Shadow & Light

by Stephen Ayer

  He stepped closer to Jose, resting his foot on Carlos’s body. “I could almost smell your hope in the wind when your trail led out here. ‘He wouldn’t dare cross the open desert’, you must have thought”

  The man lunged down and yanked Jose up by the corners of his shirt. “Surprise... I made it you slippery fuck!” With a blunt kick to the gut he sat Jose down on a box of bullets. The Mexican wheezed and clutched his stomach. “Hey here here, don’t cough. Here’s a cig.” The man pushed a blood stained cigarette into Jose’s fingers.

  “Thanks.” he coughed and looked up to the man. “How did you get here?”

  “English! Good. My Espanol ain’t so good.” The man took a seat opposite Jose. “I ran very fast. Got a few nasty burns. Was worried you guys might refuel and book it but fate was on my side.”

  “Oh.” he said, too numb and shocked to stall any more. Fate was on his side. Until they got to the wrong safe house, whose last occupants only bothered stocking it with enough gas for a journey back south.

  He put the man down, sitting him neatly on a nearby corpse, before lighting his cigarette. “Now, here’s the deal Juan.”

  “My name is Jose.”

  “Whatever. Here’s the deal.” he leaned over, lighting the bloodied man’s cigarette. “I’ve been all over this shit hole, looking for the man behind the man. The string puller. The Puppet Master. Now by my count... I stopped counting around fifty-seven, but by my count, I think I’ve put enough of you boys in the ground to get at least a name. A location. Anything.”

  “No.”

  “No what?”

  “No nothing. I cannot help you. I am sorry...”

  “Wha.... nothing? Loyalty among drug lords!? Who’d thunk? Well I guess in this country, if you don’t have loyalty, what do you have?”

  “Cocaine.”

  “Oh a quick one. I like that. Well, I’ve come prepared.” The red-eyed man reached into his pocket, pulling out a syringe, full of dark red fluid. Jose’s eyes widened when the man squirted a few drops, the crimson droplets immediately coagulated as they hit the ground. “Oh yeah you know what this is...”

  The man came down to Jose, showing him the syringe in fine detail. “Now, something you might not know about me is that I will not nuzzle into another man’s neck if I can help it. A draining is too slow anyway, can take hours before the changes can even begin to be felt. But this my friend...”

  Jose grimaced, but did not flinch from the syringe. “I can live through that.” The pale man grinned. He could admire that.

  “Depends on how you define live. But yes, Jose, I expect you to live. I’m counting on it. I’m counting on you living as much as I am the sun on rising. It doesn’t have to be that way, though. Tell me whose really behind your little cartel and we’ll call it even. You go home to little Pedro on the farm, bang your mamacita and everyone leaves happy.”

  Jose remained quiet, but kept his gaze on the syringe.

  “Fine, have it your way.”

  In an instant the man slammed the syringe into Jose’s neck like a prison shiv. “Wait!” he cried, seeing from the corner of his eye that the man had not yet pressed his finger down. A slight trickle of blood ran down his throat from the incautious stab.

  “The name just came to you, didn’t it?” said the red eyed man, his finger hovering over the pump.

  “Senor Alejandro Reyes.”

  The man sighed and massaged the syringe pump. “And? This thumb is feeling a little itchy...”

  “What!? Please I told you all I know! I have a woman and ki-”

  “No you don’t you fuckin’ liar!” snapped the man, grabbing Jose by the neck, “You’ve got some banged out whore in Culiacán huffin coke until she gets a brain hemorrhage. Then it’s back to business as usual. What I’ve got is just a fuckin’ name, what I need... is a location.” He gripped the man by the back of the head and angled his syringe down even more. “Tell me!”

  “Ok ok ok... Nicaragua, a little village called Ojoche!”

  The man sighed and pat Jose on the head without taking out the syringe. “Good. That’s better. But we’ve still got a problem.”

  “What?”

  “You lied to me. Twice.” In an instant the man’s unholy lifeblood mingled into the criminal’s bloodstream, burning like some virulent plague and sending him into spasms. “Never lie to me.”

