even now there is hope

           When I finally get inside, I'm hugged by a gothy Polaris missile in a black lace-edged dress who asks me what the fuck took me so long and hits me in the shoulder.
            "I got sidetracked. You know how hard to find some of our friends are?"
            "Not as hard as you always make it out to be, you fucking baby. God, I know how to look for them and I can't even bring myself to give a shit."
            I smirk. "That's only two. You losing touch, Naoms?"
            She hits me again. "Stop being such a smartass or I'll bend you backwards and make you blow yourself." But she's smiling when she says it, which is a good sign. "What do you think of the house?"
            "A little creepy, but thankfully we won't have to deal with anything too stupid?"
            "Save your celebrations. I think something's been creeping around a little here and there."
            "Something...big?"
             She smirks. "Big, yes. Shadows, mainly. And some banging noises." She stops and breaks into a grin. "Hey, remember--"
            "You better hope I don't before you finish that sentence." She slugs me again and God help me I think she means it this time.
            "Let's get down to work." I say finally after a long silence. "Where's Colin?"
            "Outside running off one of those creepy people who follow us around." Naomi tells me. "I think he got him in the leg from the window, but you know how thorough Colin has to be."
            Colin is a very quiet man who does very quiet work. Out of all the people I know, Colin is the scariest person I have ever encountered. You will never see him get angry, you will never see him get upset, all you will see is a small sigh. I pity you if you get him mad enough to actually do something. He's not the kind to pull off halfway through.
            Naomi, on the other hand, is the opposite. She loves to talk. Whenever she stops talking is when you know it's time to back away slowly. "...so something's been scratching outside and we see these weird lights, but there's nothing other than that..." she's saying as I shift uncomfortably. There's a sound from the woods, something I know but don't want to.
            "Right, right, but have there been any real sightings of him?"
            "Who? The high-stepping idiot with the waggly arms?"
            I burst out laughing. "If you really want to call him that, then yes, him."
            "Ehh. Not really." She shrugs. "Is that who we're after?"
            "All things in good time. Anything weird?"
            "The meadow across the way is filled with fireflies every night. They look a little...smarter than average."
            "So nothing hairspray and a zippo couldn't fix. Dammit, do we have anything real?"
            "I told you when I found the place. Disappearances happen and then creepy whackjobs who taunt us show up. How much realer do you want?"
            "Okay, okay, fine." I hug her again and she squirms uncomfortably. She may be friends with me, but she isn't mine. None of them are, really.
            "Oh, one other order of business. If we're hunting that thin freak, you're probably going to need this." She turns around and gets something off of the mantle. It's old, battered, and scratched up in places. The handle is triangular rubber, then that leads into a long thin metal tube and ends in a dense, curved head. No way, I think. I lost that ages ago. "I found it when I cleaned out the wreckage of the old place. Did you have to throw an entire liquor cabinet into there?"
           "It tried to eat us. There are two things I hate, plants and getting eaten. Yes. It was necessary."
           "Shit..." Naomi looks uneasy. "And when you stripped naked and ran screaming at the shadow thing?"
           "...no. That wasn't necessary. I was just drunk. And I might have been high." I think back to the incident and suddenly remember that I'd been caught with Adam and my-- "YES. Definitely high."
           "Oh, wait, was it that time?" Naomi asked. "Sorry."
           "Anyway." I glare at her, getting back on topic. "You found it."
           "Your weapon of choice. The others were all charred beyond recognition, but this baby..." she tosses it to me and I catch it one-handed. Along the side of the five-iron someone scratched the word "Stormbringer" in with a key. A bad joke from someone who knows their fantasy literature, but it was like a piece of me coming back, making me whole.
            I smile. "You remembered."
            "You're my oldest friend. Why the fuck would I forget something like this?" she laughed. "It's the stupidest fucking weapon I've ever seen, but if you like it, I'll keep it handy for you when we run off into danger like this."
            I give it a few practice swings, holding it like a samurai. "And running off we are." I look out the window into the creepy wooded back yards. "Let's hope something takes the bait."

