LMNanowrimO

[LMNO]

Tom began to relax.  His mind had already begun the healing process, and was busily covering up the gaping hole in his picture of reality with bits and pieces of lies and rationalizations.  The story he had told the cops was suddenly making a lot more sense.  He knew it wasn't true, but then again, what exactly did he see, anyway?  It was dark, he was scared, and while something had happened to those two boys, there was undoubtedly some reasonable explanation to be had.  After all, here he was, in this room, and there wasn't any scary monsters around.  Just him, and Doug, and a bunch of cops.

Cops who were, it should be said, now talking in low voices, huddled in a circle.  "Rick is still up there!" the one called Casper said. 

"Yeah, but he got hit by that lightening!" replied Smith.  Upstairs, the booming had subsided somewhat, but there were still occasional strikes.  "There's no way-"

"Can you hear yourself?  That's one of our own up there, and we just left him lying on the ground.  If George hadn't put out his shirt that was on fire, he'd be a barbecue by now!"

"What are you saying?"

"I'm saying," said Casper, straightening up, "That I'm going to go get Rick."

"But Detective Mitchell said-"

"Fuck what he said.  Arrogant prick.  That's my partner up there.  Anyone going to try and stop me?"  No one made a move.  "All right then."  He walked up the stairs.  They watched him go.  The entire group looked around and watched each other, trying not to look nervous.  Each boom of thunder made them wince, and one or two cops started looking a bit bashful, and made tentative moves towards the stairs.   Then, between crashes of thunder, they heard Casper grunting, and the sound of a body being dragged.  "A little help here!" he shouted at the top of the stairs.  "You wouldn't believe what's going on-"

There was a flash of light and an enormous boom as Casper and the policeman's body he was dragging were flung down the steps.  The tomb itself suffered a direct strike.  With a tremendous cracking noise, the roof toppled inward.  As the two bodies tumbled down the stairs and into the stone room, dust billowed from the trapdoor entrance.  The two men lay motionless on the floor.  Then one of them, Casper, rolled over groaning.  The other officers rushed over to them.

"I'm fine," said Casper through clenched teeth.  "Check on Rick."  The one called Greg was already there, head to chest.  He gently started removing Rick's charred shirt, and then stopped.  He dropped his head to his chest.  "What is it?" asked Casper.  "Greg, what?"

Without a word, Greg pushed rick over to his right.  Rick rolled easily, and everyone could clearly see a large hole, about the size of a half dollar, burned into his chest, right above his heart.  The hold was blackened and burnt, and the could see it went in deep.  Deeper than was obviously healthy.  "It's no use, Casper," said Rick softly.  "His chest exploded."

"Aw, no," moaned Casper.  He propped himself up on one elbow, and struggled to his feet.  His nose was bleeding, and his clothes were torn.  "Rick, man, I'm sorry," he whispered.

"Tom leaned over and whispered in Doug's ear, "Well, at least he's already buried."

"I heard that, you asshole!" yelled Casper, and stumbled over to them.  "How the fuck can you just sit there and make jokes!?  That is a human, an actual person, and you decide to mock him?" His hand became a fist, and cocked back.  "You know what I'm going to do to you?  I'm gonna kick your ass so hard, and then book you for resisting arrest, so I can kick your ass again..." Doug was pointing at the wall.  Casper turned around, saying, "What?"  The force of the tomb above collapsing had shook sections of the wall's facade in the room.  The room wasn't just blank stone after all, but covered with a plaster that made it look like blank stone.  A large chunk had fallen off the wall opposite the tunnel's entrance, and they could see pictures of symbols marking up the wall underneath.

"What the hell?"  The one called Smith walked over to the wall.  "These look familiar," he said, catching the edge of the broken plaster and pulling more chunks off the wall.  "They look like..."

"...Like those crop circles they've been showing on TV," said Doug.  "No one's sure what they are, but where they used to only appear in cornfields and things like that, they've been showing up everywhere.  But those drawing look... old."

Casper scoffed.  "Oh, bullshit," he said.  "Crop circles are bullshit, and people who believe in them are full of bullshit.

"You do have to admit that crop circles actually there when they're found," said Doug.

"But they're man made!"

"So what if they are?  Someone had to make them, for some reason that no one's been able to figure out yet.  And more than one someone.  Not only have they been showing up on multiple continents, they've been documented for more than 100 years.  So it's a multi generational, international project for reasons unknown.  And now they're here, too.  Exactly what part of all this is not suspicious to you?"

"Suspicious, maybe.  Criminal, no."  Casper turned towards the other cops.  "Has anyone been able to get a radio signal?"  They shook their heads.  "The hell with this, then.  Let's get out of here.

"That's gonna be kind of hard," said Smith, who pointed up the stairs.  The entire trapdoor entrance was blocked by the roof of the mausoleum.  "Looks like we're gonna have to follow Detective Mitchell."

[LMNO]

As a side note, I fell down the whiskey hole this weekend, and woke up in a drag bar.  Needless to say, I didn't get any writing done.  I'm at 17,700.  I better make up for lost time.

[LMNO]

"Oh, what the hell, man," groaned Casper.  "What the hell is going on out there?  There wasn't any rain, or anything, just fallen trees and lightening bolts.  And now this.  I gotta think about this."  He started pacing back and forth, as Doug began peeling off more plaster.  Tom frowned, looking at the patterns as they revealed themselves.

"Hey, doesn't that look like...  Isn't that downtown, on the Northwest side?"  He asked.

Doug answered, "Really, you think so? I thought it was a layout of Greyson's."

Officer Smith spoke up.  "You know?  I don't think I ever noticed this, but Greyson's looks a hell of a lot like downtown Northwest, when you look at it from above like this.  How weird.  So, if this is the water tower, and this is the cooling plant," he traced his finger along the wall.  "Then old Masterson's grave is right where the civic center is."

