Ima4nic8or: Here's {blah blah blah blah] everywhere.

Well, gee, I was wrong.I do have the capacity for one more scary story, and this one is absolutely and demonstrably true. It is terrifying and disgusting - vomit and pee-inducing for sure - and I am sure that it will be one of the winners.

It will also be short - very short. 35 characters, 10 words, and one sentence shorter, in fact, than the classic "The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door."
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Are you ready?
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Are you sure? Seriously, this is a vomit-inducing tale from the darkest Stygian depths of the convoluted, razor-stropped mind of a madman, an intellectual Zombie that lusts for brains, any brains at all, to suck out the precious bodily fluids.
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Last chance! Proceed at your own risk!
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.Seriously, proceed at your own risk!
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Don't come to me whining that you weren't warned!
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OK, for reals, this is your last warning! Its bad. Its very bad..
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Ima4nic8or posted to a thread on Fark.

Well, hell, let's go with one more.


The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a lock on the door.
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The door was unlocked by the the detail of female prison guards, once again come to take him to his nightly fate of servicing the 120 beautiful, young, lonely, horny concubines of the late Sultan's harem.
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The last man on Earth was as Gay as a tree-full of parrots.

Back in the mid-nineties I went through a vampire and "vampire poetry" phase, inspired by a vampire poetry reading by The Undead Poet's Society at Ipso Facto in Fullerton, and a weirdo who insisted that he was a real vampire. The leader of the UPS was somewhat of a jerk, and the two of us formed the nucleus of a group, The League of Vampiric Bards, which rapidly swelled to about 12 people, We performed for several years at coffee houses throughout Orange County. My contributions included six poems - Nightrunner, Roberto's Song, The Rebirth of Leah Jean Baxter, The Scrolls of Night and Day, two love sonnets, and a lengthy short story: Take a Second Look. And then I went on to other things.

The poems are not terribly scary. They are more epic origin stories for the Nightrunner^tm universe I've been working on a decade or so. The short story is a bit subtle, built around a stream-of-consciousness monologue, but I think qualifies as scary... and a bit erotic. At nearly 7,300 words it is kinda long, but I hope it holds your attention.

I will gladly accept constructive criticisms.

I will also post one of the poems, haven't decided as to which one, yet.




You live too fast. You really do. You movers and shakers and daily drudges, you luminous-eyed high achievers and clock-faced nine-to-fivers, you smugly sedated workhorses and self-righteously frantic thoroughbreds, you harriers and hurriers and driven workaholics, you hamstrung hamsters lurching along in spiraling circles to alpha-numerically marked crypts in a mausoleum wall: you never slow down long enough to take a second look at the world. You should. Move your mind in a straight line for once. If you do, I guarantee that what you learn will fill you with wonder. It will also scare the living hell out of you.

Smell the air. Go ahead, I bathed just last week. Smell that tang? Wood smoke! Wood smoke in the middle of the city! Illegal? Sure it is, illegal as all hell, but it's also easily available! I know you've never taken the time to notice, but lots of smart and desperate people around here are welding old car parts into Franklin stoves and switching to black market wood to keep warm.

I'll bet you've never studied - really looked at! - the gritty gray fingerprints that Jack Frost leaves on a vehicle's windows in the pre-dawn winter air. You're too busy scraping 'em off and cursing the time you've lost in the mad rush to join the tollway traffic jam.

Have you ever listened to the little "popping" sounds that a concrete underpass makes when it cools down in the twilight of a summer day? You'll never hear them if you're busy jogging off those three extra pounds that make your high-fashion exercise suit too snug.

Have you even noticed that the junk they now use to patch the old concrete sidewalks starts to crumble almost as soon as it dries? I think that they still use the good stuff on the more important boondoggles: all those new prisons, repairing the bridges and the dams, things like that. That way, you won't ever know about the payoffs and the bribes and kickbacks, unless you take the time to slow down and compare old and new.

I bet you don't even know that aluminum cans these days are only half the weight of the old ones. Know why? Thinner gauge metal! I observed this fact almost six years ago; that's how long I've been collecting for the recycling centers. Yes, that is a long time, and it doesn't bring in that much, particularly after they withhold income taxes, but it has kept me in beer. But it can also be a royal pain in the butt sometimes, especially in the summer, what with all the damned flies.

Ever noticed that flies take off backwards when you try to swat 'em? Humans have been swatting at flies for three million years, and natural selection has culled the genes that once dictated forward flight. You will never see this if you let an electronic genocide machine do all your killing for you.

Killing. Killing... Huh. Ever wondered where all the missing people go? There are a lot of them: several hundred thousand a year. Most of the missing fall into three broad statistical clumps. The first clump consists of our society's outcasts, the economic losers, the abject poor, the homeless. Like me. The second bunch are society's trash: the junkies, the alkies, the wireheads, the petty crooks, the crazies. And last, are the social predators, the psychos and sickos and child molesters, the sociopaths, the serial killers, and the kill-crazy, two-bit punks. The thing all these people have in common is that no one important gives a damn if they vanish. And when they vanish no one ever seems to see 'em disappear. But I have. Heh heh heh... I know why. Because I'm not too busy to take that second look.


In fact, I'm not busy at all. I've had a lot of time on my hands for the last few years, since I got laid off from Nuclear Consulting. I was one of those sacrifices to the Public Good. I'd been a big shot Safety Administrator, a top-drawer Suit, but when the San Onofre reactor choked on red tape and went critical, the Washington boys covered their asses by blaming us. After that, it was sort of tough to get work.

I did a lot of scurrying around at first, frantic to find identity and security in a job... any job! But after ten positions and ten layoffs, and twenty-six months of food stamps and government medical coverage; and after coping for two years with the weightless smirks that Human Resource Managers carefully arrange on their faces when they tell you there are no present openings (but always, always omitting that self-righteous Luddite reproach "for your kind"); and after the kids were taken away by Social Services and the wife left; and after losing the house and the mountain cabin and the BMW and the Porshe and the RV and the credit rating and the charge cards and the mortgages; and after living under a highway overpass for six months... Well, I finally realized that I was not going to die from starvation. So I decided to do myself a favor and relax.

That's when I started taking those second looks at the world, when I began seeing, and sorting out, the subtle things that add up to something obvious - when you take the time to observe.

I guess I really don't blame you for not seeing what I do. What with the economy the way it is, it's hard to stop keeping that old nose to the grindstone. I know. I remember how scary it was, wondering if this would be my last week with this, or that, or the next company. I can remember how, just when I thought that the feelings were under control, a new Friday would roll around and my breathing would get jerky and my stomach would tighten up in small bruised knots and I could literally feel that succinct extra squirt of stomach acid bathing and soaking the ulcer that I knew was gradually taking over my belly. I had time for little else than putting in twelve hour days to make myself a little more valuable than the next white collar slave, and working the ever-shrinking online Classifieds with the dregs of energy I had left.

Energy! That's what it's all about! We're running out of energy around here! All the initiative and brilliance have disappeared from the world, and the forward momentum from the past is being fouled by all the slippery political bullshiat being thrown into the gears. The motor of progress has slid into neutral because of all the rules and regulations, orders and edicts, and all the other crap that bureaucrats, in and out of the government, feed on and excrete with such relish. You know what? It's like a damned battery! The human battery's life energy is slowly being siphoned off by all of the anal retentive corporate and government regulators, and it doesn't look like it's going to get recharged any time real soon.

