1x00 "Ashes"
Released on http://www.patreon.com/99geek on April 2018
“I hate you!” Dakotah said with a giggle, holding her glasses in place while clenching her legs together. “You’re the god damned worst.”
“Mmmf,” came her boyfriend’s muffled sounds from between her thighs. He replaced his tongue with two of his fingers, and stood up to kiss her passionately. She was tall, but he was taller, and she’d have had to go on her tippy-toes had he not sat her on the wooden bar of their favourite pub. His kiss was deep and passionate, and she could taste herself on his lips as she drew him into her embrace. She wrapped her long black boots around his torso, as he continued to play her like an instrument.
“Stop,” she whispered in his ear though she knew she didn’t want him to. And he didn’t seem to want to either. With a shudder, she felt an orgasm roll through her body, and felt her juices leak over the counter and off onto the floor.
“Oh my god!” she said with a laugh as she could feel her face turn red, and her boyfriend Cale laughed too, grabbing napkins and a towel to mop it up. “Look what you made me do.”
“I love you so much,” Cale said, kissing her even while he cleaned up her mess with his hands. She was about to say the same back at him, affectionately touching his large bare muscular arms protruding from his sleeveless shirt, but she was interrupted as the bartender came in from the back.
“You two are still here?” Carol asked, an older short round Asian lady who ran the bar and made a habit of putting up with them. She was like a mother figure to them, more than their mothers had ever been. Dakotah had met Cale in that very bar; Carol had been the one who had introduced them.
From the moment Dakotah’s eyes landed on Cale, and locked with his own dark wells, she knew that she loved him at first sight. She knew, before they’d ever even touched, that her spirit or soul would be forever entangled with Cale’s, at least for as long as they drew breath. It wasn’t long after that moment before they were entangling both in spirit and every other way they could come up with. He filled all her holes, both figuratively and literally.
“Did you spill a drink?” Carol asked, spotting the rag Cale had just been using. Crossing the bar he threw out the napkins and seemed about to correct the bartender.
“Yes,” Dakotah said quickly, glad Carol hadn’t caught what they’d been up to before she’d come in. She gave a warning look to her boyfriend.
He answered the bartender’s first question instead. “We’re waiting for a business associate,” he told her, “He’ll be by soon, and then we can help you flip the chairs.”
“Will your business associate be wanting a drink?” Carol asked with a raise of her eyebrow.
“I can take care of it,” Cale told her, flashing the woman a charismatic grin, a toothy smile that made Dakotah wanna reach out and kiss him. “You can go upstairs and rest, I’ve got things from here.”
“I love you,” Dakotah said, reaching her arms out to Cale from her place still on the bar. He came to her, and they re-embraced. His comforting warmth was like a safety blanket around her. As long as she had him by her side she no longer felt afraid.
Love was everything. It was all encompassing and all consuming. When love grabbed hold of someone, good luck to any attempts at rationale. Good luck getting out alive. Like John Carpenter’s The Thing, love tears at a person, rips them to shreds. Murders the person they were. And then becomes them, or at least some facsimile that looks like them but doesn’t act quite like they used to.
And then one day it’s just gone. And then you’re alone.
*
She woke with a start, lifting her head off the bar where she must have passed out the night before. Her cheek had been resting on the very spot her butt had sat only one year earlier. She could still remember all of it, as if it had been yesterday. How he smelled, how he tasted. She could still feel his strong arms carrying her to their bed, she could still feel his warm body pressing against her, enveloping her. Smothering her under his weight, just the way she liked it.
“You’re awake,” Carol said, coming down the stairs from her loft above in a bathrobe.
“Did I sleep here last night?” Dakotah asked groggily, unable to remember anything from the night before as her head pounded with the king of all headaches. There was still half a pint of beer in a glass beside her, and she drank it down in one large gulp, feeling the warm flat alcohol slide comfortably down her hatch. Her stomach twisted, and her headache subsided slightly.
“Well if you’re trying to suggest that I took you home last night, undressed you, put you to bed, then redressed you in the morning with the same clothes you wore last night and repositioned you at my bar…” Carol trailed off as Dakotah looked at her expectantly. “I didn’t do that.”
“Well can I have another?” Dakotah asked, raising her glass to Carol. She looked around the large empty bar, where Carol had clearly cleaned up around her. Whatever insanity had happened last night, there was no sign of it now as the dingy old pub had been reset for the next night of drunken debauchery.
Carol got behind the bar to set a kettle to boil, and she crossed her arms as she looked disapprovingly down on Dakotah. “You still haven’t paid me for all your drinks last night,” Carol told her surrogate daughter. “Pay me for just one and you can have another.”