A=A
         
            

I love the sound of breaking glass

                  The problem with finding her isn't so much knowing where to look as knowing where she'll show up. It's a science only Adam's really adept at, and that's because the cheeky bastard already knows where she is exactly. He still makes me look for her. I do have one edge, though. I look for an apartment, an old one with brightly-colored lights and what could be a loft, but I don't find one, so I start hitting the bars. She likes bars as much as she likes squatting in archetypical lofts, or hitting up those freaky weapon shops you sometimes find near Chinatown or something.
                Six beers later and two slants in progress and I finally find her in the usual place a few blocks off of Redactedth Street and of course that big street, Undisclosed, with all the pedestrian traffic. I hear those tiny hints of Southern accent and the sound of wood on skull and my pace quickens a little. And then there's something that makes my blood run cold. Show tunes.
                I suppose some background is necessary, considering that you're all new to our operations here. Many people have their little rituals and coping mechanisms. Many do things unconsciously when they're in a good mood. For example, I find myself singing to myself at many parts of the day, or reciting onomatopoeias. But out of all of us, only one of us sings when she's working working, and happy about it. Li picked up the habit god-knows where, and now whenever I hear Sondheim, my hands start to shake and my breath gets short.
               Li hums show tunes when someone's shit is ending.  It's when she's bored of the fight and the person's already on the floor but she feels like she's been cheated and keeps going. Because if there's one thing she hates the most, one thing that makes her go above and beyond, it's boredom. Leave her alone with nothing to do, and someone winds up in an ambulance. Give her a fight she can definitely win, same thing happens. I bolt towards the bar, throw open the doors, and find the patrons standing around in stunned silence while a little slip of a brunette hipster with ice-blue eyes whacks a guy with a pool cue.
               "LILA!" I snap. "Stop. Now."
               Her entire face breaks into possibly the most choreographed smile I've ever seen. "Tao! Heeeey, darlin'! Wanna few cracks?"
               "Put the pool cue down, sweetie." I hate using the Dad Voice on her, but I might as well.
               "Stop." She says it now, but a little sweeter. "Don't do that to me. We're almost the same age, for Christ's sake."
              I look around at the concussed douchebags. I'm suddenly aware that there's an entire group of them and she was finishing up. That scares me worse, but at least she's nonlethal. "So which one spat in your beer?"
              "Oh...this one told me to stop rejecting him, and he was kind of rough about it." She replied. "So I saved him for last. They're all so boring...it's not like in the old days, where you had a gang of guys with character. It's not even like the days when a bunch of guys would charge into a fray for you for money. I miss the eighties."
              "You were a baby in the eighties, so you can't miss them. Now come on. Bigger things. I'd have sent Adam, but then I'd be pulling you both out of a bar full of concussed people and we'd still be having this conversation. Time to go home."
              "I miss the movies, darlin'. Reagan always sucked." She pouts.
              "Yeah, yeah, I'm a buzzkill. Now let's shift it. I don't want to be here when the cops show up. Oh, hey, that reminds me." I turn to the bar. "She's a tall brown-eyed redhead, I'm a twat with floppy hair and a bowtie." I fix them with a hard stare. No one wants us to come back, so I'm sure they'll pick up the story.
              "So, where to now?" she asks, "Not that I'm partial long as there's things to hit and no one asks questions."
            "Sweetie," I tell her, "you'll have more idiots than you can shake a stick at, and all of them will be itching to take a shot at us."
             "Don't call me sweetie, Tao. You know I don't see you like that."
              I'm not about to say anything on that score. "Fine."
             "And tell me where we're going."
             "We're visiting some family. It's secluded, and Naoms picked it out. Everyone you know is probably already there."
             We're heading towards the train station. You know the one, but I'm not saying it here. That'd just be stupid. Then you'd know where we were, and chances are you'd only bore us.
            "Oh, ick. Everyone?"
            "Yeah, her too. We need her." I roll my eyes. "Besides, I thought we were past that."
            "We were. That doesn't mean we are now."
            "We need them. All of them. I've been getting a hunch right away, and then Naomi went and bought some single-story house and just confirmed it."
            "This house won't be like the last house, will it?"
            "Single-story with a tower. We can see everything and there's no baking cookies smell." I assure her. "Don't remind me of our old house. Now let's go."
             We disappear on the train, heading like a bullet to the small town of None Of Your Damn Business, located in the isolated high-income part of central Jersey. I read a book I stole from the huge comic book store at the intersection of Undisclosed and Deletedth, she looks out the window and taps her foot in time to music only she can hear. When I get back to NOYDB (pronounce it "Noid", with a silent B), there's a car waiting for us and Adam passes me a laptop.
              "Hello, Lila. It's always nice to see you in person. Tao, do what I ask you to. I don't ask for a lot in this arrangement, so drop him a line. He's running a blog! A blog of all things!" He chuckles, already aware that I'm writing this entry in another tab as we head up the winding roads to the house up in the woods.
              So I do. I toss off a few comments, playing the coy little bugger with Sage while we drive, and when we get there, I let everyone else get out and stretch. Time for us to earn our keep.

