by Jacob Hammes
Marcus loved those things, his tattoos, and the mysticism of it all. He enjoyed that he had something so eerily frightening to some people on him, yet things that meant so much to those who knew how to read them. It was the reason he kept them hidden, too; Marcus didn’t like explaining to people what his art meant. Some things he did just for himself, tattoos were one of those things.
All Julie knew was that his tattoos were sexy.
For the day, he chose a black button up shirt with a brown tie. He wore dark brown slacks and deep, rich brown shoes. Marcus’ hair naturally hung about his face, though off to one side, so he rarely did more than put a dab of mousse in it so it would look as tame as possible. He kept his government identification in his wallet, which he shoved in the inside pocket of his blazer.
Julie, as predicted, had procrastinated. She was laying sexily on the bed in nothing but her thong panties and high heels. If this was any other time, he would have pounced on her like a tiger on its prey. Too bad it would make him late for work.
“Are you sure you don’t want to call in sick?” she prodded him. He had thirty nine minutes to get to work, less than enough time to deal with this.
“Sorry sweetie, work calls,” he said, picking her dress up off the bed for her. As nicely as possible, he handed it to her. The satiny gown floated down over her curvaceous body and fell where he dropped it.
“Hurry the hell up, woman,” he thought.
She rolled her eyes and took the hint. She dressed, Marcus grabbed a Red Bull, and within five minutes they were heading down the elevator together. Good thing for Marcus, Julie could not be mad for long. Though she referenced herself as a cheap whore more than once, they were on amicable terms again shortly. Eventually she would have to understand that there was nothing that could break him from this job.
They kissed goodbye in the lobby. Julie would be awaiting a taxi in the warm dry lobby area so she did not get drenched outside. Marcus did feel bad, leaving the beautiful woman standing there all alone. It must feel bad to be ditched. He swore that he would make it up to her soon but for now he had to hurry and put her out of his mind. Twenty two minutes to get to work, twenty seven blocks away. He would have to step on it.
The rain poured down in buckets, but under the lowest levels of the towering apartment building Marcus neither saw nor heard its pounding sheets of relentless onslaught. He walked quickly to the sleek, very expensive silver Audi and touched its side. It opened in response, starting its growling engine like a lover that had waited all night for just this moment. Leather seats were warm, the air inside smelled like Julie; sweet, sexy, warm…
He put the car in reverse and backed out. Between shifting, Marcus took a precious second to smile one last time. The night was turning out to be a good one, though he hadn’t slept a wink. Who needed sleep though when you had a woman like Julie? Save the exhaustion, he was happier than he had been in a long time.
Julie, on the other hand, was slightly upset. She, too, had a night she would fantasize about for many months to come. She looked dreamily through the front door, out into the pouring rain. Each drop danced like a ghost on its flight from heaven, refracting beams of illumination from every streetlight in odd angles. The fall from heaven made a symphony that she could sleep to time and time again. The drops played her favorite tune. They took the color of red for a moment as a car passed by; a sleek, silver sports vehicle.
“I’ll be awaiting your call, just like usual,” she muttered to herself, half dreamily and half grumpily. Julie popped her phone open to check the time, absentmindedly running down through the list of numbers she had acquired over the years. Thirty or so down, there was his name; Marcus Claudius Constantine. It was such a nice name, powerful and old, yet it fit the man so perfectly. She had asked him once whether he had changed the name to suit his wants or whether his parents had actually named him that. He assured her that his parents were much more superstitious than he was and that his name was chosen for certain purposes.
It took a bit of willpower for her to close the phone, smiling in the light of the downstairs lobby. She would wait until lunch and then call the man.
The light at the end of the tunnel came in the form of yet another parking garage this morning, as the rain was falling more heavily than ever. It wasn’t uncommon this time of year for rain to pelt the area, but it had the tendency to be excruciatingly annoying. The fourteen minute ride ended up taking eighteen, leaving just four minutes to get from the parking garage to the conference room, seventeen stories up. Those four minutes in delay were critical when promptness was expected.
