Disclaimer: I do not own Legion.

A side story, not so much a fairy tale as it is an urban legend, and adapted from the short story The Hearse, by J.B. Stamper in More Tales for the Midnight Hour.

The main characters are Tina Wallace (Phantom Girl) and Brian Landon (Timber Wolf). Hope it's coherent enough.

On a side note, I once heard of a man who had a poor heart. He had been forced to walk outside during one of the hottest days of the year before he stumbled into an air-conditioned store. But the cold in the store was such a shock to his system he died of a heart attack.

Cautionary Tales: The Hearse

The tide ebbed and flowed. White clouds spread like slashes of paint on a blue canvas. Sun shining bright. Water blue, glittering aquamarine. Seaweed spread out, going in whatever direction the waves would pull it. Barely any wind. A beautiful day on the coast.

She was sprawled on her back, openly inviting the sun's rays, her companion sitting closer to the waves as they came up to his legs.

He felt something at his foot. Looked over. A dead crab washed up on shore, right by his toes. He nearly jumped back before he realized he had stepped on another one and let out a sound of disgust.

"Aww what's wrong puppy? It's just a little crab."

Brian Landon turned his gaze from the crab, over to his companion sprawled on a red towel on the white sand. Tina Wallace wore a black bathing suit which outline her pal, curvy figure. Her skin was as pale as New York snow, which they had managed to escape for the winter holidays.

"A dead crab." Brian corrected, still standing.

"Poor puppy. I didn't know you were so squeamish." Tina playfully pouted at Brian's grumpy scowl as he sat beside her on the sand. Now that the two were together, it was like looking at contrasting photographs.

Tina was small and thin, but with perfectly sculpted curves that could give her never-ending potential as a model. Hair, soft and shiny, flowing like black silk. And eyes which were round and perfect, which glittered like monochrome pearls.

Brian's hair was brown, and there was plenty of it. A beard on his face and a ponytail, and hair on his body that would make people think he was a werewolf, somewhat, especially with those eyes that seemed to examine a person as if he wanted to eat them.

"Isn't there anything else to do around here?" Brian complained, as he usually did. Tina found that cute. And that butt of his didn't hurt none either. He swatted a mosquito. Instead of saying 'ow', he just grunted.

"Well aren't you Mr. Popular?" Tina giggled. "And besides, there's plenty to do."

"Like what?" Brian asked. Tina sat up to get to eye level with him.

"Well you could just, y'know, go for a swim. I mean, that IS why the ocean's there. Besides being used to dump gangland killings of course." Tina herself had just come in from the ocean, and was laying on the towel to dry off while working on her tan. Brian saw the evidence of her quick dip on her chest, by the way the seawater had completely soaked her and was now causing certain… parts to arise as the suit she wore outlined them.

"I'm gonna go for a walk." Brian said, blushing and deciding to walk off his madly beating heart before they received an unexpected visitor.

"Well, just don't wander off too far." Tina told him, smirking. "I don't want to get a call from the zoo about them picking up a stray wolf on the shore." Now, it was Brian's turn to smirk.

"If the zoo does call, it'll probably be because your mom locked herself in the monkey house."

Tina's smile disappeared, and she slumped back down the towel and frowned up at the sky.

"Spoilsport." Tina muttered.

"Love you." He said, leaning down and planting one kiss on her cheek, reigniting her smile.

"Love you too." She replied, reaching around in her bag for a pair of sunglasses, to hide her drooping eyelids as he observed the coast. "And don't forget, you promised we'd go to the amusement park on the pier!"

"I won't!" He called back as he waved.

Brian and Tina had been spending the vacation on the Florida shore, away from the biting, depressing cold of Manhattan in the wintertime. They hitched a ride with Tina's mother, Wilhelmina Wallace, and her group of former suffragettes turned freedom fighters, always protesting one thing or another, whether it was animal rights or police brutality, or even discrimination in professional baseball, Wilhelmina had her hand in it. Lucky for Brian too, that they could ride along, because it gave Brian a chance to listen to all the embarrassing stories Tina's mother and her friends had about her, which he could use in his ongoing war against the information his back-stabbing, so-called "friends" had given Tina.

Brian wiped some sweat away from his brow and he continued his sojourn down the beach, passing by many of the other happy vacationers as he did. Little children building sandcastles with little plastic shovels and buckets. Older siblings tormenting their brothers and sisters with jellyfish and seaweed which had washed up on shore. Brian never understood the appeal, but, he didn't have any brothers and sisters. The ones to ask in that department would be Rocky, Garth, and Nora (Nora being the tormented, and Garth being both).

Tourists and old people who huddled under big umbrellas for fear of getting sunburn (and giving such strange looks towards him, as if they wanted to scold him for not getting a proper haircut). Parents wading together with their offspring in the waves. Couples making out on towels. Some local teenage girls who were checking out Brian's abs with blushing cheeks, and they weren't half bad from his perspective either. But, he was spoken for now, so he pushed those libidinous thoughts away.

