This is a WIP currently being written in serial form at the link below.
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Be honest, but kind.
If you troll me, I will send zombie vampires to hunt you. In a novel, of course….
We all know there’s no such thing as zombie vam– (OW! Get back down there, you stinking–!)
And yet he guards the ruined world,
hearing echoes of long-dead men,
the clang and rattle of long buried swords,
the screams and moans of pleasure and pain.
He smells the candles in the temple,
And the perfumes of the maidens,
And the poisons of the traitors,
And the flesh he’s burned in battle.
The laughter of the children rings
through the cavernous passages.
The hawking of wares in the marketplace
shout in abandoned streets.
He is king over ashes,
and ruler of rubble,
with broken towers his castle,
and cracked and blackened bones his subjects.
The scavengers that remain
give him obeisance, and
bow and scrape for leave to
hunt scraps.
But on the watching wall he stands,
constant as the cosmos,
unyielding as stone,
unchanging as what has been
written before…
Unfettered, he is free to fly
and soar and kill and burn
And yet he guards the ruined world,
Until it stops to turn
Too early to go home, too late to go back to the office.
I’d put something maudlin on the stereo, and grieve with an expensive bottle of single malt; the picture of that in my head was too pathetic, even for me.
I went to the Full Moon Saloon instead; it was everything it promised.
My favorite barmaid, Sandy, was there; she didn’t like the term though. She preferred bartender, because she had her reasons, which oddly enough, were pretty valid.
“Hey, Kent.”
“Hey Sandy.”
“I heard.”
“Who hasn’t?”
She leaned forward, searching my face, all compassion. “What can I get you?”
“The usual, stronger than usual.”
She gave a little smile, but there was concern as she pulled back. “You sure you want to…?”
I sighed. “Sandy, I’ve been second guessing myself since I heard about Valentine. I just had a young cop get in my face and second guess me too. I consider this place a refuge, and a haven, which may be the same thing, but I don’t care right now, and I’d like to think I know my own mind, at least here.
“So yeah, I’m sure.”
“Hey,” she said, leaning back over. “This place is a refuge for you?”
“Yeah.”
She smiled. “Does that make me your refugee?”
I groaned, smiling in spite of the fact my heart felt like a sledgehammer hit it.
“Really? Is that the best you got?”
“Ha! I got a million more like ‘em.”
“That’s why you’re here.”
She stroked my cheek, then gave it a little slap.
“Fuck you, big man.” She went down the bar to make my drink.
“When I watch you walk away, anything’s possible.”
She looked over her shoulder, then it registered, and her mouth dropped.
I started laughing, then she joined in.
We actually did have a thing once, but she wasn’t going to walk the path I chose, and truth be told, I didn’t want her to do it either; she had an innate sweetness, despite the jadedness of the surroundings she worked in.
The place was a dive, but it was ‘our dive.’
She came back with the drink, and poured a shot for herself.
“To Valentine,” she said. We dribbled some of our drinks on the bar; she let it run down a bit, and the scent wafted up like sinful incense.
“So what happens now?”
“Word’s getting around; by tomorrow there’ll be a manhunt.”
“You in it?”
I sighed.
“No, Kent. C’mon. Those jackals that do this stuff for real are great at it, way better than guys like you.”
“I’m motivated.”
“By what? Were you…?”
“No. She was like a daughter to me. Sort of.”
You didn’t admire your daughter’s legs. or let her roam the world in short, tight dresses killing people for obscene amounts of cash.
“You, and other guys like you. C’mon, Kent! She’s played the role on stage a million times to guys like you.”
“You keep saying that, Sandy. What do you mean by that?”
“Careworn, world-weary. Guys like you, carrying weight you no longer need to carry, having problems that should have gone away by middle age. Guys like you, trapped by money and no way to get out ‘cept through the morgue.”
She put her hand across my folded forearms.
“It was never going to be enough, Kent. Don’t you see that? You’ve got blood on your hands, your conscience, and no one to inherit anything good, because nothing good came out of it.”
She dug her nails in a bit.
“All you have to show, for all you’ve done, for all the years you’ve been supposedly cleaning up the streets and changing things for others, and profiting from it, is an onset of cirrhosis, and a dead young girl with her guts steaming in the rain.”
Her words felt like someone jammed a double-barrel to my head and pulled both triggers.
I felt myself convulse, and she took her hand away.
