Chapter 6

Warm surgical steel caressed Berry's neck and the supple underside of her chin as she snuggled gently against the blunt side of Caroline's Farberware fillet knife. Even in the dull illumination of sleeping electronics, the knife's finish shot dim, dazzling lines of reflected light towards the ceiling. Caroline lay on the bed next to her; wearing silk pajamas Berry didn't remember her having on the night before. The consciousness of texture, however, led towards half sleeping luxuriation, which quickly grew boring as Caroline seemed too dead asleep to notice her sleeping partner's early morning stirrings. Berry's ascension into the waking world struggled against her natural passivity like a juggernaught, bringing her slowly and unwillingly towards Saturday morning wakefulness.

Berry inched her way out of Caroline's bed, looking forward to the solitude and security of having a sleeping lover in the next room. After all, the soft tantalizing touch from behind caressing the back of the neck or the scented recess of the ear didn't happen on its own. Such seduction required a level of orchestration that could only be achieved by artful separation.

Intimacy is a direct result of comprehensive knowledge, and nothing gave Berry that thrill quite like examining the personal effects of her lovers. The color of a curtain, whether there were pictures or posters, the state of the furniture, all these criterion educated her to the passions and artistries of her intimate companions. Berry surveyed the efficiency's main room, picking up and examining trifles that sparked her curiosity, and then carefully placing them back in the positions she'd found them in.

The knife, however, slept gently in her sleeve.

What was this? Thug's invitation! Berry picked up the still remarkably pristine tract. The names "Mrs. Black" and "1st Holiness Pentecostal Church" reminded her of something she'd read in an occult sampler somewhere, or possibly a book of saints. Luckily, there lounging in its own dark crystalline opulence, was Caroline's sleeping computer. Berry slid into the wheeled, teacup-like chair and fell into the arcane sea of endless information.

Surprisingly, there was a Wikipedia article on Mrs. Black, and after a quick scan, Berry saw the same picture as the one on Caroline's invitation in the body. She'd heard the story before somewhere but she'd had no idea that it was in town. Considering the nature and history of the place it was no wonder it didn't attract the same kind of tourism most locations with that nature of story did.

Standing to stretch her burning tendons in the early morning hours, Berry realized the knife was still carefully tucked in her sleeve. Her proprietary senses tingled, and she ceremoniously rinsed it and respectfully placed it back in its wooden block. Sliding back into her pattern of peeping investigation she opened the refrigerator door, revealing cheap beer, a large pot of beans, assorted odd vegetables, including a half eaten head of cabbage. A candy or nothing girl herself, the most appetizing looking thing she found was a sweet potato, and even that was a stretch. Behind a bloody tub of chicken livers she found a carton of pineapple juice, easily moochable. Helping herself to a full day's supply of vitamin C, she settled back down behind the computer to finish reading.

Caroline awoke to the sound of a brief burst of running water, followed by a few clunks and random shufflings from Berry's explorations. Yawning and stretching her way to her feet, she wandered into the main room where she discovered Berry perusing the Internet. Disheveled bits of hair that had broken from Berry's nighttime pigtails formed a dark halo around her head in the strengthening morning light.

In an uninhibited moment, Caroline placed her right hand gently on Berry's lean, defined neck, then snuggled the bridge of her nose in the warm recess under Berry's jaw. Berry turned in appreciation, placing her left hand on Caroline's tousled head and casually continued her search for information on Mrs. Black.

"Say, that's the picture on the tract, isn't it?" Caroline inquired.
"Uh-huh. The name seemed familiar when I thought of it this morning, so I decided to have a look around. Mrs. Black is apparently quite remarkable" Berry explained.
"Did I tell you about my dream last night?" interjected Caroline.
"No...." Berry hesitated. She knew how bad Caroline's dreams could be. That was part of the danger that made Berry so enchanted with her. Berry knew Caroline was dangerous and unstable, but she didn't act dangerous and unstable. It was almost as if Caroline were the perfect liar. Taking a deep breath, Caroline explained:
"The dream was short, maybe the shortest one. The woman in that," she pointed to the screen, " picture was in my dream, telling me my dreams were dangerous, that I wasn't safe there, or something."
"So, she can really do that?" Berry asked, incredulous. After all, these sorts of witch stories were all over, but almost none of them were actually true, and those that were were still never current.
"Either I'm crazy, or she did. I saw her in another dream before, in the same country church, waving at me. If there's something you know about her, I need to know it too before maybe it's too late," Caroline concluded, looking worried.

Berry clicked on the largest, most believable article she'd found yet. Apparently there were a lot of people who hated Mrs. Black over the years; there were conflicting stories about things she had done. Some stories said she stole all the children from a church nursery, cooked them in some secret recipe, and made an elixir that kept her alive eternally. Others said she'd poisoned a communion with syphilis. Still others said she'd never done anything wrong, and she was just a poor old woman who'd outlived all her friends and lost her birth certificate. The most complete article, by a student of religious sociology in Berkeley named Allison Rice, said something even more outlandish than that.

According to Rice, Mrs. Black was born in 1809 to Phillip Bones and Goodie Franklin Bones in her parents home. Phillip Bones was flunked out of seminary correspondence school for holding "primitive fundamentalist beliefs." Goodie Bones was a woman; apparently no record other than her genealogy remained from that more sexist time. They named their only child Lillith Ivory Bones, after her maternal great-grandmother

Phillip Bones became a cobbler, but his passion for the faith led him to become deacon of 1st Holiness Pentecostal Church. According to Rice's research, Mrs. Black was saved and baptized at the tender age of 3 years old, remarkably young even at that time, on Easter Sunday in 1812. From that time forward, church records indicated she never missed a single service, not even during her seven later pregnancies.

At the age of 16, Lillith Ivory Bones married Conscientious Adam Black, normally referred to as "Mr. C. Adam Black" in records. Two years later, Mrs. Black gave birth to Stalwart Marcus Black, and had six other children over the next fourteen years, two of which, Patience Alice Black and Fortitude Richard Black died of dysentery in 1835, survived by their older brother Marcus, and two younger siblings Precision Adam Black and Chastity Angelina Black. Afterward, two younger children were born, Purity Gertrude Black and Temperance Mary Black.

Rice's in depth biography continued, mentioning the death of Mrs. Black's husband by being kicked to death by a mule in 1852, and the appointment of Mrs. Black that same year as church midwife.

At this point, Rice's biography became more interesting.

In 1854, Mrs. Black revived a child declared dead by a licensed doctor after a drowning incident. In 1855, Mrs. Black cured a case of polio using an unknown tea and a salve containing, reportedly, an extraction of poison ivy. In 1857, she was prosecuted for practicing medicine without a license. During the trial, the head prosecutor was diagnosed with smallpox. After a visit from Mrs. Black, the prosecutor was cured and all charges were dropped. In 1858, Mrs. Black performed an amputation of a gangrenous toe, which reportedly grew back over three months with another mysterious ointment. In 1860, Mrs. Black "gave a stern talking to" to a young mentally challenged boy who was disturbing a sermon. Afterward, the child was reported as having "above average intelligence" in studies.

The juiciest part, however, was not initiated by Mrs. Black at all. In 1861, the bodies of three young black men were found under a compost heap on the property of one Reverend Victor Belforte, Pastor of 1st Holiness Pentecostal Church. The bodies had been beaten, sodomized, and eventually lynched.

There was never any investigation or charges filed. Rev. Belforte wasn't even excommunicated. According to Rice and some of the more believable accounts, several motions were filed in the church minutes by Mrs. Black herself demanding investigation by the church internally of Rev. Belforte, all of which were voted down unanimously. Rice provided a copy of a letter to the editor of The Tribune by a Mrs. C. Adam Black, demanding investigation of Belforte. In response, the editor defended Belforte by claiming the evidence was as setup by the "true sodomites" who supposedly chose Belforte because of his vehement stance against homosexuality.

What made this case noteworthy in that time period, according to Rice, was the obvious homosexuality, and not the act of racist lynching, which was common. Basically, there was no investigation because no one cared what happened to three blacks, even if it was the heinous act of violent anal rape and murder. To compound the issue, all three bodies were the same level of decomposition, insinuating that the crime was committed by an organized group. Common knowledge was that lynch mobs were organized by white churches, and in this case 1st Holiness Pentecostal Church.

Publicly, Mrs. Black did nothing mysterious. However, from the date of the discovery, not a single female member of 1st Holiness Pentecostal Church became pregnant, at a time when child mortality was a whopping 50%. None of Mrs. Black's five living children had been members of the church for two years previous to the incident, for unknown reasons. For two years, not a single pregnancy occurred among the thriving congregation of young, active members.

Then Rice threw the icing on the cake.

In 1863, Mary Folkshire, a pregnant woman visiting from Carolina and relative of a member of the congregation, attended Sunday service. Within thirty minutes, Mary had a violent miscarriage.

Berry stopped to read that line again, and tried to imagine what a "violent miscarriage" must look like. Caroline merely shuddered.

