Session 3.3 - Original

And… we're back! Getting back to the shorter segments of my original works, we leave the fantasy setting behind and head into more modern times.

In "Shadow Man," a girl is stalked by an invisible man that only she can see and hear. But, whenever she tries to tell anyone, they all think she's crazy. Of course, as everyone discovers, this man is very real and very, very deadly…

Shadow Man
by Kristin Renee Taylor

Kim sat in her seat, staring at Patricia in part disgust, part morbid fascination. Patricia didn't seem to notice, her entire focus on the tray before her, a maniacal grin plastered on her face like some macrabé, female Joker lacking makeup.

With deft fingers, she carefully sculpted the whitish-gray mass into a semblance of a man, a fat, chunky man with sagging limbs, but a man nonetheless. Carefully, she inserted the small, black dots for eyes. Then, ever so gently, she shoved her knife into the creatures mid-section. With evident glee, she took two packets of reddish stuff, and squirted the liquidy substance around the knife and dribbled it off the sides of the man.

Her creation complete, she sat back to marvel her work.

"You're sick," Kim said.

Patricia stuck her tongue out at Kim, and examined the ketchup-splattered mash potato Man. "It's a shame we didn't have noodles for lunch. I could've had guts."

"You're gross, too," Kim said.

Patricia rolled her eyes and brandished her potato-covered fingers at Kim. "I'd rather be gross than a freak like you."

Kim looked at Patricia, "I assure you that I'm crying on the inside."

"Ooo! Sarcasm! Now I know you're mad," Patricia said with a grin. She looked down at her hands. "I'll be back. I need to get this stuff off before it hardens."

Kim watched her friend wander off across the cafeteria. She sighed, and picked up her bookbag, rifling through it for her Biology notebook.

Movement out of the corner of her eyes. Something brushed across the back of her neck.

Startled, she jerked upright, and looked around for the culprit. At this time of day, the cafeteria of Pastoral High School was only half full. The lunch hour (really an hour and a half) had been divided into three sections, and Section C lunch was always practically empty. Because of this, Kim and Patricia had always been able to pick a table close to the large bay windows, far away from the banks of lockers.

Today, none of the nearby tables were occupied, and there was still ten minutes for lunch, so nobody was over near their lockers. Which meant that nobody was near Kim.

Baffled, she studied the few students around her, but gave up her search, dismissing the occurrences as a quirk of her already tense nerves. She had a Biology exam after lunch, and she wasn't exactly the most confident of test takers. Firmly putting the occurrence out of her mind, she went back to her cramming.

Sighing in relief, Kim turned her exam in seconds before the bell rang. Her teacher gave her a brief, comforting smile before calling in the rest of the exams which, Kim was happy to discover, two-thirds of the class was still feverishly working on.

Slinging her bookbag over her shoulder, she walked out the door, and was greeted by Patricia. "Well?" her friend asked. Together, they started down the hallway, heading for the English department.

"It sucked," Kim said, "I'm shocked I actually finished it."

"Huh... Should I even bother asking you if you're ready to give your speech?"

Kim couldn't smother a smile. Their speech teacher, also the Debate Team's coach, had been begging Kim to join since Freshman year.

Patricia noticed the grin, "What the hell are you smirking for?"

"I just realized that even if I refused to give the speech, I'd still pass the class with an A."

"Shut up. It's people like you that make me wanna puke."

Kim laughed. "This from the person who makes potato sculptures of people getting stabbed in the stomach."

"That's different! That's Art! What you're doing is just plain insane."

Kim opened her mouth to retort, but a sudden flicker of darkness out of the corner of her eyes made her stop walking. Surprised, she looked to her right. The halls of the Science department were decorated with stuffed animals, molecular models, and beakers of chemicals, all behind glass displays.

Reflected in the glass, a man leaned against the wall behind the two girls, dressed in black, tattered rags that steal managed to conceal the skin beneath. His face was hidden in a black mask, but she could still feel his eyes glaring out at her. He casually tossed a knife into the air, and it was that motion that caught Kim's attention.

With a startled cry, she spun around to face him, but nobody was there.

"Kim?"

Patricia's voice jolted Kim back to reality. She looked down at her shorter friend dazedly.

"Are you okay? You look like you've seen a ghost or something," Patricia said, her voice filled with concern.

Kim blinked, confused. "I..." She looked around, seeing nobody in the hallway but them. "Uh... Yeah... I'm fine." Pushing her glasses up, she massaged the bridge of her nose. "I'm just a little tired, I guess. Haven't been sleeping well."