Human batteries. Heh heh heh. That's a good analogy, because that siphoning of life can be literally true. I've seen it! I've experienced it.... Heh heh heh. Do I sound nervous? Never mind, you'd never believe it. You won't take the time to take that second look! What's that? You want me to tell you? Why? So you can go uptown to your glass tower office and joke with your sleek, paper-shuffling associates about the crazy old man in the frayed and greasy three piece suit, the unkempt, homeless has-been, the former fast-track, six-figure executive with a Stanford MBA and PhDs in nuclear and quantum physics, who babbles on about... monsters?



Monsters.... That does them a dis-service. Aside from what they do, most of them are not monstrous at all. Some are actually pleasant to be around... when they aren't feeding. Indeed, they are often very much like you and I at our best. (But we can also be monsters; certain of the human saints and sinners would put their excesses to shame. Saints? They can be the very worst of fiends; it depends on the extent of their zeal. A True Believer can be monstrous, indeed.)

What's that? You don't know the term? Why am I not surprised? A True Believer is a fanatic, a human robot whose soul is submerged in some kind of mass movement. A True Believer thinks that the End justifies the Means (and what that translates to is that his ends justify the use of your means), and that folks who don't embrace the Holy Purpose, whatever it is, secular or religious, are enemies to be destroyed. Most of the really interesting chunks of history, or at least the reddish raw oozing slices, are due to the various and determined activities of True Believers.

No, I'm not Neoliberal or Neocon or Dominionist-baiting, and I'm not being intolerant about anyone's radical political or religious agendas... though what I'm saying applies to damn near every one of them these days. The so-called crony capitalists, those well-connected business people, are the same; sometimes I think they're the worst of the whole lot - and the most hypocritical! Christ on a crutch! If he were an honest one, I'd take a totalitarian-minded Statist thug over a two-faced trough-feeding tycoon any day! At least you know where you stand (or kneel) with the would-be dictator!

Hell, most of the larger firms (and all of the new megacorps) behave like mass movements these days. They're more like states than companies; some of them even control their own private armies. They've mutated into psychotic group-think organisms that eagerly sacrifice the integrity, the dreams, even the lives of employees (and anyone else in their reach) to the god/whore/demon trinity of cancerous growth, extorted and unearned profit, and endless bureaucratic expansion.

          The psychosis is contagious, and it seems like most people end up being both glutton and main course. I remember attending day-long staff meetings that accomplished absolutely nothing except to decide on that fiscal month's sacrifice to the Profit Gods, and to confirm the opinion of each briefcase-clad spear carrier regarding the essentially, fundamentally reptilian nature of each of the other participants. These people were monstrous: they would ruin careers, lives, and entire industries over a tenth of a percent change in operating profit, a junior executive office next to the corporate alpha male, that little extra bonus package of cocaine or illegal tobacco, or a night with a company whore.

There are other monsters. I've met more than a few at government aid offices. I'm talking about the ghouls with the pursed lips and the prissy frowns, the damp eyes and the greasy souls, the ones with cords attached to their eye-glasses so they always know exactly where they are; the fiends who walk slowly, who speak in impatient staccato tones, who taste the flavor of your fear, and who weigh the worth of permitting you to interview for that temporary minimum wage job for which they have been unable to find just that right person; the ones who get erect or warmly wet when they thoughtfully consider how they control you; the Power Junkies, who mainline on distilled despair, who decide whether you will work today, or eat next week, or live next month; the soul-farkers who, with lazy-eyed anticipation and slight catch of breath, slowly - oh! so carefully and cautiously - examine, stamp, and verify and, perhaps, approve your appeal for just one more extension of medical or food benefits....

          No, the monsters I refer to are quite a different sort. They, for the most part, do monstrous things because they have to, not because they like it. They do not, for the most part, seem to be particularly malevolent fiends. They seek neither to destroy nor to enslave us. They merely hunt us. We are their food.

And sometimes more... I know of one... I'll call her... Jean. She wanted to bed with me, to trade sex for... nourishment. She said I was attractive, but I imagine that her desire was originally based on the generic promise of an erotic midnight snack, rather than any special charms I had. I refused her at first. I had just finished putting together all the clues, had just learned the big secret, and had not yet managed to graduate from fearful revulsion to my present state of wary watchfulness....


They dwell in darkness, and hunt the night. They forage among us in the hours between sunset and dawn, unseen by all except their prey. They, too, have certain things hidden from them: they can never gaze upon the sun; its harsh light would destroy them in an instant. That is one price they pay for being immortal.

Immortal? In a sense. Barring accident or violence or a drifting, deadly ennui that may overtake them after centuries of survival, they will endure forever. This is curse as well as boon. After mortal lifetimes of repetition, existence can become a mindless habit that requires no cunning, intelligence, or effort. And unconditional immortality is often seen by them as being somehow less vital, less varied, less valid... than mere mortal life. Human mortality, with its incessant cycles of peril and potential and terror and triumph, is often envied by them. And though they may indeed long for it, the Undead cannot truly sleep the centuries away; they merely cease to function for (what is to them) a brief while.

Undead. It is the only word that describes, the only concept that works. Life is change, self-motivated, self-directed change. When change is no longer present, the organism is no longer alive. It becomes a mere lump of organic debris, like ancient driftwood. All the ingredients of life are present... except for that single secret spark that makes itself known by the fact that the organism, its parts, the very cells of the thing, are in a constant state of change.

I've been told that, seen through a microscope, their cells are static, perfect, unchanging: they do not grow, or replicate, or die. If damaged, they revert by some agency I cannot imagine, to a state that is precisely that of the way they were prior to the injury! Yet these petrified, these "frozen" cells somehow continue to perform all their separate and communal functions within the Undead body.

The Undead have no heartbeat; nutrients flow to the cells via a kind of osmosis. When at rest they do not need to breathe; except for conditions of stress or exertion, oxygen seems to be supplied completely by the nutrient. Their bodies do not generate heat; they have no natural energy state, and they assume the ambient temperature of their environment. Unlike reptiles, however, they are not affected by the external temperature, and can function as easily and as effortlessly in the Arctic or Sahara as in Los Angeles or New York.

Their bodies function perfectly, and with enhanced performance. Eyes see, ears hear, nostrils smell, and mouths speak (and do other things) in ways that we cannot equal. Their hands can caress a face like a lover's whisper, or bludgeon a body into trembling submission like a sledge hammer. They move with cat-like speed and robotic precision. Their brains possess an elevated level of electrical activity that is evidenced by, among other things, complex intrigues and masquerades, and at times outright warfare that are much more subtle than the crass plots and posturings that are carried out by mere humans.

The mingling of schemes, games, and gossip deflects their boredom and fulfills a human-like need to meet and interact. The Undead, accordingly, have their places, their hangouts -- coffeehouses and bars mostly. They can ingest limited amounts of coffee, certain herbal teas, and some of the less complex alcohols - vodka, gin, stuff like that - though these things, by themselves, have little effect on them. They often, therefore, mix these refreshments with more... unpleasant liquids.

Blood. They feed on it. It is their only food, and they crave it with a driving need which I find impossible to imagine. They can, and most do, exist mainly on the blood of animals. Now and then, however, they must feed on humans. There is an unknown vital factor, perhaps an RNA segment that less intelligent animals lack. Something that is essential if they are to remain as thinking, rational beings. Without regular access to it, they will not long survive.