After that incident, a large portion of the congregation split and joined another nearby Pentecostal church. Due to the now infamous story of Mary Folkshire, church records revealed no new members. 1st Holiness Pentecostal slowly dwindled down over the years with no incidents of note until 1923, when the last surviving member other than Mrs. Black died of congestive heart failure. Mrs. Black had been living off a church pension since she was appointed midwife in 1852, and the church assets were rolled over into a care-taking fund. Upon Rice's investigation, it was discovered that Mrs. Black still held the deed on the church, and furthermore Mrs. Black was never issued a death certificate. No attempt has ever been made to have Mrs. Black declared legally dead due to the political cumbersomeness of the church's history.

Caroline did some quick mental math.
"Wait... that means Mrs. Black is almost 200 years old!" she exclaimed.
Berry sat there for an empty moment, still assimilating what all this meant.
"I think this is real..." Berry said quietly, " I mean this is really happening to us..." Berry had seen Caroline the night she stabbed herself, but she'd assumed that was simple insanity, a plague that ran rampant in even her best friends. Berry herself, certainly, was not famous for her mental stability. After all, Berry knew Thug. He and Raz used to hang out by the bar on weeknights while she tried to get free dances from the girls at the Velvet Glove, back before the cops shut that place down. Thug believed in Mrs. Black enough to make him nervous around Caroline for some strange reason, as if he knew something no one else did. Thug was no sucker, either. If he was involved, this was serious business.

However, today, Berry had Caroline all to her self, and that, as the British say, was a more pressing matter.

Animal blood, if you're indiscriminate, is remarkably cheap and easy to get. Sure, you can't just buy it by the bucket at your corner grocery store, but it comes free with all sorts of delectable organs. Hearts, giblets, livers, they all come floating in their own delicious juices by the tub.

Human blood is potent, to be sure, but a mage that uses his own too willingly ends up too faint and scarred to be of much use afterwards. While preferable, the blood of others is difficult to obtain in any substantial amount willingly. Thus, animal blood is the staple choice of the working class diviner who wishes to avoid criminal charges.

Caroline rubbed her right hand over the fresh scab on her stomach, and then looked at the scar on her left hand. She had always been clumsy and prone to accidents, but she'd never thought of herself as being scarred or hacked up looking before. Berry had taken the car and a little money to the wine store to get a magnum of something red; Caroline still had no idea what kind of wine she liked. Regardless, it would be nice if she'd get here already....

Todd strolled into the virgin apartment nonchalantly, with a bottle of dark pink, almost red sparkling wine in either arm, cradled like a set of breast-feeding twins.
"Hey there, Carl," he said, turning Caroline's head away from her old addiction.
"Todd, where's Berry?" Caroline responded, not knowing how to react emotionally to Todd's welcome but uninvited and unexpected presence.
"Oh, Raz finally tracked Berry down to the liquor store. I don't know if you've ever seen them fight, but it gets pretty nasty. We spent three hours trying to break into Raz's car; that crap's not as easy as they make it look on TV," explained Todd.
"Wait... where's my car then?" Caroline asked, trying to tie up the loose ends of her derailed evening.
Todd struggled with the bottle in his right hand, "Oh, I drove it..." POP! The cork flew out of the bottle, hard enough to snap the filament in the ceiling light as it struck, "Sorry about that," Todd rallied, "But I don't think we'll have any use for the light for a while."

"Wake up, Caroline. It's me."

A soft, steady nudge poked Caroline in her shoulder.
"Todd?" Caroline asked, snuggling deeper into her fleshy pillow.
"No, it's not Todd," said the voice, only slightly drier and deeper than Todd's voice. "You're asleep, in a real dream. I'm here to help you."
"Who are you?" Caroline asked in her sleep trance. A human face appeared as Caroline rose to greet the dream phantom, remarkably similar to Todd's. The eyes, however, were made of pure, clear glass, revealing the gray and crimson workings behind them.
"You may call me Glass," said the demon.

"I'll tell you everything you need to know, but you have to let me. Will you accept my story, and all of it? I would never want to intrude on your dreams, after all," said the Glass smoothly. At this moment, Caroline felt all the gravid power of the dream-trance leave her, regaining her full but limited logical processes. Knowledge, after all, was power, and all this Glass wanted to do was educate her. Maybe this was one of those things, like demolition chemistry, where a little knowledge was a lot more dangerous than none at all?
"Yes," she assented, and the power of the trance took hold once more.

"First of all, please let me explain just who, and what, I am. It could be said with some accuracy that I'm your guardian angel. Certainly, I was created by God to watch over and protect you. It's a little more complicated than that, but that would take a thousand years to explain. At any rate, as an angel my specialty is dreams. I'm sorry you couldn't stop the plane crash; I thought maybe there was some way you could stop it."

The Glass paused for a second, considering his options. The plink of some sort of flying insect hitting a windowpane rattled in the background.

"Do you like Todd? I sent you Todd, because I knew you needed someone in your life to make you happy. You seemed lonely in your quest for knowledge. I, of course, always support education. I want you to think of this as a learning experience. You're perfectly safe with me."

The Glass's voice dripped with honey and wisdom, like the maitre de of an expensive Asian restaurant.

"Now, the dreams that I give you, they all come true. They're complex metaphors, but they're all true. Just figure out the symbols, and the dreams tell you what's going to happen, or in some cases, what has happened or is happening. This is not one of those dreams, though sweetling, this is a real dream, just like normal. I'm not real in any physical sense; I only exist through and in dreams."

There was a faint cracking sound, and the tinkle of a tiny piece of broken glass. There was a brief buzz, and then the Glass's hand snapped out and crushed a tiny black bumblebee that floated near his face, flicking its mangled corpse into one of the corners of the dream space.

"I don't want you to be scared, Caroline. Maybe you'll never see me again; I just want you to know that the dreams aren't from some sort of scary dream world, someone who cares about you sent them, and that person is me. I'm not going to lie to you, or try to frighten you, or tell you what to do. There are people out there that just want to use you for the dreams. Don't let them fool you...."

Three more bees entered, this time with no tell tale sounds, each from a different direction. The Glass crushed two of them with Shiva-like quickness, but one of them got through and stung the Glass's temporary dream form on the face.

"Not everyone is like me, Caroline. Someone is trying to cheat the rules," the Glass said, his face beginning to swell. Veins in his forehead began to pop out, and his cheeks flushed bright red.

"It's not fair... there's been no convocation...this is a real dream... that witch should have no power here..." moaned the Glass, as his face continued to swell to inhuman proportions. The wound turned crimson red as it grew, then purple. It formed a white head of purulent material at its center the size of a pea, the swelling itself the size of a grapefruit protruding from the right side of the Glass's face. The Glass's voice became muffled as the swelling filled his mouth.
"That witch.... Mrs. Black... she doesn't want me to warn you... to protect you..." The Glass gasped. He leaned garishly close to Caroline's face, and the giant cyst on his mask burst into a malevolent mix of blood and pestilence...

Caroline started up from her dream, gasping. Who was this Mrs. Black? Worse, what was she?

Chapter 5

On a sleepy Friday lunch break, Caroline pulled two steaming bowls of leftover red beans and rice out of the microwave and placed one in front of Jaleesa on the cramped break room table.

"Berry's been begging me for your number all week," mentioned Jaleesa as she plunged her plastic spoon into her unevenly heated rice, mixing the scalding outside edges with the lukewarm center, " do you want me to give it to her?"
"Wait, you mean she's been asking and you haven't told me?!" whined Caroline.
"Meh, Berry's kind of worthless," explained Jaleesa, "all she ever wants to do is get fucked up and club hop. I figured it wasn't your thing."
"Did she tell you about last weekend? We had a blast!" countered Caroline.
"Well, to be honest, Berry's a dyke, and I figured she was just crushing on you. I know you're freaked out by that kind of shit," admitted Jaleesa.

For the first time since they'd become friends, Caroline realized that there were some things she just couldn't confide in Jaleesa anymore. Up to this point, Caroline had never done anything Jaleesa didn't write the book on. Apparently sexual deviance was the kind of vice even Jaleesa wouldn't touch. Drugs, alcohol, violence, infidelity, Jaleesa had never failed to understand and have the answers for it all. It was a kind of loneliness even Caroline's reclusive lifestyle couldn't prepare her for.

"Please, Berry couldn't handle all this," Caroline said in what she hoped was a decent copy of Jaleesa's voice, pushing up both breasts to emphasis what on another woman would be luscious curves, but in Caroline's case was more like just hanging skin. Jaleesa's head cocked to the side suspiciously, but she decided to get back on topic.
"So, you want her to have your number or not? Or do you need a REAL woman?" questioned Jaleesa, actively diffusing any latent homosexuality with traditional locker room flair.
"I think I'm mainly going to stick with Todd," Caroline replied, "at least he doesn't have to bring his penis in a bag." Jaleesa chuckled, and Caroline relaxed a bit. Caroline had never realized how difficult it was for freaks to fit into so-called "straight" society. Racism isn't the only kind of prejudice, after all.