"Oh... Well you know that lack of sleep causes hallucinations."

"Thank you, Little Miss Psychology."

"Expect my bill in the mail."

"I can't afford you."

"Then here's one free of charge: We're going to be late."

"Shadow Man" isn't permanently Trashed. I have a vague idea of turning it into a parasite EVE story featuring Eve, but I'll cross that bridge when I get there.

However, I have absolutely no intentions of continuing this next segment…

This whole mess started with the hospital. When I woke up that fateful Tuesday afternoon, I knew that things were different.

No, wait. I'm wrong.

Actually, everything started Saturday night with the party. My pal, Corin, had invited some of her older brother's friends. "Just think, Monica," she said to me at school the week before, "We'll be meeting college men. One of them may even ask us out!" Although I'm not as boy-crazy as Corin was, I must admit that the prospect of going out with a college guy, even if he was a freshman, was appealing.

So it was with great excitement that I came home from work that Saturday. I spent about three hours figuring out what to wear, then tossed my entire wardrobe out and opted for black jeans and a white T-shirt. Pretty plain, I know, but when you look like I do, men can't help but drool no matter what I'm wearing.

Oh, that reminds me, you don't know who I am, do you? Well, let me introduce myself. I am Monica Woods, a typical African-American teenager living in Pastoral, Illinois. I was born in, surprisingly enough, a hospital. That was seventeen years ago, and I've grown since then. I'm five feet and six inches tall, which is just two inches over the average. And, according to some fashion magazine, I have dark, chocolate brown hair (as opposed to dark chocolate brown hair, whatever the difference is) and eyes so brown that they remind some people of freshly tilled earth. I'm not quite sure what type of brown my skin is, but the last I heard, it was 'a shade darker than cocoa, but a shade lighter than chocolate, which is right after cocoa.'

I never put much stock in fashion magazines. None of their stuff looks as casual as I like to dress. But, that's me: an ordinary, high school teen with amazingly good looks. (Hey, have you ever heard of a Monica that didn't have amazingly good looks? Neither have I.)

Back to the party...

To say the least, it was a ton of fun. Corin had gotten some disc jockey to be there. So we had good music. Anybody who was anybody was going to be there, including some really cute guys. So we had the entertainment. And Corin's parents weren't home. So we had a really good reason for staying there late.

Around four in the morning, after turning down the college guys, I decided that the party was officially over. I had already flirted with all the boys I had even remotely liked. The college boys were a total let down. Mostly they sat out on the deck, drank beer, and ogled over the girls. After one of them had practically vomited on me, I decided that they were all creeps and could go to Hell for all I cared (pardon the expression). Corin was visibly upset, but then again, if a bunch of drunk jerks had just dumped my mother's stereo into my pool and then left, I would be visibly upset, too. By this time, practically everyone was gone, except for Chad (a boy from school that had somehow gotten into the beer), Corin's older brother, one of his friends, and myself.

While I helped Corin clean up the vomit, Chad staggered up to us.

"Hey," he slurred, peering blearily in my direction, "do you need a ride home?"

"No, Chad." I replied, and glanced over to where Corin's brother and his friend were engaged in a heated argument about pizza rolls.

"Are you sure? I mean it's no problem. My car's right outside."

"Really? Gee, and all this time I thought it was in the living room." It must've taken a moment for that to sink in. And it probably took even more time for his dulled mind to react to that. Finally, he said, "Was that an insult?"

I gave him a look. "No, Chad." I repeated, this time with heavy sarcasm. Next to me, I heard Corin giggle. Chad looked at me for a long time. Actually, he was staring off to my right, at a lawn chair. He glared at it menacingly. "Good. Don't like insults." He told the lawn chair, then he stalked off in search of more beer.

I looked at Corin. She looked at me. Simultaneously, we burst into laughter. Pretty soon, we were doubled over and had tears in our eyes. I stopped finally and used a corner of my shirt to dry my eyes. Then, on impulse, I lurched over to the lawn chair. "You wouldn't happen to know where my car is, would you?" I asked it, slurring my voice and doing a very good impression of being drunk. Corin watched me, grinning. "What's that?" I said to the chair and leaned closer to it. "I don't think I heard you clearly." I took a step back and made like someone mad. "Them's fighting words, sir. Prepare to be hurt!" I punched the air in front of me, lost my balance, spun around, and sprawled in the lawn chair, which started Corin laughing again.

