Nevadan Cleanse

by wafflepudding

The conception and cessation of Madness Combat's Nevada. Cover by Jackie Cai (Spectra 6234 on DeviantArt).

11. The Club

Summer. The hiatus ends.

Five

He sat quietly on the couch. The TV was low. Fidgeting was kept to a minimum. "Mom?" He said, even though she had a headache.

"I have a migraine." She replied.

"I'm sorry." He said. He was hurting her head again. He didn't like to hurt her. "I'm sorry. Can we go to the ice cream store?"

She looked over to the television to see the gimmicky SIN Soft Serve commercial. He looked over at her, but she didn't look back, just grimaced and returned to her paperwork. "Not now. Maybe your dad can take you when he gets home."

That's right, Dad was getting home today! The boy smiled. It had been a week now, and Hugh'd been at home whenever he wasn't at kindergarten. Dad could take him to SIN Soft Serve, to see a clown, and maybe to play at the studio. Until then, he could just watch television. The people on TV improved houses then sold them, and it was the only show Mom could watch when she was with him. She couldn't watch her adult shows because he was there.

"Mom, what papers are you doing?" The boy asked.

"Taxes. Watch TV. Don't talk. I have a headache." She replied.

He watched TV and waited for Dad to come home. That was all he needed. Dad needed to come home and they could finally go out again. He was going to ask his mom where Dad was, but she would get mad at him again.

He squeaked. Mom slapped down her pencil and buried her head in your hands. "I'm sor-"

But Mom was already mad. "Don't start with that again." She said. "I swear to God, if you make that noise one more time, you're going to split my head open. We'll see how many squeaks you make when you're grounded."

"I'm sorry Mom, I couldn't -" But this time, he was interrupted by the door opening.

"Family." Came a rumbling voice from the doorway. The boy spun towards the door, knees up on the couch cushions. Here he is.

"Daddy!" He squealed, and Mom clutched her head. Hugh ran over and jumped into his arms.

"Hey, Hugh boy! How'd you two do without me? Did you keep your mother out of trouble?"

Hugh nodded and smiled. That was his job when Dad was gone, to take care of Mom. It wasn't his favorite job, but Dad was always happy with Hugh's work. "I have a headache." Said Mom.

"We're sorry, Mom." Dad said, rocking Hugh. "We'll keep it down. Hey, I got some great work done with the band this week! We'll finish mixing in April, then their album's coming out. I think this is going to be a big one, Marcy."

She looked at Dad without smiling. Hugh remembered a time when Mom used to smile and hug him tenderly. But that was before everything happened. "You'll finish mixing in April?" She asked. Dad nodded. "How long?"

"Well, Marcy, it's a creative process. I need to give the artists what they want, and sometimes it can take some time to..."

"How long?" She asked. Dad said a couple weeks. "A couple weeks." She repeated, not looking at him anymore. "Another couple weeks. You've wasted six months on this project, and that paycheck you keep talking about is always 'just a little while away'. And you're leaving again? It's bad enough that this week you left me here with -"

"Marcy!" Dad said. Dad left her here with what?

She was quiet for a moment. "Hugh, go to your room. I need to speak with your father."

No, he didn't want to go to his room. It was getting dark, and he'd be lonely again, and this last week had been even darker than the last week without Dad. He was about to complain, but Dad spoke instead.

"No, Marcy. You're not going to send Hugh to his room so you can yell at me. I just got home, can't we enjoy ourselves? I bought a movie."

She threw up her hands. "You're right. There's no point sending Hugh to his room, because these walls are just about paper thin. The brain-dead kid would hear all of it."

"Hugh, get your shoes." Dad said. Hugh scurried to the closet. They'd stop talking like this as soon as they went out.

"Thank God. Bring home some Advil." Said Mom.

"Maybe I'll bring home a better woman." He muttered.

"Excuse me?"

"What, you think I like coming home to this attitude? Despite what you think, I've been working hard this week." He said, getting louder.

"And I haven't? Look at this mess." She said, motioning to the papers on her desk. "While you're out doing shady business with your music buddies, I'm back here practically laundering -"

A dark look silenced the wife. Hugh's eyes pleaded with his father to leave. "You're ready, buddy? Let's go. Say bye to mommy."

"Bye mom." Hugh said, without making eye contact. He and his dad headed into the hallway, father taking upset strides, son trying to keep up. Dad only relaxed when he was outside the building.

"So, Hugh." He said, letting out a breath, smile growing on his face. "Where do you want to go?"

"SIN Soft Serve." Hugh instantly replied.

Dad chuckled at his enthusiasm. "SIN Soft Serve it is. It's a bit of a walk, though."

That was fine. Hugh liked the cold air. It calmed his squeak, just like the light. The walk there was twenty minutes because Dad didn't have a car, but Hugh was glad. They got a chance to talk. Dad was very funny, and he had a lot of stories about the artists he worked with. They were there before he knew it.

"I have two strawberry scoops in a cone, three Dutch chocolate in a cup, is that right?" Asked the woman at the counter. Dad said yes. "Good. What's your name?"

"Mr. Tricks." Said Dad.

"Have a seat there, we'll call you up when your ice cream is ready."

"Thank you." He said, winking at the girl before he sat. Her face got red, and she smiled until she gave them their ice cream and sent them to a table.

"Tell another story about the band." Insisted Hugh.

Dad laughed and took a drink from his silver bottle. "Actually, Hugh..." He began, sipping again. "I saved the band this week."

Hugh's eyebrows raised. "Saved them from what?"

"Well, the bond holding the band together was fragile. When they were on drugs they got along great and wrote great lyrics. But by the time I got there, they'd been cooped up without their poisons for weeks. Every talk was an argument, every recording a forum for invective. At that point, they wanted to finish the album and break up the group.

"I didn't let them. Their first eight tracks were just too good, vocals mixed and polished. They couldn't record another two tracks with an antagonistic mindset. And they can't call it quits after their debut album. It's just too good. So I gave them what they wanted. I had to take out a loan, but I got them a key of what they needed. And they're finishing now."

"Can I hear it?" Hugh asked. Dad smiled.

They took their ice creams down to the studio, abandoned, dark. Hugh would've been scared if his father hadn't been there, but Dad kept the monsters away. The lights came on and the speakers turned up. Forty minutes later, Hugh was lying in his Dad's lap, dozing to electronic sounds.

"It sounds like a superhero made it." Yawned Hugh, getting on Dad's back to leave.

"I wouldn't say they're superheroes, but..."

"You're the superhero." And with that, he fell asleep.

He awoke to the sound of the apartment door. Dad set him down and they made their way to their room. "Marcy, it's me." Dad said, knocking on the door. They couldn't hear anything inside, and there was no light coming under the door. "Marcy, open up."

She didn't respond. Hugh's heart beat a bit faster. It was dark inside. Anything could happen in the dark. Why wasn't she responding? What if she was hurt? Hugh remembered Dad telling him that if he ran in the dark he might fall and crack his head. Hugh saw her head cracked open, eyes wide, bleeding over the carpet.

But Dad pulled a key from under the doormat and stuck it in the knob, and Mom was alive and well on the sofa, fixing Hugh with a glare like she wanted to crack his head open. "You're drunk." She told dad. Hugh didn't know why she was angry. He didn't know why cold hands seemed to be gripping his throat. All he knew was that she was displeased.

Now

All he knew was that IT was displeased. He'd failed, he'd been too disobedient, and he was being given up on. This secretary was his punishment. "Mr. Hugh Tricks?" She asked, looking up at him.

"Tricky." He corrected.

"Of course." She said. She spoke into her phone then hung it up. "Sheriff Jay will see you now."

"Thanks." Tricky said to the woman. On his way to the Sheriff's office, Tricky realized just how few people there were on the large top floor, and how unnervingly clean the space was. He opened the door and stepped inside.

"Hello, Tricky." Said the Sheriff.

"Hey Brass." Tricky replied.

The Sheriff frowned at him. "How're you doing today, Tricky? I'm sure you have something interesting to tell me. You're my most interesting employee." He said. Tricky did not reply, just stared out the sliver of bare glass in the curtain's center, casting harsh light onto the Sheriff's shoulder and desk, silhouetting half of his face. The Sheriff studied him.

"You don't want to be here. Why not?" He asked.

Tricky laughed. "This is my punishment, Sheriff. I was thinking the wrong thoughts and nearly being disobedient. Now I haven't heard any orders or guidance in weeks, except to accept my demotion to North Complex janitor."

"You're mistaken. We have good work for you here."

"Yes, a janitor's work. Killing the dissident to wipe up your messes."

The Sheriff sat back. He pulled an opaque yellow bottle from his desk drawer, took a pill, and set the bottle on the table. Tricky gulped when he saw the label. "Was that a Valium?"

"I don't know why you want guidance, much less orders. You look like you could take on any challenge you could assign yourself, no need for a puppeteer."

"Can I see that bottle?" Tricky asked.

"I doubt any boss of yours would be okay with you popping pills." Said the Sheriff.

The Auditor wasn't.

"I imagine that would interfere in your taking orders." Said the Sheriff.

"I need ITS orders!" Tricky retorted, voice a decibel louder. But a voice many decibels smaller said that he hated ITS orders, that ITS orders had burned his acquaintance and killed innocents.

"Then you don't need pills." Replied the Sheriff, oblivious to Tricky's internal tumult. "In any case, I can tell that you're tired of killing the 'dissident', as you say. I have a more constructive job for you up at the East Complex."

The East Complex... yes, he knew that place. He had a faded memory of himself sneaking into a 2004 Corvette and holding a gun on some man cast in shadow. Tricky hadn't truly said or done any of it, though, merely allowed ITS voice to seep through his mouth. But despite how tainted IT had made the memory, Tricky felt that he'd seen that man since then.

"There's a lot of damage there. A lot of cleanup to do. I want you to take charge of repopulating the complex and managing that branch. Let you be in charge for once." Said the Sheriff. "Of course, if you'd rather wash your hands of this demotion, it's your choice to walk out that door. You're in control."

I'm in control? No, he couldn't be in control, not with this mind. That would be dangerous. Why was the Sheriff offering him this job? Was it another one of ITS tricks?

Shut up, that's exactly the kind of thought that got you put here. It would never trick you! At least, not with malicious intent!

But maybe he wanted to be put here. He'd be in control for the first time in his life. "What would I be in charge of at the East Complex?" He asked.

"Anything. Everything. What did... IT... put you in charge of?" Asked the Sheriff.

Whoops, the Sheriff wasn't supposed to hear that. Tricky was supposed to refer to his master as Mr. A. "Mr. A, not IT. My job was perfecting the imperfect, making telephone calls, and recruiting."

The Sheriff paused as though working something over in his head. After a moment, he asked who Tricky had recruited.

Tricky was struck with the memory of his first encounter with the recruit. It had been dark, and the man had had a deadpan expression, moving slowly, taking his time to close an empty soup kitchen. There'd been a bandage over one of his eyes. He'd seemed to be whispering something. The Auditor kept telling Tricky all the evil things the man had done: mainly resisting The Auditor.

"We're closed." The man had said when Tricky walked in, not looking up from his lazy hands and metal dishes. "Come back in tomorrow."

"I'm hungry." IT had said through Tricky's mouth. "Is there any soup left over?"

