Disclaimer: I do not own Twisted, nor do I own Where Things Come Back. All rights remain with original authors.

Where Things Come Back Twisted

I have no idea how I graduated, but I made it. Me. Tyler John Miller. Graduate of George Washington High School, probably somewhere on the road to Ohio State in the future. But for the foreseeable future, I was stuck with a summer job of digging up weeds and planting new seeds and other things like that.

I didn't mind it. I got squishy trying to study for final exams, and I probably lost a good portion of my muscle mass. This digging holes thing is what I need if I'm going to keep up my Hulk status, especially since college is right around the corner. I'd like to stay in shape. You know, college girls and big bills. It's a brave new world.

Today I had been doing some landscaping for the town, mostly around the park by the river. I got home in my car (my car, by the way—I can finally drive again), realized that I was missing all of my tools, and cursed. I'd left everything back at the dig. Good job, self.

So after showering up, I drove back to the site. It was dark out now, the air still a little cold yet to shrug off sweaters.

Some dude was sitting at the bench not too far from where I had sweated away the afternoon and evening. I nodded at him. "Hey." Then I kept walking, and—aha! Saw my gardening tools and their handy dandy carrying bag hanging out by the bushes I had just planted.

I almost forgot the man was there as I leaned down on my knees to pick things up. But I heard him whisper, "Are you Gabriel?"

Something in his tone sounded off, but I just smiled easy. I've been good at being on my best behavior. "Sir, you must have me confused with someone else. I'm Tyler."

"I'm Cabot," the man said. "Cabot Searcy. And I'm looking for Gabriel."

"I don't know any Gabriel around here." I hurried up with my landscaping tools to get out of there. "But good luck finding him."

"I thought I found him before," Cabot said. "I was wrong. I had to let him go. But I think I found the real Gabriel." And the man gave me a strange smile.

Alrighty, time to go. I turned around, shouldering my pack and pulling out my cell phone. 9:00 PM. "Well you have a nice night."

I started walking away.

After a second or two, he called back, "I've seen you before, Tyler. I watched you at the park, when you threw a gun in the water."

Cold water storms down my back. I stopped and turned around. "What?"

From out of the baggy folds of his heavy sweater, he pulled out something shiny. And I knew it anywhere. My father's Beretta that I had torn apart and thrown to the fish. "You gave this to me," he said, fingernails clicking against the gun. "Why?"

For one wild moment, I couldn't speak. I kept staring at the reassembled gun in the man's hands. It felt as if I'd just seen a ghost. "Whoa, whoa. Wait a minute. I didn't give it to you," I said. "I threw it in the river."

His smile faltered. "But I was nearby. I watched you. I knew you meant it for me."

Oh man.

I had completely forgotten about the gun. I thought no one would ever find it, much less put it back together. That gun was still registered to my dad, who was just now starting to get along with me in a buddy-buddy way. And now it was in the hands of…what? A schizo? What the hell just happened in my life?

If he did anything with that gun, it'd be my fault.

I was beginning to really curse my own stupidity for ever leaving my landscaping bag behind. But then I realized that this man would have had my father's gun. And I wouldn't have known about it.

Accomplice to murder. Restless endangerment. I'm sure the police would get me with something.

Cabot said, "This is the puzzle, right? The path I'm supposed to follow? Like a heroic quest. You pulled things apart and scattered them in water so I could put them back together." He cocked the gun. "And I even found the bread crumbs."

I inhaled sharply. I had an image of my own death. Then his. Then the police—my P.O.—arresting me again for yet another thing I didn't do. "Look, I need that back. It's my dad's. I shouldn't have thrown it away like that."

Cabot sighs. "Justice always rests with the father. No justice for man." He tapped the gun on his thigh. "Isn't that right, Gabriel?"

"My name's not Gabriel," I said. I steeled myself. I was not going to run away. I was going to be a man and deal with this. I was going to get that gun back.

"I watched you tear apart this gun," he said. "And the gun was one of the first ways that man became more godlike. Controlling sparks, the sound of thunder." His eyes pierced me. "You don't want people to have this power, right? That was what you were trying to do, right?"

My throat was so dry, it hurt to speak. "How did you even find them?"

"I told you. I watched it happen." He smiled. "I was driving by and watched you. It took me a long time to find the pieces. And I've been waiting to talk with you ever since." He raised the gun and leveled it at me. "So why don't you set down your stuff and chat?"

