When you dance…

He knew it wasn't any way to start a letter. He wasn't sure if it would be better opened with a sonnet, or an ode. He wanted to make an impact, he so wanted it to be perfect. But really he cared only about putting it down. Making sure that it was forever and unalterably commemorated.

When you dance…

Then he was stuck. Lost in the empty lines of the page and smirking slightly at his own incompetence. What do you say about someone when they dance? He couldn't even drum up a quote to put here. Casting around the room for a book, or some music. Something that would save him the trouble of explaining what happened when she danced.

Actually he didn't even like it when she danced. She wasn't particularly graceful or elegant. He thought about scrapping it. Toss the paper aside and start again. But he would rather glare at three words than none at all. He allowed his mind to wander. He asked the surroundings to distract him. Clear his mind and let him think beyond what it was he was going to tell her about what it was like when she danced. Heavy sighing seemed like the thing to do, so he tried that for a moment. He flicked at the switch on the base of his green bankers lamp and straightened out a paper clip.

There was nothing here. Nothing to say about her dancing. He had just wanted to start it that way. It seemed like the way a romantic letter should start. He considered putting the next line. It was a stalling mechanism. Just making more words on the paper before he said anything. Deciding he was now in up to his elbows he went ahead and threw down the words.

When you dance, I feel…

The truth of the matter was that he didn't feel anything about her dancing. He couldn't very well put that he felt she lacked grace and elegance. That was definitely not what love was about. It was about passion, and sharing, and things of that nature. To tell her that she danced like a stumbling ostrich would get him farther away from his goal. No, he had to woo her. He had to draw her in. He had to …well he had to sucker her.

"Goddamn it." He said it out loud. Maybe it was so that God would make no mistake about his frustration with the whole mess. He figured that in uttering it, there was more reality than just thinking it. It was the same ideology as with the letter. If he could just make this one beautiful realization then it would be tangible. He would be able to hold it, experience it. It would be tactile, it would have dimension. Now it was ethereal. It twirled around in his mind day and night. It mocked him endlessly. It eluded him and frustrated him. Partially he wanted it to be in a state that he could batter. Just pound it down and then stake it to the earth. Maybe even bury it. There was no way of saying what it was in it's current state. Put it on paper and then it is.

Four floors off the ground. He was just high enough that no one ever seemed to look up at him. They might look beyond his window, or usually down at the ground, but never did he have to make eye contact with anyone. He could sit languidly and never once be noticed. His desk was beside one of his two windows. Staring down now, there seemed to be no one on the street. He went back to his paper. It hadn't changed. While he contemplated more swearing, he took a long swig on the iced tea beside him. It was getting warm now, the ice long gone and the early morning rays landing right on the glass.

If he strained his eyes, he could almost see the first waves of panic coming for him. The early part of an exhausted onslaught was riding up over the hill. Miles of dunes separated him and those feelings, but the ominous knowledge that there would be a battle to remain calm could have choked him as if it were made of cotton.

When you dance, I feel…

The words failed to make sense to him. He recognized the letters, but was almost tempted to check his spelling as those five talismans swam in front of him.

"Fuck it." He got up. Standing and stretching put the paper far away from him. He would go to the bathroom now.

He washed his hands. His skin felt greasy and he wanted to shower. He was part way through his third straight day of wakefulness and it was showing. He stared himself in the mirror. His eyes were ringed with blue tissue, and there was little white visible. His hair was hastily shoved back from his face with his hand, and it stuck out slightly. He shook at every motion. He figured his best hope now was bathing…and pray that he found a way to finish the letter.

He stripped and sat naked on the plastic of the tub. He adjusted the water temperature and plugged the drain with a plastic bag that served as a makeshift stopper. He wasn't going to try and stand for the time it would take to shower. He had learned that bathrooms were very fraught with danger to anyone whose schedule did not include rest or recuperation. He needed to think anyway, and standing water felt more like a place where decisions were made. Running water was preferable for sex.

His skin chirped signals at him about the sensation of the water. His nerves seemed very excited by the whole thing. It made the hair on his head prick up at the roots, a shiver inducing feeling that ran down into his neck as if cream were being poured over his scalp and flowing (down his body.)

He chose to build his life around
A land of bottled dreams.
He refused to see the tapestry
But asked to see the seams.

Jerry was exhausted. His whole right arm ached from shoulder to fingertips. It was difficult for him to jab for as long as he had. Difficult to keep pulling it out and putting it back in. Blood would create a suction around the thin blade, and it took Herculean strength to get it out for another cycle. He was too dependant on his right hand, which was something he had neither the time nor the inclination to do anything about. He wasn't about to try to retrain his mind to ambidexterity. He didn't have time, his owner wouldn't wait for that.

He unwrapped the cellophane from the head of the recently deceased. It was coated with the blood they had gurgled up. There was a film of mucus and bile on it too. Death was never something that went daintily when the procedure was forced. Without voluntary consent the whole thing was messy. Jerry wadded the cellophane up and stuck it in his backpack. He rinsed off his wooden knife and that went in as well. He took a brief pause to look at the crystal on his watch. It was shattered, and the hands didn't move. That went into the bag. He looked down at his victim one more time. Took note of the sloppy holes punched in the body. They leaked all over the floor.

He left it like that. Every time. He thought about putting coins in the mouth or something ceremonial. The clinical repetition took away the sanctity of it. Maybe say a prayer over the corpse, or draw symbols on the wall in their fluids. He used to carry a totem with him that had a bear on it. He would grip it and mutter something in an Indian tongue. Usually just well wishes, although he knew that there were no wishes strong enough to ward them where they were going.

He checked his time on the clock in the hallway as he left. He didn't have much time left. He figured that there wasn't much point in cramming another sloppy job into the day, so he went home.