Just then, I happened to notice the time on my watch. It was getting pretty close to four thirty. "Aw crap! I gotta go!" I said goodbye to Corin, waved to her brother and his friend, and jogged to my car. On the way, I saw Chad snoring underneath a table and decided to let Corin deal with it.

I lived ten minutes away from Corin, in another part of Pastoral. But since it was such a lovely evening (or morning, rather) I decided to take my time getting home. So I drove in the opposite direction of my house.

For my seventeenth birthday, my parents had bought me a blue Camaro. For those of you who don't know, a Camaro is a convertible (Well, mine is.), and a really nice one at that. I treated that car better than I treated my little brother, Aaron, and I treat him fairly well. But, no matter how well the car handled, the person handling the car was in no condition to be suddenly surprised by the extremely large shape that loomed at her from the darkness.

Screaming, I slammed on the brakes and spun the wheel, trying to swerve around it. My car skidded and slid, completing a quarter of a turn before coming to a stop in the middle of the road. I was lucky that it didn't go off the road. There was forest on either side of me and this road was hardly ever driven on.

I passed out.

When I next became aware of my surroundings, it was already well into morning. My car clock read 9:32. I frowned slightly, but that hurt so I stopped. I climbed slowly out of my car to see if I had damaged it.

My car was unharmed, but what I found underneath it made everything else seem insignificant by comparison. Hiding underneath my car was a small Mexican lobo wolf.

I blinked at the wolf and smiled. "Well hello there, Mr. Wolf. What are you doing underneath my car?"

"What does it look like?" The wolf snapped. "I'm hiding!"

"Oh," I said and sat down to ponder this. After awhile, the wolf came out and sat across from me, tongue lolling. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but you're a Mexican lobo wolf, right?" The wolf gave me a wolfish grin. "As a matter of fact I am." He stood and extended a paw in my direction. "The name's Brandon. And you are?" I leaned over and shook the proffered paw. "Monica Woods. A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Brandon."

"Just Brandon, please." He said, sitting.

"Oh, sorry. A pleasure to meet you, Brandon."

"Likewise, Monica. Likewise."

We sat there for quite some time, just staring at one another. I swatted irritably at a fly. Brandon scratched his neck with one hind foot. Finally, to break the silence, he said, "Monica, don't you think it's kind of odd that I'm a talking wolf?"

I shrugged. "I had thought that earlier. But then I realized that if you are a talking wolf, then I'm insane. That kinda made me feel better. I mean, when you're insane, then everything just sort of makes since."

He snorted. "You are not insane, Monica."

"Ah," I said and pondered that. We lapsed back into silence.

My watch read 10:17 when Brandon said, "Did you hear me, Monica?"

"Oh yes," I replied. "I heard you quite well."

"And you understood what I said?"

"What? About me not being insane? Yeah, I understood that."

"And you still don't think it's weird that I can talk?"

"Well, I just sort of figured that you must be my spirit guide. You know, the one that is supposed to help me be enlightened, wise, and generally a better person than I am now."

Brandon blinked at me. "Uh, no."

"Ah," I said again and fell silent.

Neither one of us moved for another hour. I had started to get a cramp in my right leg, but it fell asleep to avoid the pain, so I put it out of my mind. My left leg, bored, decided to join my right leg in Slumberland, thereby berefting me of any feeling in my lower limbs.

"I guess," I said after a time, "that I ought to be going home." I unsuccessfully tried to get to my feet, but my legs wouldn't work properly and I fell over.

"You're not going to ask me, are you?"

I momentarily stopped massaging my legs to glance at the wolf. "Ask you what?"

"Ask me what?!" he cried, incredulously, "Ask me what?!? Has it even crossed your mind that this entire situation is impossible?"

I shrugged and climbed awkwardly to my feet. "It had occurred to me."

"Then why didn't you say anything?"

"Well, I knew that you would tell me what was up eventually. I just didn't want to jump to conclusions. I might've been wrong, you know." Brandon sighed heavily.

"If you're not going to ask, then I might as well just say it." He stood up and stared me in the eyes. "Monica, I'm a figment of your imagination."

"Oh," I hesitated, "Then you're not my spirit guide?"

"I am not your spirit guide!" he shouted angrily. He took a deep breath and calmed down. "I am a figment of your imagination caused by a side-effect of the serum that the doctor gave you."

"Doctor? What doctor?"

"The doctor in the hospital, doofus! Where else would a doctor be?"

"I'm not in a hospital."

