Author Archives: John Saye

About John Saye

Servicing you with novels and garbled discourse based on my impressions of shows, movies, books, story structure, and whatever else I can get into.

Inside a grand, dimly lit cathedral, towering stained-glass windows cast eerie red and blue light over the stone floor. A massive owl, Arthur, lies weakened, partially consumed by writhing yellow tentacles. A rat detective and a monocled frog in a top hat stand over him, preparing to purge the parasite.

Shadow Street Chapter 8

Longevity and Other Stories
A life without end,
stars call from the endless night,
time slips through our hands.
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This is a draft version of a chapter from John Saye’s book, Longevity and Other Stories. If you are daring, why not subscribe to my newsletter (they come few and far between), and I’ll send you a PDF copy of the book?

Up we went, grabbed and yanked into the sky. Clutched around our dangling arms and legs were the strong talons of an enormous beast. It flew silently. I could see brown and white in the feathers. I can’t otherwise see anything. Feathers are on my face. Those silent soaring wings. Mr. Curtis’s legs dangled below me as I watched our street fall away from us and the smoky city leave us behind.

They dropped us. I assumed it was to our deaths. I thought for sure that Mr. Curtis’s legs next to me were lifeless. We landed roughly on a tiled rooftop and rolled.

Mr. Curtis’s hat flopped by. I picked it up and sat up, then turned around quickly as a shadow crossed over me.

“What? Who?”

“It is I.”

It was Arthur, the owl.

Mr. Curtis stood up next to me and took his hat. I gave it to him, forgetting for a moment that I thought him dead just a moment before.

“I uh,” I said.

“No need,” said the owl.

Mr. Curtis reached into his hat and found another fresh outfit and started putting it on.

“Where’d you get…”

“This old thing…”

It looked freshly pressed.

The owl paced. Every few moments a ruffle would send fresh down feathers upon us. I brushed them out of my face.

“You boys,” said the owl. I swear his eyes lit up, but I don’t think they did. “You boys may be in way over your heads here.”

“What are we up against?” said Mr. Curtis, tying his tie.

The owl scraped the roof, sending tiles plummeting down to the ground below.

“I thought it might come to this.” The bird turned around. He was pacing. I thought he was preparing for liftoff.

“The bakery must be closed and cleansed. The tunnel must be closed that leads into the cave, and that will not stop them.”

“What will?” I asked.

“We’ll eventually have to find their lair and storm it. No one is safe, but in the short term, we can keep things under control.”

“How do we cleanse the bakery?”

“Salt. Holy water. Don’t eat the…” he coughed.

“And blocking the…”

“The drain…”

The owl tripped and landed in front of us. One eye was wide, the other tightly shut. He wasn’t breathing well. His beak opened, but it wouldn’t open wide enough for the creature inside to make its way clear. The first two sickly yellow tentacles pushed forth, trying to open his mouth.

I watched them in awe. We felt lost. “The surrounding town, Mrs. Constellation, the bakery, everybody, now this.” Mr. Curtis didn’t flinch.

“Thank you, my friend,” he said to the body of the owl lying before us, the creature inside trying unsuccessfully to take control of his large body. The failing eye winked at him as Mr. Curtis replaced the monocle in his left eye.

He handed me a flask and pulled quickly from his hat. It was a small one, glass with a stopper in the top

“Water?”

I saw the frog had in his hand a small salt cellar. He opened the lid, bidding me to do the same with mine. I popped it open.

“Holy water?”

“I thank you. You’ve told me enough. Now let’s cleanse my friend here.” He sprinkled the tentacles with salt. They retreated into the bird’s beak.

“Quickly friend,” he said to me.

I sprinkled some of the water onto the bird’s face, getting as much as I could on the beast.

“That’s right.” He did some more salt, going around the roof a little too. I did some more, following his lead.

The owl’s body convulsed. It flipped over. It shook. I poured a measure down the owl’s throat. The creature slowly emerged after it choked. It slid out and flopped to the rooftop, but it couldn’t cross the salt sprinkled around.

It was yellow, slimy, and pale. It resembled an octopus, but it had five tentacles instead of eight, and couldn’t easily supply support for its body weight. It blinked, looked around with a single bulbous bright blue eye, and stared us down. The person looked around.

“Looking for a way yet?” said the frog. “I’m onto you.” He faced the creative eye to eye, closing one of his own.

I carefully stepped away from them.

“I want you and your friends to leave,” said Mr. Curtis. “It’s hard enough being a frog or a rat in a world like this.”

“There’s room enough for all.”

“While true, I’m afraid I can’t condone parasites attacking my friends and neighbors.”

“We just… we must…”

“James, can you please?” Arthur was stirring. I ran to see him and helped him up.

“Of course,” I said.

“It’s just…” said the squelching squid.

“Can you live long outside of a host?”

“Yes, but not for long, and not above the surface.”

“Then I’m going to have to kick you out and ask two things.”

“What?”

“No coming above the surface.”

“And?”

“If you do, find a host that at least likes it.”

“Curtis!” I said.

“What? Somebody might.”

“Doubtful.”

“And if we don’t?”

“You may as well come kill me first next time so I won’t get in the way.”

It eyed me, where I was listening to Arthur’s heartbeat, and saw it, the place where we hadn’t sprinkled salt.

“We will come for the surface.”

It slid from me. I tried to climb the owl. Arthur just knocked me to the roof.

“Dr. James! The holy water!”

“Oh, yes!”

I pulled it from my breast pocket and uncorked it with my teeth. It reminded me of tossing grenades during the war. I tossed the bottle where it hit the creature, and mostly bounced off, but not without the contents spilling out all over the creature.

Where it spilled, what was later to be burned into the creature’s skin? It lost a tentacle, dissolving completely, then another one as it tried to run. Mr. Curtis chased it to the edge of the roof with the salt cellar, shaking handfuls of salt at it. It dodged this way and then rolled down the pitch of the roof like a ball. Its tentacles flopped and flapped like fettuccine that hadn’t quite seen enough boiling water and it fell from the roof, landing with a splat on the ground below. It opened its eye and looked up at us and I could hear in my mind. “We’ll be back. There are more.”

I squeezed my head, trying to get him out of there, thinking my body was quickly being taken over when I realized he was gone, squelching in the mud down a drain.

“Thank you, Arthur,” said Mr. Curtis.

“I’m never taking a roll from you again, Mr. Curtis.”

I walked back.

“What do we do?” I said.

“What? Do we?” Said, Arthur. “You, and you know.”

“Holy water and salt?”

“Where do we?”

“Come with me,” said Mr. Curtis. And he jumped down the drainpipe.

“I hate the drainpipe.”

I jumped down it and tried to keep my descent to the ground under control, but I couldn’t manage it. I slid out onto the dirty streets and with all the fluff, closer to the rat I know I am than the gentleman I see myself as. The tweed hid most of the dirt, so I straightened my coat as best I could. At least I’m in the shadows of the building.

“This way,” said the frog.

“What’s this way?”

“St. Albert’s cathedral. Holy water.”

I realized I’d used all I had on the poor thing.

“And salt?”

“The bakery,” said Mr. Curtis. “Besides, I still have some. Where’s the salt? Poor fellow, must I spell everything out for you?”

“No?”

I took off after him. The cathedral was several blocks ahead but faced the corner at one intersection. I could see it. It was the only place nearby where the stained glass was in red with blue and yellow. Skylights swallowed enough light at strategic angles to light the entire building with a certain glow. The morning streets were moving, but he kept on hopping rather than flagging a cab. The closer we got to it, the less I felt like flagging one down, either.

There were massive front steps of Stone, that also had a blue or red tile inserted every so often to keep up the motif, there was no sign for St. Albert’s only a large red cross in a field of yellow glass in the front with a blue letter A on each side. One was upside down, the other right side up.

We climbed the steps. It seemed like there were too many of them.

At the door, this early in the morning, I expected it to be locked. It wasn’t.

Mr. Curtis opened it and swung it wide. Giving me a look to the side. He hopped in and I followed. The door closed quietly behind us.

The tile was immaculate. I walked, hearing my footfalls echo down. “Mr. Curtis, how much exactly do you keep in that hat of yours?”

“I don’t know.”

“You always seem to have what we need in it.”

“I like to be prepared.”

“Unlikely.”

“I’m doing my best here. I was never good at magic.”

“No?”

“Much better doing this. I’d rather not be on stage. What about you?”

“You know, I’d see patients.”

“You’re retired though.”

“Doesn’t Mean I…”

Something clattered ahead of us.

“What was that?”

We ran down and found him on the floor. He was a mole, dressed in a monk’s habit, lying on the floor near a grand basin before three sets of tall solid oak doors that led further into a sanctuary.

We ran up to help him up.

“Thank you, Thank you.”

“Is this the holy water?” I asked.

“It is,” he said. One of the sanctuary doors quietly closed.

“We… need…”

“How much?”

The frog just looked at him, then back at the monk. “All of it?”

“I understand.” He reached under the basin, touched a switch, and brought out two bottles. They looked like vodka bottles, with crosses on them.

“Ah.”

“Take ‘em.”

The frog smiled. I kept one under my arm, and Mr. Curtis slid the other into his hat.

“Come on,” said Mr. Curtis.

“Not here,” said the monk, “don’t disturb him here. Yes, I know he’s here.”

We pushed through into the sanctuary. It was darker than the previous hall. He was sitting there in the front row, breathing and huffing.

We walked down the aisle and sat in front of him on the steps before the altar. His tentacles hung there without touching the floor.

“You can’t just take who you want,” I said.

“I know.” Again, the response was in my mind.

“Just let me rest.”

We sat down.

“Where do you come from?”

“Here? The deep? Depths. It’s been so long. All we know is dark.”

“Do you have a leader?”

“We have. He tells us to break free. We must take the surface back.”

“What do you think?”

“It’s too much trouble.”

“It’s not worth it.”

He perked up. “Oh, it’s worth it. I just don’t know if the cost will simply be too heavy.”

“I’d like it to work out. Is there any other way?” I said, while Mr. Curtis sprinkled salt under him all over the side floor around him and then started hitting the surrounding pew.

“We just get a host. It’s the only way we know.”

“I’m sorry,” said Mr. Curtis.

The frog doused him. I didn’t even see him pour the glass.

"A colossal monster with glowing, translucent skin rampages through a city as battleships fire down. Two adventurers with energy whips prepare to strike while an unstable portal crackles behind them."

The Man With Three First Names, Chapter 10

The Man With Three First Names
Rabbits leap through time,
Portals hum with shifting fate,
Night and day now split.
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This is a draft version of a chapter from John Saye’s book, The Man With Three First Names.

There was a bellow from below them, the creature was beginning to grow. Its skin was already a sickening shade of yellow, and Simon could swear it was glowing beneath them. They watched out of the side of the ship as they passed over while the creature took a chunk out of the building it was climbing on. Electricity shocked through its body, and it began to convulse.

“Will he ever be the same?” asked Simon.

“No,” said Michael.

Fred and Moxie pulled on their goggles and watched the battle screen. They gathered around the console. They looked at the video image of the creature on the ground.

The President reached out his hand and moved his fingers across the table, moving in troops and air battle groups. They could see themselves. The President selected all the air units and then selected the creature itself. They could feel the ship they were in turn as he did it.

“What’s happening?” asked Simon.

Michael already knew.

“We’re surrounding it. I’ve just given the order.”

On the screen, the battleships converged on the monster, and keeping a safe-ish distance, began to circle around it.

The creature writhed and pounded its claws into the building it was on, busting out the side where a firm of lawyers was going over their latest case. Still around them, the thickness of the brown mists and bluegrasses pushed into the world. Great spiraling trees worked their way into the buildings, lifting some of them from the ground.

“The portal is still active,” said Michael.

Simon looked up. We saw it destroyed. How can that be?

“I don’t know.”

The President was quiet.

“What?” said Michael.

The President nodded over folded hands. He covered his face with them.

“Talk.”

“The connection hasn’t finished settling.”

“What’s going to happen?”

“If I’m right we’re working our way into a downward spiral.”

“What like a low-pressure system?” asked Simon.

Michael slapped the President’s hands down. “Talk! This isn’t a weather report.”

There were immediately fifteen guns trained on him.

“We are not playing here Mr. Christopher. We’ve got to ride this out. If the experiments we’ve been doing so far are any sign, then this is going to blow over in a few hours, and we’ll just have a little cleanup to go through after the worlds settle themselves out.”

Michael took a step back.

“It’s okay gentlemen.”

The President straightened his tie, and the men laid off, lowering their guns.

“Now let’s look at this again.”

They gathered around the console again, but this time Michael kept his distance a little bit. He listened, but he was already working on his own agenda.

The great dinosaur-like creature bellowed below them and put its hand into a building, past a group of designers and web developers, then pulled out a large pile of disused hard drives and ate them. It burped and belched fire all over another building that was just standing there minding its own business, thank you very much.

The creature, now starting to turn more of a green shade than he was before jumped down and landed in the middle of a busy street half-covered in cars and half great wooly creatures looking for succulent bluegrasses. It found the only asphalt instead. It grabbed a bus and started emptying people out of it into it’s gaping maw like they were potato chips at the bottom of the bag. When all the tasty morsels were gone, it tried to bite the bus, didn’t like the taste of it, and threw it into a local movie theatre, after which patrons began to run screaming from it, partially because of the impact of the bus, but also because they were in the process of running out already from the throng of little blue warriors that had taken refuge in the theatre.

“We can’t waste any more time.”

“Then you’re back on board Michael?”

“Yes.”

“Everybody else?”

Simon nodded.

Fred and Moxie nodded. They did their best serious looks.

“Okay then.”

The President waved his hand over the screen and began moving in troops.

“You’re ordering them with this right?”

“Yep, they are on the move, here.” The President brushed his finger on the screen, then selected a commander.

Michael watched them move into position. It looked like a leader was getting the orders in his helmet and then getting his troops in line. Chain of command.

“We’ve got to stop him.”

“All I can do is slow him down, I’m afraid.”

“It’s all up to Simon here.”

“What?”

“I think you’re the only hope in this situation. You were the closest to the blast and survived it when the barrier exploded between our worlds. Somehow you’re the link that’s going to send this guy home.”

“He’s pretty intelligent on his side of the fence,” said Michael.

“It’s sad,” said Simon. “Their world is poisoned.”

“I’m sorry, but there’s nothing I can do about that. I’ve got a country to run and a city to save here. Somehow it all comes down to you. I’m not sure how it’s just a hunch.”

“You’re right,” said Michael. 

“Mike?”

“He’s an ass,” said Michael, “but it’s the only thing that makes sense at this point.”

Simon found his nerve and straightened up. “When can I get down there then?”

The President smiled.

“Moxie? Do you have them?”

“You bet.”

Fred and Moxie pulled them from their gadget-laden backpacks what looked like little metal tubes. They held them forward and pressed a button with each thumb.

“What are those things?” asked Michael.

“They’re our ticket.” The bars expanded, and compartments opened and slid out until an entire hoverbike floated beneath both of them.

“Hop on guys.”

Simon ran forward and sat behind Moxie.

Michael took a deep breath and sat down behind Fred.

“What’s the plan then?” asked Michael.

“Oh the usual,” said the President. “Wing it.”

“Great.”

“Wing it. That’s all he’s got.”

“Wing it.”

“Nice.”

Michael shook his head. “Get us out of here guys.”

Fred and Moxie revved them up and took off. When they got to the edge of the flight deck, they turned to wave at the President, who waved back, then they dived off the edge, heading for the ground. It rushed up at them rather quicker than Michael would have liked.

They hurled to the ground, this time with engines spurring them on, towards mad creatures that wanted to kill them, but somehow Michael was at ease with it all. He sat there, on the hover-cycle, holding his hat and screaming at the top of his lungs like he was on a great carnival ride. He let it all out of himself, closing his eyes and imagined all the strange things he’d seen in his lifetime. The Lochness monster, bigfoot, aliens, zombies, and who knew what else. What better fate for him than to be dashed to death on the ground before a giant rubber monster that was terrorizing the city? If it was the way he was going to go out, it at least suited him just fine.

They flattened out, and started zinging through the streets, and in and out between the buildings.

There was a roar above them. Michael looked up and watched as the head of the monster seemed to bob between the buildings.

Moxie fired up her lasers.

Fred did the same.

They started firing on the creature as they approached.

“No!” yelled Michael

They didn’t hear him and kept on firing.

The creature swung out a fist and missed Moxie as they went by.

Simon leaped off of Moxie’s bike and flew through the air towards the monster, who batted at him and sent him tumbling into nearby thick grass.

“Simon!”

Michael too jumped, leaping for the creature’s neck. He latched on and held there for dear life. He reached into his pockets, and pulled out a squirt gun, and aiming it into the creature’s eye, blasted it with a mixture of lemon juice and battery acid. “That was handy.”

The creature writhed in pain and shook Michael off. He plummeted to the ground while the creature rubbed its eyes, more out of an annoyance, but it gave Fred and Moxie a chance to come around from the other side and hit the creature again.

Simon jumped and caught Michael on the way down and set him down.

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it,” said Simon, as he launched himself up into the air again at the creature. He latched onto the creature’s nose and began to punch him, but it was like hitting a towering stack of gelatin molds. His hand stuck through the creature, and he had to pull it out with a sickening sucking noise each time.

Fred and Moxie came around for another pass, and Michael could tell from the corner of his eyes that the President was bringing his ships in, moving in for a kill, or a melt-down or whatever this creature’s fate would be.

Fred and Moxie let loose, and Michael watched as their laser blasts hit the creature, entered its dinosaur-gelatin body, seemed to build for a moment, and then passed through to the other side with a spurt of slime and marshmallow goo.

The creature burped a cloud of sweet-smelling steam and shook it off.

“Cut the lasers!” cried Michael, but he was wrong. It was a signal to Fred and Moxie to up the ante and let the creature have it.