The man had sighed. "Listen, buddy, I know what it's like to be hungry. But we're closing up. Stick it out for the night, come back early tomorrow. Get here at six and you'll be first in line."

Tricky had taken one of the man's dishes and broke it over his head, then dragged his limp body to the trunk, snuck his unconscious acquaintance up to his hotel room. Tricky'd tied him up, put on the gas, and given him a talk about being positive. When the man came back to him, recruited and with a burnt face, Tricky remembered briefly regretting it, then forgetting that regret. It made him sad that he still couldn't remember his memories.

"I never learned any names." Tricky said. "I just followed orders."

"Mr. A's orders?" Asked the Sheriff.

"I don't know what I'm allowed to tell you." Tricky said.

"I'm sure anything you aren't allowed to say would have been made clear to you. Besides, even if you said something out of line, who would know? It's just us in here." Said the Sheriff.

"He'd know." Tricky said immediately. "He always knows, whether it's where I am or what I'm doing or what I'm thinking, IT..." Tricky stopped, closed his mouth, and looked back to the window. He was certainly saying too much now.

"It's no problem, Tricky." Said the Sheriff, waving it off. "You don't have to say anything more than you want to. In any case, there's a car outside waiting to take you to East Complex. I've taken the liberty of appointing you a personal assistant until you get your feet under you. So, what do you say? Do you want East Complex?"

Tricky smiled and stood up, the Sheriff followed suit. Tricky shook his hand, making the man wince at an overly strong grip. Then he was on his way to East Complex. He drove through the field, looking over winter grass, running to brighter things.

Eight

He sprinted through the field, admiring summer grass, running from darker things. "You're dead meat, Hugh!" One of them shouted.

He ran faster, skipping over a stone, a stump, approaching the forest. "Slow down!" Panted another.

He did, lingering a moment by a tree, then trotting along the forest edge.

"I've got you!" Roared the blond boy, tackling him from behind. Hugh screamed in fear as the others piled on. They tore off his skin and chomped on the muscle below, spitting out splintered bone and drinking red blood.

"Alright, you're dead! Who's next?" Said a dark thing, and Hugh was inducted into their terrible ranks. He pointed to the blond boy, the blond boy sprinted away.

When their game was done, they lay in the brittle grass. Catching your breath was a good feeling.

"Who taught you that game?" Asked the boy with red hair.

Hugh shrugged. "I thought of it."

"I can't think of games." The ginger boy said.

"You just can't think. Your hair burned up all the games in your thinker." Hugh replied. The boys laughed and smiled, all except the one with black hair.

"You're crazy fucking loco." Said the blond boy.

The ground shadowed in the fading dusk. "It's getting dark. Let's go in, and your mom can make us cookies like she said." Said the boy with blond hair.

Hugh stiffened in thought of his mom. "I don't want to go in." He said.

"Hugh doesn't like cookies." Taunted the one with black hair. Hugh didn't much like that one.

"Let's go in the forest." Said the red haired boy. Hugh rolled his head back to look at the forest. It was dark, and the sun was setting, and there might've been bad things in there. The blond boy agreed that the forest would be goddamn fun.

"Wait... it's getting dark. Let's go inside. We can get cookies."

"Are you afraid of the forest?" Asked the black haired one. Hugh didn't respond. "He is!" Shouted the black haired one, eyes glinting in malice. "Hu-ugh's a sca-aredy cat!" He sang.

"Fine, let's go." Hugh said. The one with black hair took off into the forest, drawing the other two behind him and leaving Hugh terribly alone. "Wait up!" He yelled, jumped in a spaceship for solace, and vroomed after their path.

The trail took him to a clearing, and Hugh could no longer find them through the tall grass. "Guys! Where are you?" He called, getting nervous. It would be dark soon, just like his room, and he didn't have his night-light out here. After hearing no reply from his friends, he started back home.

Or not. Home was lost from view, and the trees cast heavy shadows, obscuring the way back. He was beginning to panic. He made the loud hiccup-squeal that he only made when he was nervous, and his body had a small spasm. "Guys!" He called, one last time. But they were probably back home already.

There seemed to be very few options. During the day, anything was possible. He could solve any problem, be anyone, do anything. During the night... anything was possible. But not the good kind of anything.

But look! Footprints in the mud! He chased after them, curving ever to the left. He passed a mossy rock, then a twisted tree, then a rotting squirrel. Hugh liked to poke squirrels in the daytime, but at night they might stand up and sink a row of tiny needles into his eye, then pry open his lips and worm through his throat to decompose.

He stopped dead in his tracks when a twig snapped under his foot. Something surely would have heard that. Was there something to the left of him? He swiveled around to make sure, backing against a twisted tree trunk. He could almost make out one of the darker things that had haunted his late dreams, with the scraps of skin hanging from their mouths, with the red burning in their eyes.

"You're dead meat, Hugh." It might have said to him, gnawing the meat off his corpse. He shivered when his imagination made it real, stalking in from behind, laughing a laugh deeper than the echo of a bottomless cavern. He reminded himself to ignore it. Only acknowledging them made them seem real.

"Hu-ugh." Sang the dark thing. In the day they were toys - they had so much more power over him at night.

"Go away." He whispered, not loud enough to be heard.

"You're dead meat, Hugh." Said a voice right next to him.

"Who's there?" Demanded Hugh, shocked that the voice sounded so real.

"It's me, idiot." Said the black haired boy, leaning against a mossy rock. He was grinning and his black pupils were glinting again.

For some reason, Hugh wasn't relieved. "Okay. Let's go home." He said cautiously.

The boy shrugged, strolling through the leaves, not caring how many twigs he snapped. Each one made Hugh wince. "Follow the north star, obviously." He said, pointing it out.

My God. Hugh shivered. The stars were out already.

"But I want to talk a bit first." Said the black haired boy, stopping at a rotten squirrel and kicking its carcass. Hugh'd been walking in a circle.

"I don't have anything to say to you." Hugh said, following the boy's advice, taking the north star back home. He happened to step on some of his old footprints as he went, but stopped suddenly when he found, looking down, that the trail he'd left so recently vanished a few feet in front of him. He found that his feet were lodged in the final remaining prints, shoes matching perfectly the marks' size.

The black haired kid gave a harsh laugh. "There's no use running. Your path is already lain."

What? His path was already lain? The black haired kid's speech had grown strange and stripped Hugh of any comfort he might have had.

"What do you want to talk about?" Hugh asked.

"How about your mom?" The kid answered immediately. The hairs on Hugh's neck stood up. He very much didn't want to talk about her. "She's a bitch, do you know that? I hear she sucks dick for free. Maybe I'll get some."

Hugh didn't respond.

"Oh, so you already know your mom's a bitch. What, she didn't like you? Maybe hit you a few times? Knew just how brain-dead you were?" Hugh still said nothing. Small spasm.

"I see how it is." Said the black haired boy, grinning. "Your dad is a talentless jackass who got lucky with a good band, made big money. What's he done since then, huh? Suck di-"

Hugh slugged him in the face before he could finish. Hugh had always been especially fast, especially strong. This showed in the black haired boy's bloody nose. "Is that all you've got?" Asked the boy, plugging one nostril and blowing blood onto the ground.

Hugh punched him twice more in the face, then drove him to the ground and worked his stomach. Satisfied and panting, he stood up to follow the north star home, rubbing his tender knuckles.

"Hugh!" Said the blond boy when Hugh emerged from the forest. "Where were you two?"

"Just playing." Hugh said.

"It's getting really dark out. We should go in. Hey! Come out of there!" Red shouted to black. Black didn't respond. Hugh knew that black was deep in the forest, recovering from the blows Hugh had dealt him. What would people think of that, anyways? His friends fought all the time, but they never did it that hard. Maybe this was bad.

Several minutes passed. Each second that the black haired boy did not emerge increased the tension among the three friends. Eventually, Hugh's mother stuck her head outside. "Boys! Time to come in!"

Flashlights. Parents. Interrogation.

"W-we were just playing outside." Sobbed the blond boy to the missing one's mother. "It was getting dark, and h-he said that we should go inside, that he was going to find Hugh. And then we went back out to wait for them, that's all I know, honest."

Hugh hadn't said anything, just sat on the porch with a blank face and his hands in his pockets, ignoring anyone who tried to talk to him. None of them were his dad, so he had nothing to say. His missing friend's words kept rattling in his head, though, so he drowned them out with his Walkman, turned loud, playing his dad's first album.

Then the missing kid was found, and Hugh watched the child's father carry him from the forest. People rushed to bring him water, bandages, and anything they thought he might need. He was set down on a well-cushioned lawn chair. Hugh saw a bloody nose and a black eye. Hugh had given him those. But he also saw an oddly twisted arm and blood seeping through clothes. Those were injuries Hugh didn't remember delivering. The boy's father bent close and asked, "Son, what happened?"

The boy gave no reply, just pointed at Hugh, whose hands were now out of his pockets to reveal bloodied and raw knuckles.

The boy was soon on his way to the hospital, and Hugh was soon locked in his room. The night light was off, the real lights were on. Two hours passed with music. After all, there was no possibility of sleep.

He hardly heard the knock over his blaring headphones. But he turned them down and let the door open.

"Hey, buddy." Said his father, standing in the doorway. His demeanor was calm and reassuring, almost like the events of the night had never taken place. "Wanna go to SIN Soft Serve?"

The strawberry was good. His father was better. Despite the circumstances, his father had made Hugh laugh several times already, wiping violence from his mind and reducing him to eight year old giggles. The spasms that near his mother were so barely contained felt far away now.

"Tell me about your new project." Hugh inquired.

"Oh man, Hugh..." He said, closing his eyes and leaning back in his chair, only two legs on the ground. "You remember the first band I worked with? The one that took us from rags to riches?" Hugh nodded. "They're finally off tour. And apparently I'm the first one they called when they got back. Hugh, they want me to handle everything this time! Not just mixing, they want every beat on their album produced by me."

Hugh's eyebrows rose. "That sounds like a lot of work."

"I'll be provided a full team of audio engineers. I have every resource I can imagine at my disposal, and it feels like all my years of work have been leading to this moment. I'm ready to create my masterpiece here." Said his father.

"That's great, dad!" Hugh wasn't just excited for his father's commercial success or personal satisfaction. He believed that his father would be creating something Hugh would listen to for the rest of his life.

"Thank you." But now his expression sobered, and smiling lines disappeared. He paused for a moment, as if in waiting long enough, Earthly woes would fall away and only joy would be left. Not so.

"Hugh, we need to talk about what happened." He said. Hugh looked away, down at the table. His ice cream was gone. "What happened in the forest, Hugh?"

Hugh told him most of the story, leaving out the more disturbing bits that involved squirrels and darker things. His father considered it as a sage might, nodding in accord and frowning often. "This boy clearly isn't a good friend for you." Said his father.

"He's evil." Hugh said.

"Evil is a strong word, Hugh. Murderers, rapists, tyrants might be evil. This kid is mean. What you did was closer to evil than him - but it was still very, very far away." He said hurriedly as Hugh was taken aback. "You didn't know what you were doing. You're still so young. So I'll tell you now, violence isn't how you should respond to meanness. Don't be bad because someone else is being bad."

Hugh absorbed this. "Is violence ever good?" He asked.

"Yes. The military is good. So are police officers... well, sometimes. You should only ever be violent to stop other violence. That's a good act, just like what superman does. But you can't hurt people for being mean. That's bad." Said his father.