"I don't have Todd's number, though, and I know Berry has it," continued Caroline, thinking quickly. She did after all, want Berry's number.
"Mmm... you have a point. Hand me that old flyer over there, and a pencil," requested Jaleesa. Obediently, Caroline handed Jaleesa a small brick of Post-It Notes and a Bic mechanical pencil over the table. In bold, looping letters, Jaleesa wrote the numbers 652-0013 and slid the brick back across the table to Caroline.
"There you go. Now I'm going to clock back in so I can get paid for sleeping."

As five o'clock rolled around, Caroline became more and more anxious about calling Berry. Last weekend had been one of the greatest, strangest, and most frightening of her life, and the idea of that being the be-all and end-all of her life scared her in the desperate way a junkie is scared of losing all her dope connections.

For example: What about Todd? They'd had fun last weekend, but she'd never remembered to give him her number. He'd never given her his number, after all. Was it just a one-night stand? Did Todd sleep with every new girl that showed up to The Fool's Card? Berry was Raz's fiancé, though, and Raz spent a lot of time at Todd's.

Thinking like that made Caroline feel guilty and manipulative, even though she was pretty sure that's what Jaleesa would do in her situation. Still, here was Berry's phone number, and if there was one thing Caroline knew, it was what Berry wanted her around for.

Jaleesa had gotten a phone call from her married daughter earlier in the afternoon and barely responded to Caroline's wave on her way out. Caroline slid slowly into her car, savoring the freedom only granted on Fridays. She still had half a pack of cigarettes left over from last week in her center console, so she pulled one out, careful to leave a single inverted cigarette in the box. It was a superstition harkening back to her days of smoking old butts behind the school and trying not to get caught, but as a non habitual smoker, she'd never had enough packs of cigarettes pass through her hands to make it an inconvenience.

Caroline took a long drag of smooth but cheap menthol smoke from her 100-millimeter cigarette. She picked up her bedraggled and much ignored cell phone and dialed Berry's number. Already, she began to feel the glossy slick sensation movie stars must feel schmoozing socially over the phone from the patent leather seats of their limousines. At that point, it was a shame when the robotic voice of Berry's answering machine picked up. Rallying suavely, Caroline used her smokiest voice to allure Berry into a few drinks at The Fool's Card. Even if Todd was just a one-night stand, he wasn't the only fish in the sea. However, if she were going to ignore the attentions of people like Straight Mike, she'd need Berry to pull her away from their blandishments.

It was 6:43 in the evening when Berry had finally finished putting on her make-up. Being presentable to the world was on a long list of things Berry had to finish, or risk spending the rest of the day feeling "unsettled" as she liked to think of it. Perfection, after all, was not a state achieved with mere intent; only through compulsive measurement could some form of order be maintained. Half-measures and dabbling had long since been broken from her nature after years of dynamic emotional turmoil. Controlling the state of her life was impossible, but her hair was definitely a known variable.

Berry turned from the mirror and walked towards her baby: a sleek, matte black phone. Inside its memory was the combined result of five years of social networking proficiency.

She removed the stubby black umbilical chord that connected it to Raz's computer. It's R2-D2-like beep of dismay at being separated from the big mother power grid sounded cute to her ears in its own special way. The only difference between her and the homeless was that tiny black box. It was a dependency, to be sure, but luckily there's a short list of dependencies still condoned by society.

A message from a new number? Hopefully some schmuck hadn't dropped her number to some random horny loser again. A familiar voice, Carl's voice, was on the message, doing what sounded like an impression of a drag queen with a decades long smoking habit.

The contents of the message, however, were quite pleasing to the ears:

"Hey there, Berry. Whadya say you give me a call and we what we did last weekend?" Carl was naïve, true, but it seemed like she had some kind of untapped well of creative perversity inside her. Carl was acceptably attractive, but by no means beautiful. It was the freshness of her personality that attracted Berry to her like a moth to a flame. She'd never met anyone so good at hiding their sexually deviant fantasies. Considering how many Berry had to hide, she could do well to take notes.

Slipping on a mental mask of socialism over her already painted face, she dialed the number Carl left on her phone.

"Hello?" said the familiar, insecure voice.
"Hey there, cutie!" Berry replied, "So... The Fool's Card at 8:00?"
"Of course," Carl said back, in that cute little 'I don't know I sound like a drag queen' voice.
"See you then." Berry closed.
Then, almost as if stolen from a bad 80's movie about New York, Carl said, "Ciao."

Berry could tell this was going to be another crazy night.

Caroline strolled through the shadowed doors of The Fool's Card attempting to coolly smoke an over priced black clove cigarette she'd had offered by some random stranger. The bar was as empty as a church on Super Bowl Sunday, and Raz sat disconsolately drinking overpriced draft alone at the bar. Straight Mike was blissfully preoccupied talking to a pair of obvious drag queens while trying to sip his rum and coke huskily through a straw propped between his fingers.

Caroline tapped Raz on the shoulder, "You wouldn't happen to know where Berry is, would you?"
Raz turned slowly and drawled, "You didn't really expect her to be on time, did you? Besides, she's still driving my car."
"Wait, you mean you're stuck here?" Caroline asked.
"Hah! No, I'm technically stranded at Todd's. Berry has a bad habit of running off with my car while I'm passed out 'so I don't drive drunk'. It's one of the many reasons I'm over there so much." Raz explained
"So, where's Todd?" questioned Caroline, looking around the bar disappointedly
"Oh, Todd's grading papers in his office on campus." Raz told her.
"Hmm.... So, what's going on?" said Caroline, steeling herself for a night of crying alcoholism with Raz.
"Well, I don't know if you know him, but Thug showed up to the club tonight. Last time that happened, someone had sold Straight Mike some fake X, and Thug ended up ripping the guy's face off" gossiped Raz.
"Wait, which one is he?" asked Caroline. She'd seen a lot of bad bar fight movies, and wanted to be prepared if guys in cowboy hats showed up chucking bottles and waving switchblades.
"Thug's the one in the overpriced suit smoking a cigar," pointed out Raz in his detached drawl.
"Wait, which one?" Caroline asked, squinting in the dimly lit club. A cherry the size of a dime glowed into existence after shedding its load of ash. It partially illuminated a shaven face and shades, under what, against all odds, appeared to be a fedora hat.

It was as if Jake Blues himself had gotten out of prison after ten years of fighting in the Folsom Boxing league, sitting alone behind a rickety table in a seedy niche bar.

"Don't stare." Raz warned her in his easygoing monotone. "Thug is probably here on business. He used to work security at The Velvet Glove; he's not so bad to hang out with. He's probably looking for Star again."
"Why would he be looking for Star?" Caroline asked curiously, completely ignorant of who Star was.
"Star's had a coke problem for a while. Whenever she gets in debt or stops doing shows, Thug shows up, takes her to rehab, and she comes back a few weeks later with a couple of extra pounds and religion."

"Oh shit! Scar's here! Watch this, this is going to be funny!"

A tall, lanky but muscular man with a pierced eyebrow entered the bar, paid his door fee, and strolled up to the bartender. As he got closer, Caroline noticed a huge scar extending from the corner of his mouth midway into his cheek. He was shirtless under his leather vest, sporting a waxed chest and gauged nipple rings. As he went to order his drink, the bartender whispered in his ear and pointed down the bar towards the dime-sized replica of hell floating beneath the gaudy fedora. Then the bartender reached into his own tip jar and placed three dollars, the exact amount of the cover charge, into Scar's outside vest pocket. Swallowing visibly, Scar broke into a cold sweat. Briskly turning, he walked out of the bar at a pace that would be considered jogging by any other standard.

"Ha ha!" Raz chuckled, "normally Straight Mike and Scar just ignore each other these days, but it looks like Scar's not taking any chances tonight."
"You mean that scar on his face... that was Thug?" assumed Caroline.
"Well... yeah. It's a small scene. You get in a fight with somebody, you're still gonna see them around. Unless you're Thug, of course," Raz corrected.

A pair of car keys slapped Raz in the forehead and fell into the empty cup in front of him at the bar.
"You wanted these?" Berry said demurely, posing in front of the bar. Raz sighed, turned towards the bartender, and ordered a stout mixed drink.
"So, did I miss anything?" Berry asked Caroline. Raz had already withdrawn into his alcohol, the position he always seemed to be in when Berry was around.
"Some guy came in, saw Thug was here, and left. That's about all I know." Caroline supplied.
"Was it Scar?" Berry giggled.
Caroline nodded, "I think so."
Berry shrieked with schoolgirl laughter, "I guess this means Star's back on blow, then. That's weird... she didn't seem coked out when I saw her last night..."

Berry went slightly stiff, as though her puppeteer had raised her strings a little too high.
"Oh crap...Straight Mike is looking over here. Damnit Raz! Stop making us look so single!" Berry exclaimed, punctuating her exclamation by slapping Raz on the back of the head. In response, Raz chugged his drink and ordered another. The bartender solemnly served the empty cup containing Raz's keys to Berry.

Meanwhile, instead of coming over to annoy the two girls at the bar, Straight Mike walked over towards Thug and whispered in his ear. He pointed towards the trio, and then slunk back over to the queens he'd been talking to previously. Thug took a large hit from his cigar, and killed his neat whiskey. He thumped the cherry from his cigar, wrapped the stub in a napkin, and placed it in his inside pocket. The cherry fell from his fingers in a tiny spray of sparks and dropped cleanly into the ashtray in front of him. He pulled a small card from his suit coat pocket, his hands cupping formally around the card like an usher carrying communion.

