Tyler sat illuminated by the glow of his monitor. The blue light that washed his face offset the red hue still present from his morning jog. Wiping the sting from his eyes as sweat continued to slide around his eyebrows, Tyler started scrolling through his personal e-mail.

His words were barely audible to himself as he muttered the subject lines that he bypassed. "'Fixed rate APR'. 'College diploma'. 'Attract men with larger breasts'. Why would anybody want a man with large breasts?" His eyes kept scrolling down the screen until he noticed they were resting on the name of an e-mail's author. "Sandra Wells," he whispered to himself. He let the mouse hover over the e-mail for just a moment, then abruptly pushed himself away from his desk.

"I'm not dealing with her," he said to the hallway as he walked towards it. "Not this early."

As Tyler pulled his t-shirt over his head and stepped into the bathroom, he stared at himself in the mirror. He silently shook his head and turned to start the shower, letting the hot water steam up the room. He normally felt invigorated after jogging. He normally enjoyed pretending he looked healthier when he stared in the mirror. He normally took cool showers in the morning to clean away his sweat and exhaustion. Just reading her name, though, had thrown off his morning. Sandra Wells was still knocking him off balance. Half a year's distance hadn't gotten him anywhere.

* * *

A bright, cold light illuminated the Christmas Eve morning. Even with the heater on, they could feel the outside nip invading the truck as it sped along highway 166. It was nothing compared to the shivering pit in Tyler's stomach. Beside him, his brother's tightening grip on the steering wheel and creased forehead broadcasted he was growing more and more uptight, and Tyler couldn't help but feel guilty.

He had been hoping Ben wouldn't rip into him again; he just hated the feeling of getting a lecture from his younger brother. He hated it more when it was deserved. The moment Ben opened his mouth, however, Tyler silently relaxed the jaw muscles he didn't know he'd been tensing. At least the stale, glass tension in the truck had finally shattered.

"So let me get this straight," Ben started slowly, as though this weren't the third time he'd brought it up. "This 'Sandy' lives in Lowell, right?"

Tyler's new comfort had been much shorter lived than he'd have liked. He dropped his gaze to his own shirt, idly tracing the patterns in its wrinkles with his eyes. He almost thought he saw Ben smirk over at him without turning his head, but he continued to stare at his own shirt. His voice caught in his throat, and it took him a few moments before it managed to sputter its way through. "She told me Lowell last night, before I asked you to take me. I didn't find out until this morning that she meant Lowell City."

The chuckle that came from beside him had real warmth to it, but Tyler couldn't let himself feel it. Ben's voice held just as much warmth when he cynically asked, "And, this being Kansas, such a lovingly logical state, that would be the county seat of Lowell County?"

Tyler's cheeks began to warm on their own, now, but not from the heater or his brother's stupid damned humor. He was beginning to get a little pissed. "No, Ben. Lowell City isn't even in Lowell County. It isn't anywhere near Lowell County. It's in Cherokee County and you already know that!"

"Ha!" burst Ben. There wasn't even a hint of scorn in the laugh. Seventy minutes into this little trip, and he actually seemed to be enjoying the situation. "I know this state, 'mano. Lowell isn't even a city. I don't think you could even call it a town. There's nothing out there but road signs that point you back to Baxter Springs."

What the heck did "mano" mean, anyway? Ben had started using that word as soon as he got back from Venezuela, but it was stupid. He'd looked it up in a Spanish dictionary, and it meant "hand". What sense did that make? Tyler looked over at Ben to ask this question but was cut off by Ben gesturing down the road.

"That, 'mano," Ben began. There he goes with that stupid word, again. "That's Lowell."

Tyler forgot all about silly foreign words as he looked at what was going to be his home for the next little while. There was a tall church, pristinely white in the middle of his gaze. A flat patch of snow, unable to hide all the grassy greens beneath it, stretched away from the church, interrupted occasionally by a smooth granite tombstone poking a hole up through its blanket. Beyond that, he thought he saw a gas station. Then there were homes. Houses and barns and fields and nothing.

"There's nothing here!" he exclaimed to his younger brother.