A=A

Big Black Nemesis

           I'm thankful I don't have to go into alleys for her, though this is somehow worse. She inhabits the dark, squalid underbelly of things, below the alleys, below the streets where people walk unsuspecting...a motel here, a subway station as a homeless person there...she never settles down and she never stays in the same place twice. But if you know where to look, you can find a trail here and there. She never really liked the desert. Too few people, too little to do, and before you knew it she was bored. I never liked when she got bored. It was a terrible sight. If anyone knew what she did when she got bored...

         I found her this time in a fleabag joint, sitting behind a counter and reading a copy of Consider Phlebas,  wearing the same white dress she always wore. "So how was Long Island? I hear now that the weather's warming up. You must be thinking of the next place to go." She glares at me with those weirdly colored eyes and slams her book. "You bore me too, you know..." 

       "I know. But there's something that won't. We're getting everyone back together." 

       "Which means that you need me."
      "I'd like to think I want you, not need you, but okay. I need you." I sigh. "And your talents."
     "I need to know something, myself. Will I get bored?" She asked it simply, and without a hint of anything behind it.
    "If I have my way, you never will. Chances are when we stick our heads out, everything from your favorite punching bag to that thing I make new holes in when it shows up are gonna run right towards us. Next question."
   "If you expect me to--"
   "If I expect you to work with your sisters, you'll fucking work with them." I cut her off. I feel myself get a little tired and smack the glass in front of her to break her concentration. "We need at least one of them, if not both of them. Now, are you in, or am I wasting my time?" I stop, pause, put a finger in the air. "Oh, and remember. Those cops are probably closing in. It's not like the Midwest, where you can dump six bodies and no one bats an eyelash."
    "Fine." She appraises me. "You're still the same sad bitch you always were, Tao. No spine, needing us to help out with things, always worried about what others would think of you and always, always trying to act like it doesn't matter. Please...if I'm going to do this, at least conduct yourself with a little dignity." She gets out from behind the desk and walks over to me. Never touches me...some things never change. She hates people like me. Disgusted by us, can't touch us...whatever it is, she hates people like me.
     I shrug and light up an herbal cigarette only for her to yank it out of my mouth and fling it into the nearest trash can. "And none of that. That stupid tattooed trash might put up with it, but you're dealing with someone important here." Her eyes blaze for a moment and I remember that they're colored all weird...purple or something like that. She tried to kill me the last time I asked her if they were contacts.
     "Constance..." I tell her. She hates the name, but she'll take it. She'll take it because she knows she has no choice in the matter. She glares at me. "Just play nice with us and rough with them." I tell her. "Do that for me, will you, Constance?"
     As I get to the curb, Adam's waiting with a car and holds the door for her. He waves to me and points down the street. "She's that way, old boy. Go. We'll be here. Oh, and call that dear friend of yours when you're done. I don't need him worrying we're going to turn up dead. Even though he knows better." He laughed. "He should by now."

I continue onward, into the twisting streets of the city, looking for an abandoned loft, the kind some tortured artist would squat in. I can only hope I'll find the right one.