  A cold wave swept down Jose’s chest and he felt what he could visualize as if his heart was turning to stone, its aortal pumps turned craggy with granite and ice, grinding against harsh flesh at an ever slower beat. His fingers refused to move while liquid warmth streamed out the corners of his mouth and nostrils, the essence of life rejecting the intrusion of the icy immortal nectar. “You said... you wouldn’t...” he coughed, near paralyzed with agonizing numbness.

  The man took another puff of his cigarette and admired the coils of smoke as idle shafts of moonlight pierced through the carcinogenic haze. “It was more of a guess than a promise. You’re gonna be floppin’ around there for a good while, burning the night away.” The man stepped over his twitching body and wiped away some coagulated blood from a window to let more light in. “When you get up you’ll be as hungry as horse. Probably will wanna rape or kill something. Maybe both.”

  The man put out his cigarette on the dead, pallid cheek of one of Jose’s men, the little flecks of golden red ash tumbling down into the poor soul’s blood pool. “A few foxes or snakes out there might hold you over. I’m not too up to date on Mexican wild life but you’ll find something.” The man walked back to Jose and got him back on his back, still gurgling and jerking in pain. The young criminal had a prime view of the moon through the warehouse window.

  “The real challenge though, is that we’re in the middle of nowhere and you’ve got no wheels.” He pointed to Jose’s spasming and blood soaked legs. “You’ll have new legs though. Now I’ve seen some pretty fast vamps... not a single one outruns the sun.”

  The man stepped into the doorway he had ripped apart earlier like a crazed rhino before giving one last look to his victim. “Anyway, if you survive all that shit, you’re welcome to hunt me down and thank me. Or maybe kill me. Whichever, I’ll be waitin’... but for now, the name’s Frank.”

  Jose stared at the moon and shivered. He felt his pain drop off and the last of his warmth drip from his mouth. Distantly he was aware of a truck door being slammed shut. His truck. Soon the ignition started and then it was no more. Only the desert winds gusted through the bloodied warehouse.

  His eyes relaxed into a dead stare and his ears became reacquainted with silence. He was at peace.

  For now.

  Chapter 2: Till Death Do Us Part

  October 22nd, 1999

  New York City

  “Your... brother, isn’t coming along, is he?”

  “Hell no.” He was the best best man I could hope for. Not the best man to cruise with. “It’ll just be us. Besides, who brings their brother along for their honeymoon anyway?”

  She smiled wide. “Well... he did.”

  “Oh. That’s right.” One of my bigger mistakes. One of his bigger triumphs. He held up his empty cup. “Shall we?”

  She took one last swig from her own, before setting it down like she just drained a mug of beer. “Yep!” She looked around her seat before looking at him. “Wait, you got the camera right?”

  He poked his jacket pocket before giving her a hand out of her seat. “You know I do.” He put his hand on the small of her back and lead her out the door as they waved to the barista, the warm light of day gracing their faces upon reaching the busy street.

  He held her close as he jabbed the traffic signal over and over, visualizing when the red hand would turn into a man. Though he did not know it at the moment, every place his eyes fell, the fluttering red autumn leaves, the simmering hot dog stand across the street or the crows that perched on the looming amber streetlights, was the last time he would see such things.

  He looked to his wife,
and gave her a brief kiss. He pulled away slowly, watching her eyes open, first with delight, and then grow wide with primal terror as she looked on behind him. He looked over his shoulder and his good mood turned to ash while his mouth went dry with fear. Adrenaline sparked through his veins, lending fire and power to his frame that he never knew he had, his strong arms pushing her away from him, sending her tumbling on the ground.

  In that split-second, the out of control car fell over him, dragging him under its wheels, devouring him in a series of snaps, crunches and pops, his body rag dolling and splintering internally as if he were in the maw of some metal tiger, come to claim his meal in the concrete jungle.