Ben chuckled, again with real humor. "That's what I've been trying to tell you." He pulled off the highway, and parked the truck on the side of the road. "Come on. At least it'll be easy to find Sandy."

"Sandra," Tyler corrected as he numbly stumbled out of the truck. "There's nothing here!"

"I remember someone telling me that before. You're from Smallville, idiot. There's nothing there either."

Tyler grumbled inwardly, but protesting wouldn't get him anywhere. Ben had left home at 17, and came back years later after living in San Diego, Salt Lake City, Dallas, and Caracas. And yet despite Tyler's two-year head start, despite having all that extra time in their hometown, Ben was even more at home now than Tyler ever was in Smallville. If he told Tyler that there was nothing in Smallville, Tyler had no choice but to believe his little brother.

"'Mano?" Ben asked lightly.

"What?"

"Sandra. She's your girlfriend. You've been seeing her off and on for almost a year now. You're even at the moving-in stage." His sentences always had that edge of a laugh in them.

"And." When he had a point, why wouldn't he ever just come to it without getting you to fish for it?

He laughed to himself for few moments, and then asked, "So why don't you know where she lives?"

Before he could even glance at the sheet of paper with Sandra's address on it, the knot in his stomach started to return. He hadn't noticed it leaving, but now it seemed determined to reach full-blown panic status.

He reached out for Ben's shoulder to steady him, and took several deep breaths. "I don't know if I can do this, Ben," he almost whimpered. Why were his knees so weak? "Give me a minute to." he didn't catch himself trailing off. He didn't notice his brother's worried look, or slowly being lowered to the ground. Just those dark green dots that kept crowding his vision.



The sound of gravel being ground beneath mud beneath snow beneath boots gradually called Tyler back from unconsciousness. The steady rhythm of footsteps was joined by quicker, lighter steps as they grew louder, nearer. Against his better judgment, he opened his eyes. As the light reached his pupils, the tangy discomfort in his stomach started to rise again. He hoped he could keep it under control, this time.

"So I've met Ben," came the steady voice of Sandra from several yards away, still approaching. He turned his head to see her, and was rewarded by her smiling face and a hastened step in her walk. He breathed in the sight of her, her dark curly hair, her too-puffy cheeks, and her delicate, short form. Ben practically dwarfed her, walking ahead of her without waiting or offering her an arm in the snow. Jerk. He was nearly an entire foot taller than she, and much darker in coloring. She probably wasn't much less muscled than Ben, though. That was the one area where Tyler knew he had his brother beat. Literally, as they'd shown in the past.

He pulled himself to his knees, and found that Ben had put him in the truck's flatbed with several blankets. It wasn't enough, and his teeth chattered through his smile.

"I-i-ignore h-him, come here and warm me up, doll," he managed to force out his mouth. He didn't miss his brother's exaggerated eye-roll, but he was sure he wasn't supposed to.

"Hello! Remember me?" contributed Ben. "I'm the guy who got help? This spectacularly cute help?"

Tyler's grin broke wider as Sandra ran past Ben, and he all but forgot his nervous stomach. He forgot it, that is, until she stopped a dozen feet from the truck with a horrified look on her face.

"What happened to you?" shrieked his girlfriend's stricken face. "Tyler, what happened?"

Confusion blew through Tyler like a tornado. The panic in his stomach was rising to a maddening level, making him want to throw up, run away, scream, or all three. He could see Ben's perpetual cynical grin end in wide eyed shock as he broke into a run to replace Sandra's. His brother practically leaped over Sandra in his haste to get to the truck, grasping Tyler by the shoulders and forcing his back down to the bed of the truck again.

"It'll be okay, Ty, it'll be okay!" Ben was shouting in his face. He was ripping one of the blankets to shreds, his hands moving incredibly quickly.

What was going on? The panic was threatening to overcome him, he was scared and he didn't even know why. He didn't know what was wrong, he was confused, and...