It was a forty minute drive back to his shack. It was stuck out to the side of the city in one of the dwindling rural settings. Eventually it would be paved over so that people could more easily buy cigarettes and pump gas. He'd built it himself. From start to finish there wasn't one inch of it that didn't have his sweat on it.

He slipped through the front door, which he left unlocked. No one would steal the wooden bed or the animal parts in the freezer. That was all there was. If they did take it, he could get it back. It might have been thought of as a job perk by some, but it was a fact to him and nothing more. He went out to the pump for a bucket of water, splashed his face, drank the bucket dry and then washed off the cellophane and his knife. His watch had gotten smeared with drying liquids, and he worked his thumb over it to dislodge all the remnants.

He went back inside to wait. He left his backpack outside to later be burned. The waiting was the longest part of his day. Everything else was so harried, so full of movement and activity, so stressing, that when the bottom fell out and he could do nothing but sit and hope for his employer to arrive quickly the stillness was surreal and would have been frightening to most. Thankfully, patience was the only ability that Jerry had. He had no aptitude for anything but waiting. Endless dullness concerned him not at all. He had been given a long time to get adjusted to it.

Eventually, a delicate man came knocking at the window. His whole body told of his aristocratic bearing. There wasn't any part that was rough or hardened. He was pristine white and moved like a fencer. Anyone who had not been mellowed like Jerry would have long ago taken it into their mind to shatter the dainty form. He came into Jerry's house without making any show of expectation for Jerry to rise to allow him entrance or invite it.

"Hello," was all he said by way of opening the conversation.

"The list is in the kitchen, right where it always is." Jerry didn't move, didn't gesture, didn't alter his voice. He just sat and made his declaration. The narrow man floated out of the room and a single paper rustled. He came back with his small mouth turned down at the corners.

"You are short one."

"My watch broke on the last one, he was larger than you said. It took too much time. I couldn't finish. I can make it up later," Jerry explained. He made no apology, no excuse. He thought of those as extraneous talk. He was frank and brief. The entire room was devoid of emotional atmosphere.

"Well enough then I suppose. Enjoy your rest." The thin man exited with less preamble than he had entered. Jerry was going to sleep now.

His legs were made of wood
His arms were made of twine
And in his head there was a brick
Where there should have been a mind.

Mary wandered around the house dazed. It was early afternoon and everything was bright. She was rarely home during the daylight hours, and felt out of place. She knew these things, but now they looked large and unfamiliar. She couldn't recall where she put things down. She had to think hard to recall where her keys were. She hadn't quite made up her mind, but she thought she hated her house in the daytime. It wasn't hers from sunup to sundown. This was the time the housekeeper came, this was the time the plants got watered, this was the time the cat was asleep. She tried to watch TV, but the sunlight glared off it and she couldn't make out the pictures. This was not her home, this was his home.

He lived in it during the day. He was the one that watered the plants and hated the cat. These were his hours. He owned them, she had the evenings and the nights and he claimed the mornings and afternoons. It was a wonderful arrangement. That is, it was normally a wonderful arrangement until today. She had nothing she could be doing today. She had no wounds to lay her hands on. They had not all been healed, but her collapse had made them refuse to allow her to do it. She couldn't tell them that she had to. That if she didn't then she would be lost in a labyrinth of abstract shapes that perverted her home.

He wasn't there. She had not sought him out, she had left closed doors unopened and tried to find a place where he could easily overlook her. It all smelt like him though, and it was impossible to find anything of hers to hide in. She had looked outside for his car though, and it wasn't there. He might have known she would take the house for a different shift, or he might have fled from her scent's disgusting pang as she now wanted to do from his. She could almost taste him it was so powerful in some rooms. A dry and offensive odor like tanned hide. The reek of a taxidermist's shop of still-life death.

There were no pictures in the house. Nothing personal anyway. There were a few paintings, a photograph of the northern lights taken from a plane, but not one snapshot of either resident. She liked it that way and she supposed that he did too. It was easier to forget the other, so long as their scent was not milling around the humming silence of the house.

She was in the basement, eyeing a bare desk. It was of a very dark wood with heavy spindle legs, a perfectly polished top, and a roll top with one latch broken so that it sloped to the left when it was opened. She eyed it because she couldn't recall ever using it, much less polishing it until it shone like it did. Light seemed to jump away from it, as if burned.

Trepidation filled her as she thought about opening it. She wanted to know what could be in this heap of wood, but at the same time was afraid of the things that he might store there. She was also afraid that he would know it had been disturbed and perhaps destroy something of hers as restitution. He had never done anything of the kind, never showed the emotional capacity to feel anger of any degree, and had certainly never sought to tilt the scales of wrongs between himself and her to an even balance. She did not want to see the day he took to vengefulness, were that day to come. She would not be the cause of it. She took caution with her up the stairs and out of sight of the temptation that lurked around the desk.

The stairs terminated in their den. It was a rustic room with hardwood floors and a stone fireplace that had never been used. She loved this room at night. It had a huge skylight with her recliner under it. She would read in that chair and rest her eyes looking at stars. Today she would not touch it.

She went through the den into the kitchen, through the sliding door to the deck. The deck felt neutral, safe. A demilitarized zone. She leaned against the railing. The wind threw a lock of hair across her eyes, and everything was momentarily obscured by shimmering brown with silvery streaks that spat off light like chrome. She was still attractive in the dignified way of a woman who can't offer her body or even the ability to bear children. We shall call it an inner beauty, a poise, a bearing perhaps. Something that will make even a younger man look twice without really knowing why. Whatever attribute she had, it was wasted today. Veiled behind insecurity and outright fear.

She felt entrapped by knowing that he would come back eventually. He would catch her in his house, during his hours of the day. Without a word he would chastise her and warn her to make that mistake never again. After her ordeal the previous night, she would not stand to be imprisoned and pierced by silence. She would give him his house to await his homecoming.