They tore into it and filled him full of as much energy as they could muster. It filled the creature up and bloated the inside of him. As they passed the rubber monstrosity, the energy came out its other side and flew straight at them. They had just reached out for a high-five, and it turned into a handclasp as the energy from their own blasts came out and smacked them from behind. They were blown off their bikes, which crashed into the outside of a nearby building, and they were flying through the air.

Michael’s got a lot of luck. Simon’s nigh-invulnerable. Fred and Moxie are cute and have cool toys, but they are mortal, so they searched their bodies for anything they could find, and without their regular backpacks there was little they could do before they too hit the outside of a building to be cut to ribbons on the glass.

They clutched their hands together, and just before they hit the wall they hit the emergency teleport button on their wristbands.

No time to program it.

In a whiff of sparks, they were gone.

“Oh crap,” said Michael.

He looked back up to where Simon was punching the creature in the face and getting his hands stuck deeper and deeper in it.

Simon yelled and flung his fists at the creature, who seemed annoyed but not much else. It reared back its head and shaking its neck toppled Simon onto it’s bubbling green tongue, and swallowed him whole.

The creature walked up to Michael, who could see Simon struggling inside the beast through its translucent skin, and lowered its head to sniff Michael’s scent.

He blew Michael’s hat off. It rolled to a corner of the street that was already covered in shards of glass.

“That’s enough.”

The creature opened its eyes a little wider and regarded Michael a little differently. It cocked its head.

“I asked you not to come here.”

He stepped forward just a little bit.

“I told you you wouldn’t make it through the portal without causing more damage than good.”

He stepped forward again, and this time the creature stepped back a little.

“I’ve had enough, and now it’s time to send you back home.”

Michael plucked up his hat and put it back on, straightening it.

“I don’t know how I’m going to do it yet, but you are finished, my friend.”

He held up a small phone to his ear.

“Mr. President, nuke the portal please.”

On his command ship, the President pressed a red button on his console, and then selected the remains of the Sublight group.

It wasn’t an actual nuke, but the three missiles that fell from his ship and headed out toward the facility were plenty good enough to do the job.

They landed one after the other, one, two, three, into the crater. Fire and dust exploded from the site, including a fearsome blast of light.

The portal was no more.

Cut off from his world, the creature began to scream and hold its head in pain for a moment, and then it righted itself, and almost seemed to regain and redouble its strength. Its skin became a more solid shade of green. Simon was still visible, but just barely, and he was moving less and less.

“Hmm. That’s not what I expected.”

The creature bellowed and stomped one of its great clawed feet down, pinning Michael to the ground. It was like being pinned to the ground by a candy bar.

“Okay,” said Michael from between the claws of the beast, now you’ve really ticked me off. He wrenched his body this way and that. His hat came off again, and he put it back on, giving the creature a glare when it happened.

The creature bellowed above him and reached out to knock an electric street sign down, which exploded and landed next to Michael in a shower of sparks.

Michael used the time to look through his pockets.

He pulled out a small voodoo doll, not much help there. He tossed it aside.

Policemen ran up, brandishing rifles, took aim and started shooting the creature. The rubbery nature of its skin wasn’t much help as the bullets just bounced around, or lodged in the skin and stuck there.

Michael searched another pocket and came up with his pistol, alien in origin, he wasn’t even sure what it was called. He fired it, and a beam of green energy flew to the creature’s torso, but it didn’t make much difference. For just a second, the creature forgot about Michael and started to walk off, carrying Michael with him still stuck at the foot, but the laser blast was enough to get its attention again, and it crouched down, pinning Michael flat He squeezed Michael’s arm against the side of the curb. Michael let go of the pistol.

“Crap.” It clattered to the ground.

What else did he have left?

He reached around and found a dagger there in the side of the street. It was one of those the little guys were always carrying. He took it and stabbed the creature, slicing off a rubbery toe.

It stepped off of him, and Michael popped up. He dodged a swing by the creature, and he could see in there, inside its body where Simon was now curled into a ball.

The creature kicked out and lashed its tail at Michael, but instead of hitting him with it, Michael jumped and landed on top of the tail, grasping it in his hands. He climbed up the creature’s back, using the spikes on the creature’s back for support. They were a little harder than the rest of its body.

The creature turned around, trying to sling him off, but Michael didn’t budge. Instead, he held on tight and didn’t move, and continued to scale the beast. There was occasional fire from the President’s men, but they were afraid to hit Michael, so they held off.

Michael grasped onto the creature’s neck and gathered his strength. The creature was starting to make it’s way through town, scraping buildings and breaking glass in its wake, stepping on a car here and there. Things were starting to stick to it, a light pole here, a small dog there.

Michael got up on the creature’s head, and he stomped on it.

The creature stopped.

Michael put his hands on his hips and looked down on the creature. “This is the end of the line for you. I asked you not to come here. To shut off your portal and leave it alone, but did you listen to me? You did not.”

Below him, deep in the creature’s belly, Simon’s eyes opened, and he transformed.

“Now it’s a little too late for you isn’t it?”

The creature looked up at Michael, not comprehending.

“That’s the worst part, isn’t it. You don’t even know you’re causing all this trouble, do you?”

The creature groaned a reply, but there was little feeling or coherence in it.

It rolled its eyes, trying to get a better look at him, then it shook its head, and just like Simon before him, the creature opened its maw and sucked down Michael and swallowed him whole. Then it burped and began climbing a nearby building.

It lurched up the side of the building, tearing out power cords and making a general mess of the place. It just wanted to see a little bit better. Being down in the buildings was as good as being in a cave to it. When it popped it’s head out above them, the President aboard his ship said “Fire.”

All the floating ships started at once, firing red pulses of light towards the creature, and it started to burn, and sizzle and pop.

It roared, and whipped around, smacking down on one of the President’s ships, which roared to the earth and exploded in a giant fireball.

They continued to fire. The President’s ship was standing back a bit now, and the creature whipped out its tale and took another one down, it spinning off into another building, and exploding. Only three left, the creature tracked them like they were gnats hovering just out of view of its left eye.

It jumped from the building and knocked the third one of the President’s crafts out of the sky like it was knocking the football from an opposing player’s arms. The craft lurched and hit the ground, plowing through a street lined with abandoned cars. There it carved a groove in the ground and sent dirt and debris up into the air, splattering all the buildings, and knocked the cars that were in the way into the storefronts of nearby businesses.

The President dropped his arms, and stood there, looking at the destruction all around him. He peered out at the orange sky and waited for it to all be over.

“Sir, what are your orders?”

He looked around lazily.

“What?”

“Sir, your next order sir?”

He let out a great breath and looked around him at the men who were in his service. He didn’t even know their names.

He turned back to the battle map in front of him.

“Ram it.”

“Sir?”

“You heard me, arm the nukes, and ram it.”

The officer relayed the message into his headset with a solemn face.

There was general nodding around. They had to hope to get smacked and nuke the creature. After the others went down there was little hope for victory that way, and they couldn’t just leave. The country would be in total ruins forever.

They armed nuclear weapons.

They fired up the engines and sped toward the monster at top speed.

Right before the weapons finished arming and booting up, the creature whipped out its tail and knocked the President’s ship down. It sailed in a spiral towards the Earth and exploded in a ball of flame half a mile high.

The creature roared and bellowed with rage, and with satisfaction as it continued to tear through the city.

In the belly of the beast sat Simon and Michael. They lay there unconscious and somehow preserved inside the jelly stomach. It stomped along and took them with it. Other people were around them in various states of consciousness. Some of them were curled into balls, some were whimpering, but others, some of which found themselves turned into snack food for the beast via being on the wrong bus at the wrong time were cutting and slicing their way through the beast’s flesh with plastic knives and sporks, and several were using just their hands, or paper coffee cups to do the digging with.

“Should we wake them up?”

“It’s no use. They’ll wake up in time.”

“I hope it’s on time.”

“I do too.”

“They kept digging, almost swimming through the creature.”

Outside the creature knew no different. To it, there wasn’t a rebellion going on under its skin. It just knew it was free, and that this world was there for the taking, not that it knew what that meant either. It was free, and wild in a strange land, and it was alone.

In the wreckage of the President’s ship lay the torn and scattered remains of the President. His body lay broken and torn apart, there were wires everywhere, and part of his plastic face had melted off. His suit smoked, charbroiled and burned and the screws holding his limbs on had all given away and were strewn across the field of battle.

One of his commanders, next to dead himself, pushed up from the wreckage, noticed the disaster and watched as the creature continued to lurch away. He held his earpiece to what remained of his ear and said, “Delta Bravo One, do you read?”

He heard a response.

“The man’s down, repeat, he’s down. Start operation starfish. Repeat operation starfish.”

“Copy that, Delta Bravo One out, Operation Starfish is in motion.”

There was a click, and he knew he’d signed his own death warrant. The remains of the ship exploded and took him with it. There was no evidence now, no pieces of the dead President’s robotic body strewn around.

The commander welcomed it. He closed his eyes and succumbed to the magnetic fireball, and knew no more.

Millions of miles away, Fred and Moxie came hurtling out of a purple wormhole and onto the deck of a popular space station. They got up and brushed themselves off. They didn’t have their backpacks, and they didn’t have anything but each other and their wristbands, which were blinking. “Recharge light…” By then it might be too late. They picked themselves up. There was a throng of people who were now avoiding them and walking away from them. They had arrived in a busy walking area.

They staggered to a coffee shop on the side of the walkway and looked up at the starry sky above the mega station. They ordered two cups of synth coffee, and sat back, unaware of how the battle was going without them, feeling guilty that they couldn’t return immediately.

“What do we do?”

“We wait it out, what else is there to do?”

They watched through the glass and force fields in the ceiling and looked out as the station came back around to the dayside of the planet.

It was Earth.

“Fred.” She said it as she grasped his wrist.

There it was, definitely Earth.

“Oh shit.”

Below them, the Earth turned. They had traveled in time as well as space. It’s always odd when you have to hit the emergency escape.

They took another sip of their coffees and watched their wristbands, to see how long it would take them to recharge.

By the time they had finished their fifth cups of coffee, now wired up and ready for anything, their wrist bands beeped and they were ready to go.

They stood up, the bill for coffee unpaid, and zapped out of there. It wouldn’t matter where they programmed it for, their wristbands were still stuck on Earth. They flung around through time and space, on their way back. They held hands as they traversed the psychedelic passages of space and time to come out the other side screaming, hot and flustered, and landing just several feet from Jen and Walter’s restaurant again.

“Hungry?”

A foggy Victorian street at night. A rat detective and a monocled frog in a top hat stand frozen on a doorstep as an eerie figure looms in the doorway—Mrs. Constellation, her body wrapped in writhing yellow tentacles. Her eyes glow, and a sinister beak-like maw emerges from her mouth.

Shadow Street Chapter 7

Longevity and Other Stories
A life without end,
stars call from the endless night,
time slips through our hands.
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This is a draft version of a chapter from John Saye’s book, Longevity and Other Stories. If you are daring, why not subscribe to my newsletter (they come few and far between), and I’ll send you a PDF copy of the book?

“Mr. Curtis, what happened?”

We ran up to him where he was standing there, covered in donuts, his hat to the side. His monocle still hung from his eye and he had the silliest smile on his face.

“What?” said the frog.

There was a blank expression in his eyes.

“Let’s get them off of him.”

We started pulling donuts off him, popping them over his wrists, and then after pushing him to the ground with the cushion of baked goods around him, onto his back so we could disentangle his feet. Soon he lay there on the ground.

“Here’s your hat at least,” I said, putting it back on his head. This seemed to clear his mind ever so much and he seemed to look at us for the first time realizing…

“Well, then!” He reached into his hat and pulled out a long nightshirt. “That’ll do.” He rummaged for a second longer and pulled out a pair of red bedroom slippers. He put his feet in them, then wriggled into the nightshirt and put his hat back on. “Good as new! Come on, this way.”

He hopped down the hall, left and right.

“Which way are we going?”

“Listen, Dr. James, the singing! This way!”

He pointed in one direction and completely hopped in another. Mrs. Smith and I did our best to keep up, following his hopping flapping body in as best a serpentine fashion as we could.

“Wait, I can hear it,” said Mrs. Smith, and faint, I thought I could as well.

“It must be this way,” I said.

We scrambled around, down in the tunnels, and came around to a small balcony overlooking a large room. I covered the ceiling with glistening stalactites hanging from it. Lights from a fire pit below shined on it. There were several other small balconies like this one across the way, but they were all dark.

Down below, around the fire pit, were several folks, mostly moles, and a couple of mice, again with strange octopus creatures holding onto their faces. Each extended two tentacles, one to the left, the other to the right, and they were touching each other as they danced, or used their possessed bodies to dance around the fire pit.

“Do you recognize anyone down there?” I said.

“Anyone? I recognize all of them!”

“They all come to your shop?”

“Yes, I’ve seen all of them recently.”

“In the last few days?”

“I don’t know, but I think I’ve sold things to all of them.”

“What do we do?” said Mrs. Smith.

“Nothing yet. We’ll have to watch them,” I said.

 Curtis was back down from crawling over the edge. “No jumping just yet, friend.”

“Humph.” Mr. Curtis folded his arms.

“Cut it out.”

I peaked over the banister’s edge and looked down, but all I could see were people dancing in the dark around a fire, and what seemed just a few people at that. I pulled a small pair of binoculars out and peered down below, and got a look right into one of their mouths.

“Yeah,” I said, then looked again. They were dancing around, holding onto each other’s tentacles, and swaying around, their arms hanging by their sides, to no music I could hear, and then they released each other in unison and I watched as the creatures slowly retreated into their mouths. A moment later, they were blinking and staggering around, and the fire went out.

“Now,” I said.

Mr. Curtis jumped over the side, giving me a wink on his way over.

“What? Mr. Curtis!” said Mrs. Smith. She ran to the edge to see Mr. Curtis deftly land and slide the rest of the way down to them, on a random stair banister. He landed in his pajamas and wandered into their midst, waving his arms and acting as disoriented as they were.

“How do we?” I said.

“This way.” Mrs. Smith took me by the hand and dragged me around the corner where the stairs were. We ran down to find Mr. Curtis helping a young mole up.

“There you go.”

The mole looked at us. “Where are we?”

“No idea,” lied Mr. Curtis. “Do you know?”

“This way everybody,” said Mrs. Smith. “This way.” She waved her arms. “Link Up everybody, link up.”

Everyone took a hand, and she led us out, occasionally I took the lead for a couple of turns, and mostly, Mr. Curtis kept up the persona of a dazed fool who didn’t know where they were, like the rest of them, on one or two occasions he sent us in the right direction when no one was looking.

“This way,” said Mrs. Smith, as we passed the mushrooms.

They passed under strange pipes and up to a strange mossy set of stairs. Above them, a gas lamp, covered in metal and glass, burned and flickered, casting strange shadows on the ground.

“This way everybody, follow me,” said Mr. Curtis. He hopped cheerfully up the stairs and found the door locked, but his face didn’t falter. He twisted the handle, and it rocked, but remained still.

He pulled a fine feather from his hat and jiggered it in the lock as the other folks were climbing the stairs. It clicked with a satisfying thunk and then twisted the knob and opened it as if it belonged to him personally.

“This way, this way.” He reached in through the door and found a candle on a holder which he lit, and picking it up by the little ring holder, he went in and proclaimed everything okay. “Through here, yes, right this way.”

He led them through and into the next room, which was someone’s front parlor connected to a ballroom. All the lights were otherwise out and there was a coating of dust on the floor that was sticking to my furry toes.

“I say, Mr. Curtis…”

“This way,” said the hopping frog. He led them right to the front door, and out into the night streets. Corners were lit with gas lanterns and a couple of cabs were still on the road.

I shared a look at Mrs. Smith and then with Mr. Curtis, and we hailed three of them for our woozy friends. I paid for the coaches and Mrs. Smith and Mr. Curtis gave them all scratches behind the ears. A black pug pulled one, and Scottish terriers pulled the other two. Mrs. Smith gave them all tickets for a roll and a coffee after we sent them home. After we walked Mrs. Smith back to her shop, we wanted to see if we could see them again.

We were stepping up to her front door and about to enter when she hacked, coughed, and held her neck.

“Mrs. Smith?” I said.

“Oh dear,” said Mr. Curtis.

We held her by her arms, one draped over my shoulder, and another in Mr. Curtis’s hand, when she erupted like a spring, spitting yesterday’s lunch from last Tuesday all over the steps. She sprayed like a faucet and soup coffee and dinner rolls splattered across my vest.

“Dr. James, I… Dr. James… Mr. Curtis…”

Then the tentacles erupted from her face. They splayed out like a pinwheel in the wind and wrapped around her head. Eyes came out of her upturned mouth, with a snapping beak, and her teeth and jaw hung slack. Her eyes were dark, and staring into nothing, lids loose and unfocused.

“Mrs. Smith! Mrs. Smith!” I said.

Mr. Curtis held her hand, aiding me to support her now relatively limp body.

“Mary-Anne!” I screamed.

“Friend, I think it’s taken her.”

She shook out of our arms and staggered away, shuffling like a zombie with a broken foot, back out towards the street, then the tentacles reached and touched the ground, and pushed her feet up off the ground. It carried its body-shell with it and headed down the street, her feet trailing behind her.

“By Jove…”

One tentacle, sickly yellow and pale in the moonlight, reached up, and they carried her up and over a building, and through the chimney tops.

It left us standing in the street in front of Mr. smith’s bakery.

“It’s in the rolls,” said Mr. Curtis.

“I’m realizing that now.”

“I wonder how long we have before one takes us, too?”

“I’m not sure, but I would certainly like to know what we can do.”

“How many people have they taken already?”

“Could be hundreds?”

“More than that shop here.”

“And it’s not just here. Who knows where else this is happening?”

“This is much larger than just us.”

We were already walking home, we just didn’t realize it. We made our way around the corner and back down the hill toward shadow street.