"AAAAUUGH!" The scream was ripped involuntarily from his throat. Ben had just touched one of those strips to his face, yet it felt as though he'd dug a flaming sword through his skull. His body jerked suddenly to the side, and the strip came away from his face. All he could see was green; green slime, green liquid, green something dripping off of it before Ben reapplied his make-shift bandage, this time with force.

"NOO!" he screamed again, this time with even more voice and heavier convulsions. He could hear his screaming echoed by Sandra as she wailed from behind Ben. Lightning struck his head every time something came near his face. He was chewing on molten lava while spades dug through his face. His body thrashed, but Ben held steady, trying in vain effort to wrap even one strip around his head.

In desperation, he took a swing at Ben, just to get him to stop, just to get it to end. He knew he struck something, but he didn't know what. All he knew for sure is that it had worked. Ben wasn't trying to strap anything to him, anymore. In fact, Ben seemed barely able to roll himself out of the truck and stand on his own feet.

For all of two seconds, Tyler was free from the pain, and could think. There was screaming, there was shouting, there was pain, and there was green. Oil? What did it add up to? Why was Ben digging that pipe out of the truck? Why was he swinging it? The last thought that Tyler had before another flash of pain and the dark green spots enveloped him was, "But Ben's left-handed."



ER. That's what those beeps reminded him of. He tried to shift in his bed as he realized he must have left the TV on.

There was some rustling next to his bed. "'Mano, you awake?" It was Ben's voice. He sounded the same way he used to when they'd just broken something of their parents' and didn't want to overexcite anybody.

Bright light pierced Tyler's eyes as he opened them, and he found he couldn't move his hands to block it. When his eyes adjusted, he saw his brother smiling sadly over at him from a chair, his arm in a cast.

"I'll go grab the doctor," he whispered to Tyler. A pained look crossed his face as he looked at Tyler, almost as though he could feel whatever aches he was looking at. He had plenty of aches to give Ben, that was for sure. "You have. I gave you a concussion, Tyler. I'm sorry, I had to. I." He swallowed hard and seemed unable to finish.

The confusion Tyler had been feeling was starting to amass, again, but at least the panic wasn't there. Finally, his mind seized on one thought that he could pluck from the swirling streams. "Where's Sandra?"

Ben sat back in his chair. Apparently it was now his turn to examine the wrinkles of his shirt. His voice had no force to it as he said, "She's not here, Ty. She's not. She's not coming." He stopped, and looked up at Tyler. After a few empty moments, he continued, "She called you a freak. She said to make sure you heard that. That you heard she thinks you're a freak. Don't even fight it, 'Mano. If you don't know where a girl lives, she's not your girlfriend. And you certainly can't move in with h-."

Tyler cut him off with an abrupt, staccato, demanding tone. "Why am I a freak, Ben?" Instead of answering, Ben started to stand up. "Don't you do this to me, damnit," he growled sourly. Ben turned his back and started to slink away, shoulders rounded. "Why am I a freak?" he shouted. "Come back here!"

It was too late. He couldn't see his brother anymore. His girlfriend wasn't coming. He'd quit his job and left his apartment to move in with her. He was in the hospital, and he had no idea what was happening. He didn't even rightly know what hospital he was in.

A different kind of fear started to form.

"Merry Christmas, Tyler," he muttered to himself. He closed his eyes and waited for the doctor.

* * *

Tyler stepped out of the shower and looked at his face in the mirror again, and shook his head once more. The monster that stared back at him wasn't healthy in the least. Orange, red and green scales ran up his cheeks and towards his ears. His elongated upper and lower canines looked like they should have cut through his lips with his mouth closed. The claws that reached up to touch his face barely resembled anything human, with similar scales twisting the flesh and bone into talons that should never have seen creation anywhere but the stone gargoyles standing sentry atop tall buildings. The rest of his body remained untouched, but in his mind every morning, he heard the word echo that he never heard Sandra utter. "Freak." The pain came in knowing she was right.

He wrapped a soft blue towel around himself for modesty's sake, and went back to the computer. His hand reached out to open her e-mail. Instead he hesitated. He felt white-hot rage flash in the back of his head. He lashed out.

When the sparks finally cleared, he began muttering to himself, again. "I guess I get a new monitor, today."