She knew she had no right to be there now, so she fled. If she had to go to fight with the hospital, then so be it. If she had to bang on the door of a friend, then that was the path, but there was not one more moment she could smell him or intrude.

Refusing to surrender
Is all she's ever done
But in never giving up
The fight is never won.

Thaddeus Aaron Cartwright didn't like the smell of the place. It was a strange building to look at, and once inside the eccentricity of the architecture was eclipsed by the dried parchment smell that seemed to be everywhere.

He was standing in an antechamber to the main labyrinth of rooms. Certainly labyrinth was the term for it, because they seemed designed specifically to misdirect those that chose to walk through them. The floor and walls were all done in a sterling checkerboard pattern, making anyone moving through it look like they were strolling across the largest chess board ever constructed. But having the walls also so tiled confused the eye and Thaddeus Aaron Cartwright had walked into a couple of walls already. He could cope with that though, except that he was on a quest to find the source of the tomb-like aroma.

He lit a cigarette and turned his back away from the single hallway that led into the checkerboard maze and stared out into the desert. The front of the building was a series of windows that stretched from the floor to the ceiling that was, at best estimation, sixty some feet above. Even the doors were solid panels of glass with ornate porcelain handles. Black for the right door, white for the left. Beyond the doors was the desert.

Thaddeus had come to this place to satisfy an unusual flight of fancy. A curiosity that came at him suddenly and unexpectedly like a bat rousted from the rafters of a barn during a rainstorm. He had seen it from miles away, sitting like a glittering oasis in the cracked earth just to the side of route 21. It wasn't until he had drawn closer to it that he had found it anything but a bit out of place. When he tore by it, he had come close enough it seemed to allow the positive polarity of the building to draw his negative pulse toward it. After a moment, he had spun the wheel on his old, black Oldsmobile 442 and churned up a miniature dust storm as his tires spun onto the shoulder and back onto the tar riddled blacktop.

There hadn't been a sign outside to explain what the building was. It didn't have an address distinguishable anywhere or locks on the doors. It turned out to be an art museum of some kind. It looked more like a display of a private collection, because the number of paintings was not extensive, nor were any done by a notable artist. In fact, there was no name scrawled into the corner of any of the pieces that hung on the walls. To Thaddeus, they seemed more like landmarks, places to determine location within the awkward sameness provided by the tiles all around them.

To add a final installment to the strangeness was the complete absence of another person. There was no groundskeeper, nor owner, nor janitor, no one to be seen. There weren't doors to other rooms, there weren't cameras to imply a hidden overseer tending to the place from a dark room with a bank of monitors. It was hollow and lifeless.

Thaddeus finished his cigarette and ground it out on the floor. He was rapidly descending into boredom and frustration. He sighed and decided to wander back through the confusing array of pictures.

He did enjoy the paintings though. The were almost all done in rich oils and all the colors were vibrant and deep. The frames were all alike. They were clearly wooden but were a tacky golden color. As if they had been made lovingly in a woodshop and then hastily spray-painted by a kindergarten class as a gift for mother's day to be wrapped with a macaroni necklace of the same color.

The subjects in the paintings would probably have been defined as disturbing material to anyone not of Thaddeus' particular temperament. Just to the right of the hallway from the antechamber was a stark black and white drawing of a rather sloppy cesarean section birth. A man in hospital orderlies clothing was standing over the carved body of a woman with a broken bottle brandished above his head dramatically. In his other hand he held an inverted child by the feet with the umbilical cord still trailing into the uterus of the mother. Almost surely dead, the mother seemed to be looking sorrowfully at something unseen to her left.

There was a great deal of variance in the subjects and styles. Ranging from abstract to still life. From expressionistic to surrealism. There was demonic figures melting into cups of greenish fluid inside dainty china cups atop saucers and a woman bent over a shattered mirror trying to reconstruct it despite the hammer that lay beside her hand. Thaddeus' favorite was certainly a drawing of a braided string being twisted between two vice grips. The string was marked in a dozen places with little red dots. He didn't understand it. But it made his stomach tickle.

He finally became discouraged at moving along through the inconsistently shaped rooms with one hand along the wall to allow him to find his way. He saw the sunlight spilling around a corner, and followed it to the doors. He would certainly happen back this way at nighttime and see if any answers presented themselves. Until then, he would be content to be away from the smell. He pushed the black handled door and left.

"I don't even know why I come to see you anymore, Skuld," said the somewhat haughty and indignant female standing in his hallway and looking down at him in his seedy living room. She had her blue jacket in her hand and was holding his heavy inner door open. The screen door had shut behind her.

"Because I am all that's left," was his reply. It came through his smirking mask that was equal parts mockery and arrogance. "Now close the door before it starts to get cold.

She complied by moving her foot aside and stepping out of the way as the solid wooden door shut. "You know, it is 85 degrees out. I don't think you have to worry about cold."

Skuld took the admonishment silently but did lower his eyes and smile at the sleeping mouse in his lap clearly sharing something that the girl couldn't understand.

Although she could hardly be called a girl anymore. Her body was full and lithe and tall. Her face was sweet and open with just a hint of the girlish freckles long since faded still dancing about her cheeks. She had undoubtedly been tamed and broken by some man and had come out strong and independent but not without understanding. At least, that is what Skuld thought by reading her. Most anyone else would have simply said that she was pretty enough.

The hallway began at the door and there was a large doorway a few steps in and to the right that led to the living room. It was in this doorway that she stood looking ready to leave but forced to stay. Skuld stroked his mouse with a single index finger and generally did nothing but look impish. They stayed like that as minutes passed, but it was not uncomfortable or unfamiliar.