Survival. Aside from the endless blood lust, survival is the other primal drive that defines their existence. Even those that hate what they have become find self-destruction impossible; the internal command to continue what they often regard as a damned existence must be obeyed. Yet they must control that imperative, or risk exposure and destruction by humans or by their own kind. Indiscriminate slaughter is frowned upon; a social faux pas. Those who prey on humans in excessive and careless ways are deemed outlaws, and are destroyed as soon as they are discovered. The cardinal rule which all must follow, even at risk of personal survival is: "Leave no sign that men can find that you were ever there."

They cloak their existence and activities with magical ease, but they are not supernatural. They cannot change into mist, or rats, or wolves, and their reflections can be seen in mirrors when you catch them unawares. The legends that you know are wrong, perhaps deliberately so. Our sophisticated rejection of the few golden kernels of truth that are carefully hidden by the absurdities of Hollywood fantasy is one of their best defenses against discovery.

It isn't their own physical form they control, but our minds: they can actually understand and adjust our thoughts and emotions in a variety of subtle ways. They merely need to touch us with a delicate desire, to lightly caress our thoughts in the entangling gossamer webs of mental powers that mere Humans lack, and our senses and judgment become fogged and distorted and what we term objective reality becomes pliable and obscured. Their world is more real than ours; we live in an illusion created by them.

That is how I detected them, by noting disparities between the world as I knew it was and had to be, and the reality that I sometimes perceived. It took weeks of introspective thought to conceptualize the astonishing truth, and then many days longer to accept the appalling reality of it. Then, thinking that they would sense my knowledge and destroy me, I lived in terror, an existential dread which over the next several months abated into a watchful apprehension.

Then, late one night, I blundered into an entire den of them, in one of their bars. Once you know their tricks and traits they are not difficult to spot, but, at first, all I saw was Humans. I learned that night that they have mortal friends, servants, lovers... groupies. These companions, these possessors of deadly knowledge are those who hunger for second-hand power, or risky eroticism, or arcane and ancient wisdom, or craven submission and fealty, and (ultimately) a chance for immortality or total oblivion. I think that, to the recipients of these passions, it appeals to a still-human residue within them to be thusly seen, recognized, acknowledged, made real by those who are still human.

...that is what happened to me...


I'd had a run-in with the police in my regular neighborhood, so I'd been working one of the nastier parts of the city. It was getting late and I was tired and cold. My nerves were on edge from the contemplative stares I was getting from some of the local Homeboys. I was more presentable than usual (courtesy of a shower and shave from my previous night's stay in the county jail for vagrancy) and I had pan-handled enough money to afford the luxury of a couple of cold beers in a warm room. I took refuge in a nearby backstreet tavern.

I had seated myself with a brew at a back table in a darkened corner, feeling unknown, inconspicuous, and safe. I sat alone, quietly savoring the yeasty bitterness, inhaling the illicit tang of black market tobacco, and listening to the strangely subdued music and slurred hum of conversation. I was being ignored by patrons and servers alike, which suited me fine. It was warm there, and I was having trouble staying awake.

My permanent state of low-grade apprehension had actually been soothed into a superficial calm, when one of the barmaids brought me an unordered drink. Dormant uneasiness transformed into sudden, paralyzing terror, and I stared at the alien beer as if it were about to spring up and pierce my throat with fangs of razor-slivered glass. I felt frozen in time, like some small animal transfixed by the ruthless glare of an on-rushing headlight. My vision became narrowed down to perceiving, with an extraordinary clarity, only the few square inches of tabletop occupied by that terrifying, fascinating mug.

I cannot say how long I was in this state. It could have been seconds or minutes - it seemed like neither or both. My judgment in all things, even to the marking of passing time, was suspended. When I could again see-think-move, I found that I was no longer alone. Seated across from me, quietly observing me, was what seemed to be a rather attractive young woman, but what my lethal knowledge and now-unhindered senses told me was one of them.

She was attractive. She appeared to be in her early twenties. Her face was the color of pale, clear ivory - not totally white like a fine marble, but having a hint of color. Her face was framed by shoulder length chestnut hair, which she wore like an afterthought in a softly shining wash-and-wear style. Her elegant body was a flawless counterfeit of perfectly proportioned womanhood, set within a stylishly snug flat-black jumpsuit that was just the thing to wear on a midnight urban safari. Her demeanor was that of a groomed, resting cat: relaxed, yet attentive. She sat quietly straight, ankles casually crossed. One arm dangled limply across her leg; the other was upright on the table, and terminated in long, aristocratic fingers holding an illegal cigarette which she was smoking with obvious, impish relish. Shockingly light blue eyes gazed coquettishly from beneath quizzically tilted brows, and her full red lips were set in a quiet, closed grin which, even through my fear, I could see was devilish, rather than demonic.

This was Jean. She introduced herself by another name, but I won't tell you what it was, not now. It has been some months since that meeting, you see, and I've developed an attachment to her and feel rather protective. You must understand that, in a very real sense, her kind are actually more vulnerable than are we Humans. We, after all, can fight or flee at any hour of the clock; they (though supreme in the darkness) are utterly helpless during the day, and must rely on human associates, retainers, and friends for protection.

It was soon plain that Jean was aware of my knowledge. She treated it as a joke (indeed, what Human would have believed me?) and yet applauded the astuteness and rigor of my observations. I believe that my singular ability to discern the simple truth amidst the glut of artful superstition was as fascinating to her as the reality of her existence was to me.

We talked. She knew I had been a scientist, and comfortably steered the conversation onto that path. We talked about existence, about quantum physics and string theory (my love), and about computer programming (her latest passion). We talked about the Secret, and the conceivable theories that could explain it. My God, I wanted to die. For the first time in years, I was faced with that most politically incorrect of creatures, that most malevolent of monsters: an intelligent, inquiring, and skeptical mind. She truly wanted to hear new ideas! She actually enjoyed listening to concepts and opinions that she did not already embrace, and she was neither afraid nor resentful of a mind that, at least in certain areas, was fuller and more thoroughly trained than hers.

We talked for hours, until my beer was warm and flat and the bar had long since closed. By then, it was obvious that she was privileged. The hired help left us alone in the quiet and darkened room, our table lit only by the bar's dim green exit signs and the reflected orange flicker of the semi-functional sodium vapor street lamps, seen darkly through the small and sun-shaded windows.

Gradually, in careful tiptoe steps, we found ourselves wandering away from the safely dry abstractions of theory and the more personal yet still "safe" domains of our professional interests. Guardedly, yet almost with gratitude, we began offering up for scrutiny and evaluation the more private things that we loved and despised. There was no question of pretense; we accepted the fact that nothing but our personal realities, the inner truths that each of us held, could satisfy the mutual need of shared loneliness. We exchanged our secrets: the triumphs and the tragedies, the goals won and held, the desires gained and lost, the impossible dreams we had longed for, but had never attained... and the purposes we had considered, but had never dared to desire.

As we had talked, my desperately controlled fear had quietly evaporated into a subdued... watchfulness. Make no mistake: I was very much aware of what she was and that, in the normal course of events, I might simply have been her prey for the night. But I found myself accepting the necessity of those facets of her existence for which I felt dread and repugnance, and I became aware that this supremely capable killing machine was also a lovely and lonely being (no, woman) who - for longer than I had been alive - had despaired of finding an understanding, sympathetic consciousness, someone to whom she could confide the yearnings and secret dreams which she had always thought to be hopeless fantasies. I believe she regarded my informed ability to understand and accept her as an individual person to be a rare prize to be protected and cherished.