"Will you let me finish? Saturday night, you hit a rather large thing. You hit your head on the steering wheel and knocked yourself out cold. Then some Army people found you and took you to the hospital. Unfortunately, they were carrying some weird top secret serum with them and the jerks left it in your hospital room. The doctor was a complete nut and he thought it was glucose or some other IV stuff, so he hooked you up to it."

"You mean I'm in the hospital? Now?" I asked him.

"What do you think I've been saying all this time?" He shouted at me. I thought about that for awhile. Something about his story puzzled me. "So wait," I said, confused, "what did I hit last night?"

"Saturday night," he said, sounding suspiciously like one of my teachers. "It's Tuesday afternoon."

"Fine," I said, "What did I hit Saturday night?"

"Actually, it should be Sunday morn--"

"What the heck did I hit?" I shouted at him. He blinked at me, then somehow he shrugged. "Oh, just that." He indicated that I should turn around. Then he scampered off, calling over his shoulder, "Have a nice life, Monica!" He vanished into the forest.

Slowly, I turned around.

And found myself staring into the giant, gaping maw of a beast that had a lot of teeth, two tongues, a ton of saliva, and severe halitosis.

I screamed, spun around, and slammed into my car. I dropped to the ground in pain.

Meanwhile, the beast leaped over me and started eating my car.

Within minutes, my car had been reduced to a heap of gnawed on rubble and spare parts. It looked at me and belched. My rear view mirror flew out of its mouth and landed nearby. It was coated with monster spit. Then it ran off into the forest.

I stared at the wreck that had been my car. I slowly bent down and picked up a scrap of leather (also covered in monster spit). I giggled. This was just too weird. My giggle became a chuckle. Wait until I told Corin about this. Aloud, "Hey Corin you'll never believe what happened to me last night: I met a talking wolf and my car got eaten. Crazy, huh?" My chuckle became a full scale hysterical laugh.

I'm pretty sure that if the flying wombat with the baseball bat hadn't knocked me senseless, then I would've gone completely insane.

This time, I didn't have any bizarre dreams. No talking animals, no car-eating monsters, no wombats wielding bats. Nothing. Just the heavy sleep of someone that's been knocked out cold. At one point during my enforced slumber, I screamed myself awake and sat up to quickly. The sudden motion made me groggy and I passed out again.

Two hours later, I woke up in a more normal way, meaning I grumbled about how early it was, how hot I was, the way the room smelled, and anything else that I could complain about.

I am not a morning person.

I was lying on a hospital bed. I was in a hospital room. There was a hospital IV hooked up to my right arm. A hospital nurse was checking some machine.

I guessed that I was in a hospital.

The nurse noticed I was awake. She came over to me and gave me a really creepy smile. "Hello, Ms. Woods. Are you feeling better?"

I tried to say, "I've been hit by a wombat with a baseball bat, what do you think?" But all that came out was, "Tofu?"

The nurse blinked at me. "Was that a yes or a no?"

"Tofu," I repeated, sternly. Jeez, you'd think she'd know what that meant.

"Oh, um, okay." The nurse said, puzzled. "I guess I'll tell the doctor you're awake."

I sighed and rolled my eyes. "Tofu," I said in a resigned tone of voice. I waved for her to go away. "Tofu."

The nurse took the hint and left me alone. I lay for awhile, occasionally muttering "Tofu," in a jaded voice. Right when I was drifting off into sleep, the door opened and my parents walked in with a doctor.

My mother took one look at me and burst into tears. She ran forward and hugged me, causing me to grunt "Tofu" painfully. My father wasn't any better. He slumped into a chair, wailing "Oh my poor daughter! Why did such a tragic fate befall her? Why? WHY?" I gave my dad a look and said, "Tofu."

By now, my mother had realized that there seemed to be something wrong. She pulled back. "Is there anything wrong, Monica? You haven't been doing drugs, have you?"

"Tofu!" I exclaimed, surprised.

The room fell silent. My parents looked at one another. Then they both turned to the doctor, who was looking rather cornered. "Doctor," my mother said. Her voice was cold and flat. She stood. "Why does my daughter keep saying 'Tofu'?"

"Um...well..." The doctor gurgled while trying to think.

"Doctor?" My father asked, also standing. Both of my parents advanced menacingly on the poor man. He backed away, bumped into a wall, and yelped in surprise. By now, my parents were doing their wrath of God impersonations.

"Well, you see-" the doctor stammered. He abruptly burst out with "Your daughter seems to have an acute case of Tofuites!"