"Are you going to sit down, or are you going to lurk there all afternoon?" Skuld finally said, taking his attention away from the mouse for a moment. It was notable that it was barely nine-thirty in the morning. Skuld reasoned those things, things like time and temperature differently than did the rest of the world.

The girl, the woman, came in and took the reclining chair that faced the couch which Skuld occupied. She knelt over, intent on the mouse. More silence followed until Skuld sat back, as if exhausted from petting with his single finger. He looked at her through slit eyes, filtering the morning, afternoon, sunlight as best he could.

"Are you going to make tea?" Skuld prodded.

She smiled in spite of herself, "I'll make tea if you cook dinner."

Skuld seemed to mull this offer over with the precision of a jewelry appraiser. It required that he purse his lips, tap a hand thoughtfully, and scratch contemplatively at his cheek. Finally, "That means you're staying for dinner, yes?"

"Possibly," she grinned.

Skuld's face returned to the appraiser's skeptical face for a moment before relaxing and raising one hand with one thumb pointed upwards. She giggled and hopped lightly out of the chair, all haughtiness and indigence lost from her bearing. She took his hand in hers and brushed her lips across the back of it and then swirled out of the room and into the kitchen.

"Honestly," came her voice from the other room as water ran, "You're horribly frustrating these days. I really cannot figure out why I can't stay away. It isn't like I couldn't go to a therapist for advice. Or even a career advisor would be simpler than muddling through your nonsense."

Skuld scoffed audibly. "Career advisor," he said loudly into the room. "You know, I believe that is the worst rubbish I have heard come out of your mouth since you told me that you were a much better pilot than I am." Skuld's speech was lilted by a slight British accent that weighted the condescension of his words. They were further encumbered by the age and experience behind them.

"When did I say that?" she asked, poking out of the kitchen while stirring something in a pitcher.

"I think you were about eight at the time. Which should tell you how foolish you sound now," he said, lifting his eyebrows at her as she peeked around the corner at him.

"I know," she said. "But still, you could at least try to stop being so damned cryptic all the time. It is the technology age for crying out loud. Contemporize." Skuld laid his head back and laughed silently at the ceiling. "And have you ever thought about cleaning yourself up a little bit? You are covered in hair." Skuld was, indeed, becoming coated with small strands of rodent hair. It stuck out starkly from his four day old beard, through his robe, and on his black slippers. He paid it, and her criticisms, no heed at all. Such things were not nearly enough to perturb him. Besides, it made the mouse more comfortable to be surrounded by his own smell.

"Have you seen Ashe?" She asked into the room. Mostly she was answered by blank stares from glazed eyes set in putrid, sallow masks. The whole room seemed plugged into some hive mind, a mainframe that issued their commands, told them when to speak. Now it had them all frozen, waiting. Finally, a voice from the floor answered her.

"Did you call his apartment?" She looked down at the speaker. He was barely distinguishable from the brown shag carpet. He was wearing a faded green canvas shirt, a flower child castoff, and chocolate corduroy pants worn at the knees. He was like an oil spot in a driveway the way he spread across the floor like he had leaked out. But when she looked at his face, his visage was all dancing harlequin eyes that played like starlight on a street puddle. She knew him a little, not enough to recall his name quickly, but had seen him with Ashe.

"Yes, and the bar, and I drove by most of the parks, and the benches on the docks, and that gazebo he likes so much. I figured he would be here." She tried not to sound exasperated. Her floor gnome (although gnome was hardly the word for a man that towered somewhere above six and a half feet when he stood) hummed contemplatively and rolled his glittering eyes back into his skull. For a moment she thought she had lost him until he uncoiled like a rattlesnake. In one liquid motion he flung the mostly empty bottle out of his hand. It shattered against the wall beside one of the vacant statues. She jumped at the sudden violence that went almost totally unnoticed by the plastic people occupying the room.

"Gene!" He screamed as he came off the floor, "where does Ashe go when he doesn't want to be found?" Shards of glass were stuck in Gene's hair and he was glaring balefully at the amber liquid slipping down the wall beside him in rivulets. He said nothing.

"Gene goddamnit!" The newly risen man grabbed Gene's shoulder with a broad right hand and struck Gene's face with the back of his spread left. Pain and shock rose into Gene's expression as his cheek reddened angrily. "Pay fucking attention. Are you with me?" Gene cringed back, tugging on the hand knotting itself into his clothing. The left hand drew back for another connection. Finally Gene stammered.

"What time is it? What time is it?" He was transfixed by the stern sinew underneath the skin of his attacker's hand. The floor gnome dropped his hand and turned to look at her expectantly in another of his liquid movements. It took her a flustered moment to realize he expected something from her. She had brought her hand to her throat in a moment of shock, and it hung there still. She lowered it to look at her watch.

"It's uh, about a quarter after twelve." The gnome seemed content with her answer and looked to Gene for more information. Gene swallowed hard and was trying to whip his mind into some kind of a functioning machination. They waited and watched. Some of the button eyes in the room had come to focus with displaced interest at the drama unfolding.

"Drills, he likes drills in the daytime. He says they are the only ones that really understand him." Gene was clearly getting exhausted. The gnome let him go, contented to let the interrogation stop.

"Thank you," she said absently, turning for the door, always relieved to escape Ashe's stranger haunts when she had to go searching for him. She didn't even take a moment to relish in the fresh air out of the dank house as she strode over the three cement steps outside.

"Wait," the voice caught her midway between the house and her car. She would have normally kept her hasty stride and ignored it, but it was the gnome's lilting intonation, and though she didn't know enough to quickly recall his name she was quite certain that she didn't want to arouse his ire. She turned around, but chose not to meet his frolicking gaze. "I'd better go with you," he said when he drew up near her, it only took him a few strides. "Ashe can be quite a handful when you roust him." She was at a loss as how to refuse his uninvited accompaniment. She was quite sure she could handle Ashe's worst mood by herself.