  Brenda watched as the car finally stopped, smashing into a fire hydrant, its hood splitting apart like the Red Sea, the horror of her husband’s final moments seared into her brain for all time. Shock overpowered sorrow, and she sat there, staring ahead and dumbfounded, while screams and sirens echoed in the distance.

  Her eyes drifted down to the bloody ruin that lay beneath the wheels, steaming into the cool autumn air, mixing with the car’s own emissions of oil and smoke. It had all gone by so fast, so much so that the only moment that truly stood out to her, was the beginning. Right when the wheel had snagged him underfoot, dragging him down as his skull smashed into the bumper.

  At that remembrance, reality finally set in. She broke down, sobbing as the bright lights of the ambulance came into view while a crowd gathered at the sides. She was numb when the paramedics checked the scuff marks on her face, grateful that their presence blocked the view of them taking the car off her husband.

  She was alone.

  He was dead.

  Chapter 3: The Angel’s Back In Town

  Dr. Lawrence looked over the corpse, sighing with indifference. As morbid as it was, he preferred it when his subjects came in so clearly dead. Poor bastard was nearly mulched into paste, his chest cavity having been sundered underneath the weight of the tire, crushing the organs underneath. His extremities on the other hand, were intact, in the loosest sense of the word, as his arm and leg bones jutted and splintered out through the skin, like a broken marionette.

  Open and shut. Nothing to contest, nothing to explain. He zipped the remains up in a black bag, moving him into the freezer with all the other stiffs. Only the squeaking wheels of the roller and the cold hum of the fridge accompanied the corpse, with the whistling tune of the coroner floating in the air as a pleasant melody in the darkness, before that too faded away, just as the freezer sealed shut.

  ***

  Far above New York, above Earth and across the dimension that everything worldly called home, hurtled an iridescent golden white flame across the cosmos. Through pulsing and soft luminescence rose features that had the barest resemblance to Man.

  His skin glowed like an ivory candle, for he was not forged of earthy star dust but of the essence of light itself. With each league of timeless and eternal space crossed, more of his pearlescent and resplendent angelic armor flew off his body into ethereal strips, crescents of light across the celestial sea. Where he was to tread, his wits were his greatest defense, his faith his greatest weapon.

  His features, blurred and washed out as they were from his bright spirit, were serene, for he had found his opening. A new mission. As fast as he fell through the black abyss, he took in the birth of suns, the death of stars, and the passage of souls. Far off and distant lights, like plankton in the sea, at such a horizon the departed appeared like white and gold orbs, their limbs visible only in the briefest of flickers. Many were guided by an invisible current to a great, golden paradise above, sparkling with deep bands of amethyst, burning titian, shafts of fuchsia and pale fire frozen together in harmony since the day light was let into being, along with others colors yet unseen, vibrations and sounds unfelt and unheard by those that yet lived. Others drifted into a gray intermediary realm, and an unfortunate lot sinking down into a simmering ruby chasm, full of fire and choking heat, like an ocean volcano.

  He had seen such wondrous sights for so many eons, now they were as common as the waxing of the sun and the waning of the moon. No, what held his interest and lent fuel to curiosity, were the many souls who darted about like boiling fish, who somehow did not follow the currents of universal law, but rather found their own resting place outside the Trinity. He watched, but never followed, duty bound to his mission.

  Now he had found the perfect shell, neither too handsome nor too homely, not so inconspicuous for prying eyes to think it was intentional and not so exceptional to be seen as such. He had lived a relatively fair, if unremarkable life: no murders, no rapes, no fraud, and consequently, no glorious achievements but that he lived well. He was not Caesar, he was Peter. Simply, Peter.

  Most importantly of all however, was that Peter was dead, and recently too. Unlike the servants of the Fallen One, who had no qualms taking over the souls of the living, it would have been a violation of mankind’s free will to take their bodies while they live, no matter how holy the occupant.

  Like the quiet before a storm, the angel paused before the final stretch, a lone orbiting light against the vastness of the cosmos, a point of gold against a black canvas of blazing paints that ran in dusty spirals and clouds of coruscating and livid violet and fiery arms of lustrous saffron. He saw Peter’s resting place was cold, his body ruined, and so nursed the embers of his holy spirit until his glow had grown even more smoldering, defiant against the merciless void. A halo of whitish gold light burned above his head, throwing off precise gleams of light like a crystal.