“I think I’m going to need a change of clothes,” I said, looking at my vest.

“Me too,” said Mr. Curtis. It’s not like I keep another suit in my hat. I’ll have to think of that for next time.

“How much can you keep in that thing?”

“It’s a magician’s hat. What do you think? I don’t know. I think it would bust the illusion for me to tell you.”

“Of course.”

We hiked down shadow street, past a line of businesses on the corner, then larger residences, then into townhouses, and straight up.

“Mrs. Constellation will not understand what we are up against here.”

“No, we’ll have to explain.”

“Pale slimy creatures of the night, erupting from the mouths of our friends and neighbors.”

“A strange ritual underground.”

 “That we are likely to see next.”

The clock tower rang in the distance at one o’clock. Even from this far away, you could still see it, the face illuminated pale and dim, but there, a circle in the distance, you could count on more reliably than the half-moon above them.

Something passed in front of the moon, silent as the night. It was only briefly darker for a second, a shadow passing over them.

We looked for the source, but couldn’t see anything.

“Here we are.”

We stepped up the front steps, and I opened the door with my key, Mr. Curtis’s having been lost earlier. I had to find it, fishing through a pocket Mrs. Smith had vomited on. I gathered it, opened the door, and behind it stood Mrs. Constellation, covered head to toe in stringy yellow tentacles coming from her mouth.

The creature controlling her stared us down.

Her body was not slack, but her muscles were tense. She looked like a walking full-body muscle spasm.

“Mrs. Constellation…” I said.

“Is no more,” came from the creature. I could not tell where its mouth was until it revealed its beak the next moment and said, “And soon you too, and then the world.”

She shut the door on us. We were out in the cold. These creatures had infected our client and so many other locals, and we were certainly next.

I stayed on the first step.

Mr. Curtis went and banged on the door again. He was indignant. He beat on the door with his fists, calling over and over for Mrs. Constellation to open up. I thought him mad.

Then the door opened, and the creature trailing Mrs. Constellation’s body behind it stepped out.

“Who are you?” he demanded, standing there in his nightshirt and magician’s hat. “Tell me what you want!”

“We are coming to the surface. We are coming up from underneath, where we have lived for so long, in the shadows.”

“We know something about that. It doesn’t give to be hostile.”

“It’s the only way we’ve ever known.”

“Come on, try it.” Mr. Curtis’ face gave a wide smile, then croaked accidentally. “Excuse me.”

“I’ll think about it.”

It slammed the door on him again, then he came to sit with me on the first step.

“You know where else we can get a change of clothes?” I asked.

“I got nothing,” said the frog. He sat, looking with one eye into his hat. “Not a rabbit in sight.”

"A battlefield where Earth and an alien world merge. Two warriors wield glowing whips against a monstrous warlord, while a spaceship hovers above and a collapsing portal pulses with energy."

The Man With Three First Names, Chapter 9

The Man With Three First Names
Rabbits leap through time,
Portals hum with shifting fate,
Night and day now split.
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This is a draft version of a chapter from John Saye’s book, The Man With Three First Names.

“That’s it!” said the President. “Now, go suit up!”

Simon and Michael looked at each other. They nodded and followed a pair of soldiers into an enclosed room.

“Your clothes sir.”

“Forget it,” said Michael, “just do it, we’ll fit in the jumpsuits just fine.”

Metallic jumpsuits lowered from the ceiling. There were large clear openings like a HAZMAT suit. They were silvery-green in color.

“Oh come on!” said Michael.

“Sir, we don’t know what’s on the other side, we want you to be able to breathe sir.”

They were all putting on face masks.

“What, you think you’re all going with me?”

“Of course sir, we’re under your orders.”

“Then my first order is getting out of my way!”

Michael and Simon pushed out of the little room.

“What’s the problem?” asked the President.

“The problem is, we’re going on our own on this one Dave.”

“Mike, come on, you don’t know what’s in there.”

“I have a pretty good idea, and those creatures aren’t dying right away over here, so we’re on our way.”

The President grabbed Michael by the elbow, it was a vice-like grip.

“Lay off, robot.”

Mike swatted him off, then found himself looking at the bewildered troops around him.

“It’s nothing, said the President, just an old college nickname.” He gave Michael a stare to kill.

“That’s right,” said Michael.

“I just want to make sure you’re taken care of.”

“I’ll be fine. Simon, you ready?”

“You bet. He transformed into the crazed looking creature, and together they ran for the edge and jumped out of the ship together.”

“I hope you have a plan,” said Simon on the way down.

“I always have a plan, just let me think of one real quick.”

“We’ll be better off on our own.”

“Well, it’s not like we need parachutes or anything.”

“Why would we need that, right?”

Michael was looking at the ground, just a sea of sushi-like raw tentacles.

Simon was picking his landing point.

Michael touched a button on his jacket, and a parachute, small, but efficient popped forth from behind his neck. He shot up into the air, as Simon kept plummeting downwards.

Simon hit the ground like a ton of bricks, and sprayed fresh tentacle everywhere in a column above him, but still landed, kneeling, and stood up again, brushing the slime off of him like it was nothing.

Michael touched down and folded the parachute away.

“Interesting suit.”

“I got it from a—“

“Leave it.”

“Right.”

Around them, boiling pools of slime were eating away at the hardware of the old laboratory.

Simon put a clawed hand on the table, and it fell apart, from where the slime had already been working on the legs.

Before them stood the gate. It was the only thing shining in the place.

Somewhere a cell phone was ringing. It was playing a ringtone by the Beatles.

Michael answered it. “I’m sorry I called you a robot.”

“You’re forgiven.”

Simon could hear everything going on at the President’s end of the call. His senses were on overdrive.

President coughed.

“He and I went to college together,” Michael said to Simon.

“If he hadn’t been out on a mission with you I would never have been necessary.”

“I know.”

“I just wanted to make sure you got down all right. Is there anything else I can do for you?”

“Yeah, watch our backs and stay local in case I need you to round them up again after the next pulse.”

“Roger that.”

“Roger my ass.”

“Roger your ass, roger.”

“Dave?”

“We did download the personality, Mike.”

“Are you in there?”

“Some of me. Get on with it, get through that portal.”

The President hung up and Michael tossed the stray phone aside.

“You ready?”

Simon pulled out his whip.

Michael pulled out his as well.

The portal, itself, seemed to know what was going on because it started to crackle with extra energy as Simon and Michael brought the whips out.

“Let’s crack ’em.”

They cracked their bullwhips into the portal, and they went right through and sucked Michael and Simon right on behind them.

Everything became a blur of light. Things stretched, pulled into pretzels, and then ironed out like old laundry hung up to dry before Michael finally opened his eyes again.

It was dark.

Michael felt around.

His face was there, that was good.

He thought about that for a moment. So, his face was there. What about his hat? He felt around for that, found it close by and put it on. At least he felt the sensations of putting it on his head. He could feel the satin lining caress his forehead and temples, and he could feel the weight of it on his ears, but it fell off again. He felt around and could feel the ground beneath him. He pushed up, and put his hat back on again, but still had trouble opening his eyes. Everything was blurry.

He searched around and rubbed at his eyes. His hands were there, and he could see them. He looked around. Simon was on the floor, but pushing up, and shaking his head. He kept transforming, back and forth and back and forth. Sometimes he got it right, and sometimes, he got it wrong and had to transform back so he could breathe or so his eyes weren’t on the inside of his nostrils or something. He wasn’t awake enough to control it. Soon he got it back, straightened himself up, and started looking around.

They were standing on a hill, covered in bluegrass with an open, cloudy coppery sky above them.

Before them was the portal, just as it was on the other side, just a mirror image.

“Where are the whips?” asked Simon.

“Doing their job.”

Michael reached around, felt at the base of his neck, and could feel the prickle where the extra-dimensional whip must have attached itself to him, and as he thought about it, he could see the light of it trailing like a faint ghost back to the portal.

“They are linking us back to our world.”

Simon felt for his as well.

“If we destroy the machine, we’ll have just a few seconds to make it back through before the portal loses its connection.”

“Here’s to keeping it light, right?”

There were great grinding and scraping.

Michael and Simon looked out and could see a great machine rolling forward and clamping down over the projector.

“We’ve got to get in that thing.”

“That’s it, right there?”

“I think so, we’re going to have to find out.”

Captain Harland stepped forward. Here he was about their size and started working on the machine. He waved off the help of his slaves, who scattered away as he flung his arms at them.

He threw what looked like a screwdriver at the ground and sat on the machine, looking through the portal.

“Why are they out in this field?”

“I don’t know,” said Simon.

They ventured another peek, and saw behind the portal generator, the huge army lying in wait. It looked like they’d been camped out there for a while.

Harland looked over at them, did a double-take.

“They spotted us,” said Michael.

“Get them!”

Michael and Simon turned tail and ran. They dived down into the bluegrasses and tried to hide in the thick underbrush, but the army was close upon them. Here, instead of being short and stubby six-armed assassins, they were lean and strong. It was their natural world, and they were proud warriors, skilled at what they did. They found Michael and Simon and brought them forward to Harland.

“How is it that you’ve come here?”

“Oh, you know, just looking around,” said Michael.

“Just looking around? You are not from this world.”

“Never met travelers?”

Simon turned into himself.

“And what of this little man? A skin-changer of some kind? Interesting.”

“How is it that you can understand us, and we you? Are languages that similar in the galaxy?”

“You’d be surprised,” said Michael. “One of my best friends in High School was an alien, and the most foreign thing he ever said sounded something like a combination of French and Spanish at best.”

“I don’t know of French and Spanish, whatever these things are. I should kill you now. You came through the portal, yes?”

“Yes.”

“Then how come you could make it through in one piece? We are having such difficulty with it.”

“What happened here?”

“It was a war. We burned our planet to death. Some things still survive. The grasses seem to have thrived on our warfare. We’ve been looking for a new home for some time now, and yours was the first we found that we could get through the portal with. We just couldn’t make it stick.”

“Part of it’s because you destroyed the portal generator on the other side.”

“Did we?”

“Afraid so, and when you come through the portal, you seem to change. I’m assuming you didn’t try and push a big tentacled monster through at us last time.”

“No, it was a horse.”

The word didn’t translate well in Michael’s mind. They didn’t have horses here. It was closer to the word steed, but that wasn’t even close. It was more like a beloved animal when it finished in his mind.

“What happened?”

“He got stuck. The portal generator isn’t stable, we can’t make it work.”

“I have to ask you to abandon it.”

“What?”

“What you’re doing is destroying our world. Each time you power this system up, you deepen the crack or rift between our worlds.”

“That is our hope.”

“You must not. What you are doing is twisting our worlds and breaking them apart. You’ve already laid waste to this world, please don’t do the same to ours. We have a hard enough time taking care of it ourselves. Here you seem reasonable. On the other side, you don’t come through quite the same. Your minds and bodies get warped and altered by the portal. You need to shut it off, for our own good, and yours.”

“You do not understand. We are dying.”

“It’s never simple is it?”

“No, it’s not.”

Harland straightened up. The army behind him was taking notice of what was going on. “We can’t turn it off, it’s our only hope. We don’t travel the stars, we only travel between dimensions. For most of the war, we used these machines to travel in and around and behind each other, for attack and surprise.”

“And now you’re using it to find a way out.”

“You understand.”

“Yes I do, and I promise to help, I’ve got friends, and we can make another arrangement. We’ll get you off-world.”

“I cannot accept your offer.”

Michael nodded.

“You’re sure you won’t reconsider?”

“I cannot make allowances. This portal is our last hope. Before a ship from your world could arrive, we’d all be gone.”

“You won’t accept then?”

“No. It’s kind of you, but it’s no use.”

There was a rumble across the ground.

“Sire!” called one of the technicians who had been working on the machine. “We’re ready for another pulse!”

“Good, then start!”

They rumbled away from the casing, and a blast of energy coursed up the projection that was generating the portal, and it brightened.

“Everyone move out!”

They began to move forward, and transform. In just a moment the grasses shrank into the ground and became hard asphalt, light posts, and traffic lights.

Simon looked around them. “We’re home.”

“No, we’re not.”

Harland was still standing there. “It’s just the beginning. It’s still not strong enough for anything to stick yet. If I go straight through the portal, I won’t make it through, or I’ll end up caught between two worlds, like the creature you saw.”

“What’s the point then? If you come through like some kind of monster, what’s the point?”

The Captain just shook his head.

“Come on, I can have a fleet here before you know it.”

“Sorry, Michael,” said Harland. “This is likely our last chance, this or the next pulse. The projector is dying.” He moved forward and began to push his head through the portal.

“Don’t.”

“I have to try.”

Harland pushed himself into the portal, climbing through, Michael and Simon could see him transforming into the ravenous toothy body of a major slobbering monster on the other side. On this side, his feet kicked and swayed and pushed, and his arms flailed to keep hold of the edge of the portal, which of course there wasn’t one.

“Good, he’s getting even uglier now…”

Michael leaped at Harland, and grabbed him by the foot, but could only hold on, finding himself hoisted up into the air. His feet couldn’t touch the ground, so instead of pulling, he just wiggled there, hoping to latch onto something by accident.

Simon transformed and then soared into the air and landed next to Michael, who while holding onto one of Harland’s feet, and losing the battle and began to slide through the portal. He screamed, and Simon watched as Michael’s right arm turned into a wild explosion of spaghetti as it went through to the other side.

Simon jumped up and tore at Harland, and got pulled up like a rag doll, too close to the portal for comfort, and let go, falling to the ground.

Harland stepped through with a sort of sticky squeaking spurt, and Michael fell through with him, getting turned into what looked like a wet slop of raw hamburger. Simon jumped, and grabbed at Michael, pulling him back through. They fell to the ground with a whump and looked back and watched as Harland, now through to the other side looked closer to a gelatin-based dinosaur with fangs than his usual self. Harland roared, and cocked his neck, yelling into the night sky on the other side.

Simon stood up.

“Now what?”

“We go back through.”

“What?”

“I saw it, you were mutating just like that guy was, worse!”

“It’s okay, We’ve got these.”

Michael reached behind him and touched the line that connected him to the interdimensional bullwhip. When he touched it, it fell back into his hands, and he reached back to whip it forward. Are you coming?

Simon pulled his and feeling that connection to the other side through it, that safe path, they both pulled their whips back in time to hear a great thud, a crack, and the portal snapped shut before them.

“Crap!”

Michael looked around. Simon was already on top of the portal generator, tearing into it.

He pulled off the side and looked in.

No circuits.

He scrambled around, looking for anything that he was familiar with.

Michael jumped up on the generator and just sat there.

“Alien technology,” he said.

Simon looked up from it all.

“You never know what you’re going to get.”

Simon yelled and threw a part of the machine fifteen yards away. Around them, the people and animals once perched on the hill, ready for battle, began to fade in and out like a great jackpot light exploding for the winners.

“What’s happening?”

“I’ll bet it’s similar on the other side, but now it’s a much larger problem.”

Michael kicked the machine and jumped off of it. He peered in. “Looks like Aztec stuff.”

Simon wasn’t bothered to be surprised at this.

“All physical, no circuit boards, nothing like that. It’s all put together with stone and magic.”

“So?”

Simon let out a deep breath like he’d been holding it for several minutes or more.

“It means there’s no way back.”

Simon transformed into himself from the creature version of himself.

“Never?”

“Never.”

What troops remained came down the mountain at them in a giant volley. Michael watched them winking in and out of existence like he imagined that his world was beginning to do. He ought to be seeing a McDonald’s or a Buick anytime now, flying through the air to squash them.

They came down the mountain, and Simon was ready for a fight. He transformed into the monster and jumped at the attacking soldiers, tearing one of them apart in the air before he came back down to the ground.

Michael thought about it for a moment, ignoring the onslaught of warriors and wondered if it was worth telling Simon that it wasn’t worth it, that they were stuck for good, and that’s all there was to it. He pushed up onto the projector and closed his eyes sitting on top of it. He imagined the warriors diverting their attention to Simon, and leaving him alone like he wasn’t there. He could see them in his mind, throwing their spears and daggers, and them slicing just by his head without hitting him at all. He opened his eyes and watched as one slipped by his nose, on it’s way to a nearby patch of bluish grassy land. He watched around him, in a peaceful state, almost in slow motion, and thought about how this was all going right now. They weren’t trapped, they weren’t besieged, they weren’t about to die, five minutes on this alien world. He opened his eyes. It was all still true. He closed his eyes again, and imagined them back in his office, pouring cups of coffee and getting straws for the zombie brothers. That was a good thought. He concentrated on the smells and the tastes and the textures, of the feeling of slipping back into his chair again, with all of this behind him.

Simon punched his way through the body after body, but they began to pummel him, coming at him from far too many directions. He lurched with one punch and then got caught off balance by another, and down he went, and then they piled on top of him. They couldn’t hurt him beyond a scratch. He was healing faster than they could hurt him, but they were keeping him pretty well pinned to the ground now.

Michael watched, but in his mind, it wasn’t happening to him. He was safe. He closed his eyes again. One way or another this would soon be over.

He could feel the whip and snick of weapons sliding by him, thudding into the generator beneath him, and knocking chunks of stone out of the design of it. One of the chips of a rock hit Michael in the face. He told himself it was the portal reopening again and concentrated on that thought.

“What happened?” It was the President.

“I don’t know,” said Fred. Moxie was at his side.

They were standing on the little bridge of the President’s attack shuttle.

Below them, they could hear the scream of Harland’s new lease on life as what looked like a giant rubber monster, half dinosaur, and half moldy bread. It was an awesome sight.

He came up out of the crater of the Sublight group’s building and bellowed with rage and a lot of misunderstanding. There was a crash behind him, and the entire building crumbled after a giant explosion that rocked the land for miles around. It wasn’t a full nuclear explosion, but the cloud of dust and gas rising from the epicenter was a magnificent mushroom. As it cleared, Harland pushed his way up through the rubble, grabbed a nearby army airborne in one clawed hand and gutted him down whole, then bellowed again as he pushed his way out of the crater.