Around that point, I realized I still had my cell phone. Discreetly, I started punching in the numbers 9-1-1 as I shrugged off the pack on my back, moving to keep the phone out of Cabot's sight. I hit the call button. Then I dropped everything to the ground, cell phone included. The screen went dark again before his eyes settled on it. "Okay," I said. "Okay, I can talk."

I could feel the metal in my mouth again, the moment I had once thought of killing myself with that same gun. I never realized I could still die from it.

Cabot smiled, but he never lowered the gun. "Good."

Realizing that maybe an emergency operator had picked up my call, I started talking. "So why are you doing this? Why point the gun at me, Cabot?"

Dammit, why couldn't I remember his last name?

The man tilted his head. "Is this a test? Don't you know the answer, Gabriel?"

"I don't. And I'm not Gabriel. I'm Tyler."

"You're Gabriel!" he shouted, and I nearly flinched. "You're the one who cast power out and left it in pieces!" The gun shook in his hand. "It's all your fault! All your fault everything's wrong!"

Something felt true about his words, ironically. I had thought I'd gotten rid of the gun, but then this happened. I licked my lips. "What's my fault?"

"I was supposed to have a good life!" he bewailed. "I was supposed to be great. And now…" his voice trailed. Something flickered in his eyes. He lowered the gun, then flipped it around so the end aligned with his own temple. My heart jumped again. "I can't stand this," he said. "I tried to stop you, and look where it got me. A kidnapper on the run."

"I've never met you before in my life," I said slowly. I would have remembered if I did. And I probably should have worried about the kidnapper part, but my eyes never left that gun and the very real possibility that somebody was gonna get shot. And I would somehow be blamed if it wasn't me.

I'd hit people before, and I could take a hit, but…a gun? My stomach churned. My hands started to shake a bit.

"In the beginning," he said, "mankind received the knowledge of the universe from fallen angels, and Gabriel smote the angels who gave man power. That way no human being could ever surpass God." Cabot nearly seethed. He sounded as if he had told that tale multiple times over. "You should know this."

"It, uh, sounds like you're pretty angry about this," I said slowly. If only he just didn't have that gun. I could run. I could punch him in the face. Anything.

Cabot nodded. But his face ran with grief as he looked up at the stars. "We could have been gods. I could have been…anything but this. It's all ruined. Everything."

At least he felt regret, a normal human emotion. I could hold onto that for a while.

"We all do things we aren't proud of," I told him. "I've been there, you know? I made some decisions that got me arrested, and I had to pay my dues." I neglected to tell him that the end of the gun against his temple had been in my mouth at one point. Maybe not a good thing to admit. "It sucked enough to make me want to die."

He was looking at me intently. His grip on the gun had loosened a little. I had his attention for now. I was a man. I could take this. I pressed on, "Did you… do something bad too?"

Cabot hesitated. "No. No, Gabriel doesn't feel sympathy for humans." He narrowed his eyes. "You're supposed to tell me that I'm damned, that I've betrayed God."

"Who doesn't betray God?" I said. Hell, I didn't even know if I believed in the guy. "Now come on, man. I know it sucks to feel lost, but you need to put that gun down." I tried to eye him, man to man. I suddenly felt like a martyr for the greater good of humanity all over again. Mister righteous. "No one wins if you pull that trigger. Even if you did do something bad, you can still bounce back from this. You don't have to do this."

"You don't know," he whispered. "You don't know what I've done." He laughed. "It's only a matter of time before the kid talks. But what was I supposed to do? Kill him? He wasn't the real Gabriel." He eyed me. "You are."

"I need the gun back, Cabot," I tried to say. I kept my hands up to show I wasn't going to pull anything, even though I wondered if I could just wrestle him to the ground. Kick away gun. Punch to solar plex. Hold till police arrives. "I don't want to hurt you," I added. "I just want to walk away from this."

The man—really, he wasn't much older than me—slumped a bit. "This is a test," he whispered. "You're tricking me so that you can kill me yourself." His face hardened.

Uh oh.

He raised the gun again, but this time at me. "I'm going to shoot you," he said. "And you'll go back to heaven where you can't torture me anymore." He smiled, his lips twitching. "Then I'll shoot me too because if I don't, someone else will."

I seriously began contemplating how many seconds I had to tear the gun away from him.

"Things get better," I said, this time a little more desperately. Never before had I wanted to believe in the goodwill of mankind more than I did that moment. "When you own up to your mistakes, you can overcome them. You can change for the better. Come on, don't do this. You're life's not ruined."