"Excuse me. Ms. Parker?" said Thug politely. Caroline turned. It was her last name, after all. And last time she checked, none of the people at the bar with her knew that. She didn't know how to respond, but Thug was being polite, and Raz didn't think he was all bad.
"Yes?" she replied. What else did she have to say to him?
"Mrs. Black has sent me to cordially invite you to 1st Holiness Pentecostal Church Sunday" Thug said formally. A bead of sweat formed on his forehead and trickled down under his black-framed shades to drip from his chin. His eyes were covered by the dark, almost matte black lenses, hiding his expression.
"She asked me to give you this..." he continued, and handed her the card.
"Thank you," Caroline said instinctually. Thug sighed with relief.
In a much coarser tone, he parted," Alright, you guys have a nice evening." Thug turned and left almost as fast as Scar had, nervously relighting his cigar on the way out.

"What was that all about?" Caroline asked Berry.
"I'm not sure. What does the card say?" Berry asked with kittenish curiosity. Caroline looked at the card, and realized it was actually a bible tract. The tract was folded in a Z pattern, and the front panel was a picture of a cottage-like church surrounded by a tall, thick hedge. A black wrought iron fence, in turn, surrounded the hedge. The address read 646 Cottage Church Lane.

Exactly like her dream.

"I think I want to get out of here," Caroline told Berry. Berry was still holding the plastic cup with Raz's keys in it, a parody of ice. Raz had killed another drink since Berry had shown up. The bartender gave Berry a knowing look.
"Yeah, I know how you feel. Whatever can make Thug sweat is something I don't want to stick around for," Berry agreed. She took Caroline's hand, and led her to Raz's car.
"Wanna go to your place?" Berry asked.
"Yeah, why not?" Caroline answered. Nonchalantly, Berry opened Raz's car door, locked it, and then threw the keys in the driver's side seat.
"If Raz is sober enough to jimmy the lock with a coat hanger, he'll be sober enough to drive home," Berry explained. Then she reached into Caroline's purse, snatched her keys, and raced her to the car.

It's startling how big of a bong you can fit in a tiny purse.

Grayish white smoke filled the air of Caroline's efficiency. It appeared, however, that under all of Berry's façade of social sophistication, down inside she was just trying to re-enact the 80's cartoon "Gem" with her life, with her playing one of the 'bad girl' characters. Thanks to the power of file sharing technology, Berry had access to Rainbow Bright, Strawberry Shortcake, Punky Brewster, and all the other cartoons that had filled the void in her life left by her parents' complete inability to raise a child, let alone coexist peacefully with one another.

While Caroline proudly displayed her computer skill in downloading cartoons, Berry snooped through the house looking for a nice fuzzy blanket. Lesbian seduction, after all, required slightly different tools than the heterosexual kind. When she came back, Caroline was holding a bright, shiny knife in her left hand, with that strange, dreamy expression she'd had that first night they'd made love. Caroline's eyes never left Berry's as she gently drew the blade across her own lower abdomen.

At first, no blood exited the wound as the pressure of the blade reduced circulation to the affected flesh. Berry stood there, holding the fluffy blue blanket, as blood began to well from the shallow cut and formed droplets that hung from Caroline's slight love-handles. And to think, she was the one attempting the seduction. A call of blood, however, cannot be denied, at least not by Berry.

Berry fell to her knees, and pulled down Caroline's boyish khaki's and panties. Fresh blood was not to be wasted on mere clothing.

The Glass gleamed happily. Everything was going according to plan.

In Caroline's dream, she sat in a cozy, candle lit room. Across from her sat Mrs. Black. How she knew this, she didn't quite know. Mrs. Black smiled, and handed her a cup of tea.
"One lump or two?" she asked pleasantly.
"Two please," Caroline answered. Tea, she could deal with. If the worst thing about Mrs. Black was dreams about tea, she was in the clear.
"So, do you know what's been happening to you?" Mrs. Black asked in the same tone one would use to ask about the weather. Uncertainty opened a black hole inside Caroline.
"Not really..." She stammered in answer.
"Make sure you come and see me at the church then, dearie. It's not safe here for you. In fact, you'd better wake up right now."

And she did.

It was a show cut, a mere scratch. The kind of thing fakirs and shamans have used for centuries to prove their impunity to pain. It burned more that it stung, but that was most likely due to Berry's intervention. Berry lay sleeping at this point, snuggling a fancy and overpriced knife Caroline had been given as part of a set. She'd never needed to use a nine-inch fillet knife, so it had sat unused in its wooden block. Maybe she'd used it once to open a tub of chicken livers or something, but it was curious to see Berry act so attached to it.

Caroline nudged Berry, who was now soundly asleep. Oh well, there was always morning...

Chapter 4

The funny thing about prophecy is how boring and mundane it can be. Sure, seers have prophetic dreams about disasters, wars, famines, and fires, but the ones that tend to be more reliable are the ones who have dreams about traffic tickets, broken dishes, finding a quarter on the street, or walking into a room with a blown light bulb. You just don't hear about mailbox psychics, who can tell if they've received a bill or a check just by resting their hands on their mailbox. You don't hear about psychics who can look at an old man driving a Cadillac and can tell whether or not that turn signal means "left turn" or "left on." In fact, you could have a prophetic dream every night for a week and have all of them come true and not even notice, if they were about things like gas stations or what outfit a friend is going to wear. The ability to finish other people's sentences is normally considered more annoyance than clairvoyance, in the final analysis.

Just as the stripes of a tiger can look as mundane as overgrown underbrush to the untrained eye, the dreams of a seer can appear to be just normal dreams to the uninitiated. Those who have learned to cope with tiger attacks wear masks on the backs of their heads so tigers think they're being watched, and don't strike.

The Glass gleamed smugly, considering this. You can't wear a mask on the back of your mind.

Six concerned emails. Considering that Caroline was by no means e-popular, that was a lot. Sure, there was a bunch of irrelevant spam breaking it all up, but it was comforting to know so many complete strangers actually gave a damn about her well being.

As an Internet nerd, Caroline could only respond one way; she made a topic bragging about sex with Todd. None of these people would ever meet her or him, so she felt free to embellish as only a hardcore forum regular could. In the thread, she described her own body as hard and lean, with rippled abs and perfectly rounded hips. Instead of describing Todd as dorkishly emaciated and covered with stubbly once-shaved body hair, she described him as having the body of a middle weight prize fighter.

It was a boring weeknight. You can't expect one good weekend to turn someone into the life of the party.

It was strange, the way things she had cared about so much meant so little to her now. There was a time when she would have happily spent a weekend arguing that the only difference between Andrew Jackson and Hitler was that the Jews had more allies than the Native Americans did. These days, though, she was more concerned with art, wine, and food, all things that are best enjoyed with company.

Caroline had had such a great time over the past few days, she had difficulty believing she ever settled for whiling her hours away trying to explain to some 13 year old that no matter how big of an ass hat George W. Bush may be, he's not a fascist dictator because he hasn't abolished the House and Senate yet.

For once in her life, Caroline had felt wanted, smart, funny, and capable. Her acne and bad fashion sense had ruined any chance of her being a socialite in high school, but when she was at Todd's, she felt she was part of the in-crowd. The Internet had always reinforced her sense of alienation. Just being a female user in a male dominated medium had destroyed any real empathy she could have felt for her fellow posters.

Berry and Raz, though, made her feel like a real human being. There was nothing she could do or say that would make them reject her; they actually appreciated her quirks. She could suck the eyeballs out of a live rabbit, and not only would they not be disgusted, they'd be fascinated. She'd never thought of herself as half the extrovert they acted like she was, but the more she saw of the social scene around her, the more she realized how great of a time she'd been missing out on. The best part was the feeling that things were only getting started.

She still had to sleep sometime, though.

Tired, and with that boiled-eyeball feeling that only a boring night on the computer can give, Caroline trudged into bed. Slug-like with sleep, she oozed out of her clothes on the way to the bedroom, leaving her dirty laundry on the floor behind her like some sort of slime trail. She didn't so much as climb into bed as she did inject herself into it. Almost instinctually, her left hand crept out from beneath the depths of her quilts and sheets and laid her glinting glasses on the pile of books she used for a night stand next to her bed.

The Glass smiled, as much as a thing such as the Glass could be said to smile. In this place, even when it's ability to touch the world was weak; the Glass still had the power to command.

Soft green light shined off of two small reflective discs. In this world, there was always a crack, and it had been found. The left foot slid from its hiding place towards the floor, and the left hand pushed away from its soft support. The left eye opened, and led the foot to the place where the reunion could occur.

The hand found its tools there in a small, recessed alcove. The knife was found in a dark wooden block, and the blood revealed itself in a cold closet. Soon, more blood would be needed. Purer and more plentiful, yes, but for the purposes of this night and until the spiral came around again, this blood was sufficient.