“Morning, Marcus,” the security guard at the gate had said. The old man looked to be one hundred and eighty years old, and his name was Marv. The man was always there in some form or another, so Marcus thought. He was professional, never foolish, and smiled brightly every minute of every day.
“Terrible day to drive,” Marv said. “It must be awfully important to bring you guys in so early.”
Marcus couldn’t agree more. The rain always reminded him of when he was a young man, still at home with his parents. He wanted to curl up on a couch and watch some movies just as much as he wanted to be at work. Overall, he was tired and the rain was soothing. He knew that within hours he would be fighting the effects of sleepiness.
“Sounds like it Marv,” Marcus answered, swiping his military-like identification beneath a barcode scanner. His blazer got wet from the brief exposure, even though most of his car was under an overhang.
“You have a good day today. Try and stay dry,” he said, wiping the moisture from his sleeve. Marv had already re-entered the guard shack and slid the quiet sliding door closed. He probably hadn’t heard a thing Marcus said to him, but he opened the gate nevertheless. If one word could describe the old man, it would be creepy. Marcus liked creepy things.
“Sneaky old bastard,” Marcus said to himself as he drove into the parking garage. “Quick, too!”
The parking garage was usually more crowded than this, but thanks to the late hour and the rainstorm most of the cars were gone. Nestled in between the only six floors of the seventeen story building that stood above ground, and the eleven floors below, the parking garage always stayed warm. Marcus walked briskly through the garage toward an elevator, hearing the unmistakable clack of high heels behind a pillar up ahead. A very distinct ding behind a partitioned wall signaled the arrival of the only working elevator. You would think that a federal building would be more accommodating to their employees, but Marcus didn’t mind vying for a good spot on the lift.
He started a double time run around the other side of the wall in a vain attempt to catch the doors. A halogen bulb over one of the handicap stalls had been flashing for a month casting the same strange glare off a small red cup that had been there an equal amount of time. The problems the ultra-observant ran into were plentiful, but changing lights and picking up trash were not his jobs.
He heard the door start closing as he rounded the corner, hoping that he would make it. Marcus hated taking the stairs.
A woman was watching him approach through closing doors as he hurried toward the elevator. She was an assistant named Joy who worked in one of the offices upstairs.
“Hey Joy, can you hold the elevator please,” he said, hopeful the woman would listen. She had too much of a sense of humor and a bad attitude toward ex-boyfriends, though. Her devilish grin and shaking head told him she wouldn’t be helping Marcus this morning.
“Funny,” he thought. At least it made him giggle. Even though he knew he would be taking the stairs, Marcus kept his spirits up. Something good was coming his way and he could feel it.
The seventeenth floor was chosen for many reasons to be the headquarters of the Unusual Operations Division of the United States Government. The head of the organization’s headquarters, Gregory Scott, had chosen it for both numbers traditional dominance in history. One is obviously the most powerful number, as seen in such movies as The Highlander. Seven, o
n the other hand, was much more complex. There were seven signs of the apocalypse, seven deadly sins, and of course seventh sons.
Gregory Scott was a highly superstitious man and based many of his decisions on choices like this. Steeped in both tradition and deep spiritualism, Gregory was a devout Catholic that believed in everything from aliens to witches. Though he knew the two beliefs clashed, Gregory could not help thinking there were much more important things happening with the world that not many were privy to.
What Gregory did not have, however, was a knack for interior decorating. The floor was his, though it was shared with the Department of Defense. As proof of the fact, rows and rows of cubicles lined the center like a fictional tabloid’s main floor. The far windows were clear and clean and through them shone the cityscape of D.C. It reminded him of the glitter he saw in Julie’s eyes just hours ago.