"Tofu," I muttered and covered my face with my hands.

My parents stopped looming over the doctor. They blinked at him. My father shrugged, "Well then, if that's all that's wrong with her." He turned to my mother. "I'm gonna go get some coffee. Want some?" My mother declined, so he left.

"Tofuites," my mother said thoughtfully. "Strange, but I don't think I've ever heard of that disease." To the doctor, "You wouldn't happen to be lying, would you?"

"Me? Lie?" He exclaimed in a hurt tone of voice. "Why Mrs. Woods, how dare you even think that I-a respectable man such as myself- would lie just to avoid a large malpractice suit!"

My mother folded her arms and said sternly, "Fine. If you didn't lie, then tell me what Tofuites is."

The doctor's response was, "What?!"

"In detail, doctor." Doc's overbearing pride crumbled in a moment. He fumbled for a few seconds and juggled some syllables for awhile. He finally mumbled something under his breath.

"What was that?" Mom demanded.

"I said 'Tofuites is a psychological condition where the brain's speech functions are scrambled en route to the patient's mouth.' The result is that the patient's throat and mouth muscles are unable to work the way they are supposed to. In fact, they are only able to form two distinct syllables."

Mom glanced at me. "Let me guess--"

"--tofu," I finished lamely.

Doc nodded. "Tofu."

I cried "tofu" repeatedly while flailing my arms. Mom gave me this weird look. I didn't notice. I was to busy going out of my mind. "Tofu!" I said, panicking. What I actually meant to say was, "Am I gonna be stuck saying this forever? Oh God, please don't let this last forever! I'll die if I wind up saying 'tofu' for the rest of my life. Mom! Make him find a cure! Please! Please! Please! Please! PLEASE!!!!!!"

By some miraculous incident, my mom understood what I said perfectly. "So, how long will she be like this?" My doctor looked at me (By now, I was just lying there and looking pathetic. Every so often, I would make a pathetic mewling noise (which sounded suspiciously like a cat trying to say "Tofu" but unable to.) and generally looking like a wreck.) and consulted his watch. "Let's see, it's been about half an hour since the nurse told me she woke up. Given the rotation of the earth and specific location of Pastoral, Illinois, not to mention adding in all the time she spent unconscious..." He did some rough mental calculations. "My guess would be tomorrow's date plus three or four hundred years."

"TOFU!!!!" I screamed and started sobbing.

Doc blinked and smiled sheepishly. He said to my mom, "I'm sorry, Mrs. Woods."

"About what?" my mother said. She was watching me and looking annoyed. "My phone bill will finally be under two hundred dollars."

I paused my wailing to give my mother a withering glare. Then I went back to crying uncontrollably.

"Well," the doctor said, "it seems as if I forgot to carry the seven." He smiled at me. "She should be coming out of it right about--"

"tofu...tofu...to...fu..fu...to...never get that guy to ask me out, now...and my mother doesn't even care about me."

"--now."

I sat up in bed. "How can you be so cold-hearted, Mom? I'm your only daughter, for goodness sakes! This is so unfair! Why couldn't this happen to Aaron? He talks to much anyway! Why...why...eh?" I stopped ranting and gave Doc a puzzled look. "I can talk again?"

My mother answered. "Yes dear, you can talk again." Under her breath, "Unfortunately."

I glared at my mother. "I'm going to pretend like a didn't hear that." I grinned. "But, anyway, at least now I can go out on that date tomorrow."

"DATE?! WITH A BOY?!?" My father materialized next to my bed, scaring the heck out of everyone in the room. I screamed, grabbed the IV stand and hit him with it.

"DON'T YELL AT ME!!!" I shouted at him.

"FINE!!!" My father shouted back.

"It's amazing," Doc was saying to my mom, "As hard as your daughter hit Mr. Woods, he should be out cold by now."

Dad and I stopped arguing. He looked at me, then slowly directed his gaze at the IV stand. I laughed nervously and tried to hide it behind my back, which didn't work since I wound up hitting him again on accident. My father glared at me. "Monica Woods. You are grounded." Then he dropped to the floor.

I gasped and dropped the IV stand (coincidentally enough, on my dad). I leaned over the bed railing. "Dad! Are you alright? Speak to me?"

"Wasn't the IV connected to your arm, Monica?" Mom asked.

I glanced at the IV stand. I glanced at where the IV had been connected to my arm. I glanced at the pool of blood that had been forming because I had ripped the IV out of my arm. I glanced at my mom.