The Hand thought about all of this very carefully. It was only alive during the convocation, after all, and besides, thinking on its own was still a novel experience for it...

Caroline's dreams were myriad over the next few days, but all were equally and thankfully mundane. This time, she was a tiny hamster in an exercise wheel. At first, walking in the wheel seemed futile to her logical mind, but she noticed with each revolution of the cage the bars grew thicker and stronger.

With the compulsion only a dream can carry, she continued running in the track. Soon, she began to notice her body lengthen and strengthen along with the bars of the cage. Her tiny hamster ears rounded and dropped as she ran, her little forepaws became more articulate as her rear legs lengthened, and her gait began to change from quadrapedal to bipedal as she passed through an ape-like proto human form.

The cage continued to expand as she ran, her fur receding and being replaced by pale sweating skin. The spokes of the wheel flattened to a solid floor and slowed down to more of a walking pace. On the left edge, however, the spokes sprang upright into chest high tripods, each topped with a block of dry, familiar Styrofoam.

On the right edge white and yellow roses appeared, pre cut and resting in trays. The wheel slowed to a strolling pace, and Caroline began plucking the flowers with her right hand and arranging them into the floral stands that had formed on her left.

She placed a single yellow rose into each block as it passed. Each tray held three yellow roses, three white roses, and a single five petaled violet. The wheel was made of twenty-eight flat panels, each three feet wide and four feet long, each panel with a tray on the right and a floral arrangement stand on the left.

After she'd placed a single yellow rose in each of the twenty-eight blocks, she placed another six inches to it's right. Another cycle completed, she placed the third yellow rose below the first two to create a perfect inverted equilateral triangle.

She didn't know why, but the numbers seemed very clear and important to her. She looked at the floor and knew the panel was three feet by four feet. Deep in her gut, she could feel where each flower belonged, like a Cajun chef who sprinkles in spices with his bare hands, measuring by feel and by tradition as opposed to some hard, cold, stainless steel measuring cup.

Three cycles complete, she began again with the white rose, assembly line fashion, inserting them in another equilateral triangle, this one sharing the same center point with the original yellow trio. The combination of roses re-created the Star of David, with six points.

The wheel slowed again, with only the five petaled violets left to place. On this, the seventh revolution, she placed each violet in the center of the star. As she placed the final one, the wheel crawled to a stop. Fully human, now, Caroline was finally free to leave the wheel.

As she stepped outside, she noticed a fat black bee crawl out of the final violet. She followed it with her eyes as it flew to catch up with her. Ignoring it, she strolled in a random direction away from the wheel, only to be confronted by a very solid looking set of bars.

As she stared into the blank limbo that is the edge of the world of dreams, the bee sussurated directly in her ear. When her head turned towards the right, the black bee flew a few feet away, and then circled. With nothing better to do, she followed it.

The wood chips that had made up the floor hitherto began to transition towards compost along the bars between her and the abyss. The ground she walked became harder packed and drier, forming a kind of forest trail through the softening soil.

The bee continued to lead the way as the rich black soil gave way to luscious flower bearing vines, like one would find in the shade of a large oak tree. These became interspersed with low azalea bushes, bordering a tall hedge, more than a foot taller than Caroline's head.

The hedge, however, continued on through the bars and out the other side, blocking all view of what lay beyond. The path cut through the hedge by means of a leafy green portcullis, almost like a doorway arch made of living plants. As she spied through the portal, she saw a small, cottage-like church in the distance. On it's porch sat a tall, thin woman drinking tea from an antique teapot.

The bee flew away into the garden surrounding the church and the woman, dressed in a modest black ankle length dress and tight, silvery white bun, smiled and waved, like a lonely old grandmother running across a grown grandchild in a supermarket. In the first human voice Caroline had heard since leaving Jaleesa that afternoon, the old woman spoke.

"See you Sunday!" her brittle voice called. Above her head, the address on the doorway read "646"...

6:46 AM, the alarm clock read, just inches away from Caroline's bleary-eyed face. Fourteen whole minutes before her first alarm was even supposed to go off, and she was already awake.

"Well," she thought as she rolled over, "at least I didn't have one of those crazy blood dreams."

In the dish drainer, the soft pre-light of the dawn sun glinted off of the still wet plate and knife.

Chapter 3

Monday, the word corrupted from moon-day, the second day of the week, when the powers of original creation still linger in the air. Sunday was powerful for primary causes, but Monday, Monday was the day of power for those things contrary to normality.

The Glass was one such thing.

So much blood, and so pure. So...available. Where there was life, there was always blood, but not so cooperative, not so willing. The dim glint of the television shined like the teeth of a child-molesting clown. The Glass knew compulsion; the Glass was compulsion, but this was like it's human embodiment. For once, even the Glass felt compelled.

Hell, someone had even gone through the trouble of tying the girl's right arm behind her back this time.

There was a different knife. There was different blood. In this world, the Glass was omnipresent. The hand, the foot, and the eye were always with the girl. The plate was a stretch, but the power of this day was close enough to suffice.

The girl's eye opened, but the rest of the body was held in place. This time, there was no need to move, although there was no real capacity for movement. The glint of one shining surface touched the glint of the shining eye, and the dream began...

In Caroline's dream, she was lying on a bench, surrounded by the scent of roses. She tried to sit up, but she found herself wrapped in thorny vines. She opened her eyes, and the center of her vision was filled with a huge, pink rose, the size of a large man's widespread hand.

The flower retreated from her face, and she could see that a single thorny vine supported it. The flower acted like an eye mounted on a tentacle, scanning her body from head to toe. Like a breeder inspecting a newly acquired purebred, the petals of the flower gently touched her naked body.

Caroline noticed that despite being wrapped in sharp brambles, she hadn't been pricked by a single thorn.

As if satisfied with its acquisition, the flower retreated again. Surprisingly, painlessly, the vines encapsulating Caroline gently constricted and pulled her into a sitting position.

In her new seated posture, Caroline could see an endless field, every inch of which was covered by the creeping vine. Smaller pink roses in various states of bloom studded the ground. The large bloom was suspended off the earth like a rearing cobra, the petals spread like the hood of the snake as it stared at her eyelessly. In total, it was raised five feet above the ground, just slightly above eye level.

In her right ear, Caroline heard a rustling of dry leaves. The rustle grew louder and louder, like a ten year old walking through a gutter in the fall. She tried to turn her head to see what was making the noise, but the vines tightened around her.

For the first time in this dream, Caroline could feel the thorns.

The giant pink rose reared back, as if to strike. Caroline's eyes widened in irrational horror at its vegetable anger. Just as the vine was about to attack, a slender black rope whipped around the flower, like a lasso on a young calf.

Before the rope could wrestle the vine to the ground, brown withering death spread along the vine, turning its verdant expanse into dry brush. The thorns around Caroline's neck sharpened, then suddenly released as the vines that held them instantaneously turned into dusty twigs.

As Caroline tried to stand, she woke up...

...Only to find she was naked, and strapped to the couch. Todd's couch. And Berry was asleep, with her head resting in Caroline's lap. On the coffee table across from Caroline was a mostly empty IV bag containing the dregs of an entire pint of blood.

As Caroline looked around the room, she felt a dry, crackling sensation from her mouth all the way down her chest and onto her stomach. As a kid Caroline had often covered her hand in glue, let it dry, and the flexed her hand, feeling the dry, brittle glue crack and split as fresh air touched her suffocated skin. It felt like that, only less dramatic.

Looking at her restraints, she saw only her right dominant side was strapped to the arm rail of the cheap futon she'd spent the night on. Under the couch, she felt her right leg similarly bound. Her left hand and foot were unrestrained.

It took a clumsy minute, but Caroline was able to unhook the bulky chrome buckles on her glossy black leather restraints left-handed. The more she moved, the more crackling she felt. Tiny bits of whatever was caked on her face and chest fell into her lap like Greek baklava pastry without the syrup.

Caroline ran her hand over her breastbone to brush whatever it was that had dried on her. Only when she brought her hand up to see what was on it did she realize what it was: dried blood. Dried blood covered Caroline from chin to navel in a pattern of dribbles from the sides of her mouth like a thinner, more sinister kind of candle wax.

Now free to move, she gently pushed Berry's face out of her lap, trying not to wake her in what, according to the light in the window, was predawn sleep. However, she encountered more of that strange, crackling resistance.

Unlike Caroline, Berry's angelic sleeping face was covered from forehead to the point of her chin, the entirety of which was glued by the protein rich blood to the tops of Caroline's thighs. Still warm and dreamy from the afterglow, Berry's face slipped from her lap onto the couch without waking.

Not certain if she was still in some kind of freakish dream, Caroline's demeanor became almost ethereal as she wandered into Todd's small bedroom towards his bathroom. Pale white and naked except for the dried blood, she looked down at the bed to see both Raz and Todd shirtless with huge bruises on the insides of their left arms. Todd's chest was still carved with Caroline's name. Raz's chest was devoid of tattoos, but patterned with old deep scars, many of which spelled "Berry" in various styles and calligraphy. Some of them were not so old, but still disturbingly deep.