Watching that woman, Julie, as every bead of water fell from the sky in a dance of perpetual beauty, would be the best thing Marcus would see all day. He loved the way he could see her red dress in the lobby of his apartment building as he drove by, even though it was pouring so hard. Julie was a dream in pumps, that much was for sure. She could make every head turn in baggy pants and a football jersey without a spot of makeup. Marcus often wondered what he had done to get so lucky. He just hoped his streak of good luck did not end anytime soon.
Funny; between a whole floor of cubicles with four large offices dominating every possible space available and the woman in the rain, he’d choose the office.
He made it a point to revel in the little things. This morning was no different. Marcus observed the things that held the world together as he passed through the empty rows of cubicles. Red staplers, pink Post-It notes, white rolodexes, all matching black monitors. Some of the employees even brought pictures of their families to pin up next to their calendars. Marcus wondered if the pictures broke up the obvious boredom that came with the cubicle. It was as if the office supplies were the molecules making up the cell, which created the organism; the floor itself must have been the great working organ.
It was five after three in the morning and Marcus was standing across from the Department of Defense door about ready to push his own department’s door open. The lackeys in the DOD were an omnipresent force within the work area, though no one really ever saw them. Marcus wondered if the two quiet agents ever slept. Grey suits, black ties, white shirts, and polished shoes. It was hard to be more conspicuous than those two. The android-like couple barely spoke from behind their coffee mugs.
Marcus was sure they were in there, just waiting to say something in an alien language Marcus had never heard. He was glad they didn’t choose this morning to break their silence.
Big letters on his own department’s door spelled out, ‘Department of Defense: Unusual Operations Division.’ It was the exact same office he had been directed to long ago, when his talents for dealing with unusual circumstances began their manifestation. He had been a Special Forces recruit then. As a Captain in the United States Army, Marcus was assigned to a special recon unit right out of training. Being young and in shape, he had jumped on the position with gusto.
Ten men, armed to the teeth, a somewhat bizarre occurrence, and Marcus was being stood at attention before a General he had never heard of, from a unit he wasn’t sure existed.
“Do you believe in God, Captain Constantine?” the old man had asked from behind fingers perched like a steeple. “Do you believe in the devil?”
Marcus was obviously uneasy with the sudden need to be paraded in front of a general, let alone a general with three stars. He felt like he had to use the bathroom, really bad. The glistening oak desk the general sat behind reflected an almost perfect picture of the man who had led the interrogation.
“Not particularly, sir,” he’d answered.
“Do you believe that there are bad men out there with special talents for hurting others?” the general asked. Marcus simply nodded his affirmation.
“There are things you cannot comprehend, out there in the night. You’d like to see what types of things are out there, wouldn’t you? Things you can keep the world safe from, comfortably lying in their beds while you work? You want your chance to be that quiet hero, soldier?”
Marcus practically salivated, thinking back on that time. Only suckers say no to opportunities like this. Every day of his life, he applauded himself for taking the plunge. Every single day, no matter how horrible it would prove to be, was better than living in ignorance.
It was plain to see, Marcus felt as if he had made the right decision.
Chapter 2
The large office beyond the door would have been dark were it not for the light emanating from wall to wall concave, paper thin televisions mounted between the ceiling and the upper portion of each wall. Each screen played the same video feed as the last. They all showed one man resting his head on the barrel of another man’s large pistol. It was grainy footage and Marcus gathered that it had probably been derived from the cameras of a convenience store.
The Unusual Operations Division specialized in anything the government thought taboo. The supernatural, paranormal, and unexplainable phenomena were all part of the agency’s repertoire. It was not often Marcus dealt with armed robbery. He had had more run-ins with people who believed they saw Bigfoot than he had with armed suspects. That being said, the agency was big on training and none of them faltered in that area. At any given second during any given day, Marcus could shoot the eye off a gnat at fifty yards with a crooked pistol. It was a requirement every U.O.D agent was held to. Though he had used his gun on more than one occasion, most of those occasions came before the U.O.D.