"What about if you hurt someone on accident, or if you thought they were being violent and they weren't?"

His father sighed. "There may be a grey area between good and evil. Damn, Hugh, it's hard to have to tell you this when you're so young. You don't need the world's ethical dilemmas dangling over your head."

But Hugh's eyes were just as curious as before, so his father drank from his silver bottle, then wordlessly poured Hugh a small cup of strong smelling water. "Different people have different ideas of right and wrong. Most people do bad things every day, even if they're not evil, just a little bit wrong. They justify their behavior in different ways, just trying to make themselves feel better about it, so they can take whatever they want without any guilt. And the government sure doesn't help. They often claim neutral things to be bad, or bad things to be good. It can be hard to decide, sometimes, what the right thing to do is. But everyone knows it in their heart. If you accidentally do something bad, if you hurt someone without meaning to, you'll know what you've done. The best thing to do afterwards is just to apologize." Hugh's father drank, and so did Hugh.

"I think the most evil people are the ones who don't care what's good and what's bad. Some just can't tell in their hearts what the evil thing is..." That was Hugh. "But as long as they care, as long as they try to do what's right, they'll never really be evil."

So the next day, Hugh went to the black haired boy's house to apologize, and the boy made a show of cowering in return. He played energetic music and watched the sun swim through blue. He tried to ignore the disgusted looks he got from his mother.

Some weeks passed. His father's talk of morality seemed to help him when he was scared at night, and his spasms seemed to be fading. He had a playdate this evening. Things were looking up.

"You're crazy fucking loco." Said the blond boy when they all met up near the river. Hugh took off his shoes and put his feet in the water, toes wriggling in the mud at the bottom. A frog hopped nearby, and he snatched it up and held it carefully. Its chest swelled and it burped out a lazy ribbit. Hugh admired its delicate, glistening skin before setting it in the water.

"More like crazy fucking retarded." Said the black haired kid.

"Boy, you're just mad because Hugh beat your ass. I would'a beat your ass too if you called my mom a name." Said the red haired boy.

The kid with black hair snorted, watching the other two descend into the water beside Hugh. The kids beside him made a few attempts to catch a frog. "How'd you do that?" Asked the blond boy after several failures. "You're goddamn fucking fast."

It was a good day. They ate the lunches most of their mothers had made and drank plenty of water. Then it started getting dark. Hugh knew better this time. He knew he'd have to go in soon, before his mind started deceiving him.

"I need to pee, then let's go home." He said.

The black haired one snorted. "You really are afraid of the dark, aren't you? Come on, wimp. Stay out."

"No. You can stay out if you want. I'll be heading inside." Hugh replied steadily.

"Yeah, shut up, lump-face." Said the ginger, referring to the injured boy's bruises.

"There ain't no bathroom here. Where you peeing?" Asked the blond boy.

"Maybe behind a tree, maybe in your butt." Said Hugh. The blond boy laughed, called Hugh crazy fucking batshit loco.

He found a tree a good distance from the river, unzipped his shorts, and relieved himself. He listened to the sounds of the forest as he went. The birds' chirping was fading, but taking its place was a chorus of crickets. Some sounds came from the river as well. There was some talking, then a bit of yelling, then some splashing.

"Hey, cut it out!" Hugh heard the blond one say. It didn't seem as lighthearted as Hugh was used to. He started back. "Seriously, fucking quit it! Quit -"

Hugh was running now, shoving branches and vines from his path, sprinting towards the river.

He burst from the trees, scratched thoroughly by branches and thorns. Ginger and blond were nowhere to be seen, but black was kneeling in the river, forcing something down.

"Hey!" Hugh called. "What are you doing?" The black haired one didn't respond. But as he got closer, Hugh saw something very bad.

Black was holding blond under the water.

"Hey, knock it off, he can't breathe under there." Said Hugh.

"No shit." The black haired one replied.

"Hey, knock it off!" Hugh said, kicking black off of his victim. Blond came up for a brief breath of air. Then black punched Hugh savagely in the face, dislodging at least one tooth. Hugh stumbled back and splashed onto his back, water softening his head's connection with rock.

He got up to see black holding down blond, banging his crown against the riverbed.

"No!" Hugh sputtered, spit and fresh water spewing from his lips. He knocked black off again, dodging his return blow, and pinning him to the mud beneath.

He remembered what his father had said earlier. Violence was bad. Unless it was used to stop other violence.

Hugh looked in his heart and found that the right thing was to kill black, so that black wouldn't kill anyone else.

Red ran down the pretty stream.

Ginger and blond found him resting over black's body, weeping quietly into the water. "Hugh?" Asked blond.

That was strange. How did blond get all the way over there, beside red? Hugh looked down. Blond was not in the river. He never had been.

The psychologist diagnosed schizophrenia, but said there were more complex aspects to Hugh's condition that he hadn't seen before. He recommended an MRI. The MRI returned a mostly normal body structure, but the frontal lobe returned random radio frequencies that could only be described as

static

The machine was sent in for repairs. Meanwhile, a second machine gave the same result. "I told you, we should have had him checked out years ago." Hugh's mother whispered not-very-quietly.

"Marcy. Hush." Said his father.

Spasms returned in full force. They were never identified as seizures, and no medical professional could determine just what they were a symptom of. Whatever they were, one occurred every hour at least.

Dad wasn't home to back him up. Dad would be gone this month and the next. First Hugh was put on drugs. They didn't work. He was sent to SIN Acres, Facility for the Severely Differently Abled for just a month, just to try it out.

Now

He'd been at East Complex for just a month, just to try it out.

Hugh had no office for the Sheriff to find him at. He was later told that locating him had been an arduous task. His voice had to contend with the sound of clanking swords and birds being shot from the sky.

"Tricky." Said the Sheriff on entering the warehouse. "You've got quite a facility here."

Tricky raised a hand to halt two grinning units, juggling three knives between them. They left the warehouse to leave Tricky and the Sheriff alone. "The bodies are all cleared out. We fixed the generators. Chemical output is up. And I've been training all the troops I requested."

The Sheriff nodded. "Only depressed or addicted soldiers, that's right. They look plenty happy now. You've done a good job here, Tricky, even if it is a bit unorthodox."

"So, what are you doing here?" Tricky asked.

"Checking up on progress. I couldn't exactly call your secretary, could I?" The Sheriff smiled.

Tricky laughed, taking his headphones down to his neck, finally engaged. "I knew I was forgetting something. I'll have East HQ and Communications up by tomorrow."

"No rush." The Sheriff waved it off. He looked around. "I see you've made some changes to the warehouse. Is it an auditorium now?"

Tricky quickly switched on the speakers and pulled his headphones back up, blaring Track One, equalizing, gradually shifting the pitch from low to high. He generated a few monophonic kicks and shifted to Track Two, waited for the good part, volume cranked to full, here it comes, HELL YES LET'S HEAR THAT AGAIN, scratched the vinyl and spun back to replay.

The Sheriff clapped in appreciation when the headphones came down. "You play this for the men?" He asked.

Tricky shook his head. "No. Actually, I had all the walls soundproofed so they won't hear it. If they want to hear something good, they should skip over this, listen to this old beat." Hugh said, pulling out a cassette.

The Sheriff shrugged. "Whenever you feel you're ready, I suppose. Maybe I'm just uncultured, but that DJing was plenty good for me. In any case, I have something I need you to do."

"Hit somebody?" Tricky asked.

"Or have your men do it. They're a bit uncoordinated, but seem deadly enough. I've said it before, I'll say it again: It's all your choice."

"How well armed is the target?" The clown inquired.

"Better than your soldiers. They recently got a shipment of weapons from North Complex. And their recruitment strategy has been more than a little expansionist." The Sheriff replied.

Tricky's eyebrows scrunched together. "I don't really want to send them somewhere dangerous." He said. "Why are we killing these people?"

The Sheriff sighed. "Well, to be honest with you, they're hardly people. The leader's made his living by exploiting women, and recently he began sending assassins and destroying houses. I'd never ask you to do something that I believed was wrong, Tricky, and I can assure you that shutting down this operation is nothing short of saintly."

Tricky seemed to remember, a long time ago, having a conversation about right and wrong. Violence was bad. But not if it was to stop other violence. "Who's the leader?"

"He goes by the name of Daddy Flow."

"Is he evil?" Tricky asked very directly.

The Sheriff looked Tricky deep in the eyes and responded just as directly. "This man is quite possibly the most evil human being I have ever encountered. Every second he's alive is another second someone is being taken advantage of. Each breath he takes is one stolen from another's lungs. There's no moral grey area right here, Tricky. This one's pretty straightforward."

Tricky thought about it. Yes, this was right. He recalled a certain instance where he was wrong about what was right before... it was hazy, but he thought he'd hurt a child because of it. But now he was cured of the disease that had clouded his consciousness. Now he could take back his righteousness. What was more, he'd do it with his own two hands.

"Communications will be up by tomorrow. Send me the details then, and the moment I receive them, I'll be on my way. You can count on me, Sheriff Jay." Tricky said.

"That I can." Sheriff Jay replied. "A soldier of justice. You may not want to go in alone, though, just to be clear. I've heard stories about your strength, but it may not be enough for this rat den you're nearing." Tricky nodded, knowing just who he'd bring. His right hand man, his melty acquaintance, the man he owed his life to - not because the man had saved Tricky, but because Tricky'd killed the man.

The Sheriff left to go, but snapped his fingers as he remembered something else. "One last thing, Tricky. Just who is in charge of your chemical output?" Tricky told him unconsciously, distracted by thoughts of sickening human traffickers. The Sheriff left. Tricky went off to find his acquaintance.

The two of them had a knife fight in preparation for the attack. Tricky got his hand cut, didn't dress it. He didn't feel pain. He didn't need bandages.

The sky darkened. Much of the last month had been overcast, little light coming through the black clouds, but nights were especially dark. He remembered being afraid of the night sky as a child. Fear didn't mean much nowadays.

Grey leather, tinted windows. A sedan door swung open and Tricky stepped out, flicking runoff hand-blood to the street. His acquaintance stood beside him. Their guns weren't even tucked.

"What's a cop?" Tricky asked.

The burnt face didn't smile.

The rat den of immorality was a warehouse, covered in graffiti, windows broken, quiet inside. The thought of exploitation made Tricky's hands shake.

Door busted down, no knocking. Six or seven people shot right off the bat. Rooms blurred together, nothing different, just bullets and blood. He made his way upstairs, his acquaintance down. Pimp was about halfway to the top. Tricky knew it was him from Sheriff Jay's description. Tricky locked them both in a room with opulent furnishings. There was an actual golden goblet on the sex trafficker's table.

"My friend," said the pimp at gunpoint. "I see that you have some skill with the guns. I wish we had met under different circumstances, I might have hired you. Plenty of weapons, you see, but not enough men to wield them. In any case, why do you enter my humble abode? Is there any means by which I could get you to leave?"

The man was certainly verbose. Hugh put the gun's stock to his jaw to quiet him. "Why do you do what you do?" Tricky asked in righteous disgust.

"I like the money, friend, and I love the women. I'm sure you do as well. You could have any amount of either, you know. If you would just stop doing what you're doing." Tricky smiled. The man's speech sounded so much less eloquent when coming through bubbles of blood. But the man saw the smile as accord, not malice, and smiled in return.