  The sound of a great breath being taken resounded across the vacuum of space, before the being thundered down and left a blaze of stellar fire behind him. He fell across melting stars, across twisting space, spiriting over dead worlds distended and aglow with astral rot, across collapsed and convulsive dimensions, his passage blowing through the cosmos like a soundless atomic weapon, before slamming into the corpse of one Peter Salisbury in a New York City morgue.

  The morgue was just as quiet as before. Dr. Lawrence filled out a toxicology report on some young playboy burnout, while the metal around Peter’s drawer started to sweat, dripping runnels of water to the cold ground as the neighboring drawers began to show condensation.

  Within the drawer was quite a different story. The inside of the body bag had become humid, while torn flesh began to melt, ripple and diffuse into smoothness, like some invisible brush had taken to recovering an abandoned painting. On a deeper level, cellular renewal had begun, and sluggish, coagulated blood started to pump ever so slightly, motivated by a deep and powerful heat that washed through the corpse’s icy veins.

  Bones were remade, stitching themselves back together with audible cracks and snaps. Peter’s twisted posture straightened as all the breaks in his spinal column were mended. Connections to nerves were rebuilt, spreading rapidly across his body like roots in soil before becoming one with each other once again. With the nerves intact, small pulses of bioelectricity reached out from his bruised brain, just as the fissures in his skull had smoothed together in solidarity.

  Hands and feet began to jerk and spasm, while the deathly white pallor of his skin flashed with an angelic glow, before a more vital and healthy complexion washed across his body. Dried and atrophied muscles bloomed with new found vigor, his gray, dead, musculature flushing red with fresh oxygen, becoming more sculpted than they ever were in life.

  The gray matter within his skull fired up, as lines of golden light traced and faded into its numerous grooves, re-invigorating and rewiring itself for new life. Signals to optic nerves fired off, giving the former corpse vision just as his eyes finished reforming themselves into solid orbs, his irises flashing in a shade of brilliant gold before fading back to blue, with only auric flecks among the pools of blue giving any hint of his changed nature.

  For the first time in 78 hours, Peter experienced consciousness. But it was not his own.

  He felt and touched his body, getting used to the fee
ling of skin touching skin, the certain heaviness that always came with inhabiting a human form, his mind taking note of all the sloshing and pressurized fluids within his body.

  It was then he felt the bone structure on his face shift and mend. As the outer reflects the inner, so too did a change of spirit in the body yield new facial features. The angel’s features. A new face dawned in time to his consciousness and the man became aware of his true identity as well as the fact that he was trapped in a bag.

  Fear did not rise in his heart. Only gratefulness. He let out a nervous laugh of gratitude, and thanked his creator for another successful dimension shift.

  He spread his hands against the black bag, pushing against the back wall of his drawer while his feet pressed the front wall, and in a sudden motion, the drawer slid out, and his uncoordinated body fell to the icy tile floor.

  Pale hands tore through the body bag, emerging first as little fingers, perfectly well formed and nimble, a far cry from the mangled masses they were only moments before. He emerged like some new, majestic being, shedding its chrysalis of black plastic into falling tatters to reveal man in his most ideal form.

  He looked at his own hands and experimented with curling and closing his fingers into his palm. He experienced his first shiver in this body, the cold air kissing his neck as the frigid floor bit his feet. His eyes fell to the reflective window in the door to the refrigerator room. He felt his face and noticed how little of the original Peter was left, mainly around the nose and chin, the rest having been subsumed by the clean lines and sharp looks of the being that had taken his place.

  He walked closer to the door, forcing it open with his enhanced strength, and as he did so it occurred to him what he needed most. His eyes took in the messy, torn and bloody threads that had yet to be removed from Peter’s body. He walked through the door, seeing the various corpses in body bags, and smiled when he saw a white coated man jotting things down on his notepad.