“What the hell is that thing?”

“Sir?” it was an officer.

The President ignored him.

“Sir?” there was a more thoughtful, and respectful tone in his voice.

“What is it?”

“They’re gone.”

Everyone looked up.

“The portal, it’s closed.”

“Lost on the other side of who knows where the hell.”

Moxie was smiling.

“What?”

“He’ll make it. He always does.”

“Moxie I…,” said Fred. “You know I love you.”

“I know, and I love you Fred, but I can just tell, he’s okay.”

An explosion rocked the ship. Everyone fell over. Moxie and Fred slid to the edge, and almost out. The President held onto the console, and soldiers slipped in every direction.

“How do you know?” He was yelling at her over the sound of the explosions outside as the ship righted itself.

“I just know, you know that.”

“What are we going to do?”

“We gotta go look for him!”

They stood up on the edge, looking down into the pockmarked land below them, and the big dinosaur-creature that seemed to be eating a tank for breakfast, one that was currently firing at him from its uprighted position.

“Moxie, do you still love him?”

“Of course I do.”

Fred’s face fell.

“Just not the way that I love you.”

“Is face lightened.” He felt stupid for doubting her.

“How do we do it? We’ll have to trace him.”

“Do you have a sample?”

“Of course I do.”

She pulled from a small slot on her wristband’s watch, a tiny vial with a drop of blood in it.

“How did you get that?”

“You don’t want to know, Yes I got one of yours too.”

Fred just gave up and waited on it. They hadn’t tracked anyone like this in a while. Tracing his DNA across the galaxy would burn out her battery at best. She’ll have to be right the first time.

She dropped it in a little slot and pressed a button that broke the glass of the tiny vial and soaked in the drop of blood.

Her wrist band was still chewing on it when another explosion in the air rocked them again and they both went tumbling out into the air towards the ground.

“Guys!” The President was all alone on his little bridge. He thumped the counter, and his hand fell off. He looked around to see if anyone noticed, and then reattached it, and programmed himself to forget that it ever happened.

Fred and Moxie fell.

The air whistled around them.

They looked into each other’s eyes as the air rushed past them.

He clasped her hand, pulled her to himself, and kissed her.

While they were doing that, heading for the ground at terminal velocity, her wristband beeped, they had a match. She reached out, not opening her eyes, and not stopping the kiss, and pressed the button. They both disappeared in a flash of purple light right before hitting the ground.

There was a flash to their left, Simon didn’t notice it, but Michael did.

He opened his eyes.

“Moxie.”

Michael turned around, and Fred and Moxie were standing there.

Simon was still killing little blue guys with more arms than they required.

Michael jumped for Moxie, who was about to get hit with a flying dagger, and they tumbled to the ground.

Fred stood over them and then gave them both thumbs up.

“Simon!”

Simon turned around and without question jumped for them. Daggers plunged into his back. First one, then ten, then twenty. His eyes rolled into the back of his head. He fell in on them, his body protecting them from even more damage.

“Fred, get us back!” said Moxie.

Fred reached out and making sure everyone had a hand on him or the other way around, he hit his wristband and brought them all back with the feature that always kept their last location, or at least the one that kept dragging them back towards the burger joint.

They rolled into the dust near the crater and looked up. The President’s ship was right on top of them.

“Get on board!”

They all jumped on, dragging Simon’s body with them.

The ship sailed back into the sky.

“Oh Simon!” said Moxie. A tear was in her eye.

“Quick, let’s get these daggers out of him,” said Michael

They turned him over, which wasn’t all that easy.

Fred and Michael did the heavy pulling, tossing the daggers aside, but Moxie helped get some of the larger pieces out of him. His eyes looked dead, pale and silvery, then he opened them.

Moxie screamed, and Fred stood up with a sort of a yelp.

Simon groaned, and turned over again, and pushed himself up into a crawl. Moxie watched as his skin curled and peeled and began to stitch itself back together. Soon he was standing, and the color came back into his eyes.

He looked around, blinking. “What happened?”

“We’re back.”

“We made it?”

Michael looked around. “Yeah, we made it, thanks to these guys.”

A dimly lit underground tunnel glows with eerie bioluminescent slime. A rat detective and a mouse baker stand in shock, staring at a monocled frog in a top hat, who sits covered head to toe in donuts. Strange yellow tentacles slither into the shadows as an unsettling silence fills the cavern.

Shadow Street Chapter 6

Longevity and Other Stories
A life without end,
stars call from the endless night,
time slips through our hands.
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This is a draft version of a chapter from John Saye’s book, Longevity and Other Stories. If you are daring, why not subscribe to my newsletter (they come few and far between), and I’ll send you a PDF copy of the book?

“Come here, come here,” said Mr. Curtis. He danced at the end of the counter.

“Let’s get this thing started,” I said. I made my way with Mrs. Smith around the counter.

“Help me with the boxes,” said Mrs. Smith. She waved to me, and I reached up above a cabinet and retrieved a stack of boxes, each made of thick paper, and about the size of a single-layer cake.

“Sorry, we closed earlier than usual. We’ll probably need more than that.”

I laid them on the counter. There were seven.

“Where are they?” said Mr. Curtis.

“Next to the ovens.”

“I’ll be right back.”

Mr. Curtis jiggled by me, swinging around, and disappeared into the kitchen. We heard clang after clang as he went for the wrong things. Each time Mrs. Smith would wince.

Bang! “Sounds like the pans.”

Clang! “The tea sets.”

Smash! “Oh goodness.”

“I found them!” He called from the back.

She looked at me. “You must have a strong friendship.”

“Why do you say?”

“Because I think I’d wring his froggy neck if it were just me.”

I smiled. “It’ll be all right. Assuming we’re not all dead already,” I said.

Her smile faltered. For a moment, I knew she either thought she was cracking down the middle or we were, and she wasn’t sure who it was.

Mr. Curtis appeared with a pile of the boxes in hand and running among the counter dropped them all at Mrs. Smith’s feet, then put his hands on his hips and stood there, either like a pirate or like some kind of superhero. I wasn’t sure what he was up to.

“Thank you, Mr. Curtis,” she said, gritting her teeth just a little. “Let’s get started.”

We opened the first three boxes onto the counter in a line, then she started by filling each one with a pile of muffins.

“I can’t sell anything else, so anything you think you could eat, feel free.”

“You mean of this? That’s safe.” I said.

“Quiet.” She covered her mouth.

For Mr. Curtis it seemed that for every third muffin that got put in his box, one went into his hat. I couldn’t keep up and lost count, but it seemed like a lot. There were a few rolls left behind, and they went in there as well.

We set those boxes on the counter and opened three more. Into them went scones and biscuits, crackers, and bread sticks. They filled the boxes evenly with various assortments, then after moving those boxes away, we set about doing what turned out to be the last five, full of donuts.

They were cream-filled, cake, glazed, and chocolate. Some were covered in sprinkles. Some were shiny, others dull, but they all smelled wonderful.

Alone of what was there, I kept one of the plainer donuts and fixed us all strong coffee as we helped Mrs. Smith empty the coffee and tea services.

“Here we are. Let’s take them back,” said Mrs. Smith. We each took a box and brought them to the back by the loading door, just as she always had. We set them down, then continued the journey until all eleven boxes were back there, all ready to go.

She dragged a small table back from the dining room and Mr. Curtis followed her in with three chairs held aloft, but unable to see. He seemed to be trying echolocation to find his way based on the amount of noise he was making. I quickly helped him and took two of his chairs away so he could see again.

“Oh, hello there,” he said.

“My goodness, let’s sit down.”

We arranged the chairs, and brought in the coffee, and what refreshments we believed to be safe. Mostly, Mr. Curtis would remove his hat, pull out a random donut or something, munch on it calmly with the hat firmly back on his head, then he’d get another one out again a few moments later.

“You didn’t have any maggot bread, did you?” He asked, as serious as could be. I thought about apologizing for him but decided he did that, or something like it all on his own with a shrug.

“I’m sorry, no,” she said.

“Darn!”

The lights were dim.

Outside, we could see the carriages going by, each pulled by a competent dog. I thought of our apartment.

“Tell me about yourself, Mr. James,” she said.

“Dr. James,” corrected the frog, a single index finger in the air waving around one of his sticky pads.

“Dr. James, I’m sorry! I understand the two of you share the townhouse you work out of. Is that true?”

“It is,” I said. “It’s mine, left to me by my father. I don’t need the whole place to myself, so I rent the second bedroom to Mr. Curtis.”

“Were you an investigator first?”

“Hardly,” said Mr. Curtis.

“I’m a doctor, I was a field surgeon in the war, and I used to practice General medicine until last year.”

“And you?” She turned her attention to Mr. Curtis.

“I am Curtis the magnificent!” He flared his coat like it was a cloak. It didn’t quite work, and his left hand just sort of poked out. “I’m a magician. Mostly children’s parties, and some other gatherings, but I have a problem. Want to see a card trick?” He pulled a deck of cards, no cover, ready for shuffling, which he did, out of thin air.

“No, I don’t, sorry.”

He shrugged and dropped the cards.

“What’s your problem?” She took the frog’s hand.

“Trouble follows me everywhere. Strange tales. Unusual tidings. Freak theater fires. I developed a knack for figuring things out, though. Patterns emerge, even when you’re not looking for them.”

“Especially when you don’t want them to,” I said.

“Since he’s the detective,” she said.

Mr. Curtis was looking at our pile of boxes of excess baked goods.

“What’s your role in all this?”

“I’m here to keep him on track, and out of as much trouble as I can.”

“Real good at splinting my arm, I can tell you that.”

“Okay,” she said.

“Interesting thing here,” said the frog.

“What’s that?” I took a sip of coffee and a bite of something I can no longer recall the taste of, except it seemed pretty dry to me.

“Didn’t we have eleven boxes here?”

“We did.”

“Well, now we have nine.”

“Nine? We brought out eleven,” she said. I thought she was going to crawl all over me.

“Yes, I count nine.”

I ran over and started counting.

“Need my magnifying glass?”

“I don’t think so. Yes, it’s nine.”

“There it is!” I heard myself saying it, but a lot was going on honestly. There was a yellow tentacle on the floor coming from the large drain. An eye popped up, and it heaved a box up, wrapping around it, and bracing with another appendage, pulled the box down.

“Eight,” said Mr. Curtis.

I dodged out of the way, and it grabbed another one. I jumped out of the way and let it go.

“Seven,” yelled Mrs. Smith.

“I know, yes!” said Mr. Curtis. “This is fantastic!”

“I can’t argue with that.”

Another one shot out and grabbed another box.

“Six!”

Two tentacles flew out and grabbed more, “five and four!”

Mr. Curtis jumped in one box.

“No!” I said.

“Oh yes,” he said back and began emptying one box of donuts as quickly as he could, spilling them everywhere.

“What are you doing?” she and I said together as the other two boxes went.

He closed himself in the box as a dozen yellow tentacles, thin and strong, whipped out not only to grab the box he was in but to clean all the remaining food off the floor. Tentacles whipped out to trip us up. One had three donuts on it, others curled gingerly around muffins and cookies. Both eyes were up, then everything sucked down the drain.

Slime was everywhere. The tentacles slipped away like spaghetti getting slurped up by a toddler. The eyes ducked down, and the last thing I saw before Mrs. Smith and I were alone in the loading room, was Mr. Curtis’s box pop open and an incredibly floppy happy frog wave to us as he found himself sucked down the drain with the rest of everything.

The oil lamp at the side of the room snuffed out, and the table we were sitting at so briefly fell over with a crash.

Mrs. Smith and I were in the dark, standing on the edge of the drain, which was massive now that some creatures below had come through it, holding paws and staring down into the darkness listening as my friend screamed, chortled, and tally-hoed his way down into the tunnels under the town, laughing like an idiot.

“Come on,” she said, and before I could say under no circumstances, she yanked on my hand and we tumbled into darkness. At first, I didn’t understand it, because I expected it to be a short tumble into a deep pipe, but the fall seemed to last for an eon. We slipped, slid, and powered our way down wet dirty tunnels that were covered in phosphorescent paint. With everything lit up in pale blues, pinks and yellows, I realized it must be from the very slime of the creatures we were looking at.

“Here, I’ll help you,” said a voice in the dark. Mrs. Smith helped me up. It took our eyes a moment to adjust to the dark and the new colors surrounding us.

“It’s quite beautiful,” isn’t it?

“Yes, almost as beautiful as…”

“I am?”

“I was going to say the Milky Way, away from city lights, but yes.”

“So, you’re not interested in Mr. Curtis?”

“What? No, he’s like a brother to me. If a frog can be a rat’s brother, anyway. No one is going to believe what’s down here.”

They turned a corner, found a fork in the tunnel, and took the one more brightly decorated.

“I am going to have to take a serious shower after all of this.”

“Your trousers seem dry, and your jacket.”

“Yes, well, I think I’m going to be trying to wipe this memory from my mind later.”

“You do that.” She curled her paw into his elbow and held onto him as the passage both widened, and became somewhat darker, even though luminescent mushrooms were sprouting in here and they were casting a soft glow on the crystalline ceiling up above.

“Have we passed into a cave?”

“I don’t think so. Look, there’s still a curve to the wall, and it joins up down there with other pipes. I just don’t think this gets used much.”

“It’s used by someone.”

“Or something.” She grabbed me hard then by my elbow, and I turned to see her mouth wide open, filled with yellow tendrils and extra eyes. A single tentacle that had to originate at least as deep as the gut shot from her mouth and I ducked it. It flung out and snagged a crystal on the ceiling, and pulled it down, reeling the big one in for another punch.

It breathed.

“Dr. James?” I heard her original voice speaking, fighting with what was inside her.

“Mrs. Smith?”

Then there were two. One Mrs. Smith, with what looked like a sick octopus in her mouth, and the other one, mad and unleashing furious anger, only a cook with too many timers going to know the truth if. She pulled up a huge chunk of crystal and lunged it down on the creature.

It leaped from her mouth.

She or it, or whatever. Something turned inside out and scampered down the hall. It looked like a small yellow octopus with an extra punching arm and eyes. It started around a corner as I took Mrs. Smith’s hand.

“Is it…”

“Injured maybe.”

“Are you Okay?” we both asked at the same time.

We nodded and laughed at each other.

“Is he?”

“I doubt it.”

Then we heard him ahead of us. We dived through a side passage where the sounds were coming from and there was Mr. Curtis. Naked, yet covered head to toe, arm to arm in donuts. His hat lay to the side.

He looked at us, and without skipping a beat said, “you want to see a trick?”

"A massive, glowing portal divides two worlds—one alien, one Earthly—as a colossal creature remains trapped between dimensions, with military ships circling overhead in preparation for battle."

The Man With Three First Names, Chapter 8

The Man With Three First Names
Rabbits leap through time,
Portals hum with shifting fate,
Night and day now split.
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This is a draft version of a chapter from John Saye’s book, The Man With Three First Names.

The giant smacked his side of the massive gate. “More power!”

Behind him, men who all looked like they were normal, and not any way too tall for the Earth, began working harder on the machine.

“We have to get through.”

Captain Harland stood there and paced. He could see the remains of the lab on the other side of his portal, though it was only in crossing that you could tell a difference in height between these men and the men of Earth. He threw his fists into the portal, was electrified, and flew fifteen feet backward, landing in a heap and smoldering on the ground.

It wasn’t the first time he’d ever done this. The men around him, all working on the machine, which is what the Captain called it, buried their heads in their jobs and kept at it, letting the big guy pick himself up. Trying to pick him up led to disaster.

The Captain stood up and brushed himself off. He checked himself and straightened his suit. Nothing out of the ordinary.

He pushed forward and continued to pace in front of the gate.

“I don’t understand, he said. There’s nothing to it, dimensional travel is all. We should be able to break through the barrier by now.”

A small robot came whizzing up to him through the air. It was spherical and seemed to float on its own repulser field. It bleeped at him.

“Report, oh-one.”

The robot twittered.

The captain smacked it away. “Speak damn you! We programmed you to speak!”

The robot righted itself and floated back up, and switched speakers so it could translate its words into a robotic whine. The voice seemed to tremble and warble over the little tinny speakers the robot had. “Yes sir, sorry sir.”

The Captain looked back at the little ball. He wanted to crush the little sphere between his fingers, and he knew that he could, but you had to talk to someone while you were waiting sometimes.

“Please continue,” said the Captain. He held his hands behind his back while they talked to remove his temptation to knock the little balloon for another spin.

“Yes sir, sorry sir.”

The Captain waved off the apology.

“It seems sir that we are splitting the barrier further and further with each attempt and reaching into the other dimension a little bit more each time. As long as we keep up with our pulses like we are, and reinforcing the link to the other dimension, we should break through before long.”

“Just a matter of time then.”

The Captain looked around at their strange, declining world, no longer habitable by his kind. Wars had ravaged here, and after hundreds of years of nuclear bombardment, subsequent mutations, and attempted gene therapy, this was all they had left. The world was dark, and silent, and filled with purple grasses and brown mists. Around him, near where the men were working on the machine, grazers worked on the soft grasses and a massive creature worked its way through the skies lowering its long snout into a local lake to drink its fill as it cruised along on a gas-filled bladder that kept it in the sky. Around them in the distance, the ruins of a futuristic city stood behind them, covered in purple and orange moss, with grass poking up through the streets and trees growing into the lower floors of the busted outbuildings. It The tops of the buildings, what remained of them, were covered in birds of various kinds and styles and their nests.

The Captain seemed on his own, desperate and lonely. The robot twittered next to him, but he found it intolerable and knocked it to the ground again. It was the only thing he had to talk to. The other men talked among themselves, but they were useless. They had no vision, and he suspected, they were too close to the new animals of his world. This portal was all he had left.

He pulled a photograph of his wife from his pocket. She was beautiful, with long blue hair and silver skin tone. On the Earth, the pocket photo would have been larger than a standard poster. He put it back in his pocket.