I then perceived that the root of all fear is the Unknown; that once one understands the nature of a thing, no matter how terrible or deadly it is, fear vanishes like midnight dew. I felt that I understood Jean, and I found that my dread had been replaced by the same type of respectful (and perhaps more than somewhat deferential) emotional bond that one might feel for a domesticated Bengal tiger.

We talked until, with a shared quiet astonishment, we saw the first glow of dawn begin to compete with man's artificial glare. She paused in the middle of a sentence and (like a climber reluctant to forsake the conquered heights) hesitated..... then plunged back down to the flatland reality of the world, saying that it was now necessary for her, and safe for me, to leave.

We walked out together, not bothering to set any alarm. (I guessed that that particular business would not be invaded or looted by the local barbarians). She asked me to return the next evening. I did not answer, but turned for a moment to consider the luminous east. When I looked back, she had vanished like a darkened dream.


Insane though it sounds, I did go back - not the next night, or the next, but after three days and two nights, spent in indecisive gloom. The staid, timid part of me was aghast at meeting with a monster; but a more reckless and, it seemed, emerging part of me cherished that midnight tryst. This dangerous part eventually won out: I returned to the bar on the third night.

She wasn't there. And, though I stayed until closing, she did not appear. I could not bear it. My final decision to return had taken all the willpower and courage I had; I felt I could never again summon the strength to repeat it.

Nevertheless, I resolved to, and did, go back to that bar each night for the rest of the week. I began to think, however, that my boldness and purpose were to no avail: it was as though I had imagined the entire experience.

I noticed one interesting fact, though, something that proved to the skeptic in me that the extraordinary meeting had indeed happened: word had apparently been spread, and I no longer received interested inspections from the indigenous toughs. I was, in fact, pointedly ignored. I learned later that Jean had declared me "protected." Though I am uncertain as to what the mechanism of this aegis was, the local gangsters (and others of Jean's kind, I found out) were made to understand that unpleasant things would happen to anyone who molested me.

During that entire week I felt I was going insane. Perhaps I was already mad, or perhaps she had hypnotized me. It became an intolerable obsession. It was as if I was possessed. I haunted that bar, like a willing sacrifice embracing the alter stone of some ghastly yet fascinating religion, impatiently waiting for the arrival of the priestess who would rip out my beating heart.

And when, at last she did appear, seeking me, beguiling me, persuading me with silver tongued entreaties and the perfect movements of her perfect body, I succumbed in a sort of appalling rapture to the coaxing and craving words which flowed from that terrible and attractive mouth.

She took me to her lair. I resignedly took this, at the time, as a sign that I would never be seen alive again. I later realized that it was a demonstration of her trust in me, of her belief in and reliance on my discretion and integrity. (I tell you this: after years of suffering the contempt and indifference of my fellow human beings, that was the one thing that I most desperately needed.)

It was a simple studio apartment, like any other you have ever seen in the projects: one of innumerable assembly-line burrows hidden deep within the heaped mounds of the blandly anonymous warrens that pass for much of human lodging these days. Like most, it was an interior apartment without windows or skylights, and could be approached only by wary passage through decaying and gang-infested halls and stairwells, all painted in standard anesthetized shades of grays and greens. She ignored both the gangsters and the ruined security cameras, which - dangling from their wall perches like throttled birds - gave mute evidence as to who had won control of the corridors.

Like the halls, her triple-locked and dead-bolted apartment was drably modern. She had paid little attention to decoration; this was not her real home, only one of several secure places to bury herself away from the sun's power in daily, death-like trance. The kitchen area was an immaculate stage: it was stocked with enough food and various cooking paraphernalia to sustain an illusion of activity for the benefit of the casually occasional management busybody, but was never used. The adjacent living area did not contain a coffin, only a twin bed covered by a frilly pink comforter. The sole concession to a Gothic mood was that the bed was of the four-poster canopied variety.

There was no coyness, no conversation, no highball-on-the-sofa stage. It seemed that all promises had been made and kept, all decisions agreed to, all purposes achieved, on that first night. As one, our hands fumbled at each other's clothing, seeking freedom, seeking access. She guided me to the shower where we washed each other; next, to the bed. The state of my mind and emotions were such that I serenely obeyed those gentle, irresistible arms. She was shaking with her special need, and as I searched the limitless depths of her eyes I could see something very old, older than her, far older than even the most ancient of her kind: primeval, nakedly eager desire, an all-encompassing hunger to completely consume the beloved prey.

The strain of curbing the acts that instinct and emotion were demanding of her had activated her breathing reflex. Her mouth was half open, as she labored for short, ragged gasps of air. Her eyes closed to narrow slits, and her head fell limply back. I could now see into her mouth, and observed with wonder the two delicate, needle-sharp, inch-long fangs which were slowly and rhythmically sliding out of and into, out of and into, their hiding places in her upper jaw.

Her head moved again, falling forward against my chest, chestnut hair flying up in a tangle into my face. Her hands - which had been like steel straps holding my arms - released me as she lowered her arms under mine. She rubbed fingers arched like delicate diamond talons slowly up and down my back, tracing the outline of my spine, pressing insistently into the meat of my shoulder blades, reaching up to caress the skin of my neck and to lightly linger at the places where - I was sure - she could feel the living tide of my blood.

Her arms tightened, and she abruptly pulled me closer, hands gripping my head and shoulder, keeping them firmly immobile, the expanse of skin between them taut and unprotected. Her head moved forward, and she buried her face there, lips slowly and softly tracing the upward path of the pulsing vein. I felt her lips part ever so slightly, and I knew with a completely unconditional clarity that Death was there. I began to shiver as those astonishing needles emerged and - barely touching my skin - gently retraced the vein's course back down the expanse of my neck. She paused... and then she shuddered and the moment passed. Her hands spasmed once into a vise-like grip and released me, and she pressed her now trembling body against mine. Her head moved again, rolling onto my shoulder, down onto my arm, her legs and body seeming to fold up like those of a crumpled paper doll. Her hair fell back away, and she gazed placidly up at me, defeated yet victorious, waiting, her softly glowing eyes devoid of everything but aching appetite.

She was so beautiful, so perfect, so... complete! I gazed down at this monster cradled in my arms and the clock of reality stopped for what seemed a long while. And while it was stopped, it seemed as if all the certainties and opinions, fact and fancy, gods and de

(blah blah blah)

All righty then! This is my last submission. The idea came to be








Harold Modde saw the exact cause and moment of his death. He saw it unfold in blazing, flaming, indeed exploding color right in front of his eyes. He had a ringside seat to the spectacle of his own obliteration. The view, he just had time to think, was rather magnificent in a horrible sort of way.

It was like a climactic scene, in an overly dramatic chapter, in a bad novel.

The general setting was the 5/22/57 freeway interchange in Orange County, California. This multilevel pile of concrete spaghetti sorted out the movements of a half-million cars a day between three major freeways and 34 collector/distributor roads. Almost a million people cursed it daily. It was known, without any affection whatsoever, as the Orange Crush.

The precise scene was the feeder from the eastbound 22 to the northbound 5/57. This was a two-lane bridge that arched on slender concrete pylons, 100 feet over the two feeder lanes that snaked along, at the bottom of the spaghetti pile, from the northbound 5 to the westbound 22. These lower lanes were now an exhaust-fumed, sweltering parking lot of idling traffic, where a bored Harold, along with 10,000 other commuters, waited for an accident somewhere ahead to be cleared.