Doug picked up the thread.  "Ok, ok, I get it.  That means this is the path from the memorial rose garden, which means we're right-"

"Here."  Tom stabbed his finger at a point on the wall.  "Right at the civic center transit stop."  His finger jabbed again.  "Look at what the circles are doing.  Doesn't it look like they're all converging in a way?" He squinted. "Yeah, from here, and looping down this way.  They all seem to spiral, see?  And this, this place right here, is the focal point."

"Who gives a shit?" cried Casper. "A bunch of graffitti, that's what I see!  Some kids broke in years ago, trashed the place, so the owner of the plot decided to cover it up rather than clean it off!  I bet you'll find the misspelled name of their dark lord 'SATIN' spraypainted under there!"  His hand waved angrily at the other wall.  "What we should be concerned with here, 'gentlemen', is that one police officer is dead, two more have gone down that damn tunnel rogue, our radios don't work, and the only way out is down that same damn tunnel!"  He pulled out his nightstick, and pointed it at Tom.  "And you, you little shit.  Don't you think we've forgotten about you.  I want to know where you hid the bodies.  In fact," he said as he grabbed Tom by the arm, "I want you to show me."  He pused Tom towards the tunnel.  Doug moved as if to grab him, but Casper jabbed the nightstick into his gut.  Doug bent over, gasping for air.  "Smith, grab that one," Casper said pointing to Doug.  "I'll handle this faggot."  He stepped closer to Tom.  "You hear that, faggot?  Yeah, I said it.  Faggot.  Get moving."  He shoved Tom into the tunnel.

"I- I can't see," said Tom.

Casper made a noise of disgust.  "Here," he said, handing Tom a flashlight.  "But don't try anything clever.  Remember who's carrying the gun around here."  He followed Tom into the tunnel, with Doug and Smith behind them.  "The rest of you stay here and get those radios working!" barked Casper.  They made their way down the tunnel, ending up, just like Mitchell and Jenkem, at the same junction of tunnels.  Casper stepped ahead of Tom and asked, "So what the hell?  Which way, Smith?"

"Why do you think I know?  It's not like I grew up here."

"Fuck Smith, I thought your sister was a sewer rat."

"Real tasteful there, Casper.  Just like your mother."

"Oh, so you mean that WASN'T your sister I picked up on Franklin Street last month?"

"Casper, I'm getting really sick of your shit.  If you mention Samantha once more-"  The echos of a shot rang out through the tunnel.  It seemed to be coming from their left.  "You three stay here!" cried Casper exitedly, grabbing the flashlight from Tom as he drew his gun and ran off into the dark.  Smith, Tom, and Doug watched him go.  Tom spoke first.

"Officer Smith?"

"Yes?"

"May I call you by your first name?"

"It's Mark."

"Mark?"

"Yeah?"

"What the fuck is wong with that guy?"

"Hey!  That's no way to talk about him.  He just lost his partner.  He's been edgy for a long time, and all this- this weirdness isn't helping.  He's a good cop."

"Really."

"Yeah, really."

"You know, I could probably have his badge for what he said to me."

"Sir, don't you know it's not a wise idea to threaten a cop when another cop is standing right next to you?"  Smith's tone had gotten a bit colder.

"What?  Oh, I'm sorry.  I didn't mean I would, just that your definition of 'good cop' seems a but odd to me, considering the context."

"Mr Bertrand, if I were you, I'd exercise my right to remain silent. Immediately."

They watched the pinprick of light from the flashlight bobble down the tunnel, then vanish as officer Casper turned a corner somewhere ahead.  Mark turned to them and said, "Look.  I don't care if you're a couple.  None of us do, really.  That sort of thinking went out a long time ago.  I know a lot of people look at the cops and see us as some sort of jack-booted professional thug, with a mentality little better than the sort of scum we're forced to deal with on a daily basis.  But that's not really true.  Sure, we have a darker view of humanity; after all, not unlike, say, a political reporter's.  We're pretty much forced to look it in the face day after day, to watch man's brutality to man perpetuate constantly.  The base, tragic stupidity in an endless spin cycle.  We are there when poverty finally crumbles the last pillar of morality in a desperate man's soul.  We're there when endless frustration transformes into blind rage and overcomes compassion.  We see weak-willed sheep turn to escapism, escalating from drug  to drug when they realize that their horrific reality trumps the chemical fantasy they so yearn for.  We witness the petty solipsism that convinces one man that he'll never get caught after running over a bum, for a woman to hide her baby in a garbage can, for a child to take a gun into their school.  People expect us to be a sieve for the dregs of humanity, to use our own brains and bodies to filter out the Great Unpleasantness in the world.  They want us to shield them from the problems of the society they continually vote for, from the inevitable as clockwork results of school closings, factory layoffs, and political corruption.  And when the tide rises too high, and their shoes are splattered with the dreck and detrius of their own making, when they catch our attention: They holler that the nation is becoming a police state.

"So, it can only be natural that some of the shit that we protect you from accretes on us.  It can only be expected that our view of the world is shaped by what we view in the world.  We see hate, sorrow, anger, violence, and above all, by far, what we see most of day to day is the abject stupidity of the human race.  And we see this ocean of ignorance rolling up the beach of society, threatening to swamp all we hold dear.  And we know it will never stop.  We know we will never win.  We are continually told to fall back, to make sure that our damns and levees are sufficiently weak so the ignorant are neither repressed, nor suffering by our hands.  Well, our job is to repress.  To repel the anarchy, to push back at the Lord of the Flies chaos that befalls mankind when the bottom falls out of their lives.  Like a Sysiphusian army, we fight the avalanche, pebble by pebble, until our backs give out, and we fall only to be replaced by another blue uniform.  But when we look back at the society we are saving, all we see are fat bankers and politicians catapulting more rocks to the top of the mountain, to join forces with the plummeting granite as they tumble their way back down, into our arms.