She’d been killed just at the end of the last wars when the bombs were still dropping. She was lost. The blue fireball had consumed his entire street. He whispered to her, his hand on the photo in his pocket. The other world, I know it’s my only hope. I have to reach there, even if I destroy it or most of it in the process.

He listened to nothing. What he imagined was her voice, soft tones in his ears.

“I know it’s harming them. I know I should just turn off the portal, but I can’t.”

He watched as the men worked on the generator, getting ready for another pulse. There was a video projection coming from a light housing on the top of the machine, the bulb within it was the only thing keeping the tenuous connection he had with the other dimension. He dared not get too close to it. He was starting to wonder if it would ever work at all.

“We just kept getting so close.”

If he’d had it his way, he’d have stepped through, and left them all behind, but it seemed to keep bleeding this world into the next. When he tried to push himself through before it hadn’t worked the way it should. He couldn’t remember. Trying to think about the last time he tried to push through wouldn’t come to him.

He pondered it all and sat watching the projection from the portal like it was a huge television screen. Beyond it, he could see the remains of the science lab on the other side. He could see there were casualties there, and that their equipment seemed to be continuing to function a little bit. They must have tried to open dimensional portals to each other at exactly the same time. “How did that even work?  What could the odds have even been?”

He watched the science lab, now devoid of life, on the other side, and regretted that those men had to die. He’d had little to do with it, just an accident, but he still felt responsible. He’d been watching the little scavenger assassins that ran over the countryside in this part of the world bursting through to terrorize them on the other side. He still hadn’t been able to get through for more than a few minutes each time.

He thought about it, no one was choosing to cross on their own. It just seemed to be everything in the general vicinity was just working its way through. So the intention to use the portal was a factor. Either way, everything would return to normal as soon as the connection was lost, and they were forced to boost the pulse again.

“If I let it go on, then there’s no going back for any of them. If there were only a way to get through without having anything else hitchhike along with me. That’s the key. I should do it. Just crush the lamp, destroy the machine, and take that last walk into the wilderness. It would be easy. Close the portal, walk away. It would be over.”

Quick, and painless, again with his own kind. He’d been born with a drive to survive, but when all you’ve got to look forward to are monsters in the forest and radiation sickness… He kicked at the ground.

Behind him, the men were starting to get excited.

Oh-one floated up and chirped. “Sir, there’s some movement on the other side.”

Earlier they’d set out sensors, and for some reason, maybe it was the dimensional static, they seemed to continue working while they were still stuck on this side.

The Captain rushed over to the sensor equipment, red dots on a field of yellow.

“Is that all the detail we have? Turn it up, let’s bring these guys into proper focus.”

He adjusted a dial on the side of the screen and smiled with personal satisfaction when he had everything in clear view.

“It’s four of them. It looks like two men, a woman, and some form of creature, perhaps a bodyguard of some kind, lean and tall. I wonder how he deals with that hair. It’s all over the place.”

They were climbing forward, and down into the caverns that had opened up after the blast, down towards the epicenter where the portal now fizzled, almost about to go out.

They lowered themselves into the science lab of the Sublight group and he watched as they looked around, surveying the perimeter.

“They’re looking for any of the creatures. If there are any stragglers. Let me tell you there aren’t. Not until I can push back through. It could be any minute. It’s the only way.”

“Sir, we’re almost there!” called one of the men who was working on the portal generator.

“Yes? Is it there?”

“We’re about to pull the trigger on it now. We’ll be there in just a moment. All the fuel reserves are full, we’re just waiting on the charge to kick in.”

The Captain watched through the portal at the four of them standing there. What was he about to unleash on them? He didn’t know. What would he look like on the other side? It was all a blur.

“Sir, we’re there. Shall I pull the trigger?”

He took one last look at them, just in case it was his last.

“Do it.”

The men worked around the generator at a frantic pace. They flipped switch after switch, generating ever-increasing surges of power.

On the other side, Fred and Moxie walked up to the portal. Behind them, Michael and Simon made their way down. Michael removed the clip from a harness he had lowered himself in with and tossed it aside. Simon just landed with a single leap from the top. They looked through the hazy screen of the portal, and just for a moment, Michael was face to face with the Captain.

The pulse went out.

There was an explosion of light on the Captain’s side of the portal, and a blast of light from the projector flew out and exploded where the portal was. All around them the countryside was replaced with a broken parking lot, a piece of the street and a field of junked cars. On the other side, on Earth, the cars were vanishing and replaced by the form of furry creatures of the night, and the four of them were knocked to their feet by the shockwave.

Before them the images in the portal crystalized, and they could see the Captain on the other side. He seemed pleased with himself, a job almost complete was the look in his eyes.

All around them they heard the ching of metal as a half dozen of the little bastards, six arms each flew at them in the dark.

Moxie ducked as one went over her.

Michael blasted one with a small silver blaster pulled from his inner coat pocket.

Fred hit one with a baseball bat, sending it flying back into the darkness in a silent crumple.

Simon roared as five of them hit him at once and were stabbing him with everything they had. He felt magnetized. They seemed to fly at him without meaning to. He punched one, sending it careening off into the darkness. Another one bit as his ankles and tore his foot off. It exploded with sprays of green blood. He hit the floor on one knee and reached out to slam two of the creatures together into a pulp before him. In another moment, he grabbed two more out of the air above, who were about to land on him, and brought them to the ground hard and fast, killing them.

“Simon—” Michael came over to him.

“It’s all right.”

Simon stood up, and Michael watched as Simon’s wounds healed together, and his foot reattached to his leg. He popped his ankle into place and shook it off.

“All right then.”

 He punched his open palm and cracked his knuckles.

The area was clear for the moment, but there was some warbling in the air, and time and space seemed to be shifting in on itself just a little bit.

“Climb back out!” said Michael. He could feel the next one coming.

“What?” asked Moxie.

“Out, everyone out! Simon, can you help them?”

Simon took Fred and Moxie in his arms and leaped out of the cavernous remains of his old office, landing on the ground above. When he got there, Michael was already up.

“How did you—“

Michael ignored him, and pulled out his telephone, a sleek black job, no good for games, but deadly secure, even for a cell phone. He was already opening up the space roadster.

He got a signal.

“Yes, Mr. President. I think we’re going to need a little help here. I’m about to put you on the car’s cam system.”

He stepped into the car, and everyone else followed. Once in there was a rumble, like a small earthquake, and then another.

“Thunder?” asked Simon.

“No. We should be so lucky.”

He dropped the phone into a slot on the dash, and an image of the President came up.

“What is it you need Michael, is everything in hand?”

“Hey that’s the President!” said Fred.

There was another rumble.

“No sir, I think we’re going to need a little help here.”

The ground rumbled and the car was thrown a hundred feet into the air, where it settled in and began to hover there.

“What was that?” asked the President.

“We’re going to need a little help getting to the portal to get through it sir, I’d like to suggest you send in a task force, can you oblige?”

“We can arrange help in that fashion Michael, what’s the objective of the mission?”

“I’m going to turn on my exterior cameras for you now, and I’ll give you a look. Getting close enough to the portal is going to prove dangerous, and I don’t think we can risk waiting for another down pulse.”

He turned on the cameras.

Below him there were seas of the little assassins, cartwheeling about, shredding everything they could find. Around them were the Grazers, transformed from local cars and trucks, but now in massive form, as if they had been moving towards the portal since the pulses began. There were large floating behemoths, sucking up everything they could find through their furry snouts, and right on top of the portal, sticking through it, and fighting its way into the world was a creature, large and insane, a multi-tentacled beast as large as an aircraft carrier. It looked like a giant mass of wriggling spaghetti, undulating in all directions. There was a large gaping maw at its base, and each clawed tentacle ended with a large rolling eyeball, the size of a truck tire.

“Jesus Michael, that’s what you’ve got there?”

“Yes sir, and I’d appreciate a little help. I just want to keep them at bay. It’d be nice if this big one didn’t get through the gate between now and then.”

“I’ll order it now.”

The President smacked a button on his desk, and Michael could see him stand up and start giving orders before the connection went dead.

“So, what do we do now?” asked Fred.

“We wait.”

“Wait?” said Moxie.

“There’s nothing else to do. If we go down there we’ll be toast, and Simon and I have to get through that portal and knock it out on the other side. Can’t get through that on my own.”

There was a crackle in the air.

Another brief pulse and a shockwave rang out, multiplying the creatures below.

“What the hell,” said Fred.

The assassins were throwing themselves into the air and climbing on top of each other. One of them landed on the hood of the floating Cadillac.

Michael flipped the car over, doing a stationary barrel roll. The little guy flipped off, but more were on the way.

“We’ve got to get higher.”

Michael pulled the car and opened the jets, pointing the car up into the sky. The sunset played on the hood.

He dropped the speed and looked down again.

“Michael, this is the P.R.E.Z one, do you copy?” It was coming over the radio.

Michael hit the switch.

“Copy that. It’s me.”

We have you on our scanners. Hold your position, and we’ll be making our entry now.

“What’s he mean entry?”

“Watch this. You think our military hasn’t done anything interesting lately?”

“War in Iraq?” asked Simon?

“Child’s play. Here come the real guys now. Let’s just hope they can hold them off long enough.”

In they came.

Three ships appeared, from dots of light in the sky, they became brighter and brighter over the course of a second, and through a rip in space and time they arrived. They were definitely US military. Two were painted in modern camouflage, which changed almost like a chameleon to match the general tones around them. The ship in the middle was pure white, which could mean only one thing. The President was aboard, commanding the fight.

The ships had no wings, but just little sharp, pointy juttings, like fins on each side. They had command bridges up top, were smooth, and silent. On their sides, massive doors opened up, and metal spheres, each the size of a car began to spill out.

“Are they bombs?”

Michael shook his head. “Your tax dollars at work.”

The silver spheres landed on the ground below, destroying everything in their way, rolling in and ripping up mounds of dirt and turf that Michael knew would be just fine in the morning when this pulse was over if it ever was.

There was no explosion, but the tremendous crash of them impacting.

Then the spheres began to wiggle, crack and stand up on long tripod legs.

Michael took a closer look at his camera.

He focussed in, and they could see the clear, yet metallic dome over the human driver of each machine. The tripod walkers marched forward on the dome. Forcefields around them kept the little assassins at bay, and they used robotic arms to toss the grazers aside. There was some laser fire, but together the soldiers, with the help of the President and his small fleet, began to herd the creatures closer and closer together.

“They aren’t killing them,” said Moxie.

“That is interesting,” said Michael. “It’s what I expected them to do.”

There was a beep from the console.

“Looks like the President wants to talk,” said Simon.

Michael hit the switch, and the President was on the line.

“Michael, doing all right there?”

“Fine as fiddlesticks sir, he said.” He tipped his hat at the President.

“We’ve got them corralled for now. Come on board, and let’s take a look at this big guy together right?”

“On my way.”

Michael cut off the channel, and dived for the President’s ship, he landed the car in an open bay. As the four of them were walking towards the President and some of his advisors, Michael beeped the car behind him, to lock it with his key fob. The convertible roof came up, and everything locked down.

They shook hands.

“Mister President sir.”

“Michael David Christopher, the Man with three first names, its good to finally meet you in person.”

“It’s an honor, sir. Shall we?”

“Of course.”

They reconvened in a separate room, with a large table on which was an interactive screen.

The President swept his hands across the table and pointed the camera at the Sublight group facility. The large tentacled creature filled the gaping hole.

“What’s it doing there?”

“I think it’s stuck.”

Michael looked up.

“I think it is. It hasn’t made a move since the last pulse. We’ve monitored one more major pulse, a strengthener, and another few minor pulses around to even the load, and stabilize it. We think they are waiting. Someone is testing something by putting this creature through.”

“Hmm…”

“The other creatures are just bleeding through. They are part of one world, and part in another. This creature is struggling. It looks like it’s stuck halfway between this world and the other, but pinned at the portal.”

“Again, hmm,” said Michael.

“There’s a bit more there. We think it might be an experiment, the attempt to push something through on purpose, perhaps before someone or something else makes the attempt again.”

One of the advisors moved the screen with a touch and dropped some print-outs on the table.

“We think it’s almost through. One more pulse maybe.”

“Then what happens?”

“We don’t know. Two theories. Either it vanishes as everything else does after a pulse is over, or since it came through the portal, it might be left behind. We don’t want to change that.”

“What about blasting it?”

“Blasting it could cause it to complete its journey. We don’t want that to happen either. The soldiers on the ground have done a good job of herding everything up and engaging the little assassin guys, but this one we’ve been watching by satellite peek through in the last couple of pulses.”

“So now it’s a waiting game?”

“Yes, it’s a waiting game. Our plan is to get the two of you down through the gate as soon as the next pulse comes through. Until that, we’re staying airborne.”

“That makes sense.”

“That is unless one of the big guys knocks through us.”

Foom!

They looked down at the table.

“There it goes, another pulse.”

“Sir! The sun!” It was one of the soldiers, hanging by the open floating hanger.

“Good good, let’s see.”

They focused down on the hole again.

“That’s what I was afraid of.”

“What?”

There was a huge cloud of smoke around the Sublight group.

“Are the creatures fading?”

“Yes, they are fading, but this one, half-in and half out.”

There was a pulse.

“It’s made it through for good.”

They looked down, expecting to see a giant writhing creature, but there was just a splatter of green.

“At least that half of it made it through.”

The dust settled. As it did so, it revealed the half-body lying there.

“Now we may have a hell of a time getting to that portal.”

“Why?” said Moxie.

“Sushi, My dear, said the President. The crater down there is now full of it.”

Inside a bustling Victorian bakery, a tentacled pastry bursts to life on a table, sending customers into a frenzy. A monocled frog in a top hat and a rat detective stand ready, while a shocked mouse baker recoils behind the counter. The glow of gas lamps casts dramatic shadows.

Shadow Street Chapter 5

Longevity and Other Stories
A life without end,
stars call from the endless night,
time slips through our hands.
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This is a draft version of a chapter from John Saye’s book, Longevity and Other Stories. If you are daring, why not subscribe to my newsletter (they come few and far between), and I’ll send you a PDF copy of the book?

“Let’s go,” I said. I patted Mr. Curtis on the shoulder. He croaked, blinked his left eye, and then a second later his right.

“Right.”

We bounded off up the front stairs and pushed our way into the shop. She wasn’t kidding. The place was hopping. It was teaming with visitors, patrons eating a roll, donut, or sticky bun while enjoying a spot of tea or a large cup of coffee during their lunch hour. There were a variety of mice, rats, moles, and a chameleon in the corner, all wearing work clothes, suits, or other daily wear. There was a family of hamsters down at the head of the line, and we could see, behind the counter, Mrs. Smith running back and forth, fulfilling orders and taking care of customers, ordering employees around otherwise surviving the moment.

“There she is,” said Mr. Curtis.

“What do we do about it?”

“This way.”

We fought through the crowd, twisting around them, but couldn’t penetrate the line. A pair of bats who were discussing a meeting they were going to this afternoon turned and stared us down.

I looked at Mr. Curtis.

He apologized, saying “excuse me,” then to me “let’s get in line.” So we did.

Looking around, we could see that all the side tables, and a lounge area next to the fireplace were filled with folks settled neatly into handsome leather chairs.

In the middle of the room was a standing series of tables, where most folks were. They were leaving almost as quickly as they came in, but no one in here seemed to be infected. I was watching everyone closely as I could, but no one seemed in the least bit distressed, except possibly for Mrs. Smith, and she simply looked like someone dealing with a lunch rush worth of people, yet I kept expecting trouble.

Mr. Curtis appeared to be on alert as well. He was behaving strangely, which meant more strangely than he usually did. He kept darting his eyes around, looking under tables, and taking his hat off to look in it, only to put it back on so he could pull it off again to look in it, and then squeeze down onto the floor to look at everyone’s shoes, then hop up and try to spin around, and put his hat back on.

I’m glad it wasn’t just me because a pair of mice ahead of us kept scooting out of his way, giving him dirty looks.

“Curtis!”

“What?”

“What are you…”

“Looking.”

“Stop.”

“James, clues, you know.”

“I think they’ll find us by this point.”

He looked in his hat again.

“What are you looking at in there? I gave to say sometimes I do not know what or how you keep anything in there.”

“I used to be a magician.”

“I know that. Never mind, what are you watching in there?”

“An egg. At least I think it’s an egg.”

I looked in the hat.

“I can see nothing.”

Then he waved his hand over the open hat. I imagine an almost automatic gesture for him, then reached in and pulled one roll out from this morning and showed it to me.

“My goodness Curtis, that’s three times the size it was this morning.”

It was. As they held it up, it dwarfed his gray-green hand. It looked like it was expanding and building up in different directions. Little ballooning pockets. I almost expected one to rupture and explode like a boil, but that’s not the thing you expect from a sticky bun.

He held it aloft and twisted it around for me to see.

“How long has it been doing this?”

“Since we left Arthur’s tower.”

“I say. Put that thing away.”

He dropped it back into his hat and put it back on. I couldn’t see how he could stand knowing that was up there.

“How can you just put it on like that, knowing it’s up in there?”

“Have you ever gotten used to keeping a sparrow in your hat?”

“No, and I’ve known too many to—”

“Well, once you get used to one of them hopping around up there, you can keep anything in your hat without thinking twice.”

“Maybe in your hat.”

“Precisely.”

We stepped up in line.

Mr. Curtis and I were now near a set of chairs by an end table where two fellows and a lady were taking tea. They had a plate of sandwiches between them that had three trays. The top tray was little desserts topped with cream and berries. The middle comprised rolls, and the bottom was cucumber sandwiches.

They were having a wonderful lunch when Mr. Curtis leaned over and said, “Excuse me, I think one of your rolls is hatching.”

“What?” said the lady with wide eyes. She was a mouse in a red dress wearing a tall hat with a purple plume feather coming from it. “Excuse me?”