"Where'd you get these Agency weapons?" Tricky asked. IT no longer interfered to quell his interest, so Tricky was feeling much more curious these days.

"They were a gift. Someone delivered them to us, parked them in Spot 7." The pimp replied.

That was strange. Tricky remembered making a delivery to Spot 7.

A weapons shipment, in fact. Stolen from the Agency.

Ah.

"Why do you ask? Would you like some weapons? You can have them. You can leave with every single gun in a cart, if you would please just go, please."

AH.

"You aren't looking so well, my friend."

AHH.

With shaky hands, the pimp lit a cigarette.

"AHHH!"

Two magazines lay on the floor, and Tricky was panting, glaring at the dead criminal, white suit turned pink. The man would never pass through a metal detector unbothered again, and not just because he wouldn't be able to walk.

It was time Tricky left this rat den that he'd armed. "Acquaintance!" He cried hoarsely, stumbling down suddenly unsteady stairs. Each level his partner had taken held plentiful dead, all killed by a bullet to the face that left all features obscured with blood. Tricky passed no living men on his way down. But on the bottommost level was one man whose features were obscured not with blood, but with burns. The man sat against the wall, shot through the side of his head. His arms lay limp at his sides, gun a foot from his right hand.

"Acquaintance!" Tricky said, falling to his knees and feeling for a pulse. There was none.

Lifting dense weights had always been an easy feat for him, both as Tricky and as a boy whose name he didn't remember. His acquaintance came over his shoulder, and as Tricky carried him out, he took his revenge on the insidious rat den. Though the facility was empty, his guns all had been used up by the time he was outside of the warehouse.

Tinted windows and leather seats awaited him. He opened the back door and set the body down gently, positioning it in an upright position and pulling the seatbelt over its chest. It left blood smeared across grey leather.

Tricky took a final look at the vile place he'd helped to build, walls riddled with bullets and charges. He pulled a radio out of his pocket.

"Tricky coming in, do you read me, over." He said tonelessly. "Daddy Flow," the evil friend-killing bastard, "has been eliminated."

Three, two, one, and the charges detonated. Tricky didn't like the dark clouds, and my... the sky looked beautiful when it was lit up like that.

"Mission accomplished. Good work, Unit Tricky. Over." Said the Sheriff.

Hm. Sheriff Jay didn't usually attach the Agency title 'Unit'. "Over and out." Tricky said.

Tricky got in beside his friend, seat sticky and warm. The driver took him to a store where Tricky shopped for a few bags of ice and the largest cooler he could find. He returned to the car, and the driver started towards the Agency. "No." Tricky muttered, looking over the partition through half lidded eyes. "I don't want to go to East Complex right now." Tricky told the driver his old address, and the glass came back up. Tricky stared out the window. The night looked especially dull through the tint.

Tricky was beginning to dislike his curiosity. With it repressed by... Mr. A, Tricky never would have considered that his weapons delivery had killed his acquaintance or wondered how his acquaintance had even gotten shot when everyone else was dead. Well, the latter probably involved a fleeing culprit. But the former was more troublesome.

There it was. His old apartment. He remembered how he used to struggle to pay rent. He remembered the day he accepted IT, how he took whatever he wanted from whoever he wanted, whenever he wanted. He remembered when he'd returned to his landlord, holding a triumphant wad of hundreds. Rent was paid for the next thirty years.

The lobby had always been dingy. There was that one brown spot that was somehow browner than the rest of the floor, but could never be mopped up. Sometimes she thought she was the only one who could see it. Sometimes she thought she was the only one who cared.

The girl propped her head in her hands, almost asleep, watching still double doors. She remembered a time - and it really wasn't that long ago - when she still had prospects. She came through those doors instead of slaving for them. She went on dates in sparkly black dresses. One time, she was attacked by a madman and saved by a handsome hero.

A minute... didn't pass. Just dragged on. Maybe if she looked at the door hard enough, something interesting would walk through it.

Well, come on.

Any second now.

Nope. What wouldn't she give for some excitement? I'd be willing to get attacked again. She thought. She imagined it through a romantic filter.

Now a figure appeared through the door glass. Surely nobody exciting. Just a resident. Sometimes they came back late, drunk as they usually were. Her eyelids closed for a moment. Oh, sleep was an alluring mate. A overwhelming warmth, a seductive touch, a blanket that stretched with infinite width and length. But she couldn't sleep on the job. Her eyes opened.

The resident walked in like an insomniac, trudging his feet and hardly breathing. He was covered in blood and had an angry cut on his hand. He carried a rifle on his shoulder and pulled an open cooler behind him. Two feet stuck out of the box.

She watched in sudden alarm as the man disappeared down a hallway. Her hallway. She remembered the man from somewhere. Green hair... white face...

He moved farther in. Certainly, he would stop, he would open a door, and he would go inside. But he kept walking, kept coming closer to the last door. Her door.

She tried to recall memory of him. Sirens flooded her brain, subconscious trying desperately to keep her from some recollection. It must have been traumatic.

The man stopped in front of her door, and so did her thoughts. He stood still, drawing something from his pocket. She sat frozen, jaw slack.

Don't go into my room. Don't go into my room. Don't go into my room. She thought.

Because she knew who he was, now. A sticky note. A foot jammed in the door. A punch in the face. A nonsensical speech. A hysterical desire to run.

But he didn't go into her room. He stuck the key in the knob of the abandoned room next to it. He pulled his things in and left the door swinging behind him.

A gun lay on his chest. A foot protruded from his cooler. A bare bulb swung above his bed.

There were so many scientists at the Agency. One of them was bound to be able to revive his acquaintance, just as long as the body was cold.

There was a lesson to be learned here, somewhere. What bad had happened? My acquaintance died. What had caused that? Me. I delivered of weapons to the trafficker. And what could be done to avoid that in the future?

That was a harder question to answer. He'd only been following orders, and he couldn't just disobey. But something else occurred to him. IT - Mr. A - had ordered him to make the delivery. Mr. A had probably known exactly who the weapons were being delivered to - evil, violent people - and IT ordered them delivered anyways. Why would IT help evil people? No good person would ever help someone evil, right?

Tricky remembered someone telling him long ago that violence could be justified if used against evil. Acting against evil was good. So, acting with evil...

The lightbulb swinging above him suddenly stilled. Tricky felt ITS dark presence near him, and he immediately cleared all thoughts from his mind. He'd never thought that IT was evil before. He couldn't imagine what punishment he'd endure for it. So he closed his eyes tightly, stopped thinking at all, and waited for the presence to dissipate.

It had already been after midnight when Tricky fell to his bed, and increasingly guilty thoughts had plagued his hours. There'd been little sleep between then and the rising of the veiled sun.

To the halls with a gun and a cooler, past a girl sleeping at the front desk, then out the door. Tricky recognized her from somewhere. Into a cab, down to North Complex. The driver spent the drive ignoring the weapon and the sloppy edge of the cooler.

He entered the office unannounced. It wasn't as though a secretary would stop him. The Sheriff was watching a video on his laptop, but paused and closed it when Tricky walked in.

The secretary opened the door. "Sir, I'm very sorry. He just burst right in. Should I call security?"

"No need for that. Thank you." Said Sheriff Jay with a wave. He waited until the door closed to continue. "So, Tricky, what can I help you with on this dismal morning?"

It was nice to know that the Sheriff didn't like the weather either. Tricky had few enough connections with people. But weather could be one with the Sheriff. Put at ease, at least a little bit, Tricky recounted his ails. "I don't think I have a sense of morality, Sheriff Jay." Tricky muttered.

The Sheriff's brow furrowed. "Now why would you think that?" Tricky didn't answer for a moment. He'd killed his friend. A simple statement. He'd killed his friend. A simple statement, but hard to state. "Ah... do you think you did that wrong thing to that sex trafficker?" Asked the Sheriff.

"Exactly." Tricky replied. "I drove him the shipment of weapons he's been hurting people with." It was nice to have that off his chest.

At this, the Sheriff swept away his laptop and pulled in his phone. "Hold all calls." He said, eyes closed. "No one comes in."

The phone landed back in its place. He breathed as though a satisfying answer had just been supplied him, then Sheriff Jay fixed Tricky with a serious look. "But you took care of it. This isn't evidence of anything bad you've done. Rather, it means that you're learning from your mistakes and moving towards a more perfect morality."

Tricky turned down his head. "Maybe so. But there's something else."

"What?" Prompted the Sheriff.

"The weapons I supplied... they were used to do something especially bad. They killed my acquai... my friend. So that was me. I made him die." Tricky had planned, at this point, to ask if there was any treatment to save a corpse. But stating the truth of the matter made him realize that such a treatment was fantasy. It was a question not worth asking.

The Sheriff looked sympathetic. "I lost someone in a similar way." He murmured. "Not too long ago, in fact. She'd just told me that she loved me." The man's voice broke. "But black eyes took her away."

That was strange. Tricky knew of something that gave black eyes to its victims.

"I imagine you're feeling some sorrow. I know that I am." Said Sheriff Jay, uncorking a potent-looking bottle of brown stuff. Tricky was reminded of a small silver flask that he'd known many years ago. "Sorrow is hard." He said, pouring them both drink. He slid one to Tricky, who held it carefully and gave it a wary sniff. It smelled good.

"Luckily, there's a cure." Said the Sheriff.

Fifteen

Luckily, there's a cure.

The day of those words had been a dark one. Humiliating tests had preceded it for months. Psychological evaluations, brain scans, and whispered words like 'delusional' and 'schizophrenic' would undoubtedly have stolen his pride if he'd had any left. But the ordeal was not offensive to Hugh. It could not have harmed his ego, because Hugh's ego had died alongside an evil, black haired child. Homicide had turned his days so empty that he was nearly grateful for the wave of emotion that came to him at night. And in the dark. And any time he was alone.

The emotion was fear. And, no... he wasn't nearly grateful for it. Hugh's nights made him long for empty days. But like many especially dark days, the day of those words marked an impending return to brightness.

There hadn't just been a cure. At first, there'd been shock therapy, anti-depressants, and mountains of sedatives. Hugh had spent his days in a thoughtless haze, lapsing into meaningful consciousness for only a few hours before his next dose. Treatments were experimental, but he had been on too many painkillers for them to hurt. And as his father supplied a steady stream of money for personal research and development, Hugh's treatment had condensed to one pill every morning.

Hugh considered this, sitting at the desk of SIN Acres's administrator. She had him fixed with a stare lacking any semblance of sympathy. When she spoke, it was with a blameful tone. "Your mother is dead." She barked.

Maybe it was the sedative portion of his morning pill, and maybe it was the fact that his mother had never visited him in SIN Acres, and he'd never wanted her to, but Hugh felt truly unaffected by the news. The administrator allowed a few seconds for a response, then continued without receiving one.

"However, that's not why you've been called in here. Your psychologist believes that the environment your mother created was partly to blame for your violence in the past. Reports also indicate that your treatment has been near perfectly effective in settling you down. The doctor wants you back to your father as soon as possible, and your father has agreed."

A spike of excitement cut through Hugh's pharmaceuticals. He hadn't seen his father in a very long time. Goodbye to barred windows, white walls, and a broken bedside lamp.

"That's not going to happen. We both know that you are not fit to reenter society, especially not under your father's care. However, my decision on the matter can be vetoed by the consent of you, your father, and a psychologist. I am required by law to offer you this document," She said, sliding him a page over the table, "but I'd advise you to return it to me before reading it."