"You know what? I had been feeling a bit drowsy, lately. I think I'll take a nap. Goodnight." My eyes rolled up into my head and everything went black.

When I woke up again, I was alone. I was grateful for this, since it meant that I could finally get some peace. Unfortunately, my joy was short-lived.

The door to my room opened and two men in black suits and sunglasses entered. The looked exactly like twins, despite the fact that one of them was definitely of Latino descent and the other seemed Irish. The Latino closed the door behind him and locked it. The Irish was carrying a briefcase. He stood at the foot of my bed and said, "Miss Monica Woods?"

"That's my name. Don't wear it out," I said cheerfully. The man didn't even crack a smile. He reached into his suit jacket and pulled out a badge. "Agent Barry O'Keefe. FBI. We have a few questions for you."

I pointed the Latino. "And that's Agent Scully, huh? Strange, I never knew she was really a guy. That may explain why she never kissed him in the movie."

"This is not a laughing matter, Ms. Woods," O'Keefe said. "You are currently in possession of very important government property. We want it back."

I stared at the man. "What is up with the sunglasses? There are no windows in here."

"They're to help us remain inconspicuous," the Latino responded. I gave him a look that clearly stated that he was insane. "What kind of idiot wears black suits and sunglasses indoors? The only people that do that _are_ government agents! Jeez, maybe if you wore normal clothes like other people do, then maybe nobody would notice you so much!"

This seemed to fazed the Latino. "You knew we were government agents?"

"Well duh! Anyone that watches television would now what a government agent looks like. You guys tend to stand out in a crowd."

I was either on a lot of sugar when I wrote that, or reading Piers Anthony's Xanth novels, I can't quite remember which.

"It's Always Lightest" was a story I wrote for my British Literature class way back in High School. I wish I still had the entire story, but, as it is, all I've got is this half…

The reason why I’m writing this is simple: I want someone to know how this happened. Our world is dying and I am the only living soul that knows why. I should know, I caused it. Unfortunately, I can’t stop what I’ve started. It’s sad that an entire planet should have to suffer for woman’s mistake, but this is my crime for trying to be God. I just hope that I’ll survive long enough to write everything. Even now, I can feel my death approaching.

No more delaying. My time grows shorter with each passing moment. I’ll start at the beginning, a little under seventy-two hours ago....

"How long till we get there, Mommy?" I smiled. "Just a few more minutes, Nathan." Nathan Jones was my seven year old son. He had the most adorable smile, dimples, and a sparkle in his eye that rivaled the light of the sun. I was taking him to the zoo, his present for his birthday. It was two weeks late, but that was because I only had him every other month. Court laws declared that Nathan’s beanie-brained father have him for the rest of the time.

But that’s in the past. Right now, I’m with my son and I couldn’t be happier.

Somebody should’ve told me to knock on wood.

Nathan had been staring out of the window. He turned to look at me. "I did a report on you," he said cheerfully. I glanced at him out of the corner of my eyes. "Oh really? For what?"

"For class. I had to tell everybody what my mommy did for her job."

"Is that so? Well, what did you tell them?"

"I told them that you’re a doctor, just like Frankenstein."

I knew he was kidding, but I decided to play along. "Frankenstein! What ever gave you the idea that I’m like Dr. Frankenstein?"

"Cuz you bring people back to life with bugs." It was only partially true. The technique that I had developed combined genetic engineering with cryogenics. In layman’s terms, I used a specially enhanced virus to safely resuscitate organisms that have been placed in cryogenic freezing. So far, it had worked on rats, mice, and other small creatures. It has yet to be tested on humans.

"And what did they think of that?" I asked my son. My son stared down at his hands. "They thought I was lying," he said quietly. He looked up at me with wide, bright eyes. "I’m not a liar, am I?"

I assured him that he wasn’t a liar. Lots of people think that my work is pointless. Whenever people tell me that, I always picture myself being awarded the Nobel Peace prize and hearing my name on the news. "And in other news, Doctor Molly Jones has been awarded the Nobel Peace prize for astounding breakthrough in cryogenics. Dave is live with her now at Central Park..."

"Mom!" I realized that my son was calling my name. "Huh? What? What is it?"

Nathan pointed behind us, the way we had come. "Weren’t you supposed to turn back there?"

"Oh shoot!" I cried. I pulled into a gas station, intending to turn back around. As I started to turn into oncoming traffic, I heard a sudden squeal of tires. I looked up just in time to see a car across the street jump the divider, become airborne, and crash nose first into Nathan’s side of the car.