There was such a rush of mixed emotions, I wound up acting on none of them: I wanted to slap her, I wanted to throw the glass as hard as I could and watch it shatter, the way Valentine shattered when the bomb went off. I wanted to shoot something or someone, I wanted to scream, and I wanted to die.
I was out of tears, but my face must’ve gone rumply like I was going to cry again.
“Sorry, Kent. I care about you; I don’t want you to do this.”
“You’re really saying you don’t know if I can.”
She turned that over, took a sip of her drink, then focused back on me.
“Yeah, at the core of it, that’s what I’m saying. Let the hounds loose, and they’ll find him. Swoop in then, and take him away and butcher him all night when they do, but don’t join the chase.
“Please, Kent. Don’t do it.”
I took a sip of the malt.
“You had me at ‘butcher’….”
“Kent?”
I took another sip.
“Ahhh, dammit, Sandy…”
She beamed, leaned over, kissed me quick.
“That’s my man…”
We had another round, and I caught a cab home, and watched the rain run down the window, and the red neon lights colored it, and it was Valentine’s blood again, running down the window, down the gutters, down the drain, down to wherever the damned souls go, crying for peace.
*****************
When I got in, I booked a mid morning flight to Valentine’s hometown.
I hung up, feeling a bit guilty, remembering everything Sandy said, but there was one thing more important than anything else that stood out.
“Sorry, love.
“You really did have me at ‘butcher.’ ”
When I stopped bawling, there was work to do.
It should’ve frightened me that I wanted to be the one to do it, and if I’d known the depravity my own heart would reveal, I would’ve put a bullet in my head that instant.
But Valentine always said I was a hardhead.
It was raining. There was a white sheet over a red blob, and the sheet was soaked through.
“You sure about this, sir?” the cop said, standing just outside the crime tape.
I wasn’t, and he took my hesitation as an answer.
He waved over the ME. I knew him: Larson Hughes, smartest in the business.
Hughes looked up, saw me, put something away in a case, and walked over, peeling off a bloody latex glove.
“Kent.” He nodded.
“Larson. What happened.”
“Explosive of some type.”
“Thrown at her?”
“No. Found traces of it in a briefcase she was carrying.”
My heart sank.
“What color was it?”
“The case?”
“No, Larson, her blood. Yes, the fucking case.”
“Silver. Why?”
“Cuz he gave it to her,” the cop said. “There were money fragments all over the place.”
“Larson, shut this kid up.”
“You opened the door, Kent.”
“I didn’t give her that case. I paid her two days ago, and she disappeared. That’s how we worked. That’s how we always worked: I paid her, and she went away while the cops scrambled their eggs and came up with nothing.”
The cop’s jaw hardened.
“Walk away, Gilliam.” Larson advised.
Gilliam took a moment to let me feel the weight of his wrath, and walked off.
“Don’t be stupid, Kent. You’re gonna need them at some point.”
“This ain’t that point.”
Larson sucked in a breath.
“You’ve been at this awhile, so I’m gonna let it go, because I know you know better. Don’t be an asshole on this. Everyone knows what this girl did, they just can’t prove it.
“Either she met somebody better, or the whole thing was a tragic accident, and there’s nothing that’s ever gonna get proven either way.
“You know that too. Don’t’cha.”
I nodded. “You know what I have to do then, ‘don’t cha.’ ”
“If I catch you Kent, you know what I have to do.”
I nodded again.
“Too bad, Kent. Sweet kid, when she didn’t have a gun.”
“Somebody unsweetened her a long time ago, Larson. I need to find out who, and why?”
“Does it matter? Chick assassins are as commonplace now as—“
The look on my face stopped whatever he was going to say next.
He looked away, lit a cigarette. “Head back. Get outta here. I’ll see to it she’s taken care of.”
“Thanks, Larson.”
He waved and turned away.
I stood there a moment longer, looking at the white sheet soaked red, the blood and rain mingling in rivulets that sluiced down the drain in the gutter.
“Ah, Valentine.”
I understood Larson’s point; he’d known her too, before I did, in a different life, when she was a teenager. A lot had happened, and he tried to mentor her, but she wanted something more than the straight and narrow, and my other friend provided that, for awhile.
She would’ve moved on from me too, in time. Perhaps she already had someone else lined up. She never really worked for anyone; she was freelance, and handled her own affairs.
Her rep in the underground markets was impeccable. I’d been lucky to get her.
Most of my problems were gone, but not all, and none of them were good enough to get her like this.
