The Triumph of the Light

The garden would be no less impressive if anyone could actually pin down the date it first appeared. Visitors claim having heard tales of it for decades, always from third or fourth hand sources, never anything truly specific about its location or the wonders held within. The first verifiable account of someone having visited the garden happened almost five years ago, though the visitor claimed the grounds were just as packed with people on that day as there are now.

Every day hundreds of people roam the paths under the perpetually darkened sky, staring at the ever-glowing, constantly shifting patterns of light. Many of those people are scientists, attempting to uncover the secrets of the garden. Experts on bioluminescence, psychology, light manipulation and even a few stage magicians wander for hours, searching for the wires, the projectors, the hallucinogenic spores, the smoke and the mirrors. None have succeeded so far, but doubtless someone will someday claim the growing bounty put up by the skeptics to explain it all away.

A growing number of believers of all faiths flock to the garden on pilgrimages. They claim that the garden must be proof that we are not alone, and that we are loved. The lights calm the raging storms of emotion held inside the most troubled person, allowing them peace and enlightenment, or so the pamphlets claim. The same pamphlets advertise bus rides for $50 and inner peace certifications for $100.

Not matter the angle, almost every admits there is a strange calmness to the garden. Barely a whisper is spoken, fists are never raised in anger. Some say there is something else,  a sadness to the light mingled in with the feelings of peace. The garden could very well be a memorial to a battle never seen, a triumph or defeat that may never be understood by those that gaze upon it.

No matter the true purpose, the garden of light, shadows and gossamer threads stands as a reminder that the world is wilder than most people suppose, and even in the heart of civilization mysteries abound. Even in the darkest night, there is light, and peace, and even if it is just for a fleeting moment, everyone is loved.

Seemings

People just assumed it was a steeple. It's soot-stained exterior, unadorned by windows, was unremarkable but for it's tall and slender silhouette that stood out against the sky. No one could remember when it was built, it had always just been there. Then, one day, it lifted-off, brilliant jets of flame as bright as welding arcs carried it aloft, towards the stars...

La Guerre Du Sac Rouge

In 1964 Texas Instruments developed the Paveway series of laser guided missiles. Using a special coded laser signal, a ground trooper could "paint" a target for the missile to hone in on in such a way that the target could not be aware until it was too late. In 1991 these missiles were used to great effect by the United States during operation Desert Storm. This was not a new concept, even in the sixties. This idea harkened back to the days of grass huts and cave paintings, of superstition and demons and blood magic. There was no true difference, only a fresh coat of paint, science and technology covering millennium of ritual. 

Like the missiles, the monsters set loose by dark rites upon a target have no particular malice towards it. They are simply doing a job. No, not just a job. The job. The job they were created for. The job we were created for. Monsters of bone and blood, of gnashing teeth and rending claws. Weapons. And just like the missiles, we can be stopped. The huntsman's axe, the silver dagger, certain other talismans, little things far more effective than guards and armies and fortresses. Or, I suppose, police and panic rooms nowadays. Even monsters have to keep up with the times. 

The long belabored point is this, we don't hate our targets, we aren't unstoppable, and most importantly, we don't choose the targets. Which can lead to trouble. Some of us have been killed on missions, others have been hunted through the Veil to the homelands, one poor bastard even fell in love with his target. He was the one that discovered we were vulnerable to certain kinds of axes. 

There's also the risk of collaterall damage. Lesser brethren spawned because of an errant scratch, a bite on the wrong arm. The outbreak in the seventies started because of a war between the witches of Scotland. There are acceptable losses, acceptable damages, and when one of us falls, we know, and another shall rise to take their place in the hunt, another missile locked and loaded. That said, losing one of us on a mission is rare, and two is unheard of. Which is why, when I crossed the Veil and the memories of the five hunters who had failed before me filled my mind, I knew something was terribly wrong. 