"No, we're not fools.  We can see that we're merely pawns to the regulators and elected officials.  We can see the flaws in the laws they pass, and we can sense their glee as they establish regulations and procedures designed to generate money for them as they generate another generation of criminals, whose greatest crime was to be born on the wrong side of the economic gap.  So you might be able to understand where we're coming from:  The violent and destructive dregs of the stupid despise us, because we cannot allow them to be neither violent nor destrictive.  The non violent and stupid despise us because all they see is the police holding the tide back, they do not see what the tide is made of, nor what the consequences would be if we let go.  The victims despise us because we did not show up soon enough.  The innocent despise us because we show up too soon.  All around us, we are dispised.  So, huddling like the Spartan 300, we make our last stand against the barbaric horde, knowing as we do, and as we die, those we protect loate us.

"And you stand there, thinking you can threaten us because we called you a taboo name?"

"Um.  Wow."  Doug just stared at him.  "Where did that come from?"

"This may come as a shock, but some cops are fairly well read, and actually think about things now and again."

Tom spoke up. "Do most cops really think like that?  That they are some kind of spat upon hero, like a, a, a janitor at Society's High Scool?"

"You wouldn't believe half of what we think," said Mark.  "If I started telling you what goes through our head on patrol-"  A scream reverberated though the tunnel, followed by several gunshots.  Mark drew his pistol with his right hand, and crossed his arm perpendicualr with his left, supporting the gun while still holding the flashlight with it's beam lighting up what little of the tunnel it could.  "Turn your lights off!" hissed Mark at the two men.  They quickly complied.  They sat in the dim glimmer of Mark's flashlight, waiting to see what was ahead of them.  Tom began to tremble again, flashing back to what he thought he saw earlier that evening.

What they heard next was the sound of hundreds of tiny feet, running like mad, straight at them.  What they saw in the beam of Mark's flashlight was an undulating carpet of tangled fur, and pink tails, and sharp, white teeth.  What they smelled was the sewer come to life.  The rats swarmed around them, racing between their feet as they tried to get out of the way by diving towards the side tunnel that led back to the stone room.  Mark yelled in pain as he stepped on a rat's tail, who spun around and sank its teeth into his ankle.  Other than that, the rats paid no attention to the men.  They ran on, with the occasional squeak, ran in what looked like terror.  Soon, they were gone, heading down the tunnel in the opposite direction of where Casper headed, and where they heard the gunshots come from.

Mark winced as he touched his ankle.  A thin trickle of blood was running into his show, and was making his sock damp.  "Dammit," he said, "I'm gonna need to get a series of rabies shots when we get back."  He got to his feet, tested his weight on his ankle.  "I hate to tell you this, guys," he said.  "But we need to go up there and check this out."

"We?" asked Doug. "What the hell are you talking about?  Are you trying to put us deliberately in harm's way?"

"I'm not sure how much of this you haven't gotten yet," replied officer Smith.  You reported an assault, with no bodies and a slew of blood, but the apparent perpetrator's bodies are missing, and your boyfriend here is the last to see what may have happened.  That doesn't make him a suspect, but that certainly makes him a Person of Interest.  Now, I would be remiss in my duties if I didn't have you remain in police custody.  Besides, Tom here might actually lead us to the bodies, given enough time."

"I told you, I didn't do anything!" wailed Tom.

"Whatever.  Let's go.  Don't make me cuff you."

They walked into the tunnel, and set off into the darkness.  Soon, they came to the turn in the tunnel where they saw Casper's light dissappear.  The combined light of their flashlights did their best to fight off the blackness.  It was a few hundred yards later that they found the blood.  It ran through the though in the floor of the tunnel, and it was splattered on the walls, even on the ceiling.  They waved their lights across the area, wordless.  Doug caught a glint of metal off to one side, and edged over as nonchalantly as he could under the circumastances.  It wasn't that hard, as officer Smith was distracted as he stared at all the blood.  Doug saw that the glint was Casper's gun, still cocked.  He pointed his flashlight away, and kept it level as he knelt down, and picked up the pistol, sliding it into the waistband of his pants, pulling his shirt down over it.  He hadn't fired a gun since the summer between high school and college, and he didn't know why he didn't alert officer Smith and show him the gun.  He just knew that he needed it, and he needed it to be a secret.  He pointed his flashlight down the tunnel.  He grabbed Tom's hand.  "Are you ok?"

"I'm scared."

"I know.  I think we'll be ok.  Officer Smith?"

"What?"

"Can we get the hell out of here?  Please?"

"Ok, but. . ."  He swung his light against the wall of the tunnel.  "Look familiar?"

Scrawled on the tunnel wall in blood was a rough outline of Grayson's.  Inside that were dozens of circles, converging towards the middle.

[LMNO]

SECTION C: ESCHATON.


Sheila Penskoe sat at her desk, trying not to fall asleep.  The overwhelming artificiality of the fluorescent lights pressed down upon her, and the low hum of her computer lulled her further down.  She hadn't slept well last night.  Even in the late Fall, she awoke sweating, her T shirt sticking uncomfortably to her skin.  She was getting the sinking feeling that her dreams had slid out of her life as smoothly and completely as her actual dreams when she woke up.  Maybe that's why so many people called them dreams; if you never wake up, they can be as real as anything else you could ever imagine.

She had gone to college eager to study piano and art history.  Her parents didn't really mind, they encouraged her to broaden her mind.  They figured that a good college teaches a little bit of everything.  "As long as she knows how to think, she'll land on her feet," her father always said.  She had studied hard, and her parents would have been pleased to know they were right.  She didn't just learn Bach, and how chiaroscuro had been used across the centuries.  She found herself learning calculus, and reading Joyce, and learning a bit of biology and chemistry as well.  Not to imply that she was some bookworm; she had her fair share of stories to tell about keg parties and ignorant boys with clumsy hands.  But mostly, she spent her time at the conservatory and the museums.  She had played in a small jazz combo on the weekends, and sat in the front row during her Art History lectures.  She saw herself as a well-rounded artist, and she carefully cultured and nourished her dream: To be a jazz musician, and support herself playing gigs and recording.  As a backup, she figured she could get a job at a museum, or maybe even teach.