The specific actions that led to Harold's death were a confused soccer mom, nearing the end of the bridge, who could not decide whether she wanted to be on the 5 or the 57. She decided to brake hard while she figured it out. This caused traffic on the bridge to come to a screeching halt. The methed-up driver of a semi-trailer gas truck, charging up in the rear, was busy adjusting his radio. His tanker plowed into the rear car of the jam. The rear trailer's front-connector broke from the impact. It speared up into the front trailer, where it knifed a gaping rip in the half-empty tank. Liquid and fumes gushed out. A random spark ignited it all, and the truck was instantly enveloped by a blue corona of flashing flame. An explosion bounced against the concrete of the overpass and launched the truck into the air. It flew over the abutment and flamed down onto the stopped traffic.

Harold was bored. The radio deck in the ancient Porsche convertible he was driving was broken, so he couldn't listen to drive-time radio. He had a horrible case of writer's block, so he was avoiding thinking about his current science fiction novel (Harold subscribed to the theory that not thinking about the book helped his subconscious figure out the problem). So he was looking at the cars that surrounded him. When he got bored with looking at them, he looked up at the vehicles on the overpass, which he could see perfectly, because the Porsche's top had been slashed by some psychopath with a knife a week before, so he had taken it down. From this perfect vantage point, he saw every microsecond of the gripping drama. Sonofabiatch, he thought. It's true. Perception really does go into overdrive when you know you are about to die.

As a child, Harold had been raised in a fundamentalist religious cult. Since escaping, he had been an avowed atheist. He had decided years before that he was at ease with the idea of death simply being cessation. When your body died, your mind just ceased to be. There would, of course, be no regret, since there would be no "him" to feel regret.

Harold had time to think, well, me, I guess it's been a good life. But this is the end. Goodbye. And then 9 tons of burning, exploding tractor crashed directly down onto his head, and there was suddenly nothing at all.


And then there wasn't. Without conscious transition, Harold found he was lying naked, under a thick comforter, head propped on a plump pillow, in an antique four-poster canopy bed. The bed was in a room adorned with white walls, two red-draped multi-paned windows, a white, paneled, wooden door, and several high-backed, well-stuffed red chairs. A carpet of dark green and red squares covered the floor. Against the far wall sat an antique armoire. Dominating the room was a marble fireplace, complete with marble mantle and hearthstone, and a quarter-height, antique cast iron fender. The grate was loaded with a small stack of cheerfully burning logs. The room looked like a Federal Era upper class bedroom from the early 1800s.

He became aware of the susurration of the well-behaved fire. All else was silent, a marked contrast from the background of mechanical growls he had just been hearing... No wait, what the...? Without thinking, Harold sat up in bed and craned his head to see out the window. He saw the green, leafy branches of an American chestnut limned against a soft, baby blue sky that was dotted with fluffy white clouds. A red-breasted bird, a robin, he thought, sat on one of the branches, softly chirping. Peaceful. So very peaceful. Harold sat up further. He was on an upper floor and could not see the ground from where he lay. But in the distance, he could see hills covered with lush, green, virginal forest.

And then, belatedly, Harold remembered the mass of burning metal that he was damned sure had instantly crushed him to death. He thought hard. Somewhere in his returning memory, he thought he felt the ghost of a sensation: a flash of heat, a press of weight, a phantom instant of piercing pain that was almost gone before it was felt. He jerked upright, and felt himself all over. His body seemed to be just fine. Perhaps I should get up....

BANG! Harold was swinging his legs onto the floor when the door slammed open and a fireball of a man strode into the room. He was short, maybe an inch or so taller than five feet, and slender-built. He had sweptback, bright red hair, gray at the temples, receding from the forehead. A scraggly gray-streaked reddish beard unsuccessfully hid a belligerent axe of a chin. Above the mouth, a tobacco-browned reddish gray stubble of a moustache, scribbled below the red-flecked aquiline nose of a chronic drinker, completed a sad display of singularly unfinished personal grooming. Blade-like lips, an unhealthy, pasty complexion, glaring blue eyes, and a pair of metal-rimmed narrow pince-nez spectacles attached to a cord around his neck completed the impression of a thoroughly unpleasant hard-ass fanatic. The apparition wore period clothing that was consistent with the bedroom: a brown wool tailcoat, white cotton twill trousers, a cut-velvet patterned maroon vest, a red bow tie with white polka-dots, and brown leather calf-length leather boots. It spoke, "All right, all right, all right! No more dawdling and lying around sir! There are great things to be accomplished! It is time to get busy!"

The entrance galvanized Harold. He had jerked erect and grabbed the comforter off the bed. He crouched next to the bed, comforter held defensively in front of him, quivering in shock. And then, suddenly, he was flooded with the righteous red anger of the terminally put-upon. He threw the comforter down onto the floor and stood tall, pissed, and naked, fists clenched in fury and desperation, "Who the flying fark are you? And where the Hell am I?"

The apparition stopped in the middle of the bedroom, looked around with what seemed deep satisfaction, and then looked at Harold and grinned unpleasantly. It laughed. It was a thoroughly maniacal laugh, and deeply nasal. It was the kind of supercilious, nasty laugh that Harold had always associated with over-the-top vaudeville villains. "Well, my boy, as far as you're concerned, I am God. And you are in Heaven."

That was a showstopper. Harold thought again of that last instant of time in his Porsche. Yep, there is no way that I am alive, so I must be dead. But there is no way that this is Heaven; I'm an atheist, for Heaven's sake! And then he realized what he had just thought and laughed hysterically. "I'm in Heaven? Really? How the Hell can that be? I don't believe in Heaven!"

God looked at Harold like he was retarded. "You're a writer, right?"

Harold mutely nodded.

"Well, son, you're in luck, because whether you do or don't believe in Heaven, Hell, and Me, it is a singular fact that all writers, regardless of their beliefs or actions, automatically go to Heaven. Those are the rules. I should know; I wrote 'em!"

"Wha...?"

"Ok, I can see that you are confused. Say, my boy, you look truly ridiculous like that, standing around in your birthday suit. In that armoire over them...." God waved His hand in the direction of the furniture. "Clothes. I think I've got your size right. Get something decent on, and then I will explain everything." The double doors of the armoire gently swung open from ghostly hands, and several complete sets of early 1800 American men's high fashion clothing wafted from the depths of the furniture, through the air, and onto the bed.

Harold looked at them as if they were piles of snakes. The levitation act had freaked him out, and he was a sandals, jeans, and short sleeve sports shirt kind of guy anyway. Attire from a bygone age was....

God saw his expression. "Oh yes, I forgot, barbaric twentieth century attire. It is so sad that people don't know how to dress well anymore." He waved his hand again, and the piles of clothes shimmered and suddenly became twill cargo shorts, blue jeans, and several stylish Big Dog Hawaiian shirts.

"I'll leave for a bit and pop over and see another new arrival. I'll be back in ten or fifteen minutes. Hurry up and get dressed, and then we'll talk about what you are going do here." God swiveled smartly on one boot heel and strode back out the door, which slammed shut behind him without being touched.


In a state of mind he later analyzed as shock, Harold, dial tone in head, calmly selected an outfit. In the piles of outerwear, he found tees, boxers, and tighty-whiteys. Everything was in his size. He dressed in a tee, comfortable briefs, some no-name but really slick looking jeans, and a lightweight, colorful Hawaiian shirt adorned with large dogs driving antique cars. He also found a pair of white socks and a pair of hook-and-loop sandals. And then he sat on the bed and waited for God to return. And he thought.