“Your role there, it seems to be…”

A yellow tentacle popped from the side of the roll she was holding daintily in her right paw.

“Ah!”

She held it away from her and closed her eyes.

“M’lady, please,” said Mr. Curtis. “Please allow me to…” he reached out to take it from her when another squirming, yellow one popped out the other side. She dropped the bun on the floor, snarled, baring her teeth, and stomped on it, skewering the roll with a particularly devastating spiked high heel. She pulled her foot back, and the shoe remained.

Tentacles popped, grabbed the shoe, and twisted around it. She stomped again, then folks scrambled and scattered over tables.

“What is that?” said someone who had just lost their soup all over themselves. Tables fell and folks ran. The doors burst and the place emptied.

Mr. Curtis picked it up by hand in the middle of the chaos. It had closed over the shoe and tightened into a ball. He lifted it, and people around us hit the walls, plastered by fear.

I could hear Mrs. Smith in the background. “Everybody, please stay calm. Everything will be okay… ugh. What? Is? that?”

“I don’t know,” said Mr. Curtis. “I think it’s from another world.” He held it up, holding the shoe by the toe. “Very interesting.” He pulled a wooden spoon, I have no from where, and poked at it. The octopus creature squelched and tightened and the heel popped off and fell on the floor and rolled away under a turned-over table.

He poked it again.

It grabbed the spoon. “Eh!”

It dropped the shoe and hung off the spoon from underneath. It started climbing up quicker than I thought it could. I wondered how fast these creatures could move underwater.

It jumped on Curtis’s face. He ducked, and then it headed straight for me. I grabbed a glass from a table, and slinging cold brewed coffee everywhere, I smacked the creature to the floor. It ran from us, dragging two tentacles behind it. And either tripping around or rolling like some kind of insect, closed up and flying down a hill.

Rats ran. Some jumped, and others tumbled. Curtis was running after it, or closer hopping after it, and I was just trying to keep my eye on it while it bounded straight for Mrs. Smith, who was screaming.

“Kill it!” said someone.

“What is it?” said someone else.

“Not breakfast,” said someone else.

People were scrambling in every direction.

It crawled up on the counter-top.

Mrs. Smith screamed.

I slapped my arm down on one side of the counter between it and Mrs. smith, and it turned around, rolling like a ball, its tentacles slapping everywhere back towards Mr. Curtis, who had his hat ready. It rolled right into the hat and he trapped it underneath.

For a second, it was bumping around, trying to get out.

“Is it in there?” I said.

“I’m not sure,” said the frog. He peaked under, then quickly smashed it back down on the counter. “Yep, it’s in there.”

“Close up shop,” I said.

“Right,” said Mrs. Smith.

She jumped over the table and started shooing the people who hadn’t gotten out already. They were ready and willing to escape, tumbling out the door. When the last of them had scrambled out and gotten their hats together, she locked the door and she and I dimmed the lights and shuttered the windows.

“Bring it here,” I said.

“Right ho,” said Mr. Curtis. He brought the hat and placed it on a table in the middle just as I righted it. The three of us drew up chairs, each keeping a hand or paw on it as much as we could.

Someone knocked on the door. “Are you open?”

Mrs. Smith got up to answer it, but I held up my hand and shook my head. “Not yet.”

She sat back down.

“Let’s find out what’s in here,” I said. “Turn it over, Mr. Curtis.”

“Yes. Right.” He flipped the hat over, and each of us stepped back a little. It was dim, but we could see fairly well. The hat was dark.

It rocked a little. It bumped to the side.

An eye popped up on a yellow stalk. It blinked and looked at each of us.

A tentacle tentatively came out to writhe around, then another one, as another eye came up to look at me.

“Mr. Curtis,” said Mrs. Smith. “It’s moving.”

Then it was out. It flopped on the table and the hat went skittering.

“It’s out!” I said.

“Yeah, it’s out!” said Mr. Curtis. It rolled, tucking its eyes in, and splatted to the floor.

“Catch it again!” I yelled.

“Yahoo!” said the frog. He put on his hat and we were off, chasing it behind the counter, and back through the kitchens.

It slid under the counter and into the oven. We were after it with brooms. Mr. Curtis was slapping at the floor with a mop when we chased it into the back room.

“Not the drain, Mr. Curtis!”

It was flipping and sliding, avoiding blows and whipping left and right. We were right behind it. Mr. Curtis threw his hat, trying to trap it again, but it fell short, and the creature made it down the drain.

It slipped through the bars and vanished below the building.

We sat on the floor panting and clutching our chests. At least I was. Mr. Curtis just sat there and burped.

“Mr. Curtis!”

“Yes, Dr. James?”

He burped again.

“Oh, never mind. Let’s help Mrs. Smith clean up.”

Burp.

“I’ll take that as an affirmative.”

We got up and blocked the drain by dragging several bags of flour as many as we could find, and covering it as best we could, and then helped her clean the tables up and bring the dining room back into order.

“What’s left?” I asked.

“The donations for the morning.”

“Right.”

There were still many rolls, buns, and muffins in the case of the lunch crowd. Mrs. Smith lined up several boxes. Admitting was more than usual, and we filled ten with extras to put in the back for pickup the next morning.

I looked over at the pile of flour bags, unsure. I’d seen enough strange things today.

“We should stay here tonight,” said the frog. “Yes, that’s what we will do, if you’ll allow us, Mrs. Smith.”

“What?”

“Yes, we’ll watch and see. Perhaps nothing will happen.”

“But maybe it will,” I said.

“Which will help us all unravel this mystery!”

“Of course. I’ll lock up.” She left reluctantly after Mr. Curtis assured her many times. After most of the lights dimmed, the shutters were closed, and she was gone, headed to her home on foot. It turned to my green friend.

“Now what?” I folded my arms.

He croaked. “We wait.”

"A retro diner glows under neon lights as a towering alien leader in robes addresses an army of creatures. A group of adventurers stand ready for battle as dawn breaks through the swirling mist."

The Man With Three First Names, Chapter 7

The Man With Three First Names
Rabbits leap through time,
Portals hum with shifting fate,
Night and day now split.
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This is a draft version of a chapter from John Saye’s book, The Man With Three First Names.

“The pulses have been getting worse haven’t they?” asked Michael.

Jen nodded. “Yeah, they have been getting worse.” She stuck a pencil behind her ear.

Walter turned and leaned against the stove. “It’s like that time a few years ago when we had the bunnies coming through.”

Michael couldn’t remember. “Bunnies?”

“Yeah, you remember, it was like there was something to do with a hole in a tree, and bunnies kept coming out of it.”

“I remember that now.” It was vague in his mind, but he could remember something.

“I sure as hell remember that. I didn’t know how we were gonna get rid of them all.”

“True, I’m not sure how close to this that is.”

“What happened with the bunnies?” said Simon.

It was getting dark somewhere behind them. They brushed it off, but Walter spoke up. “We’re about to get a pulse.”

They turned around, but Jen kept talking. “There was this rabbit hole, it was in my neighbor’s back yard, at the base of a tree, where the roots all tangled up. My friend had been taking pictures of the rabbits, blogging about it, and when they had a bunch of little bunnies that spring, they blogged about that too.”

“And then there was the big power outage.”

“It wasn’t just the house either,” said Walter, “it was the whole dang neighborhood, out for like two weeks. Drove Nancy crazy, she had to go to the library to do her blogging.”

“Yeah, I remember that, said, Jen. She was sitting there, watching as the power trucks came through, and all that. There was a spark, I guess it was so many electrical things turning back on at once, it was kind of shocking, but she had her video camera trained on the tree at the time, but this time she had a timer on it, to try and catch them as they came and went, and a bunny popped its head out and ran across the yard, right at her. She watched it all happen. She jumped, upsetting her iced tea, the glass smashed on the patio, and she jumped and looked around. There was nowhere for the rabbit to go so it must be cornered behind her where the fence met the house. She looked, but there was no sign of the rabbit.”

“She was shaking it off and thinking about where she was going to find the broom and dustpan. Her tea was sitting there calm as anything where it had been and the rabbit, we’re pretty sure it was the same rabbit… just sitting there.”

“It was definitely the same rabbit,” said Walter.

“Yes, the same one, came out at her again, and we think it was grabbing the tea the second time that did it.”

“What happened?”

“Well, the rabbit came out and flew across the lawn to her. It got to the table that it bumped, knocking over the tea, and it just disappeared. Right there. Before she knew it, here came another rabbit. She knocked away her chair and pulled the table out of there. Her husband wasn’t due for another four hours, and the kids were staying at a friend’s house, so she just sat there and watched it as it all happened over and over again. She counted them for fifteen minutes and up to one hundred and fifty before she couldn’t take it anymore.”

Walter pushed forward, dropping burgers in front of everyone, just for the hell of it. “Then it really got weird when her husband got home.”

Simon turned to watch Walter. The old man seemed to have a gleam in his eye, and he looked ready to talk.

“There he was, Jerry, he had just come home from work. He’d stopped by here on the way home to bring home dinner, that’s how I heard about this later.”

“Oh I’d have told you, Walter,” said Michael.

“I know, anyway, it was just funny.”

“What happened?” asked Moxie.

“Well, it was like this. He gets home, and it’s already dark right, and she’s out on the patio, she’s upgraded to wine by this time, but he didn’t notice that at first. The first thing he saw was that she was sitting out there in the dark.”

“What’s with the dark?”

“I don’t know if I can take it anymore.”

“What? We’re doing all right aren’t we?”

“I don’t know about that.”

“Why are you sitting in the dark?”

She waved out to the tree, with a pained look, and said: “Do you see them?” She could no longer look on her own.

“See what?”

“Oh God, I am crazy then.”

She stood to go and said “I don’t know, pack our stuff or something,” and he said, “That’s odd.”

She closed her eyes and hoped. “What?”

“I just saw a rabbit go across the yard, and then another one must be your little troop. Wonder what they are doing out tonight?”

“Keep watching.”

“Okay.”

He continued to watch until the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth rabbit had come out and skittered across the yard.

“What the hell,” he said.

“Can you see where they go?”

“No, it’s too dark.”

“Try.”

He walked out into the yard, to watch from a different perspective and saw that they whipped across the yard to a certain point, and then just stopped. It was like they were just running into nothing.

“What the hell?” It seemed to be all he had left at this point.

“Yeah.”

“Can you touch them?”

“Yeah.”

He seemed surprised. “Really?”

“Yep. I’ve hit them with golf clubs, I shot a couple of them just before dark. I kicked three as they came out.”

“What happens?”

“They land, head for the same point, and vanish anyway.”

“What happens if you put something in the way?”

“Nothing much, they just go around it and get close.”

“What if we plug it up?”

“What?”

“The hole. Let’s plug it up.”

The idea hadn’t occurred to her yet. “What can we use?” She looked around for something. She went into the house and came out with a 2-liter bottle of soda, and together they jammed it into the hole and waited.

“That was their mistake, you see,” said Walter.

“Plugging the hole was just enough,” said Jen.

“Enough for what?” asked Fred.

“It was enough to put the portal just a little off-kilter.”

“What happened?”

“They starting busting out of there like gangbusters,” said Michael. “They popped that Coke bottle out of there, and started coming out in droves, not one at a time, but like five, six, eight at a time, and this time they weren’t going away, they were just piling up in the yard, and they didn’t want to leave.”

“It’s true. They were just sitting there.”

“So, I get there,” said Michael, “I’d already been called and I’d been watching them for a half an hour trying not to laugh, and it was time to go in, so I open the back gate and act all official-like I’m a regular cop or something.”

“Is there a problem here folks?” I say. “I’m completely ignoring the bunnies, even though they are hopping all around me. I’m not acknowledging them at all. They get in my way, I act like I mean for it to look like that.”

“So they’re freaking out right?” said Fred.

“Yeah, no doubt,” said Michael.

“So the lady says, Um, no officer, I don’t think there’s a problem. Did you hear something nearby?”

“The rabbits were all around us, one was up on the table now, and a bunch of them were in her lawn chair. No, I say, I was just trying to be neighborly,” said Michael. “I heard the two of you arguing, and thought I’d come over and make sure everyone was all right.”

“One of the rabbits jumped up on my hat. I totally ignored it as if nothing were in any way different, and pulled out a pad and a pencil. I licked the tip of my pencil and started to jot down notes, just to make them nervous. She tried to see what I was writing, which happened to be a list of books I’d like to order later. I kept the list away from her so she could not read it, which was the point, right?”

“Soon rabbits were in both of my coat pockets, and I was holding two or three of them in my arms, I was even petting one, and the two of them wouldn’t admit they were there for fear of being ridiculed. So I looked at them, covered in fur and rabbits, and said now come on, just admit, this is a bit funny.”

“Sir?” they said.

“The rabbits.”

“What?”

“All these rabbits, they’re everywhere!” She looked so relieved that she almost fell over, and, he did fall over and was then engulfed in the fuzzy little bunny brigade.

“Where is it? I asked, dropping the bunnies that were on me.”

“Down there, in the base of the tree.”

“Right, it’s the old rabbit hole eh? I’m on it.”

“After pulling the husband up from the sea of rabbits swarming all around us, I jumped into the oncoming stream and started to fight and sort of swim through them until I got right up to the tree. I stuck my hand into the hole, and though it was tearing the flesh from my arm to do so, I reached in and pulled a switch, on the other side, turning off the portal. There was some kind of box on the other side that was causing the rip, and it was jarred in just such a way to deluge us with thousands of copies of the same bunny from another dimension.”

“What happened to the rabbits?”

“We let them go.”

“They didn’t go home?”

“Not really. Thousand-plus clones of the same rabbit? We just let it go. Didn’t hurt anybody. I took some of them to my friend Harvis’s house, and some of them followed me home to the warehouse, but most of them just hopped off into the woods and became fox bait or something. It was odd though. Later there was no scarring or even a scratch from reaching through the bunnies like that. Every once in a while I still see one of them around.”

Thunder clapped, and the sky filled with misty clouds again. Outside, the cars were turning into great plains-walking beasts, and the buildings were transforming and taking flight into the sky to reach down and pick off the weak creatures with their colossal snouts and tongues.

“Walter, I’ve never asked you this before.”

“Yes, Mike?”

“Why doesn’t your diner ever sustain any damage?”

Walter’s smile broadened.

“Well, there’s a reasonable answer to that question my friend.”

“What’s the answer?”

“It’s simple. This is my space ship.”

Moxie and Fred stood up.

Walter hit a switch on the stove, and it turned over, revealing a large panel of instruments and computer screens. He checked one of them out. “Yep, the force field is still holding.”

He flipped it back again.

“You dog.”

“What?” said Walter.

“This is your ship then?” Michael looked around, noticing the grease spots, and the worn seats.

“Has it always been a diner?”

“It used to be a trailer, back in the days when we were marketing to construction workers of the clone fleets, and the people in the robot industry.”

“You sold, what, burgers in space?” asked Simon.

“Yeah, I guess, it was something like that. You don’t have cattle in space, well you do, it’s just that the meat is different than what you’re used to.”

“What’s different?”

“Well the cows, as close to an earth name as they come, are purple, but the meat is much the same. You cook it about a minute less on each side, but that’s about it. They still take ketchup pretty well.”

“Why land on Earth?”

“Well at first, I wanted to settle somewhere half-way normal, so I put down some roots here, only to find out this is the strangest planet of them all. Isolated, yet it draws every strange onlooker that has ever gone everywhere.”

“Do you mean anywhere?”

“I know what I mean.” He said it with a sort of a glint in his eye that said there was more to the story.

Thunder crackled outside. Great red forks of lightning flashed across the night sky illuminating the creatures in the fog.

“We’ve got to get out there, and get to that portal,” said Simon.

“You are right,” said Michael, “but have you noticed what’s happening yet?”

“I don’t know, sort of.”

“It’s like there’s s separation between day and night.”

“That’s what I was thinking.”

“Walter, will this place hold out?”

“Mike, with our force field on, we could withstand a nuclear explosion.”

“That’s what I wanted to hear. We wait until morning then. As soon as the day brings us some time, we’ll get as close as we can, in my caddy, and see if we can get through that portal.”

They looked at each other.

“All right then,” said Fred, and started pumping quarters into the jukebox. He and Moxie picked out as many songs as they could, and tried to make it last until the morning. When they ran out, Walter tossed them a couple of rolls from the till and they kept on plugging. Before long, they had every song in the box set to play twice.

“Why didn’t you ever tell us this was a spacecraft?” asked Fred.

“You didn’t ask,” said Walter, with a smile. “I know that’s not fair, but there you go.”

“I’m with Fred,” said Moxie, “we’ve been here like a hundred times, and we never figured it out?”

“Why do you think you keep zinging back here with your little wristbands then?”

“What? I figured it must have been the portal thingie.”

“That’s just the last theory you came up with.”

Michael sat on one of the tables in a booth to himself, laughing at them. “Walter, what did you do to their wrist bands?” he was chuckling at them.

“Nothing they didn’t deserve.”

Jen smacked Walter on the arm.

“What?” Walter was laughing now.

“Walter you old space cow.” She smacked him again.

“Jen, do you know who this is?” He was pointing at Moxie.

“Yeah, it’s Moxie. She and Fred have come in here a hundred times.”

“It’s Maxine’s daughter.”

She just looked at him.

“Maxine. You know, my sister.”

“What?” It was Moxie now.

“You’re my—”

“Uncle, right, and this is your Aunt Jen. 

Jen smacked Walter again.

“Hey now…” He held up his hand to ward off the blows.

Simon decided to stay out of it and drink his coffee. He also decided to change into the troll for a moment, just to see if that made any difference. Besides making Fred jump again, it didn’t.

He shrugged and returned to normal, but before he finished with it he decided to transform just a couple more times. He was starting to get good at taking the clothes with him each time, and anything that was in the pockets, although he kept dropping his fork.  That wouldn’t stay in the amulet.