Todd's Panasonic clock/radio/alarm read 5:26 AM in harsh red letters. Plenty of time to take a shower, put on last night's clothes, eat breakfast, and make it to work on time, her half sleeping brain told her. Reflexively, and with uncharacteristic grace, Caroline slid behind the shower curtain and eased up the hot water. The cut on her left hand had scabbed up tight and clean, but otherwise the warm sudsy water failed to reveal any fresh physical damage on her skin despite all the blood.

Enraptured in sauna-like ecstasy, Caroline felt a soft set of exploratory lips on her lower back. Reaching behind her to pull Todd's face closer to her own, her hand instead found Berry's long locks. Still sleepy, Caroline rested her hand on Berry's head as her lips slid over Caroline's slight love-handles towards her navel as Berry eased into the shower with her.

"Hey Carl," Berry whispered in Caroline's left ear after her still bloody face slid between Caroline's humble breasts and across her neck. Only the sharp digging of Berry's nails into her right shoulder grounded Caroline to reality as the memory of last night's escapade returned to her.

Not Todd. Berry. But Caroline had never had a lesbian experience before. Why now?

Berry wriggled her face into Caroline's neck like a suckling kitten, using the friction of flesh on soapy flesh to soften and remove the blood from the night before. Berry recounted to Caroline in a lover's whisper what they had done earlier. How Berry had strapped Caroline to the couch while she had been sleeping, how she'd held her slumbering eyes open with scotch tape and forced Caroline to watch as she tapped Todd and Raz's veins to fill the pint bag with fresh blood, how Berry had forced Raz and Todd out of the room, how she had punctured the bag with an ornamental knife and forced Caroline to drink, how erotic Caroline had become once she'd tasted the blood, how she had writhed in ecstasy as Berry poured blood over her face and breasts, how Berry had fallen asleep licking salty blood from Caroline's body as Caroline pushed Berry's head hard between her legs...

It's times like these that make it a real bitch when the hot water runs out.

At 6:30 Monday morning Berry was dressed in silk pajamas and fast asleep on the couch again, but this time deliciously clean. Caroline slipped into worn New Balance shoes Jaleesa had picked out after her squeamish incident yesterday and strolled down the stairs like a jolly sailor who'd just gotten lucky the night before to look where Berry had parked her car.

Thirty minutes to get home, thirty minutes to change and eat, and another thirty to squeak into work on time. Normally Caroline's biological clock left her a couple of minutes late, but these days she was feeling more and more in tune with the cyclical nature of things going on around her.

Stepping into her apartment for the first time since her incident, she was glad to be alone with her embarrassment. Compared to last night, there was hardly any blood spilled at all. Looking at the state of the place, it was pretty clear she owed Jaleesa lunch, though.

Jaleesa stumbled into work sixteen minutes late with Caroline pulling the Cheshire cat face at her from over the top of the front desk.

"What's got you in such a great mood?" demanded Jaleesa grumpily. She'd spent the last night dealing with her oldest son's baby mama drama.
"Well, mainly I'm just happy I've got the kind of friends that would wash the blood off my sheets while I bang some hot guy I'd just met that weekend," said Caroline in a voice that sounded like a female version of Frank Sinatra.
"Yeah, well, friends like that don't exactly come cheap. For example, you owe me lunch...." countered Jaleesa.
"No problem..."quipped Caroline a little too fast.
"Wait! I'm not even CLOSE to finished yet," Jaleesa continued, "...at Red Lobster. AND you're doing all the wreathes for Reverend Johnson's funeral."
"The Johnson Funeral?! But Reverend Johnson had a congregation of over two thousand!" whined Caroline in a voice that sounded a lot more like her old self. Jaleesa smiled a bit, happy to have taken a little wind out of Caroline's sails.
"That reminds me. Here's the orders on it we've gotten so far. And yes, at least five of them want a Bible laminated to the backboard opened to a specific verse. You know how nuts they go when you mark the wrong one. And notice how I said 'you' and not 'we,'" said Jaleesa.

Sometimes, no matter how crazy your weekend was, it's still Monday when you wake up.

Chapter 2

When someone spends all their time on the Internet, they develop certain base reactions. For one, they instinctually do a google search whenever they're uncertain about something. They develop a certain turtle-like quality; their first instinct under stress is to withdraw into a hard outer shell.

Caroline wasn't any different. At first she was completely shell shocked. After all, last night was completely out of character for her. Sleeping with a guy she'd just met? Smoking pot? Sadomasochism? Maybe she needed the strong anchor of a computer to keep her out of trouble. Meanwhile, what she needed was facts.

When she heard about the way the passengers sounded, she could hear the screams from her dream all over again. In retrospect, it seemed so obvious. It was the dream that caused her to act out by hooking up with Todd. If she could disprove the dream, she'd be in control of her life again.

Some people will use any justification at all to dabble in their vices.

Two minutes after she heard about the screams, she was back in her car in front of the club. In the harsh light of day, she read the club's name for the first time. The club's name was "The Fool's Card."

Caroline didn't even turn on the radio on the drive home. It was 2:00 on a Saturday morning.

By 2:30, Caroline was already off the wagon. She had MSN news on one window, CNN in another, and the BBC up on a third. Pictures of the crash site matched the dream perfectly, right down the glittering stream that seemed so Eden-esque at the time.

She broke at 6:00 PM to eat a packet of ramen noodles. She didn't even notice her right hand going numb.

The Glass waited for her in the dark, shining. She had tried to escape, or rather; it had almost allowed her to escape. Now, however, she reassumed her favorite place.

There was a smooth transition from right to left. There was no struggle. The right became the submissive, the left the dominant. Balance was restored once more.

The eyes closed for twenty minutes before the Glass caught their attention, but only the attention of the eyes, not the mind. The body rose, and the left foot took the first step towards the blood.

The blood was important.

The left hand reached out, and grabbed a knife as sharp as broken glass out of its wooden rack. This was the only purpose this knife had ever been used for. The knife was laid carefully on the cutting board, the blade facing towards the wall on the other side of the counter at a perfect right angle.

The left hand reached up again, and just as ceremoniously extracted a clean, plain white plate. The plate was laid with the precision of a Swiss clock to the right of the knife.

It could smell the blood.

Inside a different, less permanent darkness, a light shone for the briefest possible instant. A round, lidded vessel four inches in diameter and three inches tall escaped into the room with the glass, the hand, the foot, the knife, the plate, and the eye.

The assembled convocation achieved their purpose. The glass could taste the blood once again.

In Caroline's dream, she walked through row after row of perfectly placed bushes. Each bush was adorned by dark, ripe berries, and each berry was either black or bright red. The sky was periwinkle blue and clear, and there was a faint hum in the background as if bees were busy making honey. She reached down to one of the bushes to taste its fruit, and she noticed each red berry was attached by the same stem to a black berry in an almost wishbone shaped configuration. She separated the two, and caught a spray of bright red juice disproportionate to the size of the tart fruit. She sucked the juice from the dripping red berry, and it tasted savory and slightly metallic, like the top of a weak nine-volt battery. It left the lingering aroma of old cast iron in the air.

Suddenly a trickle of stinging bees rose from under the bush on her right. They landed on the still fresh juice on her left hand and began sucking it up through their tiny proboscis. Frightened, she tried to brush them away, but this only agitated them. One stung her hand, and they began to swarm...

There are bad ways to wake up from a dream, and then there are worse ones. Caroline is about to experience the latter of the two.

Pain and stickiness preceded consciousness in Caroline's mind. Even with your eyes closed, it's pretty easy to tell if you've been stabbed. Although she'd never actually been stabbed before, Caroline knew one thing; she had been tonight

Snapping awake, her first thought was "PANIC!" The left sleeve of her pajamas was soaked in sticky drying blood from the wrist down, and her right hand held an Exacto knife in a white knuckled grip. She ran to the sink to wash off the blood instinctively.

The wound in her left hand was slender, but deep, and it fell just left of the vein in the space between the bones of her pinky and ring fingers. The blood on her hand was partially clotted, making it difficult to wash off without scrubbing. The cut's flow turned the sink's water pink at first, but once the scab had a chance to reform, the bleeding stopped.

The wide-eyed calm of shock gave way to relief as Caroline realized she didn't have to drive herself to the hospital or call 911. Flower shops aren't famous for their medical benefits, after all, and bleeding to death in an ER waiting room was definitely not the way Caroline had planned on dying.

The pajamas, however, were done for.
Desperate. Lonely. Scared. Jaleesa. It really was that simple. Jaleesa could get shot and not lose her head. Jaleesa was like a rock; if anyone could talk Caroline down at this point, it would be her. Caroline's hands were shaking so badly it took her three tries to dial the number right.

Too bad the wrong voice answered.

"Hello?" said a voice she'd never heard before.
"Jaleesa?" quavered Caroline.

The second it took the strange voice to answer seemed like an eternity.

"Oh, she's right here. May I ask who's calling?"
"Caroline," she said to the strange voice.
"Ok, let me get her."

Caroline couldn't even breathe.

"Caroline?" said that familiar honeyed voice.