Without too much effort, she was able to graduate with a 3.2 average.  She borrowed the security deposit for an apartment from her family after graduation, and quickly got a temp job through an agency, working at a bank.  Sure, it wasn't related to her degree, but it was a way of making some money to pay rent and food.  It left her with plenty of time to practice the piano, and she made a habit of looking in the classifieds of the local nightlife magazine where bands posted "musician wanted" ads. 

Ten years later, she looked around herself, and wondered what happened.  The bank eventually offered her a permanent position in the branch office on the Northwest side, and she jumped at the chance to make a salary, bonuses, overtime, and get health benefits and vacations.  The hours didn't get any longer, but the list of responsibilities did.  She would come home at night, wiped out from the mental stresses of the day, and all she wanted to do was open a bottle of wine, and fall down on the couch next to her turntable.  She'd usually go through most of the wine while listening to Bill Evans or Thelonius Monk or Vince Guaraldi, or even Cecil Taylor if she was feeling ambitious.  She would usually wake up around ten thirty to the soft hiss of the record needle spinning the lock groove at the end of the record; upon which she would haul herself to bed to get back up at six to go back to work.

Though she still practiced the piano once or twice a week, she had never found a group that really went anywhere.  Once every other month, at the most, she would find herself playing a coffee shop or tiny bar with one or two people she had kept in contact with from school.  Usually, these shows were exhilarating for her to play.  She loved the sound of the piano filling the room, mixing conversationally with the drums and the bass, maybe if a saxophone, if they could find one that didn't sound like a buzz saw trying to play like Coltrane and failing miserably.  But as enjoyable as being on stage was, she never seemed to get much momentum from it.  It always seemed to her like the moment she got off stage, she went from being "The Penskoe Combo" to just Sheila.  And she still had to go to work the next day.

She held onto that dream, though.  She scraped and saved her money to record a CD of herself, and even was able to stretch her credit cards far enough to press a case of them.  Most of that case was still under her bed.  She offered them for sale at her shows, and every so often someone would sound eager to buy, but after that night, she usually would never see them at another show.  Sheila was optimistic.  She sent the CD to radio stations and labels, even though they explicitly said they did not accept unsolicited materials.

And it wasn't as if she had stopped being creative.  Ideas for songs would keep popping into hear head, and when she had a moment, she'd sit down at the piano, and jot them down in her book of notation paper.  She'd spend a bit of time sketching out an arrangement, but these days she left it at ninety percent complete.  She had learned through experience that people didn't really want to hear new songs, especially in jazz. They wanted to hear the standards, and the "new" standards, the Miles, the Coleman, all that.  She had come to the conclusion that the effort it would take to polish her ideas wouldn't bear fruit.  It was fine with her if all she did was get the idea out of her head and onto the paper, and play with it a little bit.  As a result, her notebook was filled with scribbles and jots and edits.  Every time she had a new idea, her heart lit up, and she loved losing herself in the process of working out a particularly challenging bit of harmony.  But these days, the results were pretty much a private thing.

She thought that might be one of the reasons she wasn't getting much sleep lately; she was starting to realize that the life she was living in her head didn't quite match the live her body was going through from day to day.  They matched, if your put your mind to it, but Sheila was still telling people that she was a musician, who was doing banking to pay the bills.  But what if, she thought to herself in that dark, lonely night at two o'clock am, what if she was a banker who had music as her hobby?  After all, she spent 40 hours a week at a bank, and maybe a quarter of that time on her music.  At what point does the scale tip?  Maybe it didn't matter that she thought about her piano constantly, nor the flickers of joy she got from playing, or the scraps of melody that were always in her head.  Maybe it was about what you do, not how you rationalize it. 

It was there, late at night, that Sheila decided that the main problem was that she had talent, but not ambition; skill, but not genius; passion, but not drive; ability, but not opportunity.  She was the kind of person you had to get to know over time before you understood her talent.  It was like her job.  She had worked the temp thing for a couple of years before the bank actually noticed that she was making big contributions to the department.  It actually took the death of her father; while she was away attending the funeral, the team took a big hit in productivity, and they realized that what was keeping them up to speed was Sheila.  The day after she got back, the offered her the job.

She thought that if she could just get involved in the right social circle, and made friends with the right people, they would eventually notice that she was a very good piano player, and had interesting musical ideas, and they would spread the word and come to her gigs and help open those tricky doors to the music industry.  They were like screen doors, with a huge padlock on them.  If you were small enough, you could pass through, but you'd be too small to be noticed.  If you wanted to enter and be big, you needed the key, or you needed someone on the other side to let you in.  Sheila was pretty sure that they only gave the key out once or twice a generation, so she thought that plan B would be best.

The only problem, of course, was that Sheila was often too tired to put on her best face and go meet strangers.  Plus, when she did go out, she noticed that a lot of people were people she didn't really want to know, or befriend, or even hang out with.  After even five minutes of conversation, she wanted to go home and take a shower.  It didn't help that she had become a little more shy and reclusive over the years, either.  She could still pull off her cocktail charm at moments, but those moments were getting farther apart.  Now, when she was at the occasional party, like if an old college friend invited her to a holiday party or something, more often than not you'd find her in a corner, sipping her drink, and watching people.  When someone would come up to her, she would be able to engage them in some small talk, but a voice in her head would go off on a long monologue about how this guy was boring her, she didn't care about what he was saying, maybe if she finished this drink quickly she could move away, use that as an excuse, and when's the earliest I can leave?  Invariably, all this would start coming through her eyes, at which point whoever she was talking to would politely make some sort of exit from the conversation.

So, there she was at her desk, trying to stay awake, and wondering if the dream was ever close enough to be real.  A month or so back, the TV had played a marathon of "before they were famous" biography shows, and she had watched with interest.  What she saw were little boys and girls, desperate for attention.  They gave up, or tried to give up, anything that was counter to their tightly focused goals.  They were backstabbers and suck ups.  They developed artificial personalities to fit their environment.  They were alternately cruel, vapid, Machiavellian, and naïve.  They were, Sheila found, not very nice people. 