Moxie turned to Michael. “Did you know?”

“Oh yeah, but I didn’t realize it was Maxine, that’s all. I thought it was another sister. It makes sense that it’s Maxine for some reason.”

Moxie jumped the counter to punch Walter on the nose but hugged him instead.

“You’re mother asked me to look out for you a little while back.”

“So you kept us from traveling far off-world?”

“She doesn’t like the bands. She just asked me to make sure you were doing well before I let you get too far away again.”

“Have you seen her?”

“Well of course I have!”

“She’s not here is she?”

“No.  She’s on Alpha Proxima, but I didn’t tell you that either. Once this business is over, you ought to be able to go off-planet again, but She would like it if you checked in once in a while.”

“What did you do to our wrist bands then?” Fred and Moxie were taking them off.  The bands were made of a strange synthetic leather and flexible plastic that was definitely alien in origin. On them were little screens, and red and blue light.

Walter pulled his from below the sink and put his on. “See? Right here,” he twitched the blue button, and it turned green. “It’s a safety feature. The colors are so similar that I bet you didn’t notice. It’s designed to keep you from getting too far off course on short hops. Call it a feature, rather than a bug.”

They both switched them to green and then back again to blue, just in case.

“Either way they won’t be able to get onto the network until we shut this portal down.”

“So, what’s the plan then?”

Michael jumped off the table. “So we’re serious now then?”

“You bet. We’ve got to get off this planet, eventually.”

“Why?”

“So we can go tell her mother to cut it the heck out.”

“Good luck with that. You’ll be lucky if Maxine doesn’t put a complete tracer tag on you.”

“Have you met her?”

“She used to be my partner.”

“Who hasn’t been your partner?” said Jen.

Michael was glowing with old memories. He pulled out a small lens, connected to a power supply and dropped it on the table. A three-dimensional image of the Earth appeared before them in full color.

Fred waved his hand through it, but Michael slapped it out of the way. “You’ll screw it up — ah look, it’s heading for the coast of Libya, nice.”

Michael waved through it, and repointed it to the United States, and then down to the area in which they were.

“It’s here,” he said, pointing to a dot on the map. He closed in, using his hands to get in closer.

It was a real-time image of what was going on there.

There were creatures all around the remains of the Sublight group building. Some of them just stomped around, some were circling and eating the large grasses that came with them for lunch, and others, the little blue ninja attackers, stood guard and walked around like they had something to guard.

“What’s going on there?” asked Fred.

“I don’t know,” said Michael, “but I’ll bet it’s not that nice.”

There was a great fooming sound and after that a blast of light from the crater. A hand reached out and pressed against the ground, it was the size of a compact car, then there was another one, and it pushed it’s way out through the ground.

“What the hell is that?” asked Fred, not that he wanted to know or anything.

“I think it’s daddy,” said Michael.

The creature pushed its way out of the hole in the ground, it was easily fifty feet tall and stood over the other creatures like they were its scruffy little pets. It wore long sweeping robes, and a pair of long scimitars made of gold hung from its belt.

He reached out and petted one of the grazers with its left hand, and then stood, looking around at what must have looked like its own lands, and the little assassins started to line up around him, and bow.

“Yep, that’s what I thought,” said Michael.

When Michael thought that he was just going to walk around some more and observe his turf, the colossal man looked around and began to address his people. He was making an effective speech, but the language was lost on them all. Lots of hand gestures and fists in the sky. What they could tell about him was that the creatures were all laughing in all the right places, that they seemed to both love and fear him, and that they were totally obedient to him.

He opened his arms, and proclaimed their goodness, and his happiness in them, and seemed to be giving the speech of his life. Michael couldn’t understand each individual word, but he began to put it together as he was watching the arm movements and gestures the giant was using.

“You know what he’s doing Mike?” It was from Walter.

“Yep. He’s declaring victory.”

“That’s what I thought too. We’ve got to get that portal closed.”

“We’ve got to get it closed before they can make it stable. How much longer do you think we have Mike?”

“Not long, another pulse or two. I don’t think this is the final one though.”

“No?”

“Nah, I think that this is the premature victory speech.”

The towering figure turned and looked around him. In the distance, the sun was coming up, and the creatures around him were beginning to fade. He stepped down into the crater, and slipped back through the portal, and into his own world.

Around them in the diner, the mist was clearing. The cars were transforming back from creatures of another world into the hunks of junk they used to be.

“Walter, do you think you can get this hunk of junk flying again?”

“Mike, you know I haven’t actually flown this thing for fifteen years.”

“Can you do it?”

“It’ll take some work.”

“I need you to try.”

“If you need it, Mike, then I’ll do it. Jen?”

“I’m already on it,” she said from the other room.

No one had seen her leave, and Walter hadn’t thought to look around for her. She emerged from the door to the back in a yellow jumpsuit with black trim, form-fitting and zipped to the cleavage. Walter’s eyebrows went up. He hadn’t seen her in that outfit for some time. He turned to Mike. “I think we’ve got a chance.”

“Simon, What about you?”

“I’m on board.” He stood up and transformed. I think I’ll keep to this shape for a while. “Its kind of Troll-like, don’t you think? I keep thinking that for some reason.”

“It could be.” He turned. “Moxie, Fred, what do you think?”

“Count us in!”

They grabbed their packs and pulled their goggles on.

“Leave the packs. You can pick them up later.”

They dropped them but weren’t sure they wanted to.

Michael held his watch up to his mouth and tweaked a knob on the side. There was a crackle of static on the line.

“Gretchen?”

“Yes, Mr. Christopher?”

“Meet us by the door.”

“Yes, sir.”

The car outside, the space roadster, lifted its wheels, and they vanished under the car’s frame. It floated up in the air and sailed over to the door as the last of the mist and monsters faded away with the morning.

They stepped out into the cold morning air and jumped in the car, its convertible top already folded down.

“Hey, Walter?”

“Yeah?”

“Can you feed my other car?”

“Oh yeah, sure!”

They jumped in and Gretchen pulled into the sky and pointed herself towards the crater at the Sublight Group.

A fog-drenched Victorian street at dusk. A well-dressed rat detective and a monocled frog with a top hat stand frozen as a possessed rat, its face covered by a writhing, yellow tentacled creature, stumbles through the lamplight. The eerie glow from a bakery window hints at more lurking horrors.

Shadow Street Chapter 4

Longevity and Other Stories
A life without end,
stars call from the endless night,
time slips through our hands.
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This is a draft version of a chapter from John Saye’s book, Longevity and Other Stories. If you are daring, why not subscribe to my newsletter (they come few and far between), and I’ll send you a PDF copy of the book?

The owl ruffled its feathers and peered down at us with large orange eyes that tore my soul out of my body. I felt weak in the ankles and held onto Mr. Curtis by the hat to keep from falling over. Trouble was, he was jumping up and down, trying to get us killed.

“Freeze, frog,” I said, trying to hold him still, but he got out from under my grasp and jumped up onto a pile of old newspapers the owl must have been keeping.

“Mr. Curtis!”

Nothing. He stood up, took his hat off, and bowed before the great owl.

The owl flew down to a bar closer to us. His eyes seemed to glow in the dark.

“Greetings,” said the frog.

“Save it,” said the owl. This caused Mr. Curtis to step back a little, even if slightly.

The owl flew closer again, now face to face with Mr. Curtis. I realized I was closer to the owl now than I could imagine. I felt like lunch on a stick, running around in front of him like an idiot.

“Arthur,” said the owl.

“What?” I said, without knowing it.

“Sorry, Sir. Arthur,” said Curtis. He bowed again.

“I assume you’ve got something to show me?” Arthur shook out a wing and pointed to Mr. Curtis’s hat on the floor.

“Yes, here. We encountered these in a bakery nearby, and I was wondering…” he handed one bun up, and the bird snatched it in its beak and ate it so quickly that I fell to the floor.

As he chewed, he looked over at me, where I was cowering, and still expecting to be eaten any second. “What’s his, um, problem, Mr. Curtis?”

“Oh, he’ll be fine,” said Mr. Curtis.

I struggled to my feet as Arthur chewed, and looked at the ceiling, then quickly back at me. He jumped to the floor and crouched down to look through my eyes and into my brain. He finished the roll. And opened his beak and stretched it. I survived, as I’ve been able to chronicle this adventure, so I stood my ground. He turned his head to look at me a different way and smacked his beak one more time.

“I’ve tasted this evil once before,” said the owl. He flew back up to a more comfortable perch for him and turned around after shaking his tail feathers at us. One of them fell to the ground at our feet.

“Take that. Throw it in a fire if you need to see me, and it’s an emergency.”

I picked up the feather and tucked it in my jacket pocket, unsure exactly what he meant by that.

“Curtis, have you seen anything like this before. It’s not as simple as a curse or common magic. I believe we are looking at something from beyond.”

Arthur twisted its head to something on the floor. It was Mr. Curtis’s hat. One roll fell to the floor and was wriggling away, little tentacles growing through the dough.

It shot one out at Mr. Curtis and wrapped around his legs, knocking him down. He struggled, and I watched, unable to move as it got larger and larger. It was crawling up to the frog’s gaping mouth, where he was trying to breathe and get control. He scraped at the floor, right as Arthur landed, his talons ripping directly into Mr. Curtis’s belly. No, not Mr. Curtis, the tangled tentacle-bun. The owl squished it to shreds, never arming my friend.

I helped him up.

“Have you got another one in there, Mr. Curtis?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Give it to me. I’ve got something to check, please.”

“Here it is,” he said, handing it up, and putting his top hat back in place.

“I’ll be in touch Curtis. Be careful. This isn’t your ordinary mystery.”

Arthur gently took the roll in its talons, hopped toward the crack in the inside of the clock face, and flew away, out across the city.

“Well, I knew that, didn’t I?” said the frog.

“You almost got us killed.”

“Arthur, no. He’d never kill me.”

“I’m not talking about you, you numskull. Do you see all this around us?”

“Bones, I know how owls eat.”

“Bones of rats and mice.”

He blinked and looked around at the tiny piles of bones around, behind the stacks of newspapers.

“Oh,” he said. He could comprehend if you worked with him sometimes.

“How do we get down out of here?”

“Back this way.” He hopped through piles of decimated, broken bones, and newspaper clippings, and I followed him down the path to the elevators we had come up. It seemed more morbid on the way out than on the way in.

We got into the elevator and took it down to the ground floor, and went back out onto the street. Above us in the sky, Arthur circled, spied with his exceptional eyes, and glided away until we could no longer see him.

We stepped out onto the pavement, and Mr. Curtis jumped and leaped his way down the street.

“I say, Mr. Curtis.”

“Come on, no cabs this close to Arthur’s tower.”

“Oh, no.”

I carried on after him. I could run pretty quickly, but only in short bursts. Every once in a while I had to run behind something, more an instinct than anything, and hide, then. I was back on his trail again. We got back out to Main Street, and traffic picked up again. Dogs pulled cabs as they barked about pests in their fur and what kind of treatment they were going to eat when they got home.

I stuck out my hand and waved down a dachshund, pulling a cab.

“Hello, there gents.”

Mr. Curtis hopped up. “Heading down Main Street to Mrs. Smith’s bakery. You know it?”

“Best biscuits in town, with a nice water dish out back.”

“That’s the one,” I said and got in. Mr. Curtis tipped his hat at the dog and gut in, closing the door behind him, and we were off.

The streets were uneven, and I just held on and dealt with it. Beside us several folks passed us, riding reigned rabbits. They were leaping in and out of the other cabs and plenty of people, other rats, frogs, moles, and the occasional possum going here and there.

We pulled up to the bakery. We got out and just as I was trying to pay the dog, his eyes widened and he bolted down the street.

“Hey, I…”

Mr. Curtis tapped me.

“What?”

He tapped me again, and I turned around to see someone walking down the way, a gentleman, certainly a rat, wearing a dark suit, and clutching at his neck, his throat, gagging.

“Dr. James?” Said Curtis.

“Let’s go.”

I was already running across the street when I said it. I ran him down, and got to him, just as tendrils, like the ones we saw coming from the rolls came from his mouth. He clutched at his throat as the tendrils wrapped around his face and neck. It reached around and buried itself into his ears, and covered his eyes with rounded nods that slowly opened, first the left, then he could no longer breathe.

I jumped back, as did Mr. Curtis, got back up, and blinked silently at me, his head now covered by this octopus-like creature.

“Oh, dear. That man.”

“That is freaky!”

“Curtis!”

“What?”

The man, with the creature attached to his face, straightened his jacket and walked away like there wasn’t a yellow creature there at all.

“You ever seen anything like this before?” I said.

“Nope,” said the frog. He caught a stray fly as they watched him amble up the way.

He sort of shambled to the left and ambled to the right, and skidded into the wall. His arms were limp at his side, but one tentacle stretched out from the side of his head and pushed against the wall with a pair of suckers.

“What on earth is that?” I said.

“I don’t know, but it’s interesting.” He hopped on, behind the man, weaving in and out, trailing behind him. I watched from a distance. Two yellow tentacles wrapped around and back down his jacket. They weaved around keeping balance, as one near the front felt around for the ground.

“I say,” said Curtis.

He followed him, three steps behind, watching the tendrils wave as he weaved around.

“This is outstanding James, look!” He reached up, under one tendril to pull on it.

“No!” I said, running to catch up with him before… and he grabbed it, anyway.

The rat turned around, with the octopus plastered to his head. It opened its beak in the center of its face, its maw, which was surrounded by smaller twitching mandibles, and squealed.

I ducked. Curtis’s mouth opened wide in excitement, and a large, thick shaft of a rubbery fist, an arm ending in curved, spiked fingers, flew out of the middle of nowhere between the jaws of his beak. It slid out and punched the frog squarely in the jaw. He flew back into the road, his legs sprawling in all directions. He landed on his rear and his hat rolled into the middle of the street where a dog driving a cab ran over it and missed it entirely. It swirled around and flew back into the frog’s hand. It was a total fluke, but he acted like it was all part of the plan.

“That was amazing!” He stood up and ran after him.

“No, Curtis, no!”

He ran after the guy, who was turning the corner.

I huffed my way around there in time to see him reach out with four tendrils and start climbing up the side of the roof.

“What the,” I said.

“Isn’t he Interesting?”

“Curtis, I…”

“What did you expect, murders and missing kittens?”

“I don’t know, I… never thought…”

“With me, it’s the weird stuff!”

Mr. Curtis bounded after him, jumping up to the roof. He was an exceptional jumper. He looked as shrewd-footed as a brilliant dancer, yet going from chimney to roof peak to another. I just sight of him, but from the ground. I couldn’t see well enough, but Mr. Curtis got him from behind, pulled, pulled, and used his feet to leverage the rest, and yanked the creature free of the man’s face.

He flung it far, and I saw it swing wide and dive into a chimney with a puff of wild smoke.

The rat heaved a breath of life and Mr. Curtis took hold of him by the shoulders. Looking around, he said, “what am I doing up here?”

“It’s okay, this way down.” He guided him down the easiest possible way. “That’s right, one at a time there. Come on. This way. Here you go. You remember what happened?”

I came up by their side.

“I was, um, coming out of the bakery, and headed over to the watch shop when I…”

“Headed off the roof?”

“Yeah. Are you okay?”

“Yeah, fine.” He checked his watch, which was not working, and put it back in his pocket.”

He looked around.

“You sure?”

“Oh yeah. Thank you.”

He turned, and with a nod, headed up the street.

“Well then,” I said.

“Well then,” he said back.

“What the heck are we up against?”

“Heck is the wrong address, my friend. I think we’re dealing with something much larger than that, and much scarier.”

He motioned up at the bakery window, where during a very busy lunch hour, roll after bun after cupcakes were being sold left and right to a happy, unsuspecting crowd.

"A neon-lit diner on the edge of a warped landscape, where reality shifts between city streets and alien terrain. Inside, a monstrous humanoid and a detective talk, while strange creatures prowl outside in swirling purple mist."

The Man With Three First Names, Chapter 6

The Man With Three First Names
Rabbits leap through time,
Portals hum with shifting fate,
Night and day now split.
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This is a draft version of a chapter from John Saye’s book, The Man With Three First Names.

“What have you got there this time Michael? You know I always liked your second name better,” said Gregor as he shuffled around the room.

“What about my third?”

“It lacks something dear. It lacks… I don’t know… spunk!”

“What’s wrong with Christopher?”

Simon was gawking around the room. It looked like a combination of tech-boy Christmas and James Bond’s nightmare in here. Gadgets were piled to the ceiling in all kinds of little bins and various safes and other storage containers.

Simon looked up and noticed that Xip was using his tongue and little suckers on the ends of his fingers to climb the walls.

“Well, let’s see what we have here Mr. Christopher,” said Gregor. “You’ll be needing something to get through the barrier with then, or whatever it’s called.”

“I suppose so.”

“Yes, well Xip!”

Xip, stood on the wall, straight out like anyone who normally stood upon them, and looked down at Gregor not just with an attentive ear, but with little tendrils that were extending out of his slimy head.

“What do we have for dimensional travel then?”

Xip put up a finger, licked his eyeballs, then jumped down to a shelf covered in soft burlap bags. He wheedled his way in behind one of them, and pushed it back, using his entire body until it was on the way down to the ground with a whistle.

Gregor caught the bag without even looking at it and opened it up. “Yes, this might do.” He pulled out headphones, two sets of them, ones that totally cover your ears.

“You know, dimensional travel is largely a matter of vibration, these should get you through the portal nicely. You just put them on and turn them on, and the rock music they play is enough to keep you on the right frequency to get you through the gate.”

Simon put them on and phased out for just a moment. He pulled them from his head and fell over zapping back, clutching a workstation nearby.

“Oh man,” he said and dropped the headphones.

“I don’t think so Gregor,” said Michael. “What we need is something to tether to this world with. We might not make it out alive using those.”

“Dangerous you say?” Gregor said it with a lisp. “Well, maybe not. Xip!”