"Thank you, but I've known Ashe for a long time, I'll be fine." She couldn't see his grin, but she could feel it like an unnatural warmth.

"Not as long as I have, you just don't want to ride with me. But you are going to anyway. Now which car is yours? And have I told you that young ladies in lovely blue sweaters that flatter their bodies should not wander into such awful houses, no matter who they think they know?"

"I…" she began finally looking up at him, if just for a glance. He raised a hand to stop her.

"You have no real reply. Let's just get in the car. Lead the way my dear." He bowed and extended one freakish arm. She adjusted her purse and just began walking, resigned, stunned, and frightened. "You worry too much about the wrong things," he said from behind her. Reading her like a flare in the night sky. "Were I going to rape you, I would have had an easier time in there than anywhere out here. You are perfectly safe. Oh," she heard his footsteps stop as she rounded to the driver side of her car. "This is your car? I hope to God you got a bargain." And again, she could feel his broad smile like a brimstone furnace.

To say that Ashe was in a terrible mood would have been a gross understatement. Ashe had bypassed the worst moods of his life, had scoffed as he sped by gloomy and morose. He was in a Zen meditative state of misery. He had achieved an angry and sullen nirvana. Someday, he hoped, there would be a monument erected in his soul to commemorate his hopelessness so that every other emotion he ever experienced might come to understand that they were mere pinpoints of light in his gray, gray world.

It was early afternoon and despite being inside, Ashe had dark glasses over his eyes. He was slumped in an uncomfortable chair with a notebook computer open on his lap, a spiral notebook on the small table beside him, and a newspaper folded open to the stock readouts sitting on the floor beside him. He wasn't paying attention to any of them. He seemed transfixed on a spot nearly eighteen inches from the end of his shoe on the carpet. Behind the glasses his eyes were pinpoints of bloodshot onyx. His hair was tousled and had begun to hang raggedly about his head like the tendrils of a tattered cobweb. Everything about him warned anyone chancing to look at him that he was to remain undisturbed. His clothes were rumpled and his whole face had become haggard, as if it had scowled for so long that the muscles had finally given up, leaving his high cheek bones to stick grotesquely out of the exhausted flesh.

The odd part of Ashe's current miserable state, was that is was without authority. It had no right to exist. Not to say that he didn't have every right to be sitting dejectedly somewhere in misery. He had earned the right to do it by riding the tides of pain without killing himself. However, instead of sitting, contemplating his actual suffering, he was instead moping about five words on the front page of the spiral notebook. Those five words were coming to haunt most of his waking hours. And for a man with such grief, misery, and anger in his life, it seemed ludicrous that five empty words, words that he himself had written down, would be the nerve center of his torment.

Ashe had hobbled himself in this way. He had cut himself off from his humanity some time ago. He had denied anything access to his icy pearl tower. He had amputated emotional reaction from his senses. Anymore, he wasn't able to simply take the inputs of the world and decide a way to feel about them. Instead he, like an amputee, took false emotions that tingled at him from his severed connections. Twinges that happened as he finally reached out to find something reaching back. But after enough time he had become an emotional leper. And there wasn't a way to retrieve what had been lost with the same passion and fire that is there with a normal, healthy emotional limb. It was now a crutch, a prosthetic proboscis that he tried dipping into the streams of sympathy. He tried waving it at frustrated breezes. He tried to whet it anyway he could. But none of it had worked. And so he sat, gloomily incognito.

Ashe was painfully drawn away from his reverie by a large slab of bone and meat landing on his shoulder with a thump. Ashe winced, more out of shock than pain. Before he looked up, he noticed the crisscrossing fluorescent lights casting a circle of faint, but huge shadows around him.

He looked first at the hand resting on his shoulder and cascading down onto his chest. It was a marvelously knobby thing, like the branches of a long dead tree. Gnarled in a thousand interwoven swirls and knotted until it seemed impossible to saw through. The hand led to a long wrist that disappeared into a faded green canvas shirt that wandered up through the air until it met a shoulder that was covered with long brown hair. The face was overgrown with long stubble that hadn't been groomed into a beard. The remarkable feature was the eyes that spun like jeweled dice being cast against an alleyway wall.

"Ashe." The man seemed very satisfied with himself for having found Ashe's resting place. Ashe's face had not budged. It had thought for a moment about clenching angrily, but now it split into a brief, if totally joyless grin of recognition. Seeing Ashe smile was a unique experience. He had jagged teeth that fit together almost perfectly forming an unbroken white wall in his mouth like cellar doors to his viscera. The question was, as it is with any door, whether the intent was to keep something out, or keep something in. He took note of the slender girl beside the man and couldn't help but be amused despite his abhorrence for being interrupted in his hiding places.

"Hatch," Ashe said warmly. The hand moved off his shoulder and was proffered to be shaken. Ashe gripped it for a moment then waved broadly to the area around him, "sit," he said. Hatch looked around for a moment, realizing there was no chair in Ashe's immediate vicinity. He took a few steps and drug a bench over. He indicated the girl was to sit and then did so himself.

"You are a hard man to find," Hatch said amicably. "Your friend here came by the house looking for you. Seemed in quite a rush to get her hands on you." Ashe glanced at the girl, not in the eyes, and then kept his attention on Hatch. "Tight lipped too, wouldn't tell me what the rush was. I don't think she liked having me along, she kept quite a watch on her purse and her more intimate pieces the whole time. You might want to tell her that the world has millions of those things that are far better to be taken than hers," he shrugged, oblivious to the very tight expression the girl's face took toward him.