I had to work up a list of her enemies, and her competition; there was room for overlap there, but true pros always left it at competition, and never made it personal.
Valentine had been one of those.
There was the matter of an estate, if she had one, and I decided to start there.
Someone made a ton of money if he was able to take her out, and I decided to find out whom that might be.
A niggling feeling told me I was getting into deep waters: Valentine was international: passports, money, tech, anonymous drops, first class hotels and flights. She knew the ropes, made the loopholes, and walked wires that would make other assassins quit.
She was the best, and someone had taken that away.
I wouldn’t be the only one hunting whoever it was that thought they could replace her.
They were off to a good start, but Valentine was well-liked.
Whoever you are, you better have killer legs and a sunny personality. Being a crack shot might aid your cause too. Explosives were over-reach, cowardly even; just put it down, and slink away like a vole.
She was the only one I knew her age who would get my jazz references.
The last thing I’d said to her was the opening line from a jazz standard, and she knew what to say.
That alone was cause enough to marry her, in my book.
“I’ll find them, Valentine. And when I do, they’re gonna wish I blew them up.”
And yes, I still believe in love
I still believe it’s there
It’s trembling out there somewhere in
the frosty winter air
Or trapped inside a mountain cave
from which it can’t escape
because it fell while running out
and gave its knee a scrape
Or floating on the raging sea
and looking for a light
to guide it safely home to shore
before it’s out of sight
Perhaps it’s on a city street
outside at a café
You didn’t hear it call your name
and hurried on your way
Perhap it’s somewhere crying
it cannot find a heart
that seems to want to keep it
not tell it to depart
So when we say we ‘look for love’
that happens to be true
I still believe it’s out there and
it’s looking for us too.
Blogging 101: Assignment 1 Introduce Yourself
I started writing late in life, after some things had happened, after some losses and victories, after some pain, after some memories were made. It’s been an interesting journey, and this is not where I saw myself in my younger days.
There are a lot of us who can probably say that, but it’s what you do with it when you realize it that matters.
That being said, I’m glad I’m here. I’ve learned some things about me on the way, things that I liked about myself, things I achieved that I didn’t think I was capable of, and I’m looking forward to what the future holds for me.
There have, of course, been setbacks, but I’m not the type to sit down and accept defeat. I guess I got that from my father, and watching him do his projects. He never took a short cut when it got difficult, and a shortcut was available. And the one time he was tempted to do it I was so surprised that he even told me he was thinking about it, he changed his mind, and we did it the right way.
But I knew then that he was slowing down…
So the characters and lands and stories are here; the young and old are here; the lovers and the warriors are here, the men and women, the children, the dragons, the demons, the magic (both dark and light) are all clamoring to get out while they can, and since I don’t believe in holding onto things or people against their will, I’m going to free as many as I can in the time that remains.
My goal, quite simply, is to write full time for the rest of my life, and leave a body of work that helps, entertains, provokes thought, and establishes across our man-made boundaries of insignificant trivialities (race, class, religion, etc) a common bond.
I want my readers to be, in a word, immersed in the worlds of my imagination, and to come out better for the time they invested there.
It’s a lofty goal, but why aim low?
***********************
The Muse came into my office, looking like new pearls.
Guess that made me the swine.
She moved in close, her hands over my shoulders. I stood up, not wanting her to trap me. I had other things to do…she closed the distance again, standing a little away from me, but close enough to be distracting.
That perfume…like a new book at sunrise.
“But Alfred, don’t you understand” she said, her hand cool and soft on my cheek “it’s difficult to find an agent?”
I took her hand away, walked back across the office behind my desk, took out a pack of Luckies and a lighter.
“Yeah, I do. So let me ask you, doll,” I lit the cigarette, squinting at her curvy beauty through the unfurling, infernal smoke. … “When was it easy?”
The pen
in the
hands
of the
old man
Hands
light and spotted
as
long-forgotten
ancient scrolls
on a
dusty shelf
Hands
that will soon
crumble to pieces
in
time’s cruel crucible
He takes
his thoughts
and
writes them down
They are as
stones
in the path
to mark his life
and its
passing
His pages
become much like
his crumbling
hands,
long-forgotten
until
A curious mind
plucks his thoughts
like ripe berries
from the dusty
shelf.
© Alfred W. Smith Jr. 2015
Author’s Note: Because although you didn’t ask, I wrote it anyway…Chapter 3
Beyond Panic 