The target was a witch, a catch all term used for any human with the power to summon us, and the hunt had been on for centuries. Technically, the target was her satchel, which she had been carrying around the whole time. Sorting through their memories, I was able to piece together a jumbled timeline from the five others, one of whom had run for decades before finally confronting her. In each case but the first, a long hunt, followed by the bright flash of a red bag, followed by nothing. No last moments, no death, just.... nothing. 

I could feel the pull of the target to the north, knew that she was less than a day away by car. Sure, I could get there by plane in an hour, but I had a few things left to arrange and since the security crackdowns in the last few decades, air travel has gotten considerably more difficult for my people. I reached in my pocket, pleased to find a set of car keys jangling around with a cell phone. 

***********

The next morning found me walking in to Grand Central with the rest of the morning commuters, a familiar scene from my borrowed memories. A nice, big, public place. An army in a modern castle, no safer from my kind than a barred portcullis or a moat. It didn't take long to spot her, she wore the guise of an older human, grey haired, arm in arm with an older man. A quick sniff told me he smelled very strongly of nothing. It didn't take a genius to realize that he was a crafted accessory, nothing more than a man shaped cane.

I thought little more of it as my gaze drifted to her other arm, the bag it held. The target. Glowing red in a way that only I could see, pulsing as if it were alive and breathing. I found myself gripping my arms tight, fighting the urge to shift, to attack, to end the hunt then and there. Regaining control took longer than it should have. The painkillers were effecting me more than I realized. 

By the time I regained control of myself she was gone from sight, but the pull of the target was unmistakable. She led me past restaurants, through shops, up and down, through twists and turns that were impossible to keep track of, rewarding me with momentary flashes of red to let me know I was still on the right track. 

Eventally, I looked around and realized that the crowds had thinned to nothing and a blank wall stood before us. She turned abruptly, no longer wearing the old face, but the beautiful one I remembered from the oldest of the memories now embedded in mine. The face was smiling, but her eyes held something far crueler. 

"Good boy," she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm, "heel."

I fought down a snarl. "You want to do this now? Here?"

"What better place than here?" she asked, waving her hands around in an all encompassing gesture. 

"I will not break the truce."

"Silly boy, this is my little corner of the universe. No mere mortal will be able to see anything I don't want them to see. Besides, who ever said a word about you doing anything?" With a wave of her hand, the stone floor came to life, flowing up and around me, forming shackles I could not break. I glanced around nervously, but the few passerby paid us no heed. 

"So kill me then. Another will take my place."

She smiled widely. "And another, and another, until I have finished your cursed race. Lambs to the slaughter. But first, a symbolic gesture... " she reached behind my head, pantomiming scissors. Symbolic my ass. The pain that followed real enough. 

I growled, straining against my bonds, but slumped as a wave of vertigo washed over me. "What did you do?"

Her grin was almost feral. "I cut you off. Cut the bond that anchored you to your world, to that wonderful mental collective. The next one to cross will only have the fraying edges of your memory to work with."

I fought down the growl, focusing on understanding. That was the last piece of the puzzle, the reason why the memories didn't add up to the time that had passed, why they were so disjointed. 

"But don't worry, you will be a long time dying. And oh the games we will play before you beg for the sweet release of death. The first one of you to come after me, we had so much fun. I believe he is the father of what they now call bloodhounds."

"The first you summoned, you mean."

She laughed, a genuine, delighted sound. "Clever boy! You are the first one to figure it out."

I snorted derisively. "The others knew. That's why they ran. We can't kill the employer, and we are trapped here until the contract is fulfilled."

"Oh, well, it really is no matter. Running from me did them no more good than your running into my arms will do you. The story ends the same, one more dead monster."

A gunshot rang loudly in the near empty section of the train station. I fought down a smile. The final favor I called in had just been paid. The few people in the distant hallway jumped, calming quickly when they realized that the noise must have just been their imagination. My opponent laughed again, twirling to show she was unharmed. 

"You missed."