Take, for instance, the man named Hugo McNeil. Two years ago, he’d invented a type of ray gun in his basement. The weapon projected a huge amount of ultra-high intensity gamma radiation, gathering it into one singularity and shooting it out in an extremely focused beam. Too bad for the man, and the seventy people he put into temporary comas, the creator of the ray gun had no knowledge the weapon was doing so. He was arrested, put to work for the U.O.D, and the ray gun was disassembled and destroyed. Its blueprints, however, were catalogued and kept deep within the agencies archives.
Five years ago, a large claim from a neighboring state came in from the local police department. The report stated that something had been running rampant in the city. It was demonic in stature and had its fun turning cars on their tops, destroying furniture and had killed four people in the city. Since local and state police were baffled, the government was called. The government, in turn, called the Unusual Operations Division, seeing as how this was unusual at best. Even the FBI couldn’t be bothered on what was suspected to be largely a case of paranoia.
The dispatched team found not the visage of some terrible demon, but that the local pizzeria was hosting a week-long free pizza event. One of the employees thought it would be fun to lace the pizza crust with a strong hallucinogenic which just so happen to be extremely toxic. The man who had been making the substance in his garage was considered a genius, but was not smart enough to stay out of prison.
Each of the fifty people who witnessed the so-called sightings attended the party on at least one occasion. The unaffected locals were too frightened to go out after dark; apparently the participants were loud, very loud. As for the police; who would blame a police officer for attending an event where local law enforcement was fed free pizza?
There was no quid pro quo for this man, unlike the last. This chef was publically put away, sentenced to life in prison for four counts of second degree murder, and never heard from again. The town was back to normal in no time, though it ate decidedly less pizza.
Marcus just knew, as if it were a gut feeling, that out of hundreds of cases with the U.O.D. this one would take the cake.
“Come in, Marcus,” Henry Bauss said through the darkness. With the push of a nearby button, light slowly filled the expansive room. Henry always wore colorful pastel shirts and
striped or polka dotted ties. He was a jovial, well dressed spirit. His taste was not far from flamboyant, which seemed to exaggerate his already happy mood. Henry enjoyed light hearted, good clean appearances. After all, a man in his forties with graying hair in ample amounts and an equally graying moustache and set of matching chops should hardly worry about being called flamboyant.
Marcus always meant to ask him where he got such nice shoes. He had quite the collection of comfortable, classy loafers.
His boss, Gregory Ian Scott, was something else entirely. The hefty man rarely laughed, though he had on more than one occasion been told his physique mirrored that of a most jovial Christmas character. Usually clean shaven and gruff, sporting the world’s tightest high-and-tight, Gregory looked as if he could chew sheet metal and spit nails. He was understanding and gentle, intelligent like no other and loved a good game of chess.
Through slightly thick jowls, Greg’s booming deep voice reiterated Henry’s earlier sentiment.
“Please do come in,” he said in a formal tone. “Welcome to our morning case study! I hope you slept well last night instead of going out to find some woman to coddle. You know your sleep is imperative!”
“I didn’t sleep,” retorted Marcus. “Thanks for asking. And yes, I was coddling a woman. She was much easier on the eyes than you. You haven’t even shaved.”
“Thank you for noticing,” Gregory said, rubbing his stubbly chin.
Marcus made his way across the plush carpet toward his section of the sprawling desk. There were twenty five placards below inset touch screen computers circling the long table. Each name represented another agent in the Division. The touch screen was also unique to each agent; it activated with a precise sequence of drawn shapes.
Welcome Marcus C. Constantine the computer read when he drew his special shapes. He hated the secrecy. Like anyone would use his computer. He did, however, enjoy being surrounded by yet more technology. It was something that had made him feel at home since he was a child. The Atari systems in old pizza joints had lost more of his parents quarters than any casino ever had.