A=A

The First

            I found the first one in the usual way. I just wandered the back alleys of the city after dark on a Friday and listened for the music. Stretches of free jazz don't usually play in the alleyways, not any more. And those where they are aren't usually the place where you hear muffled cries. He'd gone back to his old ways. He'd always said this was how he'd spent his Friday nights, but I never believed him until I had to look for him. 
     He doesn't see me in his black suit and unusually kempt hair, but I see him. I see him and step over the boombox he's using to play what was Coleman and what's now Miles Davis...Birth of the Cool era Miles Davis as he sits down next to what looks like a body and takes a package of green stuff out of his jacket pocket. Within moments, he's laid it out in nice lines on the body-thing --She's decked out in a short dress and a big fur coat and cheap but sexy heels, the kind I woulda wore back in my golden days when I dressed like a--...Oh my god, I think to myself, That's a hooker...and rips a line right up his nose. I have to cover my ears when the girlish scream pierces the air...people scream all the time in alleys. It's kind of a part of this life to ignore them straight. But Sage is better at it than I am, so it still bothers me to see this green-eyed bastard hammering rails of god-knows-what up his nose.
     I don't think he sees me as he bumps the second rail of green stuff through his nasal passages, weeping "Great scott, that hurts..." As he rummages through his jacket, I put my hand on his shoulder and get a brick to my hip for my trouble. As I fall over, he notices me. "Why, Tao! How nice of you to join me!" He casually moves the hooker out of the way and I look horrified. He shakes his head. "Oh, gods, no, I didn't kill her, dear boy. I haven't gone completely off the reservation." He waves the brick. "I paid her all my remaining funds to knock her out and have a typical Friday evening." He smiled. "Though the drugs are not making an appearance again." He hands me his little nose-straw and I wave it away. "Enjoy yourself, Adam." I say weakly.
     Adam laughs. "It's sooner than you think, dear boy. And you're here to offer me a job I'll accept. Things are getting bleaker, and we all have to get back together like the old days. Like the desert, hmm? Tell me, has that dear, lovely girl we know gotten the house yet?" Adam and Naoms. They've known each other the longest, so they're the closest. He refers to her with extra adjectives for some reason. I can't quite get my head around the bond. Maybe it's that they both come from around the same area. Naomi lives with me, but she ran off for a little to "get some things together". "Wait...no, of course you haven't. A pity you won't join me for some wasabi." He sighs. I sigh too. This little "I know all. I see all." act is really getting on my nerves, even more than it used to, and he knows that, too. 
     I pull out a cigarette and he looks shocked and then annoyed at me. I put it back. "Let's go, since you've pre-accepted." I say. "Oh, Tao..." Adam shakes his shaggy head. "It doesn't work like that." He cuts the line in half, takes out another straw, and dual-bumps his nostrils, almost suffocating on the overly-spicy condiment before he chokes it down and whips his head around to kill the feeling. "Now I'm ready to go. But I shan't come with you just yet. Have her get the house, and when that's done, I'll be right there with you." 
      He gets up and ruffles my hair before walking off, those long strides putting mine to shame, his suit now looking ruined, his boombox in one hand like a briefcase, half-shuffling half-dancing off into the night. "Don't worry about me, Tao. I'm not going to be receding into my old ways. Just take care of business and I'll show up."


So now not only do I have to figure out what half the stuff meant, I have to find a house and meet up with Naomi again. When I get home, I shoot Sage off an email. "One down, four to go. This used to be easier." and start looking for more leads.


A=A
     

Let's Rock

            I've seen other people put up blogs about weird shit, so I've decided to throw my own experience into the ring. See, I used to live out in the desert. No telling where. It's stupid. It wasn't, but it is now. Anyway, way out in the desert, I met this guy. He calls himself the Amalgamation Sage, but we're gonna shorten that down to Sage. In any case, Sage had some bad mojo on him, and back then, I dealt in mojo. He came to me, being the affable and good-looking sod that I am, and I was more than happy to oblige and bring out my own little brand of whatsits. I brought out a few decks of picture cards and some rum (The rum is important), and damned if it didn't get some results, even if they were vague as all get out. Half the time, I was reading the writing on my forehead more or less, but somehow it worked. Wasn't long after that that things started...dogging me. Noticing me. I couldn't see them worth a shit, but they were all around me and weren't lettin' go. I'd always had that "being watched and someone wants to smack you" feeling before, but never heeded it no mind when I got to middle school and no one really wanted to hear that there was something in the corner of the library that was givin' me the invisible frog-eyes. But that feeling got back in the desert with Sage and the other cast of nutbags.
          In any case, Sage and I figured out that this shit sorta passed right by me. Normal people, they woulda left this alone. "Oh," says John Normal, "This doesn't effect me. I can go on with things as they come." But for reasons that will quickly become known, I didn't do that. No, I went into the opposite direction. First, it was tormenting ghosts with lip-syncing and air guitar. Then it was bothering demons with my vast and illegally-obtained collection of MP3s. Then it got worse. "Hit me!" I yelled, "Hit me, hit me, hit---- ME!" I became a human target, and there weren't nothing that tangled with me and got the better end of the stick. That's not a boast, I might as well be coated with psychic Teflon. I'd let 'em hit me, and Sage could kick ass while I was dealing with the smaller threats. Pretty soon, I'd found other people who dealt with it well, and we found a nice little karass (or Nakama, if you're a japanophile and that's your gig) in there. There was Adam, as wise as he was cracked. Lila, with the power to smoke, curse, kiss girls, and...do actiony stuff. Constance, the requisite bitch of the group who could smack someone down with a look. Naomi, the Jersey-girl Elvira clone. Colin, the...well, the quiet badass, more or less. And me. Sage'd fling us against the wall, and we'd all rip loose like crazy.