Hugh skimmed the page. It looked fairly boilerplate, stipulating a month of care under his father and what was essentially parole for homicide. Hugh held his hand out for a pen. The woman's eyes narrowed.

"I am warning you not to sign that document, Hugh. Get up, leave this room. You can stay here. You can stay calm." She snarled when his hand didn't go down. "Don't ask for that pen again." She said.

Hugh's hand remained still, and she grudgingly snapped a pen in his direction. It was spinning and curving and meaning to fall to the ground, but Hugh caught it between two deft fingers and set to scribbling his name on a dotted line.

"There I was, thinking we'd made you obedient. Daddy made you forget all that, huh?" She said, smiling mirthlessly. "Well, either way, you won't be the boy your father remembered. You'll seem distant. He'll send you back. We'll all profit." The woman adopted an even viciouser smile. "But you'll be glad anyways, Hugh. I imagine you'll tire of him before your ride home is finished. And we'll all be here."

Hugh remained impassive. This woman could talk, but he'd soon be with his father again. He suppressed a grin. There was a cassette in his pocket.

"Your father was confident enough in your signature. He's in the parking lot. Go on, now, run from your safe haven. I'm sure the world will heartily welcome its latest murderer."

Hugh ran from his facility, and the world didn't seem to care. But his father did. The man hugged him hard, unmanaged stubble scratching Hugh's neck. His father looked at him with red-rimmed eyes, smiling, saying that he'd missed Hugh more than anything. They drove away, and Hugh slid his cassette gently into the stereo. The music began slow and deep, keys and strings spilling discordant notes. Then it ascended both in speed and pitch, reaching for lighter notes and harmonic chords. Hugh's father just smiled until the song ended, then paused the album.

"You kept the cassette I gave you." He said. Hugh nodded. "Could you play it at Acres?"

Hugh shrugged. "I may have stolen a Walkman."

His father laughed loudly. Hugh remembered, was fond of that laugh. It made him laugh too. Soon, they were gasping for air, father hardly gripping the wheel down the country road. "I must admit, Hugh... I thought you were on stuff. Like, so you wouldn't do anything like steal a Walkman, or things."

"There's a sedative in the medicine. That used to be most of my medicine, and I could barely think. But I think I've developed something of a tolerance, and I'm much more lucid than I was." He said.

"Well, shit, if the meds aren't keeping you calm, what the hell are they doing?" His father laughed. This time, Hugh didn't.

"Keeping the delusions out." Hugh said. "Maintaining my emotions."

"Oh. Sorry, kid, might have been a bit personal there."

"You're the one who's buying the stuff. If I were you, I'd have been wondering just what I was paying for." Now Hugh was smiling again, and his father smiled right along with him, and they shared a silver flask on their way home. Then they finished it, and Hugh's father tried to fill it back up as they drove. "I've got it." Said Hugh. His father smiled, and gladly turned his eyes back to the road.

The house looked beautiful. The gardens were even better tended than those of SIN Acres, and the exterior looked much more expensive. When Hugh thought about his childhood, it was usually about the youngest times. He'd nearly forgotten how wealthy his father had made them.

The inside was far less elegant. It was difficult to place all the trash that littered the floor. For Hugh, it didn't need much categorization, it just fell under the category of mess. At least mess was better than purity... but Hugh wondered what implications it had for his father.

"Hey, dad?" He began. "How have you been feeling about mom?"

His father stopped his tidying for a moment. "I shouldn't say anything about that." He replied at last. "I really... it's no good to say something spiteful of the dead."

Spite, then. His father seemed much more broken up about his wife's life than her death.

Hugh couldn't argue.

"How about the music? Put out anything new?" Hugh asked.

His father laughed and fell onto the sofa. "The bands..." He said, digging something out from the cushions. "Are dead. Every one of them. Hugh, I must say, people really don't like each other." He found what he'd been reaching for, dumped it on the glass coffee table, and popped a couple in his mouth.

"You need water for those?" Hugh asked. His father shook his head. Hugh picked up the empty bottle and read the label. Generic brand pain-killers, prescribed by Dr. Ableton of AAHW. His father didn't seem to be in pain.

So, Hugh sat back in one of many soft chairs, reclining for the first time in years into his home. But as he began to drift off, his father surprised him to consciousness. "Speaking of pills, SINNY Acres is insane if they think I'm keeping you on their sedatives. You're not a damn animal."

"Well..." Hugh's words caught in his throat. "I did do something evil."

"I'm not gonna just'fy 'evil' with a response." Said his father, beginning to slur. "I dunno, maybe you still need somefin to calm you down. But it'll be medicine, not chemical manacles."

Hugh's father sprung to his feet with a speed Hugh wouldn't have thought possible in his drugged state. "I'ma get you summa my medicine."

Hugh glanced at the pills piled on the glass counter. "Not those?" He asked.

His father shook his head. "That's not medicine, that shit's poison. Don't mess with it or you'll have to take it until you die."

A few minutes later, Hugh's father came back into the room with two cups of tea. His dad's was already half empty. Hugh didn't quite remember drinking his tea, but standing on the glass counter with the mug hanging from one hand, the world held such agonizing detail that he'd never forget it.

"Bacteria are everywhere." Said his father, pupils wide enough to climb through before a journey through his sticky brain that might squish around his toes like the mud beside a stream and down a spinal cord, spinning on it like a firehouse pole. "Billions of them are probably on just your hand right now, see. Each skin cell is like a whole world for them to populate. But a bug just steps right over those skin cells, millions of times bigger. But even those are so small, probably a hundred skin mites on you right now. Each person is like a whole world to them. Then there's us, and we're really so small too. The world is like a whole world to us." Hugh's father's speech was broken by a minute-long fit of laughter, then he continued. "But there's a billion billion worlds, and this universe is like a whole world to them. But there are infinite small things below the bacteria, and there must be infinite things above the universe, see. See, we must be in only one universe, but there's plenty of them, and there are people in other universes that we'll never meet, and they aren't anything like us, see. Oh, but there's probably people who can see all of the universes, where the multiverse is their world, see. I bet they choose everything that happens. Even down to the bacteria, see."

See. The ocean see. Sea water, water you doing here? Hear heresy and hearsay from heretics - tics. Tourette's syndrome in insects in sects (quite opposed to heresy one might add much like one termite plus two termites especially in the situation of terminating might [incredible, a new word created and it must be written down, of course in order to write a word one must locate first a pen and then a pencil, but one may be able to rely on one's memory {one's memory seems incredibly powerful at this very moment although one doesn't know just why} or maybe it could be etched into this glass one stands upon] and speaking of the end of strength it is possible that one's mind is fading right at this very moment, of course it may always be doing so, but it seems as though one's mental faculties are being put to a use that is not entirely useful and this may be due to a certain substance that one has recently ingested [although one can't seem to recall what it was]) religious relics relish recreating really ridiculous renderings regarding retarded renditions of the past, which has passed.

There was a delicious flavor on Hugh's lips, and he smacked them loudly.

A strange smacking sound popped from Hugh's lips, and he jumped, disoriented, confused, and frightened. It came again, and Hugh hit the glass, hands over head.

Then his mug was full, and he noticed his feet feeling something sharp. His head skin felt a heavy weight, and the rest of his skin seemed to be sensing cool air, and this may have been indicative of the weather. His ears registered the sound of laughter - possibly. He would need to rely on his eyes in order to be sure. He looked out through his eyes to see his father buckled over, chest clutched, shaking with mirth. "Holy crap, Hugh." He said, wiping tears from his eyes. "I haven't had this much fun since... hell, since you lived here.

The weight on his head lifted, and Hugh saw a brown mallet fall to the ground before him. His father started laughing all over again, and Hugh seemed to be laughing as well. "Alright, alright." Said his father, trying to regain his composure. "It's been, like, half an hour, I think I'll take your first shot."

His father lifted his own mallet and hit a shiny red orb through a metal gate, where it bumped into a similar green ball. Hugh noticed himself balancing his mallet again on his head. "This may just be the best croquet I've ever played. Oh!" A smile crossed his father's face. "Do you want to get some SIN Soft Serve?"

Hallucinogens didn't mix with speeding, so they drove slow. Hills seemed incredibly steep, sometimes approaching 90 degree angles, and valleys often went far lower than the earth's crust should encompass. The car was never silent, for each thought manifested itself as a voice.

"Hey, where'd you hear all that stuff about the multiverse?" Asked his father in passing.

"What do you mean?" Hugh asked. Hadn't his father been the one to speak of other places?

"When you were standing on the coffee table, you were talking about multiple universes, how we were just a small part of many worlds. That there were deities that presided above all of them. Then you started mumbling a bunch of homophones and I couldn't understand anymore."

That was odd. Hugh distinctly remembered crawling into his father's eye, making a few brain angels, and hearing some nonsense about the universe.

Hugh was incredibly high.

His father pulled into SIN Soft Serve's square, but the buildings were already tarnished by time. Hugh's cherry red ride looked out of place pulling between two faded white lines in front of a closed ice-cream shop. They got out of the car, Hugh idling at his door as he heard his father's close, his father trying a locked nob, then banging on glass. He looked to Hugh with eyes downcast.

"I'm sorry, buddy." Said his father, voice suddenly very tired. "I guess I haven't been here since..."

Sobriety hit cold and sharp. Hugh had found in a matter of seconds that his past was dead. He'd missed it while sedated and monitored, led blindly through a series of meals and hallways and naps. There'd been nothing bright to follow the darkness. After all, unconsciousness was just as dark.

"We could get ice cream somewhere..." His father began, but trailed off before the "else." Neither of them wanted SIN Soft Serve for the ice cream. A dessert didn't matter. No thing would make them care.

"Let's go home." Hugh said.

The next week Hugh's old friend, unconsciousness, pulled him through the depression. It turned out that anti-depressants didn't do jack shit for depression until he knocked himself out with them and all his problems vanished for twelve hours.

His father once expressed doubts. "Hey, uh... I've been picking my poisons for years now, and I might have gotten carried away letting you go down that same road. Maybe you could stick to tea for now, let me handle the hard stuff?"

Hugh had just taken two hits of ecstasy and stopped pouring with a hand half full of painkillers when his father spoke. "I've been on some harder stuff than this for seven years of severely different ability. Have some too. Take your mind off it."

Rolling. Hugh was sure the volume had blown at least three speakers, but counting wasn't in his toolset anymore.

Candy dropping? Absolutely. But he was hardly conscious of what drugs he was taking anymore, only that his father had not blinked in a long time and was methodically searching for bottles, bags, and cases and dropping their contents onto the glass table. A calm buzz overtook Hugh. He had some tea, and watched his body relax as his soul swam into consciousness.

Everything was sensory. Thought was irrelevant, outdated, and honestly obsolete. There was a sense of utter safety, because a golden angel watched his self from a distance, and in a less immediate plane, he was semi-conscious of his father napping beside him.

The angel guided him higher and higher into euphoria. In tall, grassy hills, Hugh watched an opulent mansion glitter in the daylight. That's where his body was, Hugh knew.

But his body didn't matter. What mattered was the forest that sprouted before his eyes. The grass that spread beneath his toes could hardly be described as blades; each one was curled and soft and forgiving. This had been his childhood, playing with friends by the sprawling forest.