He had finally passed by the last few people on the beach, a pair of parents who were reading from old, yellow-paged penny dreadfuls as their children waded in the water, until he was only, with only the sound of the seagulls, the crashing of the waves, and his own thoughts. This was about the farthest part of the beach, the deserted section which never met any human patronage unless tourism had reached it's peak. The part that people would pass by as they walked or drove into town, if they could see past the sand dunes.

Alone. All alone.

The sun had peaked, and the heat was now becoming unbearable. At least it was taking his mind of his boredom. Brian didn't like coming to beaches that much. All you could do was swim, which could be get boring after a while. And if that didn't suit you, you could just laze around and get a sunburn.

"Ow!"

SWAT.

Or getting eaten alive.

One mosquito was no problem. But sand fleas? A swarm. That was hell. They were currently making a feast of his arms and legs, and his swatting them away wasn't doing that much good. Finally, he eyed the water. The cold, cool, crashing waves that surged and retracted on the shore. His only course of action to jump right in, he regretted it instantly, as the icy water practically numbed his entire body, he felt worse instead of better. Extreme cold was no longer the universal answer to extreme heat.

He waded back out of the water, soaked, and had to move his hair out of his eyes so he could see where he was shambling too. Out in the distance he spied the sand dunes, and decided there would be the place to seek shaded relief as the heat returned with a vengeance. Picking up the pace, trying to kick out wet sand stuck between his toes and ignore some of the more persistent pests, he ran, but it seemed like forever. The water still dripping off his body was quickly starting to disappear in the heat. He muttered a curse to the sun and sighed in relief when he finally reached the dunes.

A little wooden fence of loosely strung together boards rested at the top of the smaller one. Brian miraculously found the strength to hop over the boards, and landed in a little cluster of sea oats before he started to climb up the taller one. The fleas had started to lose the battle, but some were willing to stick it out through the war, until Brian had made it to the top, thinking that he should be getting back to Tina, not liking the idea of leaving her alone, after it must've been so long. How long had it been? Ten minutes? Twenty? An hour? An eternity. Time must've gone on vacation. But, he stood there for a minute, all by himself again, with no even insect pests to worry about or crashing waves to alert him.

"Whoa. What the hell?" He said to himself with wide eyes.

Whatever feeling of being the king of the world was toppled by feelings of exclamation and curiosity as he surveyed the sight before his brown eyes. A road. A long, black road, which looked freshly paved by as it had been there forever. The summer heat wavered and danced a forbidden dance before his eyes, watching over and looking for any sign of life that walked on two legs and could speak in English. No such luck. Yet.

"What's that sound?"

Brian perked up his ears. The buzzing and biting of the fleas had stopped, and a new track was playing. A symphony of wheels turning and crunching rocks as it moved. A motor revving in a minor that was not in the alphabet. Far away, but so very clear. He had excellent ears. And in the distance, the form was now coming. A black blob which approached closer as the feeling of dread in his gut began to crawl up to his throat. The black was now becoming shinier, with silver painted on. Brian's jaw dropped when the form became clear.

A hearse.

A shiny, black, brand-new hearse. A funeral car. Long and sleek. Brian hated looking at those things. Everyone hates looking at a hearse. Because it means some poor bastard has bit the big one. Brian was unsure of this, if the oncoming hearse was indeed real, or a mirage. That ship sailed when it pulled up right in front of him, to his shock, as if it was heading straight for him.

In the black windows, he saw people. He saw twisted, contorted, screaming faces. Shock and mutilation, mute testaments to horror. The door swung open, and out the driver stepped. An unbearably tall man, bald with squinting, black eyes that seemed like bottomless tar pits, dragging down unsuspecting victims to their doom.

Brian wanted to run. He never felt this scared, not even when he had broken his leg, not that he would admit it. He couldn't take his eyes off the people he saw in the window, but somehow his gaze was stolen to the driver. A smooth, bald head. Tall, yet skinny. His black eyes stayed on Brian, and he smiled an eerie smile which made Brian feel like a small child, waiting for the Boogeyman to creep out of the closet.

The man's lips parted, and in a slow, grading voice that was like nails on a chalkboard, he croaked...

"Room for one more…"

He motioned with pale, bony fingers towards the passenger door. Brian silently gasped. Inside, there was girl, much younger then Tina, but with black hair that rested on her shoulders, and said blue eyes like robin eggs. She turned her eyes towards his, and he felt such unbearable sadness radiate out. Her mouth contorted, silently mouthing the word 'run'. She might've spoke the words, but they could've been drowned out by the man's quiet, perverse chuckle.

Brian wanted to comply, but he didn't want to leave this girl behind. The heat beating down on him, the world spinning like a top, the man's black eyes and sadistic grin. People screaming. Too much, like the long-ago feeling of an overdose.

And then he submerged in the cool, quiet darkness of nothing.

To Be Continued.