Of course, she didn't want to be a TRL superstar.  She just wanted to make a living off of her music.  But she thought of that screen door again.  As far as she could tell, there was no real middle ground.  To the best of her knowledge, there was either not enough, or too much, and you had to go through years of not enough before you got too much.  But even if she was wrong about that, even if she could make enough money for food and rent, how much did success depend on selfishness? 

She thought about it like a pyramid.  The higher up you got, the fewer places there were for you, and on the capstone were the Famous:  That one person who, for now, was the distillation of millions of dreamer's ambitions.  But like water buffalo around a slowly drying oasis, the competition gets more and more vicious as the amount of available room becomes smaller.  You had to be unmerciful to those around you.  You had to claim that social space as your territory, and defend it like a bear.  Or, more accurately, like a poop-flinging monkey.  How much poop was Sheila willing to throw?

Not much, truth be told.  She considered herself a nice person.  Nice enough, anyway.  Well, maybe not so much when she was driving and some douche bag cuts her off, but she certainly considered herself to be compassionate more often than not.  Deferential, too.  Not in a meek way, though.  It was more that she considered herself a collaborator rather than a leader.  She was very good at using her knowledge and skills to work through problems, and knew enough diplomacy to get everyone on the same page, but she just didn't seem to have that vague leadership quality that drew people in like magnets.  She had been given leadership responsibilities before, and when everyone was pointed in the same direction, she liked the feeling.  But she was certain that she couldn't command respect like some people did.  She preferred when people liked her.  Not to any sort of pathological degree, but she was far more comfortable when the people around her enjoyed her company.  The times when she did have to put her foot down and make demands always made her feel uncomfortable, bossy, and generally like a bitch.  It was fairly obvious that if a mixture of blind ambition, greed and selfishness is what it took to make it to the top, or even to the middle, there was no chance in hell Sheila was ever going to make it, except out of sheer luck.

What upset her the most, though, was that none of this had anything to do with the motivating interest in the first place: the music.  Sheila felt a singular joy while playing.  When she was in the middle of it all, it was like she was transported clear out of her head.  Nothing for her existed in those moments except for the keyboard, and her band mates.  A five minute song could, for her, last for what seemed like forever.  The outside world disappeared.  She had no worries, no pains, and no exhaustion.  This, this one moment, this is what she was good at.  She wasn't incompetent doing other thing, but she knew, deep in her heart, that this was the only thing she knew would make her happy.

From the moment she woke up, there was some sort of tune going through her head.  On her way to work, she would tap our rhythms on the seat of the bus, humming softy to herself.  At work, she would often become distracted by an errant idea of a transition, or a progression that might work, if put in the right place.  Coming home, she would try to muster the mental strength to work out an idea before it ran away.  It usually ran away.

So, to say that her core desire was actually a hobby, well . . . Her mind kept trying to refuse that prospect.  How could something so transformative be nothing more than something to pass the time between office hours?  There had to be more to it than that.  She had taken the bank job as a way to allow her to play her music without worrying about food or shelter.  Now, that job had crept its way into her life, subsuming all the things she held dear!  Or maybe, she thought to herself, maybe that life you dreamt about was nothing more that your way of keeping one foot out the door of a so called "normal" life.  Maybe this is your way of keeping yourself apart from everyone you've met at those parties and bars, the ones you consider boring and uninteresting.  Because you're an artist, right?  This is your way of never committing, never going forward.  You became comfortable, didn't you?  You never had to take a big risk.  Taking a risk with your music might have meant catching a break, or crashing and burning, but you never had to do either, because you felt "stable" in your bank job.  So things stayed the same.  Stayed the same for so long that your safety net became your anchor.  An anchor of a ship that never set sail, because it never had sails. Just monthly account statements.

[LMNO]

"-account statements.  Sheila?  Hey, Sheila?"

She snapped her head up with a jolt.  Ron, her manager, was asking her something.  Bashfully, she took off her headphones.  "I'm sorry, Ron, what was that?"

"I said, can you handle this call from the Minneapolis branch office?  They're asking about the June 2003 account statements."  Ron stood over her desk, not exactly looming.  He couldn't loom, really.  When you're five and a half feet tall, and weigh two hundred twenty pounds (with most of it decidedly not muscle), you don't "loom" so much as "take up space".

"Oh.  Yeah, sure!  Just transfer them over."

"Thanks, Sheila.  You're the best."  Ron walked back to his office, throwing a glance back at the blonde woman.  Her hair was pulled back into a pony tail, and a conservatively starched white shirt and black skirt adorned her slim frame.  As Sheila reached for her coffee mug, he caught a glimpse of a tattoo peeking out of the cuff of her left shirtsleeve.  He shook his head.  "She really needs to loosen up," he thought.  He grabbed the phone and punched the buttons to transfer the call.

The phone rang.

"Main Street Bank, this is Sheila.  Yes.  Oh, yes, Mr. Marbisen.  What can I do for you today?  Mm hmm.  Yes.  Yes, of course.  Do you have an account number?  I see."  Sheila tapped a few codes into the computer.  "Well, we do need New Business form 5078-a.  Yes.  Well, it's because of federal regulations.  Yes sir, I know.  But we're the ones who will have to pay the fine.  Yes, I know.  If it's any consolation, we will accept a fax.  Well, yes.  But what you have to understand, sir is-"

The line went dead.

"Sir?"

The power went out.

Ron came out of his office.  "What the hell?"

Like groundhogs, various bank employees started popping their heads above their cubicles, and chattering.

"Did we blow a fuse?"
"I think it's the whole building."
"More like the whole block, look!"
"Is this a blackout?"
"I need to get my kids!"
"Does anyone have a portable radio?"
"I don't want to be in this part of town if there's a riot!"