As he looked to the forest, white columns rose from the grass, red stripes running up each until they reached a top curved back down to the earth. Hugh touched one. The tree bark was perfectly smooth, and his hand came away coated in unmistakable sugar.

Farther now.

The Euphoric Woods kept on, a balmy sun's rays passing through the candy shadowless. Giddy laughter echoed from a near distance, but Hugh didn't look back at the mansion. There was too much to see here.

Birds rained a kaleidoscope of feathers on the grass, flitting from canetop to canetop, singing with the golden-winged angel. Stepping on a feather sent tingles up that foot, and Hugh collected a bouquet until he heard something even more beautiful rushing in the distance.

Unbound by weight, Hugh sped to the rushing noise, where tinkling splashes threw up spray to sparkle in the light. Hugh reached down to feel the cool water on his fingertips. They left a rippling trail as he whipped through the air down the river, face ruddied by the cool breeze and scent of life. He slowed to a gentle halt at the sight of a deer lapping water from the stream. The animal's ears twitched, and Hugh saw the purity of the deer turn the water gold.

Hugh squished mud between his toes on his walk to the bank. The deer was unperturbed, and Hugh stroked its short fur until it leaned against his leg. But Hugh was already on, leaping nimbly towards a vivid assortment of colors in the distance.

From a thousand petals came a thousand subtle scents, each so slight that sniffing with mouth open and nose brushing pollen was not enough, and an overwhelming desire to taste the aroma rose in Hugh's mind. So he did. First a white flower, vanilla coming with every breath. Then a violet one, an unknown flavor set on his lips.

Hugh was vaguely aware of a physical jaw working as well.

Hot pink, neon green, incarnadine was Hugh's trail. The flowers grew on a path made solely for him, stretching out of the forest and carpeting a dirt road. Dust rose behind ungrounded feet, and the flowers left the ground as well, curving into a bridge to the sky.

He brushed fragile petals as he floated them by, and flower tendrils reached back to tickle his hands.

Sometimes, on harsh, polluted roads, a passer-by will see green growing from a crack in the street. Today the street cracked, flowers binding and reaching through a cloud to smash asphalt from below. Rock rained down, but dissipated into air before it could damage anything alive. Hugh soared up to find himself floating in a place he knew well.

Marshmallow clouds hanging in the sky, each soft and fluffy, none nearing the path of the sun. The bakery, windows gleaming, the scent of warm loaves rolling out. The candy store, bustling with children, friendly new vines climbing the facade. And there. On the corner. SIN Soft Serve.

Hugh's soles found the street and took him to the ice cream shop. It was as bright as it had ever been, lit mostly by an eternal, beaming sun. The huge windows showed many customers, all moving as though through molasses. But a couple of them, a father and his son, licked cones and laughed at ordinary speed. Hugh knocked the window to get their attention, but they didn't notice.

...creating my masterpiece here. Hugh read on his father's lips. He had to see him again.

"Dad!" He shouted, pounding the glass. "Dad, it's me!"

The pair of them seemed to hear. His father's head began to turn, and butterflies filled his stomach. He was back. Back to life. Life as it had been. Been better than anything else.

But then he felt his stomach lurch, and the window pulled away from him until he couldn't see his father's face anymore. Now his time was up, and his guardian angel was gesturing for him to go back home. He could return here later, but the world of candy was fading, and that distant mansion suddenly became visible again.

Back down the bridge, back through the forest, back up the plains, back in the door, back to the couch, back inside his still body. He tried to look back to the far ice cream shop to find his father's face one more time, but the trip ended, and his vision returned to the black of his eyelids.

They opened to gunk and the outline of his father's head. The room was dark; it seemed his dream had lied about the time of day. "Dad." He said, patting his father's shoulder and straining to stand up. Something crunched under his feet when he stood, and he looked down to see tens of candy wrappers littering the floor. It seemed that his dream hadn't lied about eating something sweet.

Blood rushed to his head. How long had he been lying in this state? "Dad." He said again, shaking his father's shoulder. He needed to see his face, even if it would be much hairier than that of the man in the ice cream shop. But his father wouldn't rouse.

"Dad, wake up." He said, turning his father over. No response. Maybe it was just his eyes adjusting to the light, but his father's face seemed to have a darker tint. "Hey, dad! Dad, wake up." He shook him with increasing urgency. No response, but a bottle of empty pills fell from the man's hand. Hugh only remembered flashes of his time under, but he recalled that bottle being full at some point.

"Dad, are you messing around?" He put his finger below his father's nose to detect breath. Yes, he was probably just playing... but no air.

He tried the neck. No pulse.

He tried screaming. No response.

Hugh breathed frantically into his father's mouth, trying and failing to maintain composure. His father's lungs expanded and collapsed, ten times in a row, but didn't continue when Hugh stopped.

He tried to press his father's chest to the beat of some song, but he couldn't remember which one, and he couldn't remember how strong he was, and then Hugh heard a crack and felt his hands sink lower than they were supposed to.

"No, no, no." Hugh whispered, backing away from a dead man and his broken ribs. "No, no, no, no no no no no."

His leg hit something and Hugh tripped backwards over a table, knocking it over and landing on shattering glass. "Nonononono." He said, crawling further away, not feeling the shards that dug into his hands. In fact, he couldn't feel much at all. That was what happened when he tried going off his medication.

That, and the looming presence that filled the entire room. It was dark again, and now there wasn't a father to protect him, or drugs, and the things had returned. With a vengeance.

All of them.

His mind raced, remembering dark things that chased him through dark woods. Remembering himself thinking his mother was dead in the apartment. Remembering all the evil things he'd ever dreamt of, all the evil things he'd ever imagined.

All. Of. Them.

Could he run? Where could he hope to go? No, if inside was dark, outside was darker. Could he kill himself? No, hell would have no morning to rescue him from the darkness. Could he take his medicine? There was no telling how that would mix with the drugs in his system.

There was only one option. Only one place, one man could rescue him from the darkness. Hugh searched the reddened glass shards for a black box. Found. He opened it up and removed a strip of blotter paper. There was no point in moderating now; he had to get the darkness out.

Six tabs of LSD folded onto his tongue. He had no ecstasy, but it didn't matter. He was already sinking down. The demons stilled, waiting by his body. A phone began to ring, a harsh, grating sound that took him deeper into the dark. His eyes glazed over, the mansion blurred, and he settled back down onto his bed of glass. The ring turned into an incessant buzz. All his senses faded, all the world drifted away.

His ears jarred from the noise. It came from the mansion, blaring white through abandoned ears. He covered them and looked across the plain. It was dark, now that he knew darkness was correct. Blades of grass stabbed his toes when he took a step, breaking off at the dirt and embedding in his feet as so many stinging pieces.

He couldn't float above the grass either. He was heavy now, bogged down by death. He tread carefully through grey blades, headed for the forest, shivering when he felt eyes on him. Not to worry, though. Delicious candy cane trees lay ahead.

Hugh's head was light by the time he reached the forest. This time, the trees were gnarled and dark, and the leaves' rustle birthed a slow hiss from every side. Hugh didn't want to go in anymore. He looked back on his path and saw a hundred red footprints, stark in the pale grass. They stretched toward a distant mansion, so far that he surely wouldn't make it back.

A wave of dizziness came over him. He was losing blood.

"I'm coming for you, dad." He whispered. But this was less his motivation than was the dark presence he felt behind. Hugh carried on, blundering through ancient pillars of oak, chattering his teeth at the caw of crows lurching from branch to branch, alongside something darker.

Hugh looked up for the reassuring sun, but found only the shadows of a thick canopy.

"Hu-ugh..."

No. He couldn't focus on the voices of the past, or he'd be pulled back in. He covered his ears and started running through the forest.

"Hugh!"

The voice cut right through his hands.

"No!" He shouted back, squeezing his eyes shut, still going at a sprint. His toe broke on a mossy stone, and Hugh slipped to the ground, head banging on the earth. A lazy brown frog croaked next to Hugh's still skull, pondering his giant eyes. Hugh was too sluggish to grab it.

"If you run in the dark, you might crack your head."

Dark dirt had turned to dark mud, and Hugh forced himself to his feet, streaked with it. Though the corners of his vision blurred, there was no time to lay still. He knew just where the whispers were coming from.

A brook babbled. Hugh knew just where he was. Squishy mud would soothe his bleeding feet. A soft deer would turn the stream gold. But when he took a step forward, the mud gripped his feet like tar, sucking and pulling him back from his father. He trudged on toward the stream.

As he got closer, Hugh heard a gurgling sound mix with the brook's babble. It was a strange, shrill noise, all forced and faltering and wet.

The river was ghostly in its transparency, so that Hugh could hardly see the water at all. He stepped in, and the cold bit at his feet. He waded with the current, frowned when a dead school rushed through his legs. He could see with perfect clarity how their scales did not shimmer, and was reminded just how little light there was.

"You really are afraid of the dark, aren't you?"

The dark called. And Hugh came, nearly stumbling over a still, gurgling form in his distraction. His foot kicked into black's side.

The boy looked up at him, grinning, face bruised, blood welling between cracks in his teeth and dripping off the lifted corners of his mouth, running down his chin to join the stream from his neck, running down his chest to join the stream of the river. Hugh saw the deer dead on the bank, skin peeled off, torn carefully into a long, thin strip, and needle-woven through the carcass. The clear of the river ended here, but the color was not gold.

"You're dead meat, Hugh."

When the boy opened his mouth to say it, the words bubbled through dark dark blood. Hugh did not like this gurgle. He did not like the boy's dark eyes. He did not like the way that the deer had been tortured before death.

"You really... are afraid... really are... dark, aren't you?"

"...meat, Hugh... you're... dead... Hugh... you're..."

It was in his desperate sprint from the body that Hugh felt his true disconnect from reality. It wasn't just the drugs, no sedatives or hallucinogen were creating the dissonance within him. He was not a part of the real world.

But he could hear the real world, certainly operating in a different dimension, seeming to operate at a different time. It was a pounding that came from the direction of the mansion, rumbling through the forest and shaking everything on its path to Hugh.

POUND, went a huge wooden collision, rumbling through physical ears.

The noise was given a few minutes to resound before another came, a POUND even greater than the first, making Hugh slip and fall once again. Hugh fled the pounding, but much as he scrambled to his feet and distanced himself from the mansion, it only got louder.

The scent hit before the sight. It was strong, a pungent one of choking decay. His breath stopped when he came to see it. The place was still shaking from the last POUND. It was a mockery of life, a sick joke told by something dark. These were not flowers. These were the sprouts of seeds from hell.

No time to stop. He raced through the field, searching for the bridge to the clouds. It would certainly be left. It would be beautiful, and tall, and promising, and it would lead him to his fa...

Like an earthquake: He felt it rattle the earth before it hit in full. Hugh threw himself to the ground, bracing against the resounding

POUND

that boiled the air into a great roar, overlain with a thousand groans. When Hugh stood, when he was able to stand, his knees wobbled to the same unsteady rhythm as the overturned dirt around him. But the faux flowers were not disturbed by the quake. Instead, they radiated a quiet aggression. And he was alone with them.

Eyes to the sky. Where was the sun? Hugh saw no particularly bright patch of cloud. But it had to be up there... right?

Something moved against his pant leg. By the time he looked down, the tendril had wrapped thrice around his ankle and was sliding higher by the second.