****************

I don’t remember what happened next. People told me, but it just didn’t register. I have no memory of being pulled free from my car (fifty feet from the gas station and on its side.). Nor do I recall how Nathan was removed. I don’t know how long it took for the ambulance to reach us. I don’t know when we reached the hospital or when they took Nathan to the emergency room to operate on him. I don’t remember a doctor telling me that my only son wouldn’t survive. Seventeen hours simply vanished from my mind.

I started thinking rationally at close to three a.m. I was still in the hospital, but in a part I didn’t recognize. There were cabinets lining all of the walls, like some giant file cabinet. There was no one around. I walked down a few corridors, wondering where I was when it struck me.

I was in the morgue. Somewhere down here was my son.

I expected to feel grief. I wanted to feel grief. But all I came up with was an intense, burning, irrational rage. It didn’t make any sense; my son was dead yet here I was, walking through a hospital morgue with hardly a bruise on me. The sheer thought that I survived instead of my son made my rage burn even hotter. I was not going to let God, or anyone else, steal my son away from me when his life had barely just begun.

I was acting faster than I could think. One moment I was standing in an empty hallway, the next, I was standing in front of a covered table. Although a full grown person could’ve lain on that table, the sheet revealed a much smaller form. I didn’t have to check to know who was under it. I knew all to well what I would find.

I stooped and froze. What was I doing? My son was dead; nothing could change that, no matter how hard I tried. Except the cryo-virus.

I had no clue where that thought had come from. It was completely illogical. My son was not coming back. There was no possible way.

Which was how I found myself searching the near empty parking lot for an unlocked car. A brief search found an old two door white Pinto with the keys in the visor. I drove the car around to the ambulance area and parked it. Twenty minutes later I was leaving the hospital, my son’s body in the back seat.

At this time of night, the only people at the lab that I worked at were the guards and a few janitors. I had a reputation for coming in late to check up on experiments, so nobody questioned my sudden appearance then. They all assumed that I was using my work to escape the fact that my son was dead. In a way, they were right. My son was going to escape death. I was going to make sure of that.

During the drive there, I had enough time to think through what I was doing. I had done nothing wrong. All I wanted was my son back. Was that such a horrible thing to ask? Besides, you have to look at the big picture. When this worked (there was no if in my mind) it could be used on other people who had their lives cut drastically short by some other person’s mistake. No one would ever have to die like Nathan did.

The lab room that I was using featured a large cell completely enclosed by glass. I carried Nathan there and carefully laid him on the table in the center of the cell. I had long since discarded the sheet that had covered him. I needed to hook up other instruments to him.

All of the necessary connections took less than half an hour, but retrieving and preparing the cryogenic virus took longer. Each time through the procedure, a new virus must be prepared, since the old one is unusable and unstable.

This was what was going to happen. I would inject the genetically enhanced virus into Nathan’s body. The virus, along with a mild electrical current supplied by the diodes on Nathan’s chest and head, would cause his dead vital organs to kick in and start up. The virus would also handle any cell degeneration that might’ve occurred during the freezing process by speeding up the body’s healing capabilities. The full details are too extensive to go into and I would need another hundred pieces of paper. Just find the paper I wrote on it and read that.

To make a long story a little shorter, it worked. Two hours after leaving the hospital, nineteen hours since the car accident that had caused his death, Nathan stirred and opened his eyes. All of the damage done to him in the wreck was gone without a trace. A scar that he had borne since he was five faded in front of my eyes.

I breathed an immense sigh of relief.

Safety had required that no one alive be inside the cell during the reanimation process, so Nathan didn’t hear or see me. He sat up and stretched. He looked around. When his gaze met mine, I gasped and instinctively took a step back. His usual brown eyes were gone. In their place were blank white orbs. They searched blindly around the room. He clambered off of the table, ripping off the wires as he went. He looked around again, and made a high pitched keening noise.

My God, what have I done? "Nathan," I cried miserably. His head swiveled towards me. He stopped keening and groaned. With a sudden display of speed and violence that shocked me, he ran forward and slammed into the glass. He staggered back from the recoil, shook his head, and charged the glass again. I backed up till my back touched the wall. In one swift moment, I ceased to think of Nathan as my son. He had become a demon wearing my son’s skin.

"Oh God," I said quietly, as the full horror of what I had did dawned on me. The thing rammed the glass again. Every time it hit the glass wall, a myriad of cracks spread from the point of impact, forming a fine, thin web of fractures throughout the entire wall. It slammed into the glass one final time and broke through, the glass wall collapsing behind it with a sharp crash. I covered my face with my arms and waited.