I could not hold back my grin this time, but I wasn't trying very hard. It didn't matter any more. 

"You think that you were the first person to try this little trick? There's a reason why you have to paint an object, not a living thing."

She looked down at the bag, noticing for the first time the single smoking hole. She could not see what I saw, the brilliant red bleeding away.

"The contract ends when you pierce the target with tooth or claw, a gunshot will not do..." She trailed off as she noticed my smile, now wide, and the two lines of blood dripping down my jaw from empty sockets.

"A gunshot will do just fine, if you use the right bullet." 

The last of the red drained, and I braced myself against the pull that would draw me back across the Veil, so that I could finish what I came here to do. A pull that never came. Whatever she had done, it hadn't ended with the contract. No matter. As I shifted, breaking free of the stone bindings, I briefly entertained the thought of keeping her alive, forcing her to send me back, but that little bit of clarity faded with the rest of my sanity. 

She had chosen her lair well, tucked in the far nook of a dead end side passage. The remains of my bonds took up most of the entrance, leaving her little chance of escape. Tooth and claw, blood and bone, a guided weapon homing in on its target. One way or another, the story ending the same, with one more dead monster. 

Moonfall Kingdom

You might say it started with a rabbit. A rush to go nowhere fast. You might say is started with loneliness.

That's not all of it though. Honestly, that's not even how it started. That's just when things got weird. So where do I start? Where I was born? A city in the South. If you have to ask which South, then you obviously aren't from there. When was I born? Longer ago than you might think. Who am I, and why am I being so vague? I'm your humble narrator, and it all comes back to a bunny and a game as old as the universe.

I guess the best place to start is the road trip to South Fork to visit my aunt. I had come into a bit of money and was about to start losing vacation days, so I put up an out of office email, loaded up my truck, and headed west-ish to a place where dial up modems and land lines were the height of technology. Working where I worked, you had to really get off the grid to enjoy a vacation.

The drive generally takes two days, unless I'm in a rush. I do my best not to rush while I'm on vacation, so on the first night sundown saw me pulling into a tiny town in the middle of nowhere looking for a cheap motel and a bite to eat. The motel had a faded sign and mattresses that were surprisingly soft considering they seemed to be made of solid rock. The dinner came from a diner on the outskirts of town. The place was rundown and covered with dust and rust and dead leaves from an ancient tree that covered the back half of the building, a deep and ancient shadow in the bright light of the full moon. A sign in the window claimed they were open and a chalkboard on the door claimed this was the Jade Rabbit, home of fine Chinese cuisine.

I probably should have avoided a ramshackle ethnic food place in a backwoods town so white bread that the old women running the motel had called me a "furr-in-er" under her breath, but I've never been able to avoid trying food in a place that it doesn't belong, because, once in a rare while, the meal is wonderful. This time, the gamble paid off. The inside was far better kept up than the outside. The walls were a deep forest green and covered in an intricate pattern that I later realized was made up mostly of different rabbits. The decor was not the only thing better than expected. I was treated to some amazing dumplings and cha siu bao that rivaled anything that I've had at dim-sum. The food was so good that I drifted off into my own little world, lost in the tastes and the smells for longer than I care to admit.

When I came to my senses I realized that I was pleasantly full and the restaurant completely empty, save for my waiter, a spritely old asian man that seemed to be pulling double duty as the cook. Realizing that he had been serenely sitting there, watching as I rudely stuffed my face, was more than a little unnerving. "Oh. Uh. The food was great." I'm not the most eloquent when caught off guard.

"Yes."

I waited for a moment to see if he would continue. When it became apparent that he wasn't going to say anything else, I offered "Love the place too. Interesting decor. Matches the name really well." Other than the old redneck at the motel, I hadn't spoken to anyone outside of work in nearly three weeks. My conversational skills were a little rusty.

He nodded. "The rabbit is of nature. The rabbit is of the moon. On a night like tonight, with the moon high in the sky, the walls separating the worlds weaken. There are gifts to be given, fortunes to be made."