Then we figured something out.

           See, this group we put together? We weren't just a big defensive wall. We were a big defensive wall of fire and chainsaws. We were cuisinarting them, not just deflecting them. So Sage and I, being the leaders of the group, drafted a new plan of attack, though we had to scatter before it went into practice. We'd hit the big leagues, the stuff no one touches, and make sure they all knew from this point forward: You do not. Fuck with. Our. Race.

But we scattered. It wasn't our fault, of course. These things just happen. You've probably read those books where the badasses have to scatter before they reform and kick massive amounts of ass, anyway. Same basic deal.


          Let's cut to today. I still deal in mojo, according to most people, and considering I've got the chops and the weird stuff to deal with it (ask me where I keep my tarot cards and my handmade gewgaws, and baby, you'll be getting a ton more than you asked for. And there ain't no gewgaws bigger), mojo is my business and business is a boomin'. And because we were so awesome both on and off the pitch, I just had to get back in touch with the old crew. We may not always get face-time, but we're still the band, and the band always gets back together.
          So Sage. Sage has his own bad-mojo factory attached to his ass. He's had to deal with this more than I have, and that comes with its own risks and rewards. I find monsters, and he kinda dogs 'em and gives 'em what for. Occasionally, our old nakama gives us bit of backup before we start smacking some of 'em around. It helps out when you're staring down a shrieking lizard with a tentacle wang if you've got someone else to hang around and look disinterested while you're twitching like a junkie on a Magic Fingers bed and hyperventillating into its face in the hopes that it'll smell your garlic breath and pass out. Sometimes...I don't do so hot with that whole thing. I'm not used to seeing that shit, just dealing with it off-panel. And we do the big league thing like clockwork.

It's apathy, you see. You have to give a fuck without giving a fuck. It helps if you're clinging to a rotten plank of sanity, like we are. Because then when it calls on you to charge nude into a forest or firebomb a single-level ranch house for the sheer thrill of being alive, you go "I can dig it and there's no problems here, pendejo." I've been going insane recently, so I've got the insanity and the apathy. I care enough to know they're there, but not enough that they can hurt me. If you don't give a fuck if they exist, how can they convince you they can hurt you? Also, how the hell can anything be confronted with an insane person? Telepaths can't take that shit, it infects them. Anyone who feeds on fear is likely to appear as your hot indie-chick English Lit teacher who made you too afraid to talk as much as a giant bunny because you saw Night of the Lepus too many times. I mean, if you were King Shit of Fistpile Mountain and some mope stripped naked and ran at you singing "I'm a little teapot", you may win that fight, but my friend, you will not win it intact, because that memory of a turgid, bouncing manhood (or hypno-chest, if you prefer) would be bouncing at you in your dreams forever.

          So we fight monsters. And not just the small-time stuff. This ain't a blog where you'll hear about us going insane through something in the woods or eaten by some god-pounding house, oh no. We're the Big Damn Heroes, and Big Damn Heroes deserve Big Damn Monsters to fight. And fight we do, because we're not the kind to be driven insane or give up. Oh, no, we're far too crazy for that. Like I said, we're big leagues now, and that comes with bigger stakes. Us or them stakes. Oh, fuck what have we done stakes.

I'm your narrator. Call me Tao. Let's have some fun together. Let's rock.

A = A