Xip saluted Gregor. He was standing sideways on the wall about ten feet up in the stacks.

“Let’s have the dimensional bullwhip then!”

Xip nodded and made a flying leap to the other side of the shelves from where he was, and caught it with his tongue, pulling himself up to a shelf filled with children’s metal lunch boxes of all kinds and styles. He opened an Indiana Jones lunch box, shook his head, and moved on to a Star Wars lunch box, and his eyes bugged out for just a second, then closed the box again.

Gregor chuckled.

“What was that?” Michael adjusted his hat. “What did he find?”

“It’s where I’ve been stashing the chocolate.”

Gregor laughed to himself again.

Xip rummaged through the lunch boxes, eventually coming up with an A-Team lunchbox, a big van on the side. He opened it up, and pulled out two bullwhips, and dropped them down to Gregor.

“Here they are,” said Gregor. Multidimensional bullwhips. He cracked them both at the same time like he was some kind of action hero, which he wasn’t.

“Here.” He held them out to Michael.

“How do they work?” Michael and Simon took the bullwhips.

“Careful not to crack yourself on the chin now. These are designed to attach to something, anchoring them in the real, or at least our world, while you tie them to your waist and go through the portal. They are designed to vibrate at both frequencies at the same time, keeping you anchored. Handy!”

Michael nodded in disbelief, but with interest.

“Aren’t they too short?” asked Simon.

“I was going to ask that,” said Michael.

“No actually,” said Gregor. “They are designed to stretch without much problem. They will always trail away from you, in a semi-transparent state, pointing right for the portal.”

“So we’ll have to work fast.”

“Yes, these will be your silver cord friends,” said Gregor. “If someone severs it, it’s all over, you’ll be stuck for good. At least that’s the way I think it works. There are always other ways to get through.”

“Like what?”

“Like the portal that’s already there!” Gregor smacked Simon on the head, but lightly. Was Gregor wearing blue plastic gloves earlier? Simon couldn’t remember.

“Michael cracked the whip.” There was a slight hum in the air. “I like these.” He set his down on the table.

“What about some standards for Simon here?” asked Michael.

“Is he to be your new partner then?”

“At least for a while.”

Simon stood there.

He looked at them.

“You think I’m good enough to be your partner?”

“Look, you’ve seen a lot of strange stuff. It’s pretty quick, but I need some help here and there. There’s always room for some help. Besides, I think my zombie head guys like you anyway. Is there a problem?”

“No, it’s just that… Well, yesterday I was a Janitor, and now all of this…” Simon looked around himself.

“I know. Think about it. I could use you.”

“Okay then.”

Simon held his breath for a moment and exhaled, he was on board.

Michael turned to Gregor. “Clothes.”

“Clothes?”

“Michael, now, what is this?” Gregor looked between them.

“He’s a shapeshifter.”

Gregor took another look at Simon.

“Okay, so what’s the other form then?” Held his finger and thumb up to his chin, thinking.

“Now?”

Michael said “Yeah, go ahead and show him. This is good.”

Simon said, “Okay then, here goes.”

He closed his eyes, and his clothes mostly ripped here and there anyway, tore completely off. He was standing there, in his troll form, gray-green skin, and slick black hair, screaming at the top of his lungs.

“He’s still getting used to being able to change.”

“Is this an effect of the portal?”

“I think so, but I think he may be stuck with it. I’ve seen him do this between pulses now.”

“I see.” Simon turned to Gregor. His voice was calm and deep. “What do you think?”

“Well, you definitely have trouble with clothes. I think I have what you need though. Xip!”

Xip jumped down on top of Simon’s head.

Simon looked up, and Xip walked forward to stand right on his face so that he wouldn’t fall off like he’d done this a million times before. He jumped off and stood on the table with the dimensional bullwhips.

Gregor sat down in a small task chair before Xip. “What do you think? Anything that might help him?”

Xip stood up, excited.

“You have an idea?”

Xip nodded quickly.

Gregor leaned in his ear, and the little gecko guy whispered.

“Yes, Xip, I think that might very well do. Go get it.”

Xip saluted and shot up into the air like a rocket, bouncing off the walls and ricocheting off the shelves like he was in a giant pinball machine. When he hit the top, he popped open a cereal box that had been filled with packing peanuts and took from it a small black amulet, smooth polished stone, with a green light buried deep within it that gave it not so much a glow, but a quality that was pleasing to the eye. They could hear him down below, squealing with delight as he found it in the bottom of the cereal box. Getting down was trickier. He tried two or three methods, before just giving up and jumping. He hit a button on his belt and a tiny plastic parachute opened up, and he sailed on down with the amulet in his hands.

Xip handed it over to Gregor and gave a brief smile and a wave to them all.

“Thank you,” said Gregor. “I can’t think of anyone better to give this to than you. We’ll have to calibrate it first, but then after that, I consider it yours. So, you’ll have to throw off everything.”

That wasn’t difficult, as most of the clothing was already torn beyond belief.

Simon took the amulet.

“Okay, put it on.”

Simon nodded and put it on. It was cold, at first.

“Did it warm up?”

“Yeah.” Simon touched it.

“Okay, now take it off for a moment, and change back.”

Simon took it off, put it on the table and changed back.

“Okay, now put it back on and let it get used to this form of you.”

Simon did as he was told.

“Did it warm up again?”

“Yes. It’s actually pretty comfortable.”

“Good, now let’s get you set up. I don’t have much more than sweats, lab coats and sneakers here, but you are welcome to them.  The amulet you have on now recognizes both of your states. If you are wearing or carrying anything with you when you change, it all gets stored in the amulet. You can dress now, then change to the Troll creature, and dress again. After that, it will always store the other set of clothes, so changing back and forth shouldn’t be a problem for you. If you are going to need something, like the bullwhip or something, then the easiest thing to do is just put it down before you change. The opposite is true for your other form. Change into the troll, then put on whatever you like, then when you change back to your normal form, whatever you had on in that form will now be in the amulet.”

“Thank you,” said Simon.

He dressed in a jumpsuit, sneakers and lab coat, and then transformed into the Troll, put on an oversized black sweatsuit, with a hoodie. He changed back and forth several times to watch in a nearby mirror. It worked perfectly.

“Thank you very much.” He turned and shook Gregor’s hand. “Where did this come from?”

“Like everything else in here, it’s what we call a gift from out-of-town, but this one used to belong to a Chinese Zen-Mookie master who could transform himself into the form of a great Tiger-man.”

“What happened to him?”

“Unfortunately he fell fighting with us during a particularly difficult invasion.”

“I never heard of an invasion like that before.”

“It’s only because he was very good at his job, he and Michael David Christopher here, the man with three first names.”

Michael nodded. “I can’t think of a better use for it. You should definitely have that. Old Mooke, he got good enough with that amulet that he could eventually pull the same stuff out of the pockets of the two different outfits with ease. I think he also figured out how to store multiple outfits in there for each of his forms. You ought to be able to figure out all that in time.”

“It’s an honor to wear it.”

Michael looked around.  “Where’s Xip?”

Gregor looked around. He was unaccustomed to being without Xip very often.

“Xip?” He called out.

There was scrambling on the other side of a large shelf system.

They turned the corner and looked up. Xip was pulling the tarp off of a large automobile, that was parked on a shelf about thirty feet in the air.

The tarp fell to the ground, and while Michael could see the wheels, he wasn’t exactly sure what it was.

“Xip, what’cha got up there?” Michael took off his hat so he could see better.

Damn if it wasn’t.

Way up high, the engine revved, with Xip at the wheel, and the car lifted off the floor, and the wheels tucked away, then the car, for lack of a better word right now, glided off the shelf, and floated gently to the ground. It was a real space roadster. The combined efforts of himself, a good friend of his in High School, a friend named Harvis, who turned out to be from a planet some ways away, his father’s convertible Cadillac, and a shop class where the teacher was the one absent for the day, was this shining machine. Black, and beautiful. Michael’s father had only let him drive it once.

“Where the hell did you get this?”

It hovered on its own, keys or no keys about two feet from the ground. Michael brushed his hand across its smooth surface.

“Xip, where? How?”

Xip just smiled back.

Gregor smiled. “We were going to wait for your birthday, but I think you should have it now, what do you think?”

“How, I mean, my Father…”

“Oh, I know. We’re not sure how it got into the collection, but we knew when we saw it that it had to be yours again.”

“Gregor, thank you.”

Michael shook the old man’s hand and took the keys.

“Just remember to put the wheels down if you’re parking it in public right?”

“Right.”

Michael couldn’t believe it.

“I think we have our ride out of here.”

“What about Lenny and Harry,” asked Simon.

“Don’t worry about them. I’ll have another assignment for them momentarily. Hop in.”

Michael and Simon hopped in the old caddy, and Michael fired her up. The engine still sounded just as sweet as before.

He pulled up and headed for the ceiling, where a portal began to slowly open, and they popped out the top, exiting from what looked like the side of a small mountain, about a mile away from the original house they came in through. When Simon looked back at where they had come from, it looked like they had exited through a giant sculpture of a porcupine eating leaves off a tree. It was a virtually unknown monument in the giant stone carving world. There was a single lemonade stand and a bathroom, three parking lots, and that was it, the only car in the lot belonged to Zorzman, and he runs the lemonade stand, and uses the bathroom all day. He was a former agent, himself, and waved them off on their way, and went back to his copy of Catcher in the Rye.

Michael and Simon rode across the sky with the top down. It was sunset, and the air was cool but not too cool. They both put on sunglasses, which were in the glove compartment, barely touched since the last time Michael had this car out.

They left the Mesas behind and back out toward the eastern shore. The going was slower, not exactly like riding in a spaceship, the speeds for the space roadster weren’t much better than a regular car, a hundred miles an hour or so. That’s all you needed.

“Check the map there Simon.”

Simon opened the glove box and pulled out a map, noting the year. “Nineteen seventy-three?”

They laughed and threw the map behind them.

Lucky I installed one of these before I lost her the last time. Michael pushed a toggle switch, like the thumb button of an old car radio, and a piece of the dashboard flipped over revealing a small black and white television on it.

In just a moment, the television faded from static to an image of the road below them. A voice from the radio spoke.

“Michael, it’s so good to see you.”

“Thank you, Gretchen,” he said to the car. “Take us home.”

“Very well, happy to assist,” said the car.

Michael put his feet up on the dashboard and leaned his seat back. Simon also leaned back, and they let the car fly them back across the country to Atlanta.

As they were getting closer, they could see the purple mist up ahead where the lines had been drawn, and the beasts were within.

“Let’s hear a little news.”

Michael pulled the car down and parked it in the lot of a breakfast diner.

“Gretchen, can you get us some news?”

“Sure thing. Satellite news is so much easier to tune in on, here you go.”

The navigator on the little black and white came back and soon there was the face of a television announcer.

“This ought to be national news. Wonder how they are going to cover this one up.”

“You never know,” said Gretchen.

The announcer pointed to a map of the United States.

“Right now, the clouds seem to be covering Georgia, North and South Carolina, Tennessee, Florida, and Alabama, and there are trace reports that the darkness has started to drift into Louisiana, but there are no substantiated reports of that so far. All we know is that it seems to be coming from an area near Atlanta. We’ve had no contact from them in all this time, save for patches of time that seem to be miraculously clear of all disturbance. There seems to be an ebb and flow to the smoky mist, and the damage that it’s causing, though as soon as it clears there’s no evidence of any disturbance at all, and all of our reporters that we’ve sent into the field haven’t yet returned or reported.”

“Well, one did there, Charlie.”

“That’s true, we did have one reporter, well one of the production assistants from the mobile crew did return, but his mind is empty.”

“He can’t remember anything he saw in there?”

“No, he can’t remember anything at all. The only reason we know about him is that he was found on the side of the street with nothing but a badge, and a microphone boom, and a sack lunch at three fifteen this morning, and he can’t remember his parents, the school he went to, his name, any of his passwords or the name of his dog.”

“Nothing’s gotten through to this guy?”

“Nothing that we can come up with.”

Michael licked his finger and put it into the air.

“It’s almost time.”

“For what?” asked Simon.

“We’re due for another pulse.”

“It’s all going to clear off?”

“Yep.”

Foom!

There was a large deep noise, a sucking, and a blowing at the same time that washed over them.

“There it is.”

“On the screen, the announcer looked up from his desk again.”

“We have word that the clouds are blowing away again, or at least being drawn into the epicenter somewhere near Atlanta, and we’re hoping to get a bead on that location now. We’ve got Satellite looking down near that area. Gill, turn on that camera and see what you can see there.”

The camera flipped, and all Michael could see on the screen were rolling clouds. As they began to blow away, a solitary mouth whipped up out of the clouds and landed on the camera’s face. The last thing they saw before all went black was a snarling mouth, full of jagged teeth, then all was quiet.

“Gill?”

The camera winked back to The announcer, in his shirt and tie.

“Well folks, we still don’t know anything, and that’s the news.”

Michael flipped off the screen.

Michael cranked the car, pulled up the wheels and sped off for Atlanta.

Soon they began to get into the mist.

“Get down low, I’m going to go in on the ground.” Simon stood up in his chair.

“What are you doing?”

“A little reconnaissance.” I’ll meet you there. He jumped forward to land on the Car’s hood and rode it like a surfboard.

Michael pulled closer to the ground, and before he knew it, Simon gave him a salute and jumped off the car.

“Simon!”

Simon landed on the ground, in the middle of the mist. He watched as Michael rode on ahead of him.

Simon was in his element now. The part of him that was from this world of strange creatures opened its senses and threw himself into it. He ran through the neighborhoods and jumped houses like they were stepping stones. He closed his eyes and allowed his other senses to take over. He was surprised at how keen they all were. His sight was good, but his hearing could almost see all by itself, and his sense of smell was phenomenal. He smelled a wet cat, hanging out under a bridge and understood the feeling of contempt for its surroundings and its longing for its master’s warm bedroom. Simon saw a future where the cat made it home alive. He also saw one where the cat became a six-foot monster with three mouths and fourteen eyes and a strong hankering for bad sushi.

He jumped forward and rolled into a clearing, which later turned out to be a parking lot, and found himself surrounded by the large shaggy creatures, and calmly reached out for one of them.

He took great tufts of hair into his hands belonging to one of them and pulled himself up onto the back of the beast and looked around at them. They were grazers. He could tell they were rooting around in the dirt and eating small underground things. Some of them were munching grass, and others were eating mushrooms and earthworms. He stood on the creature’s back and looked around, the mist seemed to be clearing somewhat.

Soon what was under his feet was made of metal.

He looked down and realized that he was standing on top of a minivan with his hands on his hips with a lopsided smile.

He slid off it and looked around him. He was standing in the middle of a parking lot, surrounded by cars that were all parked where the beasts were standing before, none of them in their original spaces, but kind of all over the place.

He walked through them and wondered for a moment, then began to bound off once more, clearing the tree lines in a single bound, and moving on through them towards the remains of the Sublight Group’s headquarters.

It was a longer slog than he’d thought it would be, but he really didn’t have any indication of how long a distance it was on foot anyway.

When he found the burger joint again, where Michael’s other car was parked, he was in time to see Michael pull up in his space roadster, right next to the other one, and get out.

Fred and Moxie were in the front window of the place still, and they hit the glass when they recognized Michael.

Moxie was first out the door, slamming Michael with a huge hug, and Fred was second, much more laid back, but you could tell he was happy to see Michael. “Well, if it isn’t the man with three first names,” he said.

“Good to see you both.”

Moxie, Fred, this is Simon.

Simon flipped quickly back to himself from his troll-like form.

“Hi,” said Simon.

“Simon, this is Fred and Moxie. They are useful people to know in this world.”

Michael took both of them around the neck and walked them back into the place.

“Jen!”

“Michael you dog, where you been keeping yourself?” Jen threw her towel into the cleaning water and gave Michael a big hug around the neck.

Walter turned. “Ah Michael, what’ll ya have there?”

“Just a burger, a couple for my friend Simon here.”

“Fries or chips?” said Walter, “I can never remember.”

“Chips, I think.”

Simon and Michael sat down at the bar, and Fred and Moxie sat down with them, but not before Moxie had added five or six songs to the jukebox.

“You have time right?” asked Walter.

“Oh yeah, we ought to have another pulse soon. But yeah, time.”

“Yeah, what is all that then with the monsters coming out to boogie?”

“It’s a long story, I think we have a portal down there on the other side of town. We’ll have to close it up, but we have to see what we’re up against first.”

“Yeah,” said Jen, “it turns all the cars in the lot into great wooly beasts, they wreak havoc in the asphalt.” She pinched Michael’s cheek and wiggled it.

“Who’s your friend here then?”

“This is Simon. He was caught in the blast when the portal exploded. He can shapeshift now.”

“Ah well, isn’t that nice,” she said. “Isn’t that the way it always is. If there’s a nuclear meltdown someplace there’s always a superhero that comes out of it, all powered up and ready to go. Are you Michael’s new partner yet?”

“Yeah actually. I think I am.”

Walter and Jen laughed with each other for a moment. “He’ll find out.”

“What do you mean?”

Michael stood up, “I’ll let them have their fun.” He smiled at them as he hit the restroom.

“All we’re saying is that Michael goes through his partners.”

“What, burn out? Is he just an asshole?”

“Nah, nothing like that, it’s just that his kind of life is a bit intense. Not everyone can keep up with the adventures he goes on. Sooner or later they take a back seat, and help him occasionally, like us. He is a riot though, and we love him to death, but he does keep the adventures wild.”

There was a.flush from the bathroom, soon Michael was back with them, and the burgers were served.

“Eat up, I think it’s about to get rough.”

Michael plowed through his, he was ready for the next challenge, even bouncing his foot a little, waiting to leave.

Simon worked through his burgers, sharing the occasional eye with Moxie.

Fred sat on the table and asked Michael how the old space roadster was doing. It had been a long time since he’d seen it.