I grinned. "Gifts? From moon bunnies?"

The old man did not smile with me. "Adventure. Immortality. Laughter. Which would you choose?"

"Immortality." I said without any hesitation.

"A good choice", he nodded thoughtfully, "but not a wise one. Not wise to not ask the price of the gift. All magic has a cost."

"What is the cost?" I asked cautiously.

"Adventure brings madness and danger. The risk of death. Immortality brings isolation, loneliness. Betrayal. Laughter brings pain, and with every joke performed for you, there is another played on you. Are you still content with your choice?"

"Oh. Well, I'd rather not have the madness, and laughter doesn't seem to be that good a trade. I can find my own laughter without lunar intervention. In this hypothetical situation, what would happen if I chose nothing?"

He shook his head. "One does not refuse a gift from the heavens. Houyi tried, and Chang'e suffered. Some cannot even find it for all the trying in the world. Michael Collins searched longer than anyone knows, traveled to the moon itself, and history has mostly forgotten his name."

"Oh, well. In that case, I would choose immortality, and all that comes with it."

He nods, the ghost of a smile crossing his face, and turns back to the kitchen. He returns moments later with a steaming pot of tea and a porcelain. "It is herbal. Cinnamon, mostly. Fresh, from the tree out back. On the house."

I took the cup with a smile. I could be melodramatic and say that I knew from the instant that liquid touched my lips that my life had changed. That destiny, if there is such a thing, had swept me up in its current and my future was no longer my own. But honestly, at that moment, all I knew was that I was drinking a good cup of tea.

I didn't begin to get suspicious until the next morning, as I was leaving town and decided to see if the old man served breakfast. The Jade Rabbit, and the cinnamon tree that shaded it, were gone in the bright light of day. I drove around for almost an hour before I gave up, circling the entire town twice, even going so far as to ask the lady working the desk at the motel. She had never heard of it.

I left the town a bit nervous, but wrote it off as some strange dream. It wasn't until hours later, after dozing off at the wrong moment, catching a bit of gravel, sliding off the steep road, and plummeting to the valley almost a hundred feet below that I knew. Sitting in the wreckage of my truck, watching my bones and flesh knit themselves whole, I knew that I hadn't been dreaming. I knew that life was never going to be the same again.

Climbing The Corporate Ladder

André blinked, trying to rub the sleep from his eyes. A half drained cup of cold coffee sat next to his computer, forgotten now that he had passed the point where caffeine no longer did anything for him besides make his heart pound and his stomach turn. Nobody, André was certain, wanted to have gassy panic attacks while still half asleep.

He glanced at the clock. It was a little past 7 PM. He was pretty sure about the PM part. This time of year, it got dark early and stayed dark late, but he didn't think he had been working on the project for that long without realizing it. It had been two days, maybe three, of straight coding. He was pretty sure it was two.

Honestly though, it wouldn't have mattered how long it took. André was an intern, he still had to prove himself. And all of his co-workers worked well into the night. It seemed like some of them never went home, though between his erratic schedule and the ones they had to be working, he could never be sure. It's not like any of them talked to him anyway.

His boss, though, had been happy with the project. Happier than André had every seen him. Almost happier than André had ever seen anyone. His grin dimmed a little when André told him that he was going to head home and sleep for the night. This project had been huge. It was going to make the company millions. Could he stay a little bit later so he could meet with the owner? André couldn't refuse. He was an intern. He still had to prove himself. So here he was, fighting off yawns and the strange desire to start up another project, something, anything, to keep his fingers moving and his mind too busy to think of sleep. He started working logic puzzles instead.

He had neatly matched all fifteen of the 5K racers, their times, their pets names and their shirt colors by the time his watch buzzed with a notification. It was time.