The familiar acts of selecting his clothing, and dressing had helped Harold's state of mind. There were legions of questions, in no particular order of importance, which the worrier part of his brain insisted all needed answering immediately. He forced himself to ordered thought and was amazed as something "clicked" inside his head. The speed, focus, and clarity of his thoughts seemed to be somehow augmented, almost as if performance governors had been taken off a race car. And suddenly the science fiction writer in him was having a blast, as his brain logically and dispassionately analyzed the possibilities.

Was this whole sequence since waking in this strange bed just a dream? Had he somehow survived getting crushed and burned by tons of flaming truck? Was he now in a coma in a hospital?

He thought about the strangely sped up perception he had undergone. Were the events since "waking" here just more of the same quickening, except a weird hallucination from inside his brain rather than real life gleaned from his senses? Was the fraction of a second to personal extinction ticking down to zero, and soon everything would... stop?

Or had the hallucinations started earlier? Was the entire set of events since he "woke" this morning in his West LA studio bachelor apartment all just a fantastic dream? Was he still asleep? He pinched himself, and laughed at his idiocy: if he was in a dream with this much realism, then the pain proved nothing.

Maybe he had been abducted by aliens? At just the moment of the crash they had beamed him up? Was the tale that he was dead and in Heaven to protect him from the trauma of knowing he had been kidnapped by little green men? No, that was just stupid....

Or had the accident really happened and truly killed him? If that was the case, well.... He had never thought that the Christian version (or any other version, for that matter) of Heaven was plausible, so trying to compare what he had so far experienced with what irrational fables said was in itself irrational.

He couldn't do anything about any of the other possibilities, and Harold did not even want to think of the only other option: that he was really in Hell, and that the ugly little man was Satan, and messing with him. The best course of action was to assume that what was happening was, indeed, real. If this was Heaven, and the strange little man was God, then Harold should "go with the flow" and see what was going on. That meant, of course, giving Him more than a bit of respect; getting on the bad side of God was probably not a great idea.

So when the door again slammed open, and the ugly little loud asshole who said he was God once again strode into the room like he was, well, God, Harold quickly stood up next to the bed, ready to listen. God strolled up to him, put his hands on his hips, and grinned. The two of them stood looking at each other.


"So!" God said, "Are you ready to learn a few things?"

Harold had worked out his approach. "Yes, Sir, I am. There are a couple of things that trouble me a bit, and I would deeply appreciate it if you could explain them. First, however, please accept my sincere apologies for my initial attitude and outburst. I'm sure you know all about adrenaline and such, since you created it... and me...." He petered out, staring warily at the little man.

God gave a sardonic grin, and shrugged his shoulders in a what-fresh-hell-is-this gesture. He clapped his hands together and sat down in one of the chairs, elbows on the arms and fingers comfortably steepled in front of him. "Now don't you worry about that, son. shiat-damn-howdy, what are a few farks and hells between colleagues? And that is exactly what you and I are going to be. With your fresh creativity and my Divine guidance, you and I are going accomplish some great things together! I fully expect that there will be many more curse words flying between us. What we do here is not easy, and cursing helps relieve the pressure!"

This was the last thing that Harold had expected to hear, and he blankly stared, mouth open. God snorted out another nasally laugh. "Close your mouth, son, you look like you've been pole-axed with a rutabaga. Now go ahead and ask those questions. Shoot!"

Rutabaga? Harold shook his head, blinked, and focused. He cleared his throat, "Well, Sir," he said, "First of all, based on what I've heard about religion, none of this makes any sense to me. This is certainly not the Heaven I expected to see when I died. I don't see any angels or harps, and I don't see people floating on clouds anywhere, and this all is..." his arms spread to encompass the room, "...well, it looks like it has all been taken out of some historical novel. And second, how in the world did you do those tricks with the clothes, you know, the levitation and the transformation?"

God grinned. "That thing about angels and harps? Well I have angels here, and some of them are very sweet and desirable girls indeed, but I just don't like the sound of harps and don't allow any here. People floating on clouds?" God tilted his head and the wall of the house puffed into twinkling vapor. He gazed out at the clouds in the distance. He tilted his head back straight and the wall re-formed. "Nope," He laughed, "I don't have any of them, either."

He gazed around the room with evident fondness. "This is a recreation of the room and bed that I died in, in my world-line, in 1820 Massachusetts."

That makes no sense at all, thought Harold.

As if reading his mind, God snorted and added, "Well, that was on my world-line. After I died and became a God, I created your world-line. To speed up the process, I cribbed the creation command set I used for your Universe from the one my God had used when He brought forth my Universe. The only commands I actually changed were ones that made your Universe a whole lot more dramatic.

"Drama! That's where it's at, my boy! In my Universe, I was an author and a crackerjack book and anthology editor. I had a stable of a dozen eager young writers, and I worked my ass off with them to whip their writing up to a fever pitch of drama, pathos, and cliff-hanger endings that kept the reader coming back for more, week after week. The result, in no small way due to my efforts, was that we produced one of the hottest adventure serials in the world! I brought..." God raised his arms, hands forming fiery letters that floated in the air. "...The Quest for the Dramatic to the nation, and the public ate it up!

"Oh, yes, I did it up right! My home Universe was actually very boring, and I never liked it one bit. My God had designed a reality where Creation was a Steady State affair, energy and matter and stars and such being continuously and quietly created in a process that, frankly, was predictable, wearisome, and just plain dull. I decided to go with something much more vibrant and gripping: a Big Bang, where everything started with a tremendous explosion of energy and matter. That one small tweak set the stage for all of the drama and suffering and pathos that is absolutely essential for the creation of great stories. Your Universe is..." Once again, God traced out flaming letters in the air, "...The Greatest Story Ever Told!"

Harold was horrified. "Wait wait wait, you deliberately created all the suffering in the world?"

God's piercing eyes glared up at Harold. Though he remained in the chair, his slight body seemed to fill the room, dominating it. His voice rang with the certainty of a fanatic, "Son, in the long run, the only thing that matters is Story. And Story is crap without drama! Suffering is an essential part of drama. Quod Erat Demonstrandum, suffering is the Story. So I cranked up the drama to epic levels in the Universe I created. The characters come and go, but the story, the drama, the suffering, is eternal!

"That's why religion on your world is so farked up: beliefs that revolve around quiet talk, rational debate, and loving and helping each other are just plain boring! Beliefs that orbit around stupid ideas and pogroms against unbelievers are grist for great stories. So I made sure that all religion in your Universe is the province of grifters, grafters, and psychotics. The results speak for themselves! Your Stories are a glorious mosaic of madness run amuck. Drama!"

Harold collapsed onto the bed. He felt faint. He felt as though he had been popping crazy pills. He felt enraged. He wanted to throttle someone. Visions of fiery pits and laughing demons filled his head. He wanted to scream. He had trouble forming the words, but he managed to croak out, "You've created a reality of horror, and terror, and never-ending suffering, and when people die they go to the eternal torments of Hell, just so you can write a farking story?"

God laughed again. "Oh, there's quite a bit more involved than that. This is getting a bit ahead of the tale, but I made a singular discovery: dramatic universes are important for a whole other reason, which I will get to shortly. As for Hell? Few people end up in Hell. All the souls who don't end up in Heaven get recycled. It's a matter of efficiency, you see. It's much quicker and easier to reincarnate them into new Stories, either in their old world-line, or in brand new ones. Much better than going through the hassle of creating brand new souls. That's what all the Gods do. And eventually, if a soul creates good yarns, it ends up in a Heaven.