Caroline actually felt her pulse slow. Jaleesa got her through Valentine's Day. She could get her through this.

"I.... I... I... bled..." she stammered.

People like Caroline go into shock for a reason. Their normal mind just can't handle stress. Now that she felt safe, she finally broke down in tears.

Jaleesa didn't even ask what was wrong.

"I'm bringing a friend over. We'll be there soon."

Hope like hell if you stab yourself, you have a friend like Jaleesa Jones.

Caroline was still crying when Jaleesa and her friend showed up with a white diaper bag full of bandages, antibiotic, alcohol swabs, and a fully loaded semi-automatic pistol.

"Open the door, Caroline. It's me and Berry," Jaleesa said in a voice that could have been used to say "Open Sesame."

Jaleesa's voice had a power only granted to single mothers. It had a natural harmonic that said without words that it was to be obeyed first, and understood second.

Caroline was weak willed to start with, but her fear and uncertainty had no chance against Jaleesa's maternal power. She opened the door and fell into Jaleesa's arms, still naked from the waist up after having taken off her silken nightshirt to wash her arm.

The cut on her hand was barely noticeable.

For once in her life, Berry was speechless. Just thirty minutes ago she was watching a movie with her sister in law, and now she was in a stranger's living room carrying a pistol. A hot stranger. Naked. And crying. She had heard there were knives and blood involved. Somewhere inside Berry's sick mind, something clicked.

While Jaleesa comforted Caroline, Berry wandered into the apartment. In the kitchenette, she saw a single plate and knife in the dish drainer. She continued looking from left to right in the main area of the efficiency, and her eyes stumbled across the first few droplets. Following the trail of red splatters in the carpet from the open bathroom door, she saw they led like ants toward candy to a sheet laying over an office chair and what appeared to be a small computer desk. The left corner of the sheet was splotched with drying blood.

Of course Berry looked under the sheet. She's one of those "types."

A computer mouse covered with blood stained fingerprints sounds cool in your head, but in actuality it has the same shock value as one covered in ketchup. No severed fingers, no disembodied eyes, just sort of a big, difficult to clean up mess. There's nothing mysterious or mythological about it, unless you count the efficacy of solvent based cleaning products to remove it.

Berry? Clean? NO.

Jaleesa's ministrations soon had Caroline fully dressed, cleaned up, and laughing about how big of a fuss she'd made over such a tiny cut. Jaleesa knew, though, that it would only take another peep at the bloodstains to send Caroline back into histrionics. Someone had to clean, and someone had to watch Caroline. Jaleesa could work wonders in an argument, but convincing Berry to clean Caroline's apartment while they went back to her place and had a cup of hot cocoa was out of the question.

STEP 1: Get Caroline out of the apartment before she freaks out again.

Jaleesa looked over Caroline's should to try and get Berry's attention. Berry, as usual, was snooping through the main room looking for something macabre. Before she could say something, Berry lifted the sheet off the computer desk. It was an impressive amount of blood for such a small cut, almost as if Caroline had lain there unconscious and still bleeding for quite a while.

"Caroline, have you met Berry? She's the one who gave me that flyer for "The Fool's Card," prompted Jaleesa.

Berry dropped the sheet almost guiltily back on top of the bloody mess. Berry had a kitten-like ability to be distracted, especially when it meant someone was about to give her attention. Years of club girl instinct kicked in at this point.

"Wait, I remember you now, you were that girl that left with Todd the other night," Berry said. Caroline got a chance to get a good look at Berry for the first time. Berry was wearing a crimson skirt and jacket, with her shoes and hair matching the crimson motif. Only her undershirt and hose were black, as if she were only dark on the inside.
"Raz was talking about what you did to Todd. So's Todd, for that matter. He really wants to see you again," Berry continued.

Jaleesa couldn't believe her luck. For once in her life, her brother's wife's sister might actually help out for a change.

"Hey, Berry, why don't you drive Caroline down to Todd's? The LAST thing she needs is to brood in this apartment on the Internet all night," Jaleesa had the ball, she might as well go for the full court press. "Go on! Get out of here before I catch honky!"

STEP 2: Do all the hard work while everyone else has fun.

If Caroline didn't basically do half Jaleesa's work and help keep management off her ass, she'd never put up with this shit...

Berry + Vulnerable Girl + Todd's House = Berry is going to be a bad girl.

Caroline liked Berry. She was smart. She was funny. She had style. She had a lot of friends. Caroline didn't understand why Jaleesa was giving those dirty looks. Was there something she didn't know?

"Me and Raz go way back, you know," said Berry.
"Really? I thought he was after some girl named Butterfly," replied Caroline
"Don't tell me, you came in the door with Todd, and then Raz immediately asked if there was a friend of his at the club?" asked Berry.
"Yeah, pretty much. How did you know?" said Caroline.
"Hah, that's standard 'Do you need me to leave so you can get lucky?' code. There's no girl named Butterfly that I know of down at "The Fool's Card," and I know EVERYONE that hangs out there," explained Berry.
"You make that place sound like some sort of machine, Berry," replied Caroline.
"In a way, it is. Freaks are pretty rare in this town; we have to huddle together for warmth. Speaking of which, gimme your keys," said Berry.

Caroline handed over her keys and followed Berry out to the parking lot. The second Berry stepped out of the dingy stairwell and into the lot, she hit the automatic lock button and followed the lights to Caroline's car wordlessly. Berry walked quickly to the driver's side with a certain kind of brisk determination. Caroline climbed into the passenger's side with the same attitude as a seven year old on the way to school.

"This is a pretty nice car. These days when I get to drive it's normally just some beater," commented Berry to Caroline as she backed out of the sandy blacktop.

Caroline began to notice Berry had a mechanical, almost marionette-like way of driving. Her elbows almost always hung down, as if strings at the shoulder and wrist supported her arms.

Caroline continued to withdraw as she rode along with Berry. In a box with glass sides, Caroline couldn't help but feel like she was some sort of fuzzy prize in a fifty-cent grappling hook game. The more she thought about it, the more she couldn't help but feeling that Berry wasn't another prize, but rather she was the hook.

Caroline followed Berry up the wooden staircase to Todd's apartment like a sheep following a judas goat into a charnel house. Berry knocked a complicated pattern on Todd's door, like a short version of "Wipe Out." Ten seconds later, Raz slowly opened the door with thick smoke still pouring from his mouth and nose, as if his face were some kind of giant, living incense burner.

Berry climbed into Raz's arms with the grace of a joey climbing into a kangaroo's pouch. Raz smiled warmly over Berry's shoulder and pulled her backwards into the room so Caroline had room to slip into the cramped apartment.

Todd lounged on the couch in a half-buttoned silk shirt with the sleeves still open, his smile warm and inviting. When he saw Caroline, he reared up from his couch like a stretching cat as Raz and Berry came back deeper into the room.

"Hey Carl," said Todd softly, comfortably close to Caroline's face. Caroline noticed Todd smelled like pot and jasmine, with a soft touch of the scent of leather.

All of a sudden, Caroline began remembering the events of the first night she and Todd had met. Not just the events she could admit to, but the other side of what had happened. The taste of his blood, the sound of his hiss of pain as she cut him, his visceral reaction to her; as if he was some form of escape for her.

You'd think with passion like that, they'd all have found something better to do than sitting around watching Betty Boop cartoons on DVD until they passed out in a stoned, drunken stupor a few hours later.

Chapter 1

There sat the darkened, semi luminous glass again. The right hand was supporting the chin, the left unnaturally resting on some sort of smooth, tepid object.

There was no startling awakening.

The eyes snapped open, but otherwise there was no indication of consciousness. The left hand twitched, just slightly, and the dark glass re-illuminated itself. Its previous hints of phosphorescence became painfully obvious to eyes only just recently rendered capable of sight.

The soft, resilient chair did not so much as creak.

Only in retrospect did the bass laden thunk register to human consciousness. The smell of tobacco, incense, and something familiar yet cloyingly exotic filtered through the haze. On a plain white plate sat a few small dribblings of coagulated blood.

The right hand was still completely numb.

The eyes conveyed meaning without focus, directly to a still sleeping mind. This mind, enraptured in a lucid dreaming state, was filled with symbols and foreign images, a Rorschach whirlwind to the active subconscious...

And that's when the stupid alarm went off.

In Caroline's dream, she sat on a warm, gentle foothill. There, she was counting flowers and gazing at the clouds, interpreting the patterns they revealed. She watched the chirping birds come and go from the nearby mountain stream. One bird, some kind of raven, buzzed shrilly as it approached. Its silhouette slowly grew outside avian proportions, and its abrasive cries soon blotted out the song of the whippoorwills. The closer it came, the more Caroline realized it was not so much flying as falling. It spun through the air, its death cry modulated with each revolution like a siren: "Grawk! Grawk! Grawk!" It left a rain of blood on the ground underneath it, and grew to monstrous proportions in Caroline's eyes as its screams became louder and louder. The beast's toothy maw was leaking blood; its broken leathery wings were flapping impotently in the wind of its flight. It struck the mountain, spraying blood in every direction like mist. Its unending scream continued even as it rolled down the craggy peak towards her...