When I dared to look, it was standing five feet from me, its head cocked to one side, listening. This struck me as odd until I realized that it must be blind. It relied on hearing to get around. It had suffered several minor cuts from the glass, but the flow of blood slowed and quickly stopped.

I held my breath, afraid that it would hear me. Abruptly it tilted its head back and uttered a long, high, wail.

The entrance to the lab burst open. Nathan stopped immediately, whirling towards the source of the sound. It was George Summers, one of the guards for the skeleton shift. He saw Nathan and blinked in confusion. "Shoot it!" I screamed. The boy sized demon leapt at the guard and was on him in an instant. The two struggled briefly before George flung him off. Nathan vanished through the open door.

I ran up to the George. He was bleeding from his right arm. Nathan had bit him during the struggle. "Are you okay?" I asked him. George sighed, "I should be asking you that, Dr. Jones. What was that thing?"

I hesitated, then said, "I don’t know." I knelt and examined his arm. "We ought to do something about that wound." In response George grabbed me by the neck and lifted me into the air. Snarling, he started to tighten his grip.

Hm… maybe they kept the story in their records or something. I really liked that one, too.

Those of you who have read "Guardian Angel" will be interested to know that its one part of a series of One-shots, culminating into a mult-part story (which you'll have to buy in bookstores, if I've got anything to say about it). I'm re-writing the other Angel stories right now, but I've decided to drop this one. I lost focus about halfway through it.

Prerequisite warning: Like nearly all stories involving Angel, this story is going to be dark.

Her eyes snapped open, staring wildly and seeing nothing. Nothing, but thick, unending blackness. What had happened? Where was she? Who was she? And why was it so damn dark?

She sat up slowly, conscious of a dull ache in her lower body. She lay on concrete, she could feel the coldness of it seeping through the thin, torn material of her dress. She was barefoot. She couldn’t remember losing her shoes. Or her coat. Or anything. The events of the past were a smeared blur in her mind.

She stood, shifting uneasily on her feet as the cold stone tried to steal what little body heat she had. "Hello?" Her voice, a faint whisper, was swallowed by the darkness. She took two tentative steps forward and stopped, afraid of hitting a wall. "Is- Is anybody there? Please… somebody… I’m… I’m-"

A memory came, bright and stark and vivid enough to knock her to her knees. Her friends. The dance club. The bouncer. Flashing a forged driver’s license that Val had somehow gotten. Drinking. Dancing. Val trying to make her jealous. Val hitting on some girl. Val laughing. Watching her. Watching her watching him.

Becoming mad.

Leaving.

Anger, annoyance, and alcohol made her hands clumsy. She fumbled with the keys to the car, cursing Val under her breath. How dare he do this to her? Didn’t he know how much she loved him? How much his flirting hurt her?

Kelly would say she was being stupid. That Val wouldn’t know anything unless she told him.

"I shouldn’t have to tell him," she growled. "Shouldn’t have to tell him a damn thing. What does he want me to do? Strip naked and jump in his lap?"

"Sounds good to me." One arm wrapped around her waist, and the other was already on her wrist when she realized that the person holding her, the person speaking, was not Val.

The memory ended with such swiftness that she cried out painfully. Was that why she hadn’t remembered earlier? Had her mind blanked it out? Did that explain why it hurt-

"Oh, no."

-down-

"Oh, God, no…"

-there?

"NO!" The scream, full of terror and anguish, was simultaneously hers and not hers. It shattered the darkness, pulled her to her feet. She turned, confused and afraid, and found herself staring at herself.

She recognized the place she now stood: the parking lot behind the dance club. Pinned against a car, a girl struggled with a man almost twice her size. Why doesn’t somebody come? Can’t they hear her? Can’t they hear what’s going on?

No, she realized, they couldn’t. The scene was frozen, neither attacker or victim moving. Time itself had stopped.

"What…" she could not finish the question.

Whew! So many story ideas! I don't know about you, but I need a break. And, when we come back, you can read the first full story I've ever completed (And, no, it's not the Captain N: The Game Master story…) in Session 3.4 - BAK.

All works are copyright 2003 Kristin Renee Taylor. Plagiarists will be pursued to the fullest extent of the law, and crazy ferrets will eat your eyeballs while I sing kareoke. You've been warned. This has been a production of Blueberry Enterprises. Really, you don't want to hear me sing…