"Get off of me!" He shouted.

He was sick of this, tired of the dark, exhausted of the things that lay within it. The vine jerked sharply to the back in attempt to knock him down, but Hugh moved with it, spun, and stomped on the blotchy grey shoot. He twisted his heel, and the frail thing broke, snaking away from its lost appendage.

Then two vines, one around each wrist. He grabbed them and pulled, channeling years of fear into minutes of anger. They wouldn't break, and Hugh felt their thorns digging into his hand.

"...wimp...come on, wimp...stay out..."

Hugh heaved a tendril to his mouth and, pulling it taut, crushed it between his molars. The thorns speared tongue and roof even as vine wilted against his teeth, and he spat it out with a mouthful of blood. But before he could bite the other one, it dislocated his shoulder and dragged him through dark petals, flowers and vines following at his heels. He could taste blood and feel stinging cuts against his cheeks. Hugh closed his eyes against grey, oncoming blades and grabbed the vine with his other hand. But it was for naught. The earth erupted below him, a monster of dark flower, thorns, and vine taking him in its maw. Hugh filled the beast with blood and spit and fists, tearing and kicking and screaming at anything and everything around him.

He felt himself torn from the plant's mouth and whipped around by his neck, until two thick vines seized his legs and held him upside down. Blood rushed to his head, and he could hear it coming thick through his ears. A tendril pulled down his chin and bared his neck, then wrapped around it, trapping the blood in his face and neck and scalp. Another vine shackled his arms to his sides and squeezed on his ribs.

To feel something inside you - moving - is a feeling thousands of times worse than death. You have no power to rid the parasite, no ability to stop it from having its way. You can only clench your jaw and try not to scream as it carelessly slides among parts beyond vulnerable, taking away all of your power until it is all you can do not to plunge a blade into your skin and tear the thing away from your ribs and heart and lungs.

To feel it inside you is horrific. To hear it is worse.

Hugh had no knife to plunge, no way to take his own life, no recourse but to listen as the tendrils entered him. One in his nostril, mucus bubbling and popping while the rough vine scratched against his throat and made a spiral down the length of a lung. Then one up along his jaw and into his ear, and then he did scream, because he could feel it wriggling by the drum and throughout his entire head before it exited through a tear duct and entered again through the other. It flexed, pulsed, grew, and blood sprung forth to fill both eyes. Two red tears rolled up his forehead, wet some strands of hair, and dripped into the mouth of the plant below. Looking like a malicious anemone, thousands of hairlike tendrils wormed along his face and arms and feet, looking for cuts. Their each followed trails of blood into microscopic holes on the skin, widened the holes all they could, then bored through the flesh.

Worms. Near him. Surrounding him. Inside him.

POUND

And this one was so strong that it weakened the plant's grip on him. The million worms loosened and retracted, dripped with blood, and gathered to watch as Hugh fell down.

Just to be caught by the mouth of the plant. It swallowed him whole.

Down the gullet, self violated, mind maddened to a white, ear-bursting siren of anger, Hugh bit deeply into the thicket esophagus, praying in the dark that he'd sunk his teeth into an artery. (He was vaguely aware of a physical jaw grinding.) But no sap came gushing forth. The plant crumbled into his mouth like a winter blackened leaf, bitter, brittle, and dry. This thing was dead already.

Angel. He prayed, pleading hope in a hopeless plea. Watcher, find me. Show me your wings. Take me to my father.

And, to an unexpected turn of his stomach, Hugh knew that a winged watcher had found him already.

Sometimes, on harsh, polluted roads, a passer-by will see green growing from a crack in the street. Probably less often, a passer-by will witness the tooth-like thorns of a giant plant rending through asphalt and spitting a bloodied boy onto the street.

A quiet street.

No wind.

The faint scent of tar.

Cold prickling flesh.

Rubble cutting into a cheek.

Cloying taste of blood.

No light coming through his eyelids. It must have been dark.

A rumbling noise, right next to his ear and yet a thousand miles away. "SAAAAAH...," began the call, slow and deep. Hugh pushed himself up and rubbed dirt from his eyes. A slow scan of the area, a deepening frown, but no tear.

He'd been here before. In this block, in his last dream. He knew from the last time: it was time to leave. That's what was supposed to happen. It was time to go home. But he felt darker things coming, and if honest, Hugh knew he didn't know how to get back home.

A minute or two passed with footsteps on pavement. The call changed, "...EEEEEN..." accompanied by another POUND. But Hugh hardly felt their trembling power, detached from things so physical.

Put hand against glass. Avoid the broken part. Look for movement, find none. See dark. Feel... dark. Close eyes, again.

"...PEEEEE..."

His father was gone. Hugh couldn't even find him in his fantasies, goddammit. SIN Soft Serve was hollow, heartless. The shop would never see his father again. It would probably erode in quiet forevermore.

"...DEEEEE..."

There IT was, reflecting off the glass. There was no denying anymore - the angel was gone too. Something red darted in from behind, and out of instinct, Hugh snatched it from the air. It felt wet. The second piece skidded in from the same direction, rolling to a stop beside Hugh's left foot. He bent to pick it up, then dropped both pieces in disgust.

The frog by the river, all bloodied and torn.

Prickling cold turned to biting chill. The warped angel was as still as the dark air around IT, no doubt planning to do to Hugh what IT had done to the deer. Apathetic, Hugh trudged towards IT. He was unable to make out the dark angel's figure at the distance, but no visage could put fear in the void in his chest. He just wanted the thing dead.

The deep ringing of physical sounds faded away. Hugh's bare feet hurt against the asphalt, and he noticed that the blood was dried, grass cuts scabbed over. Yet his tread over ghostly grass had seemed so soon before. How had it healed so quickly?

No matter. Because there IT was, growing in his vision, as still as if IT had been painted over ITS dilapidated canvas. He could see two outstretched wings as he approached, much bigger than those of the angel, each one stretching so that they spanned the street's width, sickle-like ends curving to graze the pavement.

Whispers grew. He could hardly hear them at first, but they surrounded him the moment Hugh entered ITS radius.

"Hugh..."

"Hugh, Hugh, Hugh..."

"HughHughHughHugh..."

"...HuGh, HuGH hUgh hugH HUGh..."

"HUGH"

"...HughHughHugh..."

"...HUGH."

Hugh was very bloody, his life very spilt. Emotions had run him through, burned him out, leaving little more than ashes behind the skin. But there was a pile of rubble left on the street, and he stooped to pick up a fist sized piece. The dark angel was still there when he stood - Hugh'd half expected IT to disappear when he looked away.

The immediate-distant call returned. "...OHHHHH..."

In fact, maybe IT already had disappeared. The monstrous entity was so dark against ITS background that Hugh was becoming uncertain of ITS existence. "What do you want?" He shouted, faltering a bit in step. IT didn't respond.

"...PENNNNN..."

The whispers grew, some reassurance that he wasn't walking towards a shadow. But this wasn't exactly a relief. The whispers had begun to come in a pattern, a chant, taking on a sort of rhythm. And the rhythm they'd taken... Hugh knew it.

A thick fog began to collect around his bare feet. It felt to be a deadly smoke, a thousand painfully poisonous particles of ice. Hugh shivered again, wounds aching in the cold, and did his best not to breathe it in. "Where's my...," father, "angel?" He demanded. The dark thing stayed quiet, of course, but the whispers spoke for IT.

"You're dead meat, Hugh, you're..."

"So much anger, Hugh. Why not let it go...?"

"...dead meat, Hugh, you're, dead, meat, Hugh..."

"...Fear, too. Don't worry, Hugh. It'll fade..."

Yes, there was a rhythm here. But more than a pattern, more than a chant. It was almost like a...

"...retarded meat, meat, meat, meat..."

"...You're a killer, Hugh. That boy. The frog, the deer... your father..."

"...Death just... follows you."

A beat.

"...UPPPPP." Rattled the land, and Hugh fell to his knees to send frosty fog out in waves, and then he looked up, and when he looked up the dark angel had finally changed, because it was breathing the smoke and burning in the eyes and shifting in Hugh's vision. Hugh pulled back his arm and heaved the piece of rubble at the looming figure and then the rock smashed him in the face and poured him on the ground before it had made a quarter of the journey to Hugh's enemy.

There was a lot of blood.

Hugh put his hand where the rock had landed, felt a frightening indentation, so deep that it left him breathless for a moment. This was not normal. Through blurred vision could he see the dark angel's wings, so tattered and heavy as to be flightless, carving trenches into pavement as they drew together.

"Senseless, unnecessary, human father..."

"IS DEAD"

"...poured his Life into his 'music', and finally found the pitcher of Life empty."

"Do you really want to mourn him? Do you really want to feel so sad..."

"SO WEAK"

"...so human?"

And then the whispers became incomprehensible, and the beat they made was just a hollow imitation of one of his father's songs. The noises were made all too deep to hear, but he could feel them, and he could feel how IT mocked them, how it hated them, and how it hated Hugh, and how it hated.

He wiped the blood from his face and watched some dizzying drops fall to the ground.

A puff of smoke came from his nose, and he realized that he'd been breathing the black poison since he fell down. He thought he'd feel different, that it would weaken him, but it didn't. It felt like normal, just like it always felt when he was off his medication. But there was no point lying down, watching the blood pool around his face. Hugh stood before the red could congeal on his cheek, then wiped the wet from his head and flung it from his fingers. Then he picked his rubble back up, heading again towards a dark thing.

ITS wings were folded in, now, but still poised, tense, ready for something. There were so many holes in the wings, some large, and some small. Hugh'd hoped at least to tear one more. Hugh would cause the thing some pain before he died.

In the back of his mind he knew that he wasn't going to die. It was just a trip, all imaginary.

The dark angel didn't like that thought - oh yes, all the darker things knew his thoughts, the better to leave him wet-cheeked, hands over ears, curled up in a corner - and the rhythmic whispers pounded thicker and louder than the river of blood in his ears, screaming that Hugh was mortality and IT was NOT, that Hugh would CRUMPLE and FOLD and BREAK and after all his father was dead too from the vice of the darkness, and the roaring rhythm grew faster, and the distance between Hugh and the dark angel was closing, and the rhythm had reached its crescendo now, degrading into static, and the world slowed to a stop in anticipation of the

SMASH.

And, through a sudden tinnitus, Hugh heard the whoosh of the wings, was knocked back. He saw them open, bared for only a moment to the earth. Asymmetry. Taut skin, conforming to thick cylinders of bone underneath. Bone with the proportions of a spider's leg, digits long and bent, none with the same number of joints, turned at unnatural angles, looking more broken than alive. Veins invisible, flattened against the leathery skin, presumably empty. Radiating an oppressive darkness. A reflection of - or maybe the cause of - Hugh's internal turmoil.

The dark angel soared forth, and the sight became much more immediate, tips now escaping the range of Hugh's vision. The body that came into view looked like it had been bathed in latex. And the molten latex had never dried, it twisted in agony around largely featureless legs, arms, torso, and head.

Hugh's opportunity came when the dark thing was feet away. He ducked and charged towards it, rock in hand, and leapt up to take the jagged piece through ITS skull. But the rock made no impact when Hugh swung it, and he found himself enveloped in the fog, blinded.

No, that could not be it. Hugh would not allow himself to be killed powerless and submissive, here in the darkness.