"I kidnapped a boy," he said, eyeing me straight, "because I thought he was the real Gabriel. I can't make this stop. I don't know where it ends. This is fate."

"You make your own fate," I tried to argue. He was holding that gun unsteady. Maybe I could inch closer, knock it away. "You can choose to be better than this."

Dammit, where was the police?

"No," he smiled bitterly. "No, it's supposed to end this way. It's been trying to end this way for a long time."

I watched his finger reach for the trigger, and my mind blanked. The next thing I knew, I flew at him. My hand hit metal. Something exploded next to me, and I wrenched myself and the metal up, pulling away from Cabot. His hands grabbed at me, but I slammed them down and whacked him with the barrel of the gun, right across the temple.

A stunned look hit his features. Then his eyes rolled back, and he fell to the grass.

I came back to myself, heart pounding, lungs burning. The metal of my father's Beretta felt hot to the touch.

For a moment, silence.

My arms shook. Fear was everywhere in me. I looked down at the unconscious Cabot and the gun in my hand, wondering what I had just done. How I was still alive and not bleeding out.

And that's when I heard the police sirens, the screeching tires in the parking lot, the cocking of guns.

Panic overwhelmed me. I realized what this looked like. I knew running would probably get me shot.

So I stood my ground. Soon enough, they ran over and pushed me into the mud, thinking me the perpetrator, and as they handcuffed me, they read me my rights.

Sometimes I wonder why I even try.

I could see the rumor mill cranking out some serious shit now. Forget Ohio State, Tyler. You're screwed forever. Wrong time, wrong place every time. I thought of my dad coming to pick me up at the station, with his worn face staring at me in disbelief.

We were just getting back on track, Tyler, he would say. They've got you on attempted murder charges. Why? Why would you do this to me?

I managed to say back, But I didn't! I promise! I tried to stop him from killing me and himself! What was I supposed to do?

I held my head in my hands, listening to the clang of the handcuffs that itched on my wrists. I told myself the burning in my eyes wasn't tears. I told myself I was innocent, because I was.

Could they fault me for not wanting to get shot?

I had little idea what time it was, how long I'd been in that interrogation room in the police station. I felt that the dark window was a two-way mirror, and people on the other side were staring at me, waiting for me to confess to yet another crime I didn't commit.

It wasn't until much later that someone actually remembered that maybe I really existed inside this room. The doorknob turned, and I watched my interrogator walk in.

My stomach dropped out. Officer Adams. Of all the people. And here I thought I'd been rid of him.

"Mr. Miller," he said, stoic, voice smooth. He carried with him a fairly large file, most likely mine. I tried to not swallow hard. "We meet again."

"Yes, sir."

He eyed me.

"Do you realize what you've done?"

I swallowed hard. "Yes, sir."

"Good," he said. An awkward silence swung around a bit and hung in the air. He flung the folder onto the table beside me. "Then I don't need to tell you that you've just aided in the capture of a dangerous criminal."

The name wasn't mine, but Cabot Searcy.

Wait. What?

Come to find out, Searcy was suffering from religious delusions and had kidnapped a boy named Gabriel months ago, only to turn him loose and disappear into the countryside. How he ever managed to get from Arkansas to here without getting caught is beyond me.

Officer Adams un-cuffed me from the table and offered me a glass of water. "National police forces have been looking for him for months," he admitted. "We weren't sure if he'd fled the country."

"So…I'm not being charged?" I didn't want to get my hopes up yet.

Adams sighed. "The gun is technically registered to your father, but Searcy's prints are on it quite a bit. We have enough reason to believe that you reacted in self-defense, and so we will not press any charges there. But you may have to pay a fine for reckless disposal of a weapon."

Alright. I could deal with that. I figured that'd happen, and it was time to own up to my mistakes. "How much?" I asked.

"A couple grand," he said. Something twitched his lips up. "Or a summer working for the department."

A news report came out, detailing the whole thing. I got interviewed by seven different channels, after which a dozen other channels cut the footage of me and appropriated it into their own reports. My face? Everywhere.

Next day's rumor mill around town: Tyler aided the police. Tyler is a hero. Tyler is secretly a part of the FBI.

All things considered, I could dig that. Even if my hands still shook a bit whenever I thought about that night.
I kept thinking of Cabot and how he kept calling me a Gabriel. A justice-dishing angel.

After being held down by the system so long, after trying to do the right thing every time, I wondered if maybe he was onto something.