His boss met him at the end of the row of cubicles, nodding approvingly. He silently led André to the elevators. André, thinking to take the initiative, reached for the button for the forty second floor, but laughter from his boss brought him to a halt. With an amused twinkle in his eye, he reached instead for the button that would take him to the lobby. 

The fifteen floors flew by in the literal blink of an eye. André shifted uncomfortably as the doors opened, he was apparently tired enough that he was falling asleep on his feet. Hopefully he wouldn't embarrass himself in front of the owner. 

His boss led him away from the banks of elevators and out the front door. André fought of a slight moment of panic, worried that his contract was being terminated on the spot. 

"Don't look so scared, little man. You have done well. I'm far too pragmatic to throw away such a useful tool." 

The voice boomed throughout the courtyard. André glanced around, trying to discern its source. No one was around besides himself and his boss. The only other thing was the giant blow up mascot the company kept in front of the building. 

"I suppose you can't be blamed for suffering from the failings of your race. Such a limited world view."

The voice was coming from the mascot. André looked closer, and realized, for the first time that there was no apparatus keeping the thing filled with air.  

"Don't be surprised, young man. There are terrible things that are older than you know in this world. Fortunately for you, I am a humanist. I'm just here to offer you a job. Something a little more... permanent than your current employment."

André considered for a moment. Most CEOs were considered monsters anyway, and the benefits of full time employment with the company were unparalleled. 

"You've made up your mind."  It was not a question. 

André nodded and bowed slightly, not trusting himself to speak. 

"Excellent. Welcome aboard, young man."

An Affair to Forget

The office stood near an alleyway, gray, dull, and wholly unremarkable. Still, something about it tickled my memory, and a sense of déjà vu overcame me. I shook it off, sure I had just seen a photo on the website, or something like that. 

The receptionist smiled warmly at me as I walked in. A knowing smile. A familiar smile. I reflexively smiled back, the way that people do when they know that they should know someone. She cheerily greeted me, told me all of my information was on file, and Doc H would be with me as soon as I filled out the incident report.

I completed the so called incident report, titled "Romantic Attachment with Female Identifying Companion", in a matter of minutes. What was her name? Where did we meet? When did we meet? The last question had "date and time, please" scrawled next to it in pen. Then a short paragraph describing who she was, how things had ended, and why I wanted to forget.

This whole clinic seemed like something out of a Charlie Kaufman script come to life.  Memory donations. You didn't have to even pay the doctors to take them. They paid you. It would be like a blood bank paying you to get rid of your bad blood.

The last box had just been initialed when a tall man in a lab coat rounded the corner and called out my name. His accent was faint, but held a hint of Northern Europe. Scandinavian, perhaps. He shook my hand and clapped me on the shoulder in a familiar way before leading me to a poorly lit examination room.

After looking over my form, the doctor clucked a bit disapprovingly when he saw the woman's name. I asked what was wrong, and he said that some people will try to take advantage of anything, no matter how much it is meant to help others. He promised that he would leave the tiniest memory of her face, and a bit of pain, in case she tried to find me one more time.  I thanked him, but as much as we hurt each other, I doubted she ever wanted to see my face again.

I asked a bit about the process, and he told me that the donations were handled by his associate, a Doctor Moonan, I think, thought it might have been Mewnan. They had been practicing the technique for decades, though it had only recently been approved for use in the States. He assured me of the precision of the procedure, that there was no chance they would take any more memory than absolutely necessary.

When asked what they did with the memories, I was told that the majority of them were sold to busy executives that wanted to experience love and heart break but just couldn't find the time. Happier memories were worth more, though those often found their way into the minds of patients recovering from traumatic accidents or painful treatments. There was even another pair of scientists measuring the effects of emotional memories implanted into the brains of sociopaths.

Scientific advancement may have been a great side effect, but I admitted the main draw for me was the promise of a large paycheck and relief from this heartache. He laughed, and said that, knowing me, the money would be gone before I knew it, and I'd find a new heartache. I glared at him, but that just made the doctor laugh even harder.

