off the passenger-side window just as he hoped she would. Stirling’s sight faded to black. The suckers.