"How dare you…" she began. She had suffered almost two hours of this man's insolence and was quite displeased by the casually vulgar attitude he had. With a shudder running the length of his frame, Hatch raised a hand to silence her as he was quite fond of doing.

"Not to mention she is very shrill." He finished and dropped his hand.

There was a few moments of silence as Ashe nodded appreciatively and the girl fought down her anger and embarrassment. To have a complete stranger openly point out that you are not worth being raped or robbed was not an experience that she was coping with very well especially since Ashe seemed amused by it. That was certainly the most infuriating part for her, although she would never admit that if you were to ask her.

Almost as a consolation the tall man added, "But I suppose she is pretty enough."

"Are you feeling all right? You haven't seemed yourself since we came in." She had moved into Hatch's vacated spot on the bench to be closer to Ashe. She put a hand reassuringly on his leg. They were in one of the antechambers of the Mining History Museum with a replica of a mammoth drill taking up the center of the vaulted room. Whenever a tour came through they turned it on briefly to show the unbridled destructive power that the thing possessed. Hatch was staring down into the mock hole they had constructed to place the thing in. They had turned off the breaker to keep him from playing with the controls to operate the drill. He still liked to flip the switch absently and get ugly glances from the 30ish woman who seemed to have nothing better to do than glower at him like a nun in a Brothel. He was trying to silently coerce her into coming from behind the monolithic desk so that he could sweep her into an offensively passionate kiss.

"I'm fine," Ashe replied unconvincingly. He was watching Hatch roll his tongue around and soak in everything he saw.

"Then why weren't you answering your phone? What are you doing here? Talk to me Ashe, something is bothering you. I hate it when you shut me out."

"Forget it," Ashe said. "It isn't anything that concerns you."

"You concern me." She gripped his knee. Somehow the touch dropped signals all up his leg and blew a warhead in his spine. He jerked his knee away from her forcefully and leaned abruptly right into her face, pulling his glasses off with one hand and grabbing the newspaper with the other hand. He shoved it into her face. She recoiled a bit, noticing the putrescence of his breath and body. Sweat and liquor and several less identifiable odors wafted away from him.

"This is what bothers me!" He hissed vehemently. He dropped the paper and grabbed the computer. "This is what bothers me! This has no anima. It has no…" he cast about for a word, flinging the computer around with contempt. "no blood. No life force no…it's dead. You want it?" It flopped open in his derisive hand. "Because I can't stand the sight of the thing. It sits there like a brain without a soul. It's a big ugly calculator that can beat me at chess and doesn't know what it's purpose is. I hate this thing. It is the flawed product of a flawed design created by some fool with the same problem. I can't stand this thing!" It clattered to the floor. Perhaps breaking. Ashe didn't look at it again. His hand sought out and found the notebook. He waved it under her nose.

"This…" the word seemed to take forever to come through his hiss. He stopped looking at her and came to the blue cover and flimsy wire holding the pages together.

"This…" he said again, with more awe. "This is dead too. But it used to be alive. It wasn't constructed out of the rocks and the melted sand. This pulsates." His bloodshot onyx pinpoints came back to her eyes. "this weeps." He jammed the notebook into her hands. Replaced his glasses and sat back. Spent. She took that as a cue to open it.

"When you dance I feel…" she read off the first page. In anticipation she flipped through it. Though dog eared and worn and bent as if well used it contained nothing but those words.

From the middle of the room came a squeal and then offended screeching. The woman had eventually come round her fortress to ask Hatch if she could help him. She found that she could. But it hadn't gone exactly as she predicted. He spun her, dipped her gracefully and shoved his stubble ridden mouth to hers. There was the first parts of an elementary school field trip coming through the doors that fell to giggling with their teachers trying to quiet them. Hatch raised his hand to try and arrest the woman's gibbering at him. Her face was flushed red and she was waving her arms fitfully as she chastised him and began to move off to find a male supervisor who might be more effectual at removing the cretin. Ashe shook his head and smiled, his plight alleviated for a bit of mirth. The girl gaped.

As the woman tried to leave, Hatch took one of her arms pleadingly. She tore it away from him and rather violently instructed him not to touch her again, and informed him that she was calling the police. She rounded her desk and picked up the receiver. The desk was a piece of marble nearly chest high on the tall woman. Hatch leapt atop it without even using a stand to facilitate the leap. He used his hand instead to depress the button on the phone, closing the line. He then just smiled at her. One of the male teachers that had come through the door decided that he had seen quite enough, and chivalrously stepped in, grabbing Hatch's canvas shirt and yanking him away from the woman.

The teacher gave some sharp instructions to leave the woman alone while Hatch held up his hands helplessly. The woman was taking the chance to dial and inform whoever was on the other end of the line, which turned out to be building security, that there was a miscreant in the building who had assaulted her. Hatch decided that it was time to make an exit and walked away from the man in mid-sentence with no warning or apology.

"Hey buddy," he said, spinning Hatch around to face him. Hatch cut him off by grabbing him around the throat. The man went instantly silent as he put ten meaty fingers around the granite forearm and tried to dislodge the fingers. Hatch grinned for a moment and then released the man's throat and again, turned away and ambled down the two stone steps to where Ashe and the girl were sitting.

"I think we'd better go." Security was sweeping in from the deeper parts of the museum. Three broad men in powder blue with badges and black sticks had arrived near the desk and the woman was pointing. Ashe rose out of his seat and managed to get the girl, the notebook, and the newspaper gathered up. The computer he left in a plastic and silicone mass on the floor. He was quite done with the infernal device. Security stopped short at the benches as the trio waded through dumbfounded children and frightened middle aged women in plain skirts to get through the doors. The male teacher still stood in the middle of the room rubbing his throat.