"And now to address your second question!" God said. "The world-line you lived and died in has fewer dimensions than Heaven does. That means you are limited to simple cause and effect. You know, physical causes, physical effects. Wishing? Doesn't work there. But here in Heaven, all the extra dimensions mean that physical things respond to Will. Things and forces can be created simply by wishing then into existence.

"How that works I don't know in detail, since I'm an artist, not a physicist. But I'm told that it has to do with the higher dimensional matrix allowing for the flow of thought energy, in addition to the energy forms that exist in your reality. Directed flows of thought energy disturb certain natural structures that underlie the meta-reality. If the thoughts are precise and detailed enough, those structures use them to create the thing that the thoughts imagine. This somehow relieves the stress on them. I've been told that this process is actually quite scientific and that there are logical and rational physical laws that govern every bit of it. But I really don't care about the details, just so long as it works.

"I created and transformed the clothes by wishing them to be. Levitation? Not really. I repeatedly created and destroyed the clothes at each point in space between the armoire and the bed. It's an art, but quite easy to do after you've been doing it for a few thousand years. I can teach you how to do baby steps of the same thing in five minutes."

Harold still sat, huddled, on the bed. He was beyond outrage. He felt as if the marrow of his soul had been sucked out and that passive listening was the only course of action left. Aside from the sheer amorality of it all, God's story actually made a weird kind of sense. Harold was, after all, a science junkie and a fairly "hard science" science fiction writer. Rational extensions of and alternatives to currently known physics were far more acceptable than causeless sorcery. A higher dimension meta-reality with attached 4D spaces? It reminded him of an idea he had heard in a podcast on string theory.

But from what God here was saying, it seemed to Harold that He was neither all-knowing nor all-powerful. God was sounding less like Divine Being and more like Sufficiently Advanced Alien. Perhaps his alien kidnapper option had some merit after all. Harold kept this whole train of thought very close to his chest, his face expressionless, and simply stared at the moral monster who was comfortably sitting in the chair across from him.

There was an extended silence in the bedroom. God sat back in the comfy chair, watching Harold, grinning, exuding confidence and self-satisfaction. "I understand your feelings, my boy, I really do. Right now you're horrified, repelled, disgusted, sickened. You are thinking that this is really Hell and not Heaven, and given your druthers you would just like to be written out of the story and become non-existent. You'll get over it. When you hear and understand what I tell you next, I think that your attitude will go through a sea-change. Let me tell you a story.


"Once upon a time there was an Entity. It was a child of Chaos, a creation of the formless Void in which it existed. It lived in the Chaos, but it did not thrive. The Chaos constantly tried to submerge the Entity back into the formless non-identity from which, in a timeless moment out of time, the Entity had been randomly created.

"The Entity conceived a plan. It would fashion a habitation for itself from the Void. It would create a Universe, a meta-reality of many fixed dimensions and predictable rules. Within such a meta-reality it would be safe and thrive.

"It did all this, a Herculean task, And it thrived, safe from dissolution. But the Entity, in the fullness of time, found that the Chaos was eating away at the foundations of the meta-reality it had created.

To protect its Universe, it was necessary to (as it were) shore up those foundations. The Entity discovered it could create limited, "out-lying" versions of its meta-reality, building them each with one dimension less than its own meta-reality. These lesser realities would support its meta-reality in the same manner that the flying buttresses of a medieval cathedral supported the too-massive building core, distributing the forces that wanted to tear it down over a wider area, attenuating them at any given point.

"But the Entity quickly found that those buttressing Universes, in turn, needed support. And so an unending slog began: the constant creation of new, slightly lesser, realities to shore up the old parent ones. It was an exponential task, and the Entity toiled unendingly and it did not thrive.

"At some point it occurred to the Entity that it could create partial copies of itself. It experimented with the energies and particles of its Universes and found a way to organize some of those elements into self-aware entities that were similar to, though lesser than, itself. It found that these lesser entities were not immortal, and that when they ceased to exist in their subsidiary realities, their energizing elements, their souls, could be brought into the parent Heaven of their world-line. The Entity then instructed them in its methods of Universe-building, and put them to work building new realities to support the old ones. Those entities, in turn, became the Gods of their own universes and did the same.

"Now like I told you before, this job is not just wishing shiat up without restrictions. There are immutable laws of nature involved. Understand that there are different kinds of reality. The parent reality is a Heaven. It has, say, X dimensions." God raised one hand and a finger traced a fiery diagram in the air. It was a long oval, and it looked for all the world like an org-chart box. It had an "X Heaven" neatly scribed into it.

"The parent reality's God creates a "scaffold" reality of X-1 dimensions. These are more "Heavens." They exist to be frameworks for the levels of realities just below them." The finger moved again, and three ovals appeared just below the first one, linked to it by threads of golden flame. Each of them had "X-1 Heaven" inscribed inside.

"Now it gets interesting. The God of X makes more realities "below" the X-1 Heavens.There are two types of these realities: Heaven "frameworks" of X-2 dimensions, and as many evolving, inhabited X-3 realities as that God wishes to create and "hang" onto the X-2 framework." The finger flicked back and forth, and a dozen more ovals appeared. Three of them were labeled "X-2 Heaven" and were linked to the X-1 Heavens; nine were labeled "X-3 world-Line" and were linked to their respective X-2 frameworks.

"The natural laws are simple. Any subsidiary universe must have one less dimension than the universe that is a scaffold for it. And subsidiary universes act as buttresses for the universe directly above them."


There was again silence in the room. Harold's mind was reeling. The diagram God had drawn in the air, though diminished, still faintly gleamed To Harold, it looked like a demented multi-level marketing scheme.
"And so here we are, kid. I am your God, son, and don't you ever forget it. But I work my ass off for my God, and He works his ass off for His God. And so forth. This is a battle. We are constantly striving to create new realities to stay ahead of the Chaos. Because if we fall behind it all ends. Forever."

Harold just sat and stared.

God continued, "You remember I said that the Entity originally built a meta-reality with many dimensions? I'm told there are more digits to that number than there are grains of sand on all the planets of all the realities that have ever been created. And you remember that I said that each subsidiary universe must have fewer dimensions than the universe for which it serves as buttress? The original Entity and the meta-reality it made are uncounted trillions of years old. I have no idea how many levels there actually are in this grand edifice now, but I know that it is a gigantic number.

"And that is the Problem: your reality, the one where you lived and died, has only nine physical dimensions. And there simply cannot be less than three. Stuff just will not work. So, my boy, we are looking at The End, coming up very shortly. There are only six levels of reality left to create, and then the Chaos wins and everything disappears into the eternal Void.

"But I have discovered a stopgap! This is another reason why there is so much drama in the Universes that I create: dramatic universes are stronger, bigger, and more aggressive. They resist the Chaos better; they last longer, much, much longer.

"And that, son, is your new job." God stood up and began to orate, raising an arm into a balled fist with which he pummeled the air. "Together, you and I (and the other writers stashed away in other parts of this and other Heavens) are going to create another layer of realities, dozens of them, hundreds of them, thousands of them. And we will crank up the drama to fever pitch! I figure that we can build buttresses that will last a hundred trillion years!"