But it was his mind, his fantasy. He summoned up a great torch and let its fire burn white. He found the way out from the fog and he took it, then pulled the fire through himself so that it would burn from both hands and glow from his mouth and bring waves up from the asphalt nearby. He looked for the dark angel, didn't find it. All he saw was the massive hill of smoke he'd just escaped, plenty volume to conceal a dark thing. Hugh fired into the mist, bolts driving away their paths' smoke and lighting the darkness for brief moments before they burst on the ground on the other side. Still, though, he did not hit his target.

But then the smoke came to him, rushing over the fire in his torch and his hand and his heart to leave only a chill behind.

When the smoke dissipated, a black fire arose where the white had been. He tried to quench it, but though it was his mind, the fire was not his to dismiss.

A cold hand on his head. Hugh felt dizzy, and his knees buckled beneath him. Hugh saw an enormous shadow before him, winged and black. He was lowered to a kneel, life draining up into the hand of a darker thing. Fingers dripped down his face, clenched still his head, and turned it to the sky. Hugh squeezed his eyes closed and struggled, yanking ineffectually at the firm hand, surrounded by the beat and the cold and the smoke.

He didn't give up his struggle until it had gone on for minutes to no avail. His closed eyelids opened, and he looked up at the sky for what may have been the last time. It occurred to him to look for the marshmallow clouds once lit by a golden sun. They'd probably been destroyed too... but look! They were still there! He smiled a bit. The deer may be dead, his childhood forest may be spoiled, but the heavens were sacred. There were some things that the darkness couldn't take.

But then the world shook, harder than a POUND, harder than the SMASH, harder than anything, and a puffy white piece of the sky tumbled down to earth. A massive, pristine marshmallow dirtied itself on oil covered street. The cloud of dust and rubble it raised clung to the white surface, turning it grey.

Hugh returned to his struggle, beating savagely at the cold hand.

"Use your fire." IT hissed.

"It's not my fire." Hugh replied.

The hand squeezed, and blood spurted from all his old wounds, and all the light in him started to rush out through his skull, eyes rolling back, arms going limp, muscles forced relaxed. The only thing that didn't leave him was the black fire.

"You can't make me use it." Hugh sputtered. "This is my min-"

"This mind," said the darkness, "belongs to me."

And even as Hugh swore to himself never to use the tools of this darkness, he released a burst of black fire that spread in all directions, carved a hole in the asphalt beneath him, and blew him from ITS grip. Darker things could never smile, but Hugh thought that IT must have an evil smile inside IT, because Hugh had given in to ITS will and was still going to die.

He wondered whether any of it really mattered to begin with.

But the dark angel, grip lost, was returning for ITS kill. Hugh's fists spat the black fire at IT over and over without stopping. At first, the dark angel merely absorbed the fire, but when IT tired of the game, IT blasted him across the block to be knocked against an ice cream shop.

Now all the fire was out, and that dark angel glided towards him, and his only recourse was to flee. Crawling on elbows and feet, back from the dark angel, Hugh noticed a strange octagonal sign bearing an exclamation mark. The dark angel had no knowledge of human symbols, and had built this world with nonsense aplenty. The sign's image blurred and bent when the darkness stepped in front of it.

Now the dark angel pinned him down with invisible impenetrable immaculate shackles. Hugh looked into ITS face, looked boldly and unabashedly into the face of death. What may have been a chin lowered beneath the twitching surface, stretching the head to an impossible length. A sinister glow grew bright enough to seep through the latex, and the dark angel fell to a horizontal position where IT gripped Hugh's neck with one hand and the ground with the other. The glow of hellfire was strong now; it hurt Hugh's eyes, and he could feel it as well.

These were the last moments of his life, he thought. He looked for his father, scanned for a white light, clutched tightly to the hope that the soft hand of some heaven would finally beckon. But no hand came, and no call arose. He looked back to the dark angel, anyways obscured features further silhouetted by the massive shadow IT cast. The light in ITS mouth was blinding now, and as Hugh felt himself wither in the grasp of darker things, he reached up to squeeze at the source in a final burst of hatred. Yes, that was it. Let the darkness close away the edges of sight, let feelings get duller by the second, let the blinding light burn at his hand. His thumb punctured the bright flesh, and his fingers dug into the head until something in it crunched beneath. Keep squeezing, keep fading, keep drifting away. Hugh began to think that he might kill the darkness this way, and his inner hatred grinned that both of them could soon be destroyed.

But then there was a hideous sucking feeling at his stomach. He was being pulled into the pavement now, back pressing into the ground, ground giving way. Then the dark angel and the sign and the fog and the buildings all drifted up, and Hugh broke through the pavement, and now he was falling, and falling, and falling, then pulling back through a field of dead flowers, then whipped passed a red stream, then spun past thousands of ominous trees, then pulled back over acres of sharp, dead grass until he was back to the house, back through the shattered door, back into the body of the boy named Hugh.

SIN Acres had known there was a problem after two phone calls had gone unanswered, left to ring for minutes in the house. The SINPD had known there was an emergency when they saw some blood under the shutter and when their loudest POUND brought nobody to the door. The boy's eyes were half open now, and with pupils rolled back, he looked at the paramedics through the whites of his eyes. A Walkman player was clutched beneath his chest, rhythm warped when heard through his body. After a minute of inactivity while he was being assessed, one EMT was nearly screaming, the boy's hand having shot up and gripped the man's flashlight and hand and broken the glass with his thumb. A fellow EMT, after a desperate struggle, managed to pull away the boy's hand. The boy was disentangled and loaded into the ambulance, where numerous glass shards were removed from his feet and hands.

Hugh awoke, surrounded by white. It was a good color to see after such endless blackness.

"You're awake." Said someone, voice low. For a moment, a tingle ran through his stomach as he thought it was his father. But when his head turned, he saw a middle-aged man with a detective badge on his uniform and bags under his eyes. Hugh looked away, closed his eyes again. This was a hospital, but maybe if he tried hard enough, he could die here.

"I'm sorry for what happened to you." Said the detective, looking at Hugh sincerely. "Years of institutionalization, years of sedation... and to come home, and find your father no better. The man had succumbed to grit, let darker things enter his soul. I think you're a gentle youth, Hugh, so I imagine you tried to be patient with him, even through the drugs he exposed you to. But he pushed you over the edge, didn't he? Did you kill him because he told you how your mother died?"

Hugh was young, and quite possibly insane. But he was far from stupid. The detective thought he'd killed his father because they'd found the man dead with broken ribs. But why would Hugh kill his father because of how his mother died? It wasn't much of a stretch to infer.

His father was a murderer... he hadn't known that. But of course, it was true. It wasn't enough for the darker things to kill his body, they had to kill his memory as well, the spirit. Hugh had loved his father. But in that moment, Hugh no longer wished to see him smiling through the window of that ice cream shop. He released his hold on the final rock, the one that had kept him still and afloat in the tide of hopelessness.

When Hugh didn't respond, the man continued. "As much as I may sympathize with you, you've displayed an inability to be peaceful. You even broke an EMT's hand. You're probably going to be sent back to the institution you came from, unless you help us to help you. Do you have any statement to make? Anything we got wrong, anything to defend yourself?"

Hugh said nothing. There was an IV hooked into his arm, and knew his medicine was coming through it. The room was bright, he had company, and his medicine was back. There were no darker things to be seen.

Back to SIN Acres, Facility for the Severely Differently Abled. Clinical, clean, careful. Hugh wouldn't find any pain here. He wouldn't find any pleasure, either.

The thick administrator smiled over her thick desk. Hugh used to count her chins, but now he stared through her fat as though she were not there, and there was nothing behind her but space.

"The world's latest murderer, working hard to keep his title. I told you you'd tire of him before the ride home had ended. I was wrong, though. You managed to hold off for a few full days." She said.

Hugh was escorted back to his room. The walls were white, the bedsheets were flame resistant. There was rubber on each corner, there were bars on the window. It was no wonder his lamp didn't work. Hugh took it from his bedside table, disassembled it, and pulled a Walkman from the stand.

Music, again...

Now

...Again, music. It was really the only thing left. Hugh always closed the warehouse doors before he played. This time they swung carelessly, drew the attention of some soldiers when they banged on the walls.

Through the dark, up to the equipment. Hugh used to see monsters in the dark. These days he was the only monster to be seen.

Label time-worn, artist forgotten. A cassette slid into its player. Old technology, Hugh knew, but he'd never thought to convert the sentimental piece. The music began slow and deep, keys and strings spilling discordant notes. If only he could remember who'd written it. His eyes closed. If he could have mustered up a tear, he would have. Instead, he clutched the edge of the turntable and bent over it with shaking arms.

Darkness was hard to stomach. Hugh's god, friend, cure was truly his demon, enemy, disease. IT was evil, which was a hard thing to know. But now Hugh was evil too, despite Sheriff Jay's assurances to the contrary. Sheriff Jay, Hugh thought. The only truly good man I know anymore. Jay, with his talk of goodness, reminded Hugh of someone important. Someone he'd thought was gone, gone, long dead. Only, his memories were all a jumbled mess, and no amount of importance could give him back the man's name.

Upon opening his eyes, Hugh saw several of his units scattered about the warehouse. There were no groups, no pairs of men - Hugh's soldiers tended to keep to themselves - but they were together in sharing the increasingly harmonic melody.

Hugh knew the song well. The upcoming notes were jarring and dark. Meaningful to the composer, important in the context of the music, but not the mood for Hugh. He made them bright, and then brighter and brighter and brighter. He smiled. When he looked up to his sparse audience, he found them to be smiling with him. And they were not so sparse anymore.

No conscious thought really went into it, just a sudden impulse to which Hugh was entirely subject. "I feel evil." He said through the microphone. Unprompted as it was, the statement still didn't disturb Hugh's audience. In fact, some of them nodded their assent.

He played with the beat, feeling absent, less a thinking entity than an acting one. The music became more complex, and a subconscious directive began to phase out the sentimental sounds in favor of something bigger.

"I don't care." Said Hugh. The music was enormous now, and the crowd in the warehouse had grown. The night sky let little light inside, so people drew their own flashlights, candles, lighters.

"I don't care about the past." The music was a movement now, and it moved everyone present. These men and women were the wounded of the world. Each one carried darkness, and to them, Hugh's struggle seemed as ordinary as being awake. So they whooped and danced and transcended their darkness. Hours passed, the night waned, and there was just one song left to play.

"I don't care about the past. The dead are dead, our mistakes were mistaken. Nothing but lost memories, for me. But this one..." Hugh said, returning control to the ancient cassette. "This one goes out to those I remember."

It seemed that there was a balance between the emotionless pleasure of possession and the rampant regret of freedom. Over the next few weeks, Hugh feigned support for The Auditor, worked morally for the Sheriff, and spent his nights in the warehouse with his people. They were all connected when the music played, and they began to see him as an emotional leader as well as a military one. No one anticipated anything with more excitement than the nights at the club, and Hugh's following easily attained a cult status. He painted his face white every day, and when his people saw it, they printed their own designs, faces colored each night with words and pictures meaningful to them. Behind the mask of face paint, they all could be who they wanted to be. Judgement was left outside, left to shiver alongside the dark.

Club M, it was called. M for memories, M for anyone who wanted joy in them. Cheshyre played, for Club M was for everybody. And in defiance of the sky, eternally overcast, East Complex made its own light.