In the car: The girl drove, Ashe was in the passenger seat, and Hatch overran the backseat with his rangy limbs. He felt somehow more comfortable in the backseat. It was just one of his odd preferences. He was idly listening to Ashe and the girl converse. It occurred to him that he didn't know her name. They were in a heated discussion right now, and he felt it would be best to ask her at a more appropriate time.

"What the hell was that?" The girl was saying.

"He was just being friendly. You should see what he does with jumpers."

"Jumpers? You mean people who are going to kill themselves?"

"And people trying to rob liquor stores, convenience stores, lawyers. That's just how he makes friends."

"You aren't serious." She seemed aghast. Hatch wondered how the hell it was she made friends. Especially friends like Ashe.

"Quite. I was trying to throw myself in front of a train at the subway. He actually saved my life. Threw me down between the tracks and laid on top of me. Wouldn't let me up until I told him what kind of pie I preferred and why. And then he threw me through the glass of a vending machine. It was a very long night. But you get used to that. He was just rattling that bitch's cage."

Hatch cleared his throat quite audibly. Ashe chuckled a little. "Pardon me, rattling that woman's cage."

"Oh my god," was all the girl said. Ashe decided the conversation was over and started re-lacing his shoes. Hatch took the opportunity to ask the girl's name.

She didn't reply.

He asked again, louder. She still said nothing. It was an ugly kind of silence.

"Lilly," Ashe finally replied. "Her name's Lilly."

"Nice too meet you Lilly. You're very rude." He then laid back and tried to doze off.

You could say that Thaddeus was relaxing. He was spending his time relieving tension, doing something for himself. Taking a little time for Thaddeus. You would be accurate if you were to say that. Because that is exactly what he was doing. You would also be entirely accurate if you were to say he was dragging a homosexual through a dry riverbed. Because he was doing that as well.

It was Sunday. Sunday was the one day that Thaddeus really relished going out. He depressurized. Some men fish, some hunt, some paint bad watercolors of lilies beside waterfalls and if those last men were come upon by Mr. Cartwright, they would be forcibly hitched to his bumper face down and gradually turned into ground chuck over the course of several miles.

What really got Thaddeus' rocks off was taking the turns. The dusty tube on the end of his tow chain would go skittering to one side or another and usually plow into the side of the riverbed and rebound off the rocks like a screaming meat pinball. Thaddeus would then giggle. Thaddeus didn't really giggle, it was more of a single scoff, but compared to the otherwise flinty exterior it was as close to a giggle as one could expect from a man that took his breaks with a homosexual dismembering along the road.

Some days he took it slow. He liked it when they would fight their way to their feet, and be struggling at their bonds as their legs pumped them along. He would then pound his accelerator and sweep them back to the ground. Today, he was more inclined to run it like an assembly line. Maximum output. He'd done four already, and number five was almost surely done by now. One of the man's legs had pulled out a couple of miles back, Thaddeus could see the vultures already circling it, making sure it wasn't going to sabotage them when they swept upon it.

Thaddeus wasn't going to stop just yet. He knew the riverbed angled upward into flatter land that wasn't too far from the highway. He would finish the run and see what else might rend itself away from it's host.

Later: She'd been out on the main drag for almost three hours. Three hours in heels could feel like a fucking lifetime when you were shaking it all up and down the pavement with delicate little clicks coming from your heels like castanets. It just wasn't worth it, honey. Hell no. She loved the work, and it was true that her legs and ass looked like they were carved out of marble thanks to walking this strip with six inch spikes at the end of her legs, they were also pinching the hell out of her toes and the strap was about to draw blood, honey. To be sure.

"Oh hell no," she said, and whipping the boa around her shoulders so it wouldn't get the street grime on it, she put her finely toned buttocks down on the curb to take that damned shoe off. Her skirt hitched up to show the garter belts holding her fishnet stockings up. How undignified. She looked back and forth to see if anyone was really noticing her unladylike posture. Since she cared nothing for what the wino sleeping against the building thought of her modesty, she just kept right on with her business. She undid the buckle on the side of the pink vinyl and pulled her shoe off. Oh yeah baby, her cramped foot loved that move. To be sure it did. She undid the other one and slid it off too. The concrete felt like heaven against the burning skin on her soles. She pulled the sequined top up a bit and leaned back on her outstretched arms, arching her back. She looked down at herself. Goodness baby, if they saw you now you'd be just thrown right out of the pageant. No jury, no trial. Right to execution, baby. Sitting here with all your goods popping out all over the place, what would they say? Gutter trash baby. You've got to pull it together. To be sure.

She sighed. She was dreading getting back up even if it meant she would have her dignity back. But wait, was this a car pulling up to her? Slowing down to take a look. Oh now, you going to be a nasty one you want a girl in the gutter flying all over the place like some floozy dancer down at the adult arcade peep show. That's all right sugar, you ain't going to be nasty enough. Not close baby, but let's make a try of it anyway.

The car that pulled up was like a black hole. It was all mean lines and clean blackness that didn't seem to reflect the strip lights. Not the Open 24 hours sign, not the Tattoo sign, not even the adult arcade peep show sign. It seemed completely indifferent to everything around it. Like an ambulance. That was it, just like an ambulance. Too busy off saving lives, too much of a rush to take in the sights. It was on a mission from God. Except this ugly black motherfucker of an excuse for a car wasn't on no mission from God baby. Hell no.

The passenger side window rolled on down and she was about to get up to go on and have a little chat with the driver. Instead, he came to her just as soon as the car came to a full stop.

The first thing that struck her was how old this white boy was. His hair was like a snowcap on his head. His face didn't have too many lines in it though. He didn't reflect nothing either. Just like his car. This boy was all winter right down to his balls. He probably spit nitroglycerine when he came. He had broad shoulders all zipped up in a black denim jacket above worn blue jeans that spilled off his legs onto old white tennis shoes. Everything fit him like scar tissue, no frills. Just the right size. She stood up, her shoes in her hand.