God lowered his fist and grinned again. The braying laugh again echoed off the walls. "I can see that I've given you a few things to think about, my boy. You should probably rest up a bit. Get some sleep. And downstairs you will find a well-equipped kitchen, and a whole bunch of very well-equipped angels, if you catch my meaning. The fringe benefits and perks of this job are not to be despised, my boy! Rest up and have some fun for a century or two, and then we will start in on the training to turn you into a full-fledged God." He turned and strode to the door, which suddenly opened of its own accord.

This was Hell, it had to be. But Harold had to know for sure. "Wait! So what you said before was the truth about Hell? No one goes there, its all religious bullshiat? And you weren't lying when you said that this wasn't Hell, right here?"

"Hell?" God stopped, and turned around to gaze back at Harold. He had a big grin on his face. He laughed heartily, another vaudeville-like cackle. "Absolute truth, Harold. And after you learn the techniques and become a God in your own right, you can check it out for yourself. No, son, there are not that many people in Hell and when they go there it's certainly not for eternity. Those people are much too valuable for that. They're writers, after all. And Hell is where I send you guys to get motivated when you get writer's block!"

Take a Second Look (continued):

          She was so beautiful, so perfect, so... complete! I gazed down at this monster cradled in my arms and the clock of reality stopped for what seemed a long while. And while it was stopped, it seemed as if all the certainties and opinions, fact and fancy, gods and devils, learning and superstition, and presumed good and evil of the world paraded in front of me and presented themselves in their confused splendor for my inspection and evaluation. I considered their worth, and then, finally, turned my gaze outward. She was very near. I kissed her.

Her lips were not ice cold, like the movies and books would have you believe, but were still somewhat cool to my lips. But it was not like kissing a corpse. I knew, with a pristine shining certainty, that this was, rather, a vibrantly alive woman who was needing and yearning, and who was responding to the growing passions that I - may God help me - was in turn feeling for her.

Somehow, I will never be sure just how or when, we joined together and I lost control. My perception of, and need for the world imploded into a monomaniacal, thrusting, awareness of the joining that we had created. She responded. Her back arched and she cried out. The sounds she made were inarticulate, but the thwarted meaning was clear: she needed something more. I knew what it was.

I gently pulled her head down next to mine, stroking her hair, her cheeks, her lips, and traced with a single finger, each in turn, the deadly ivory outlines of her need. We mouthed mindless and soundless words to each other, neither of us knowing or caring what was said, valuing only that they were said. Then - at last - I turned my head away, bared my neck to her desire, and said goodbye to the world.

          Her fangs slid in easily, almost without sensation, with just a faint whisper, a dim lost echo, of pain. I felt paralyzed; even if I had wanted to, I could not have moved in the least. But I didn't want to: her control over my will and desire was total, and I wished only to lie there, next to this beautiful, wonderful monster, and listen to the gentle sucking sound of life - my life! - filling and renewing her existence.

It was more than just a simple extraction of fluid; it was as if my very essence was being consumed. I could feel her need for the blood, but in the furious swirling of my soul I also felt something else. It almost seemed as though her ultimate thirst was not for the mere material qualities of the blood, but for the metaphysical things that made me human: the joys and sorrows and hopes and fears that defined and made real the vector sum of my existence as a being. It was as though she sought to steal my spirit, my battery's life force, to re-energize her own.

Her feeding stopped. The draining of my soul was suspended and there was a silence in the room, a serene and peaceful hush. I felt her lips and tongue kiss and lick the wound, and - incredibly - felt the punctures itch and move as my flesh and skin healed. She then lifted her head, and looked at my face. Hers was an open, trembling question mark.

I looked at her, and felt her body under my hands. She now had a muted flush to her cheeks, and a hint of warmth to her skin, and I knew, somehow, that I had not really sustained her, that what she had taken was not enough to survive. But I also knew that I had brought a small measure of life, albeit of a temporary sort, to someone who had none of her own to give, and that she was grateful for the fact that it was freely given.

And yet, in a sense, she did have life to give. She had given me back my life. I thought: some humans are Undead, more-so than Jean; their souls and minds are frozen, unchanging, trapped like ancient pine needles embedded in amber. Jean's body may be Undead, but her mind-soul-spirit is very much alive. She gave me some of that vitality, and brought me back, for a time, from the living death that I now endure.

I looked at her, and then pulled her head down again and kissed her red upon red lips. She put her head, once more, into the curve of my neck and snuggled close to me. I closed my eyes and slept.


I returned to her apartment many times, always just before dusk, to make sure she would be there. From the very first, there was no fear or aversion or doubt. I saw beyond the merely physical aspects of what I came to think of as her medical condition. She saw beyond the fact of my mere humanity, my natural status as prey, to regard me as her lover. The trust and passion was mutual and complete. I was consumed with her, and (in no small part) by her, relying on the strength of her willpower and love to hold instinct in check. And she, in turn, surrendered the safeguarding of her immortality into the hands and judgment of a mortal.

It was she who called an end to the relationship. I would have had it continue until my end. In spite of the blindness that is often caused by passion, she finally saw the weakness of my body and spirit that was being created by her constant tiny attentions. And, after nursing me back to health with orange juice, high protein liquids, and large portions of rare red meat, she insisted that the affair be terminated.

          I begged her to finish it and make me like her. She responded that two such as herself could never feel the same depth of passion as we had felt, that something else - some part of the soul? - seemed to die with the body. Her kind were solitary predators; though they could and did meet socially, there was always a layer of reservation that made each of them sufficient unto themselves. She offered the boon I asked, but insisted that it would mean the death of our love for each other.

She, rather, held out the possibility that one day after I had fully recovered we could again share together in the ways that brought us so much ecstasy. And she promised that, were I on death's doorstep, she would know it and come to me, and - should I still want it - give me the boon I asked.


That was some time ago. I have not seen Jean in several months. I've returned, many times, to the Nigh... to that bar..., but I think that she, and the others, are avoiding me. No, I haven't tried going back to her apartment. My rationalizations will work only so far and - even now - I still want to live.

Jean really did awaken a new sense of life in me: a fresh ability to seek, to care, a desire to once again reach out and grasp the world by its rumpled collar and shake something new and starched and shiny out of that stained and careworn cloth. But, as with her, I am now one of the world's living dead. The generator has had too much corruption thrown into its rusting windings, and the battery has been drained too many times and now cannot hold a charge.

I cannot seem to find within me the desire to self-perpetuate that sense of passionate living that Jean re-awakened in my soul. And if I go back to her, I'm afraid of what might happen, of what I might ask of her. It's like an addiction, you see. It must be adaptive evolution of a sort, a mutation: her kind must possess a pheromone that functions as a sexual attractant. That's how they feed, as well as create new generations, by attracting addicted humans to be - not only their willing converts - but their willing victims...

But things are coming to a head. This pathetic safety net of mine is going to unravel very soon now. They're banning aluminum cans and glass bottles next month, and there's no decent money any more in plastic. My identification papers were taken by the police last week, and now they can't seem to find them. Without papers, I can't get a work permit. My final emergency unemployment insurance expires next month. The food stamp allotment has already been taken away, and the soup kitchen lost its permit and closed down two days ago. The government medical insurance has been stopped, and the Siberian Flu season is coming soon. Someone stole my bedroll two days ago. I have no idea what I will do...

...Perhaps I will take Jean up on her kind offer...

..........................Yes.

...I'll be seeing you!

mama2tnt: thatguyoverthere70: biracial shake

As an editor: change it to "miscegenated shake" instead.

/that is all

"miscegenated milkshake" for the alliteration.