Irritated, I asked when the procedure would begin. He had me lie back, count to ten, and then describe meeting her. To my surprise I couldn't. He smiled reassuringly, telling me that his associate must already be hard at work. I glanced nervously around the room, peering into the shadowed corners. Somewhere in the depths, I caught a glint of something, almost like a drop of water on an onyx marble. The room distorted and spun and I was glad to be lying down. After a few seconds, the vertigo passed and I stared into the shadows once more. Again I found the glinting onyx, and this time a sound accompanied the disruption of my equilibrium. A rustling sound, a rushing flapping sound filled my ears, and then everything went dark.

I awoke this morning with the hangover from hell and my encounter in the doctor's office fading like the strange dream that it was. A dream that I've had far too often. I looked around the room. At some point someone had scrawled "Persistence of Memory, My Ass" in marker on the mirror, and there was a large pile of cash in one of the drawers.

Apparently I made my way to a casino sometime last week, got blackout drunk, stayed that way, and somehow won a fair bit more than I lost. That's the only explanation that makes sense, really, and hey, it only cost me a week of my life, near as I can tell. Sometimes, though, sometimes I wonder just how much time I've spent in the bottle, because face in the mirror seems a few years older than it should be.

Triple Crown

Pendleton was relatively certain that something was wrong. Mere months ago, he had been rather comfortably munching on some cactus leaves, enjoying a nice sunny day, when suddenly he was in a strange, damp place with a small manling on his back. Then little creature had the gall to hit him with a stick. Infuriated, he took off running, trying to shake this little burr.

As he flew around a corner, he noticed the other creatures running beside him, each with their own tiny manling. They seemed to be somewhat related to the camelkin, though they were certainly distant cousins. He spared them little further thought as he sped past them, still bothered by the stick smacking his side. After almost two minutes of trying to dislodge the irritant, Pendleton found himself crossing a white line and the manling suddenly stopped hitting him. He pulled to a dignified stop, glad to be done with that strangeness.

Finally able to take a look around, Pendleton noticed the he was in a giant bowl, surrounded by hordes of the creatures that called themselves human. He spat nervously, startling someone who was approaching cautiously with a armload of sweet smelling flowers. All of the man creatures seemed nervous, disoriented. In a strangely accented version of one of the rarer manling tongues, Pendleton heard "Well, ladies and gentlemen, it appears that Lyapunov wins...." There was a smattering of confused applause. Pendleton ate one of the flowers from the sheet being draped around him.

The next few weeks were a confusing mess of manling arguments, sharp pricks from pointy things, and running in circles while being called Lyapunov. Before the second circle, Pendleton's tiny manling came into his stall, slapped him on the side, and said "Congratulations, kid, you're a Thoroughbred." It was all very strange, but at least by the time he ran the second circle, the manlings were cheering in earnest as he crossed the finished line. The yellow flowers didn't taste nearly as good as the red ones had.

Pendleton, who by then thought of himself as Pendleton Lyapunov, had grown accustomed to life in the strange oasis by the time of the running in the third circle. He had convinced his manling that the stick was unnecessary, and the food he got here was better than anything he had in the desert. The manling had moved him to a nicer stall, and let him wander whenever he wanted. The small creature had even prevented several taller manfolk from stabbing him with more sharp things. He wasn't sure why these were different from the ones before, but he was grateful not to suffer the sting.

As before, the third running pitted him against other cousins of the camelkin. He recognized a few of them from previous circles, and spat welcomingly at their feet. This caused all sorts of jumping and whinnying. He doubted he would ever understand his distant relatives. All of this angst was forgotten by the time that the circling started, and once again, he easily outpaced the others, even though this was a greater distance than before. The audience erupted in cheers, his creature wore a wide grin, and the white flowers were delicious.

Pendleton was absolutely certain that something was wrong, but he had long forgotten what he thought would be right. All he knew was that he loved the constant oasis, the tasty food, and the cheers of the manlings.