"What's up baby? You lost?" She cocked her free hand on her hip and let him see her full glory. Like a black panther baby. To be sure. And then she waited. And the white boy, he just walk up to her and don't say nothing. And he sure does look happy with himself, like a sleeping snake with a cat sized lump in it's middle. "Can I help you with something?" she said, not liking the way snowcap is looking at her. He sure as shit isn't hungry. Hell no. He don't want her, and that isn't no good.

He looked up the street really slow. He saw the wino and he just kept scanning around. Just looking pleased as can be.

"Look darling, if you want to…" she finished her sentence with a shrill scream as he grabbed her by the hair and started pulling her toward the car. She dropped her shoes and started trying to pry his hand off her head. She wasn't small and she knew it. She could double for a body builder she was so damn big in the chest and arms and especially her marble legs. She couldn't get the hard fingers wrapped in her hair to budge at all. A crowbar and a one ton jack was about the only thing that was getting this white boy's hand to let go.

He jammed her head and shoulders through the passenger window. She began kicking like a hurricane of stockings and garter belts. He deftly evaded her feet, put his iron hands on her ankles and finished putting her in the car in a heap. She bloodied her lip on the gear shift while he manhandled her. Once her feet hit the floorboards, she clawed for the door handle. It was locked. She looked for some way to disengage the lock. She saw the screw on the top of the door panel. He had taken the knob off so she couldn't get a hold of it. But she began to try anyway, digging at it with her long, fake, glitter polished nails. Those that had not broken in the struggle began to chip and fall off now. Snowcap thrust his hand into her hair again and pounded her face into the dashboard. She heard her nose break and another, less identifiable crunch from below her left eye. Coupled with a bright flash that started in her cheek and seared it's way across her skull and into her spine. She brought her hands in front of her face to stop the battering. He immediately let go, and before she could prime herself to make a leap out the window, he was in the car with the tire's squealing away from her shoes. Now looking very dilapidated beside the road.

Mary had run herself nearly ragged. Her hair was now pulled back in a tightly controlled pony tail at the back of her skull that made her angular face look very severe. The flight from her house had been so unusual for her that she'd been fraught with a feeling much like vertigo. Repeatedly she had to pull off the side of the road to catch her breath and allow her vision to stabilize. It had taken her almost three hours to complete the short drive into the city. Normally the commute was between forty-five minutes and an hour.

"Why are you bothering?" Skuld asked. They were sitting on the floor with their hands clasped together. He had never seen her like this, fitful and anxious. She was normally so calm and placid. Normally she was so much like him that it was frightening. When he asked the question he could see the strain grow into the corners of her face. He changed his tactic.

"Is he worth it?" Skuld kept ducking his head to try to hold her eyes. She kept looking away.

"I…" she started, and furrowed her brow and then cast around the room for anything to look at that wasn't him. He decided to let it go and just do the reading. He stretched and popped the pieces of his spine. He let go of her hand for a second to pick up a piece of leather, rolled up until it resembled a bunch of quarters. He bit on it and took her hand again. Two deep breaths and he waited for the thought to come from her jumbled mind. Eventually she gave him the image of a man. Odd looking with jagged teeth and shaggy hair. Skuld gripped it and plunged. After a few minutes he let go of her hand and collapsed back onto the floor like a rag doll. Two hours went by as she watched him twitch and writhe.

His eyes moved fitfully around in their sockets. His hands would occasionally wind into his clothing and scrape at the carpet. The mouse watched from a cushion of the couch with an affected lack of interest. Skuld's whole body moved grotesquely and spasmodically. It was only through force of will that he managed to refrain from vomiting or swallowing his tongue. It took longer than she expected. That was never good news. Good news came fast and easy. Skuld's eyes would pop open and he would sit up cheerily, take a nip at the bottle beside his chair and shake his head affectionately before he told her what he saw.

Despite not wanting to leave him, she went to the bathroom. She splashed water on her face and stared at the horrifying image of herself. She was sallow and drawn. Behind her eyes she could see her mind imploding on itself. She was glad Skuld couldn't see her now. He would have sighed and patted her back in a fatherly way smiled sadly at her the same way a beaver with one leg would smile at a cub caught in a trap. "Pain" he would say "lasts a moment. Death lasts forever." He would then pick his mouse up and they would lay next to the stereo with the bass turned up until the windows shook.

She came back to find him out of his state. She stood where the carpet met the linoleum of the kitchen and watched him. He was shuddering horribly. She moved to help, but knew she couldn't. His left hand seemed to move independently of the rest of his body. It was hanging in the air, clenching and unclenching itself. It kept twisting itself into unfamiliar patterns that would only have been appropriate in trees above a cemetery. Or perhaps in the boxes below one.

She hated to see him in pain. It was the most heartbreaking thing for her. She was the sole confidante he had. She knew that Skuld could find hell without a compass. She could see in everything he did that she was the only thing he had ever loved. He would go through this just to satisfy her. It was perverse in it's devotion.

Skuld lifted his right arm, which made his face convulse. It hung there. She immediately went to slip under it. Skuld started crying. His eyes remained fixed on the floor. The mouse sensed it's time and scrambled down the couch and slipped into one of the pockets of Skuld's robe.

Once, before anyone had thought of electricity, Skuld would have made a point of destroying the neighborhood. He would have rent the virgins asunder and set fire to anything that would burn. Now, quiet and mellowed and forgotten as he was, he could only let tears roll down his cheeks and shiver. There wasn't anymore violence left in him. He had been beaten. His hand began to clench into her shoulder, painfully. Excruciatingly as it tightened. She refused to say anything. He couldn't hurt her. It was his only disability.

Skuld was utterly lost in his own world. He had never been faced with something so hideously profound.