"Ok people," said Ron. "Let's treat this like a fire drill. Everyone just stay calm, and head for the-" The explosion cut him off.  General panic ensued.

"Holy shit!"
"Are we under attack?"
"Terrorists!"
"Get out of my way!  My babies!"
"Go! Go!"

Sheila sat quietly in her cubicle as the bank employees streamed out of the office towards the stairs.  They were eight stories up, and she could only imagine the trampling taking place in the stairwell.  She slipped out of her heels, and pulled out a pair of sneakers, which she put on.  Calmly and quietly, she gathered her purse and jacket.  There was a flash of light outside, another explosion, and the building shook.  She could hear distant screams of terror from the stairwells.

"Was that lightening?" she asked herself as she walked in the opposite direction of the hordes of bank employees fighting their way downstairs.  She looked out the plate glass windows, and saw a large cloud of smoke filling the sky, rolling towards her building.  Sheila broke in to a quick walk, not running yet, as several more explosions shook the building.  Behind her, she heard a window shatter, and she could hear rumbling from the aftershocks coming from outside.  She could also now hear sirens.  She turned a corner, and saw her destination up on the right:  A small door that led to a service access shaft that led straight into the basement.  She opened the door, and heard, "Sheila!  Hold up!"  Turning, she saw the portly shape of Ron jogging her way.

[LMNO]

"I didn't see you in the evacuation route, so I came back to see if you were ok," he panted.

"Oh, hi Ron," Sheila replied.  "Yeah, I know what a CF that fire drill can be, so I scoped out another route a few months ago."

"Oh, great!  We really need to get out of here."  He looked around nervously.  "What do you think is happening?"

"I really don't know.  It seems serious though." Another explosion rocked the building.  "Did you see the broken window?"

"Yeah.  Scary.  So, what's this way out?"

"Through here."  Sheila stepped through the door, which led to a small alcove.  Surrounded by a cage was a hole in the floor, with a ladder running down.  She opened the cage door, and swung one leg over onto the ladder.  She looked up at Ron just at the point where he had lost his willpower over self decorum, and was glancing up her skirt.  She did her best to ignore his crudeness, and said, "Ron, this is just a ladder going down, floor by floor.  Can you manage?"

Embarrassed, Ron quickly looked in her green eyes.  "Uh, yeah!  Not a problem.  I'm right above you."

"That's what I'm worried about.  If you fall, I won't be able to catch you."

"So. . .  You want me to go first?"  She shot him a look.  He smiled weakly.  "I promise I won't look up."

"Fine."  Sheila got off the ladder and stepped to one side as Ron moved by her and took her place.  "Just keep heading down.  This leads straight into the basement," she said.

"The basement?"

"Yeah.  If you haven't noticed, there's some really weird and dangerous stuff happening outside." As if in sympathetic punctuation, the building shuddered, and was accompanied by a loud and low booming sound.  "The basement has been coded as a bomb shelter in case of emergencies.  Right now, it seems the only place that might stand up to whatever is going on out there is in the basement."

"Whatever you say."  Ron began climbing down, his knuckles already white from holding on to his weight as his feet tested out the rungs, inching down step by step.

"Why the hell did I wear a skirt today," Sheila muttered to herself as she watched Ron's head disappear through the hole in the floor.  After a couple of yards, she followed him down.  Ron moved pretty slowly.  It seemed he was running out of gas after they passed the fifth floor.  "Hey!" Sheila called out.  "Take a break!"  He stepped off the ladder onto the fourth floor landing with relief.  He bent over at the waist, and shook his hands out.  Sheila jumped off the ladder a few rungs up, landing softly next to him.  "You ok, Ron?"

He looked up, and smiled weakly.  "Can you tell I haven't been to the gym in years?"

"You'll be all right.   Just a few more to go."  Outside, she could hear the rumble and boom of the explosions increasing in frequency.  She thought that she could vaguely make out the sound of sirens, but couldn't be sure.  "Ron, we really need to get going."

"Yeah.  Just let me catch my breath." He straightened out, and winced. "it would be kind of funny if this were a fire drill, huh?"

The building shook to a powerful blast.  "I don't think so, Ron.  Go.  Now."  Sheila pushed him towards the ladder.  With a groan, he got back on, and continued his slow descent.  "Ron, the faster the go, the less time you'll have to be holding on," she said.

"I know, but- If I slip, I- Pick up a lot- Of speed."

Sheila realized, as she followed him down, that she didn't really know what to do once they got down there.  She hoped there would be more than just a concrete box, but there was no way of telling.  She found this access ladder during lunch one day, but had never gone all the way down to the basement with it.  What if the building collapsed?  Then a more imminent thought struck her:  What if there was already someone there, and it turns into the "Twilight Zone" episode with the guy killing people who wanted to get into his bomb shelter?

As they got close to the main floor, the noise of the explosions got louder.  Dust and mortar sprinkled down on them.  Ron's breathing became labored and hoarse.  "Only two floors to go!" shouted Sheila.  "Come on, Ron!" Sheila looked down, and could see the dark hole that led to the basement.  It didn't look very inviting, but there was really no choice at this point.  She noticed that Ron had stopped climbing down.  "Ron!  Go!"

"I can't," he panted.  "I have to rest."

"No time!" cried Sheila, as the building shuddered around them.  Then, the building took the decision out of Ron's hands. Literally, as the section of ladder he was holding tore free from the wall with a shriek.  Ron's voice added to the shriek, as Sheila watched in horror.  Like in slow motion, she watched him twist from vertical to horizontal.  One hand reached out to grab hold of the ladder, and missed.  His pudgy body sank through the air, and she could see his eyes were wide with fright.  Sheila thought he was going to hit the landing, but his trajectory was off.  His legs and hips dropped through the hole into the basement, but his back struck the edge of the landing.  Sheila saw his head get thrown back, and slam into the floor with a dull, hollow "thonk" that somehow cut through the noise from outside, his eyes going from terrified to blank in an instant.  A splatter of blood, like a paint bubble, splashed out from behind his skull as the rest of his body dropped through the hole, following his feet.  And then he was gone into the dark.