But it wasn't a dying dragon. It was the damn alarm clock. And she'd fallen asleep at the computer.... again.

Caroline fell out of her chair onto the floor, and rolled with the grace of a one-legged gorilla into the bathroom of her tiny apartment. She had the water on before she'd even risen to her feet. That was actually fortunate, because it created less impact when she fell into the bathtub.

It took only a second for the icy cold water pouring out of the faucet to soak through her oversize t-shirt, ending whatever modicum of cozy warmth she'd retained from sleep. Her eyes opened wide with the shock of both the impact and frigid temperature, and she saw the clock on the wall said 7:33, meaning she'd be three minutes late even if she skipped her shower.

This being a singularly secular moment, she used the one name in vain that could even remotely be of comfort:

"GEORGE DUBYA BUSH!" she hissed under her breath for catharsis. If she hadn't stayed up all night arguing in that stupid political BBS, she wouldn't have fallen asleep at her computer. If she hadn't fallen asleep at her computer, her back wouldn't hurt, she wouldn't have a bump on her forehead, and above all, she wouldn't be late for work.

Finally, hot water streamed down her face and back, and the mind numbing cycle of work and breaks began anew. It was lunch before Caroline felt like herself again. Then again, Jaleesa tended to have that affect on her.

"Damn girl, do you ever get a good night's sleep" Said Jaleesa's feminine baritone.
Caroline's eyes closed as her head rested against the wall behind her chair. The soft hum of the microwave and her belly full of homemade bean burritos made alertness a futile effort.
"No" she mumbled, although the mumbling was mainly for show.
"You need to sell that computer and use the money to get out more. If I didn't have any kids, I sure as hell wouldn't be at home at ten o'clock at night," Jaleesa said, her neck flapping like a flag on the 4th of July. Jaleesa was 35, and only her two youngest children lived at home.
"Yeah, but you also like other people. Besides, I already have money. If I had more, I'd only blow it on booze" said Caroline.
"See, that's where you've got it all mucked up" Jaleesa said, "All you do is pay the cover, the MEN pay for all the booze. That's why your ass is so bony now, you don't shake that thang enough".
"Have you ever seen me try to dance?" Caroline asked.
"Oh, yeah... never mind," said Jaleesa, making a face that said she had seen Caroline try to dance, and "try" was definitely the operative word. Luckily, lunch was over before any other of Caroline's inadequacies came up for conversation.

After work, Jaleesa waited outside the door, smoking a cigarette. As Caroline walked past, Jaleesa waved to get her attention.
"I've been thinking about it, and you DO need to get out more. Here's a club flyer for a place that plays that techno you like," supplied Jaleesa.

Caroline took the flyer. Anything was better than waking up in that chair again.

"When was the last time I was in a club?" Caroline thought to herself, "It's either now or never."

Caroline was what you'd call a bit of a wallflower. Between her love of Japanese manga, her love of Reese's cups, and her hatred of assholes, she didn't even attend prom. She'd never wanted attention; she hated people like that. If she didn't know for a fact she'd end up asleep in that stupid chair again, she'd have never gone.

The club did not play the kind of techno she liked.

The club played Skinny Puppy. The club played Mindless Self Indulgence. They did not play Darude. They did not play Paul Oakenfold. The only vinyl in the place was made into a pair of pants and worn by an overweight twink talking to a queen in the corner. And she was staring straight at him.

"Hey girl, never seen you around here," said the twink in a voice that was much more masculine than Caroline expected.
"That's because I've never been here before." Caroline said, reaching for a cigarette. She only smoked when she was nervous, so she'd bought a pack to keep her hands busy. The twink already had his lighter out before she'd even looked up. While she fumbled for her Bic, he'd already lighted her cigarette. She'd taken two drags before lifting her own lighter to her face.

"Wow, you really are new. They call me Straight Mike around here," he said. Embarrassed, Caroline put her lighter back into her purse.
"That didn't take him long, did it?" said an effeminate lisp from the corner. The voice belonged to a 6'5" man wearing blue jeans and a plaid button up.
"Damn you Todd!" said Mike.
"Whatever. You've had something to prove ever since you let a trannie blow you in the bathroom." Todd replied.
"She was wearing a choker!" whined Mike, who ducked out and quickly walked to the bar for another drink.
"Sorry about that.... What was you name?" said Todd conversationally.
"Caroline," she said in return.
"Well, as you may have noticed, I'm Todd." He said as he extended his hand graciously. Caroline shook it, noticing his soft skin and gentle touch.

Caroline heard the DJ spin yet another breakcore beat, and winced visibly. The cover had been low, but the prices on the bar were sky high.

"I noticed you haven't ordered a drink yet," said Todd conversationally.
"That's because even piss is three dollars a bottle here," said Caroline, a little more waspishly than she'd really meant. Mike's greasy demeanor had put her off.
"It doesn't look like you're having a good time here, and none of my friends showed up," offered Todd. "Why don't you come to my apartment and cry into a glass of Shiraz with me? I need the company." Despite having just met the guy, Caroline already wanted to leave with him. After all, he was clearly gay, AND he had wine. What could go wrong?
"Sure," said Caroline. "Is it far?"
"You can walk there from here," said Todd. "C'mon, let's go."

Todd wasn't gay.

Somewhere between the parking lot and the street, Todd pulled a flask out of his coat.
"Care for a nip?" he quipped in a decent cockney accent. It was only 8:00 PM.
"Bloody right, mate," replied Caroline, in what had to be the worst Australian accent ever. Todd giggled, and they both took a swig from the metal pint bottle. Caroline's cigarette from the bar was still burning.

"Here it is," said Todd, "It's small, but it's mine."

Todd led Caroline up two flights of stairs to his one bedroom efficiency. Inside, the television was on, and a Goth kid was sitting on the couch smoking a bong that was all of two feet tall. Caroline had never even seen a bong before except on television.

"This is Raz," said Todd, "Raz, this is Caroline."
"'Sup Carl," said Raz, holding out the still smoking bong meaningfully. Todd took it, and took a huge hit, leaving Caroline in awkward silence with Raz. Raz squinted at Caroline and then at Todd.

"Is Butterfly at the bar tonight?" Raz asked Todd. Neither of them knew anyone named Butterfly.
"Yeah," said Todd, "She was asking about you."
"Fuck this place, then," said Raz, "Nice meeting you Carl." Before Caroline had said a word to him, he was already gone.

"Was that your boyfriend?" asked Caroline.
"No, he's definitely my man-friend," answered Todd. He wandered to the kitchenette part of the main room, and grabbed a bottle out of the fridge. "Do you like Noir? I have a collection. The movies, not the wine, I only have this one bottle of Shiraz."
"I don't know much about it," admitted Caroline.
"It's about the play of light and shadow. Metaphorical juxtapositions of good and evil. You know, gay art crap," explained Todd, motioning for Caroline to sit next to him on the couch. He leaned over and pulled two glasses and a corkscrew off the shelf. The apartment really was small.

Caroline sat down next to Todd, who took another hit from the bong and passed it nonchalantly to Caroline.
"It's got a carb, so put your finger over this hole before you hit it. Let go of the hole to clear it," informed Todd, as if he knew Caroline didn't smoke weed. Already buzzed from the alcohol, and bewildered by Todd's seeming generosity, she gave in and hit the bong while it was still lit.

She might as well have thrown her panties at him.

Caroline woke up with a prickly sensation on her back. She was lying on a soft cotton sheet. She reached behind her, and grabbed the offensive crinkly thing that woke her. She squinted at it in the light of Todd's alarm clock. The ripped packing read "Tro- -jan," with a clean rip between the "o" and the "j." Her lipstick was on the packet. Todd was frying eggs and watching the news in the other room.

Caroline crawled out of bed, wearing only a sheet.
"Did we..." She asked Todd, sticking her head through the bedroom door.

"Well, I sure did. And from the sounds you were making, you did a couple of times." With those words, the last night came flooding back to her. The wine, the movies, the blanket, the footsie, the cigarette burns...

There was a plane crash on the news.

Todd turned to face her. He was shirtless, and the word "Caroline" was scratched deeply into his chest in angular letters, as if done with a box cutter.

The news anchor said the company that owned the plane was Dragon Inc., a discount passenger service.

"Did.... Did I do that?" asked Caroline, disturbed. She'd never been into sadomasochism before.

"You sure as hell did," said Raz, sitting up from where he was laying on the couch.

The news anchor said there were frantic cell phone calls from the passengers. The victim's families said you could hear the spinning plane rhythmically knocking the breath out of the screaming victims. They said it sounded like a raven, or an alarm clock.

"Caroline?"

Sometimes it takes a minute for your brain to register what's really going on in the background. Only 10% of your brain actually thinks. The rest is just a filter to block out unimportant details, like gravity. But if you're Caroline from Pugh's flowers, it's only 7% doing the thinking. That other 3%? That part dreams of the future...

They gave me a blog. On NG. Where I do my NG things. Don't they know what kind of fucked up shit I do on NG? I always fucking warn them, and they never fucking believe me.

Oh well. They'll get off light this time.... THIS TIME.