"Ron!" she cried out, and made her way down the ladder as quickly as she could, until she got to the section the tore off.  She made her way down three more rungs, using just her arms as support, legs dangling in the air.  She swung her feet a couple of time, and let go, aiming for the landing.  Her leap was good, but her left foot hit the smear of blood as she landed, and slipped out from under her.

She fell backwards, and the image of Ron smashing into the edge of the hole flashed through her mind as she tried twisting her body to the left.  She landed, just missing the hole; she landed hard on her shoulder, her bag slitting open.  Various random crap spilled out, but she really didn't care about that.  She sat up wincing, grabbed first her shoulder, and then her phone, then wallet, then keys.  The rest of the bag was the generic flotsam a woman has to carry if she wants to be accepted in the patriarchal and misogynistic society.   She cursed again for wearing a skirt, pulled out her cash (twenty seven dollars), wrapped it around her ID and credit card, and shoved it into her bra.  She wasn't sure what to do with her cell phone, but then shoved it into her sock, and pushed it down to her ankle.  A jab of pain went through her shoulder a she pushed herself up, and grabbed the ladder leading down to the basement.

As she dropped through the floor, she saw that there was a trapdoor on the other side that swung up, sealing it off from the inside.  She hesitated, and peered around at the bunker.  It seemed like there was some sort of emergency generator, but it was very weak.  The lights were recessed and glowed yellow, offering a sepia tone to the room.  Seeing that there was enough light down there to see, she grabbed the hatch, and slammed it home.  The bolts were easy to throw with one hand, and she made her way down the rest of the ladder.

Ron was lying close to the ladder.  His arms were splayed out to either side, and his legs were crumpled up underneath him. A thin rivulet of blood trickled from his head and across the concrete floor, heading towards a drain in the center.  His eyes were glazed over, unseeing.  Sheila knelt over his body, and pressed her fingers to his neck.  His head lolled over to one side, revealing the crushed mess that was the back of his head.  She backed up hastily, tripping over her own feet.  She sat down, hard, and stared at Ron's body.  Then she looked away.  Not wanting to look at him anymore, she cast her gaze around the room.  In the dim light she could see there were stand-along shelves lining the walls.  Various boxes were arranged on them, but she couldn't make out what they were.  She got to her feet, and noticed that the building was still shaking occasionally from whatever was going on outside.  She slowly got to her feet, and went over to one of the shelves.  She grabbed a box, slid it out, and looked inside.  It was filled with paper, with lines and lines of handwriting.  Pulling out the top sheet, she squinted in the sepia light, and read:

"Rooted to the floor of it all with hard nails in the knotted wood there are spiders that spend their lives catching the lives of the annoyances and missteps of your life.  They spin their ruby webs and wait patiently for the opportunity to relieve you of your burdens. Like an old sailor who praises the fisherman praising the fish he catches and kills.  The symbolic relationships become more than real in the center of the maelstrom."

Sheila reached into the box and pulled out another page.

"It was then he realized the pluses and minuses of friendship-- you love who they are ands what they bring to the static 1010101 of your life. But it was who they weren't that was the problem. Sure, they were fun, but they were Hungry.  It's not about what makes you happy, nor about ducking aside and Saying, "this time, I'm going to make Her happy." It's about the nudge. Let's talk about the nudge. It   ain't gonna kill us. The nudge is the chunk of ourselves that we say "fuck it" to. What part did we create, what part was given to us...

"How are we supposed to tell the difference?  Maybe we can figure it out by the amount of pain it will cause. But pain is so subjective.  How intolerable is it to stay in an UntZ club? Well, with a sardine- stacked dance floor, and five deep at the bar, it can be pretty obvious that if it hurts now, the only thing that's gonna put you over the top ain't gonna happen any time soon.

"But eventually and incrementally, the next morning shows it's face like an insolent child trying to get back into your good graces, poking her head around the doorway, with a pout perfected by years of getting what she wants."

Sheila tried to make heads and tails out of what the hell was in these boxes, and who might have left it here.  She grabbed another sheet.

[LMNO]

"'there's something in the sky.'
"Her voice shook a bit as she said it, which was odd. There were dozens of things in the sky, more than dozens actually. But that wasn't the problem. The problem was, there was NOTHING in the sky. The sky wasn't even there. At least, part of it wasn't. The part directly over her head was somehow absent, as if a hole was cut out of the air.  She knew it was a part of the singular eventuality that led to the place of the Other.  It was colorless, and made no sound.  To her, it looked and felt like death.  How death is an absence.  Her mother made a similar hole in her life when her blood began to poison itself, and she refused treatment.  Oh mother oh mother oh mother. . ."

Sheila tossed the papers back into the box, and pull out another.

He could feel the serpents coil thief long tongues around his hope,
whispering the sweetest lies and of honest truths. About and above,
fractured sillouettes flapped about like diseased seagulls fighting
for scraps of stale garbage held from gloved hands of tourists. The
moist noise of the crowd swelled and burst onto the arena where the
sacrificial pawns waited out for the endgame to shift slowly to the
inevitable collapse. Market share must be considers, which explained
the closed circuit TV cameras. The cameramen stood stock still, and
the sun gleamed off the grafted steel appendages that had been
surgically implanted to their bones.

How pale, then, the threats and accusations thrown like candy to
starving street urchins! See them fall and rattle away from our
subject, her proud breasts standing high and haughty in the thick
night air.  See her lips, as they part and curve, revealing tiny sharp
teeth, and a thin pink tongue slithers out to taste the air. Greasy
electricity moves like a stalking beast, looking for the new victim.
Bolts smash the dirt like giant's fists. Hail the heralds of the
Coming! Let them clear a path through the clean and the impure alike.
Stand not in the path of the Chosen, but rather give yourself to them.
Offer your skin, receive their mark. Look at the
Rings in your flesh, feel how they tease and tear at your mind,
holding you still, bending your will. You are commanded to obey, and
you will hear the Forbidden Letters that have been kept hidden from
mere humanity for centuries by the Keepers. The very air itself twists
when the Words are spoken; the Forbidden Letters sear molecules as
they pass.

Kill the insect in your heart that urges you towards say "no", that
taunts you to defy and rebel. It's buzzing serves no purpose to the
Chosen. And it serves no purpose to you. For how can you stand up to
the might and strength of the Chosen? Kill it! Kill it! Grind it under
your heel, silence the nagging and annoying speck that you call
'concience' and 'will'. Feel the dirt on your knees as you submit to
the Chosen. You will feel it and find it to be most natural. For They
are the superior, and you the inferior. From their nests they shall
command the world, and you shall obey. Obey. Obey.

Sheila pulled at another box on another shelf on another wall.  The steel shelves rocked slightly as the box's edge caught against the lip of the shelf.  At the same time, another explosion rocked the building.  The shelf heeled sharply, and the whole structure, at least nine feet high, began to topple over.  With a curse, Sheila jumped back and away from the rain of boxes and paper.  As the whole thing came crashing down, one box in particular fell heavy, and instead of a fountain of crazed writing, just sat there with a silent 'crunch'.  After the ringing in her ears subsided, she nudged the box with her toe.  It didn't budge.  She knelt, and opened it.  Inside was a flashlight like the kind security guards carry-- about a foot and a half long, and built out of thick metal.  There was also a lunch pail, a stack of wrapped up reams of paper, and four boxes of cheap ball point pens.

"The night watchman?  What the hell?"  Sheila shook her head, and looked around at the still standing shelves.  "There must be thousands of pages here," she thought.  She looked at the exposed wall, and saw that the writing didn't stop with sheets of paper.  The wall was filled with scrawled writing.  Sheila went over to the wall, and tried to read what was more scraped than written.  She started as far up as she could see.

"Do not pass. You will not pass.  No entrance.  You are commanded no entrance.  Holy God forbids such things such as these.  Do not pass. From whence and where you came, you shall return. You shall not pass.  Go back, go back.  That such as this has no place on earth, nor in heaven.  Do not pass.  Return."

She glanced further down the wall, close to the floor.

"In Their glory, and in Their supremacy.  In black grace They walk, and Their time will soon come.  But not now.  Hold, and await the moment.  The ground will be scorched to make ready the coming.  Hold, be still.  Do not walk upon the unclean ground.  Do not step upon earth that has yet to be cleaned.  Patience.  Hold.  In glory and fury they come.  Their power and supremacy are not to be questioned.  Hold."

[LMNO]

As Sheila read, she noticed that the wall didn't look right.  It was lumpy, and the she noticed again that the words on the wall seemed both written and carved.  There was a vertical crack that started at the floor and went up about seven feet.  She dug a fingernail in and pulled.  A chunk of plaster came away, and she found herself looking at hard wood paneling.  She dug her fingers into the hole, and pulled some more.  Soon, she had uncovered a heavy looking door. The door knob looked like it was broken off, but she noticed that as she was uncovering the door that it shook a bit in it's frame.  She backed up a bit, grabbed the hem of her skirt lifting it to her waist, and then kicked out at the door at the area where the broken doorknob was. 

"Owww!  Fuck!" She cried.  The door had buckled slightly, but not given way.  With a determined look on her face, she reared back and lashed out again.  With a crash, the door burst inward, revealing a dark hallway.  She could only see a few yards in, so she grabbed the flashlight, and turned it on.  Now, she could see at least two yards more, but that didn't really help.  She looked down at her skirt.  Then she slowly turned, and looked at Ron's body.  Then she looked back down at her skirt.  "Damn," she thought.

She slowly walked back to Ron's body.  She took a deep breath.  "Ron, you're pretty much probably dead.  And just because you used to stare at me from the neck down when we were working doesn't detract from the fact that it feel incredibly strange and uncomfortable for me to do this.  I don't know if there is a God, but if there is, I hope He, She or It doesn't mind what I'm about to do."  She knelt by the body, and unbuckled his pants.  Then she slid down his zipper, and tugged his pants down his hips.  They wouldn't easily slip past his crotch.  She groaned at no one in particular, and then reached a hand into his pants to try and slide them off his hips.  Her eyes went wide, and she tried to suppress a giggle, in spite of herself.  "Ron, you could have been in movies," she said to his corpse.  "What were you doing in a bank?"  She grabbed his pant legs, and pulled them off.  She then quickly unbuttoned her skirt, which dropped to the floor, and stepped into the dead man's pants.

Scooping up the flashlight, she started down the corridor.  It seemed to her a normal corridor, floor, walls, ceiling.  No lights, however.  Ahead of her, however, she could hear what seemed to be a trickle of water, like a stream.  And also, of course, a smell.  It was like a sewer.  But Sheila knew that you didn't connect a regular office hallway with a sewer main.  Not for the first time, Sheila discovered that she was wrong.

[LMNO]

NOVEL FAIL.

[ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞]

NOVEL FAIL.

Wordcount, pls.

[hooplala]

I didn't make it either.  I made it to about 35000 words (I still need to do the full word count) but got very distracted these last two weeks.  BLAH.

[LMNO]

NOVEL FAIL.

Wordcount, pls.

Somewhere around 27,000.

[ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞]

NOVEL FAIL.

Wordcount, pls.

Somewhere around 27,000.

NOVELLA WIN.

[LMNO]

Hah!

I suppose I should write some Lovecraftian conclusion, then.


"Tekelili!  Tekelili!"

And then Jack was a shoggoth.


THE END.

[Suu]

Hah!

I suppose I should write some Lovecraftian conclusion, then.


"Tekelili!  Tekelili!"

And then Jack was a shoggoth.


THE END.