Dakotah slid her huge black purse from her arm, and started rummaging through it. “I’m gonna come into a little money any day now,” Dakotah insisted, pushing aside her Witchblade comic book and eyeliner. Her tazer. Empty change purse.
“Like trip over it on your way out the door?” Carol asked Dakotah with arms still crossed. “Dakotah. I love you. But I’m cutting you off.”
“Come on,” Dakotah said to herself, digging her hand deep into her purse. “I only need two toonies and a loonie.”
Carol turned on the TV as Dakotah continued searching every corner of her unwieldly large bag. The bartender switched it to the news where a reporter seemed to be doing a story out of their neighbouring town of Oakville.
“It was at the scene behind me here,” the reporter said into the camera, standing in front of a dock, “where sixty vampire children set sail in a large shipping barge off to a new world where they might live free from the risk of hurting others.”
“Vampires?” Carol repeated, with a shake of her head. “Fake news is getting worse and worse these days.”
“I believe in vampires,” Dakotah said, checking her coin purse for a third time in hopes she might find some coins she hadn’t seen any of the previous times. “People who feed off the social energy of others. They exist.”
“You also believe in witchcraft and every conspiracy theory you’ve ever read,” Carol said. “I remain unconvinced.”
Carol returned to her kettle as it whistled away. The reporter on screen was just finishing her story. “This is Isabol Teung of Voice News, Signing off. Back to you Brian!”
“Ah hah!” Dakotah exclaimed with excitement as her finger brushed against something metal. She pulled the coin from her bag as the door to the bar opened, and she lifted it to the light that streamed in from the open doorway.
“Damn,” she said. Just a quarter. She looked past the coin to see two of her friends entering the bar. Brienne and Alex. She’d gone to high school with them, so many years ago now. They were all about the same age, and Dakotah had just turned twenty. Brienne had long frizzled dreadlocks, and she was supporting her boyfriend Alex who seemed to be feeling unwell.
“Dee!” Brienne called into the bar as she helped her boyfriend through the doorway. “Help!”
“Brienne!” Dakotah said her name in greeting, getting up to join them. “Alex! Can I borrow five bucks?”
“Give it a rest Dee,” Brienne said, as Dakotah took Alex’s other arm. “Something’s wrong with Alex.”
He doubled over against a table and Dakotah put down a chair for him to sit on. “I feel amazing,” he insisted smiling even as he was wincing in pain. “I mean except for my stomach.”
“He took something new,” Brienne told Dakotah.
“What?”
“Some kind of drug,” Brienne continued. “I told him not to. I swear to god. I was like ‘Don’t take it Alex. You gotta have scientists like tell us it’s okay first.’ But you know Alex and science.” Brienne rolled her eyes, obviously very concerned. Alex was more akin to Dakotah than Brienne. He was open to new experiences, and didn’t believe in the ‘conventional truths’ the government brainwashed society with.
“Carol,” Dakotah called to the bartender. “He needs some water.”
Alex groaned and doubled over in his seat, clutching desperately at his stomach.
“What can I do?” Brienne asked him in loud hysteria, crouching down beside him. “Tell me what I can do!”
“It hurts!” Alex barely managed to utter. “Feels like my stomach is burn’n up. Oh god it hurts! It hurts!”
Brienne clutched Alex’s hand, tears streaming down her face. She loved him, they were each other’s entire world. Dakotah had once had a love like theirs. But love burned like a fire, consuming everything, eating away until there was nothing left but ash.
Alex’s shirt caught fire. Dakotah couldn’t see where the flame had originated from, but it seemed to spread from his belly, quickly engulfing his torso. Brienne screamed, the bright orange flames lashing at her and forcing her to release Alex’s hand. Both women backed away from him, screaming as their friend spasmed and writhed in his seat. As loud as their screams were, it wasn’t enough to drown out his own, an agonizing wail the likes of which neither would hear quite the like of again.
It took less than a minute before his screams were nothing but a memory, and a smoking pile of ash was all that remained of Alex. There was silence in the bar, all except for Brienne’s sobs. Dakotah inhaled, gasping for breath though she hadn’t even realized she’d been holding it.
“What the hell was that?” she asked at last, as Carol picked up her phone. Dakotah heard her finger land three times.
* * *
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Anderson woke up on his couch slowly, his hand clenching in pain. Remnants of a months-old wound. It was the joints, specifically the ones that had been broken. His other scars still ached as well. Two months of recovery, and he still didn’t feel quite the same. He didn’t think he’d ever feel completely the same again.
His apartment was a disaster. Dirty clothes littered the floor, mixed with empty potato chip bags and other junk food wrappers. He had nothing but a bath robe on, and couldn’t even remember the last time he’d showered. Or what day it was. He turned on the TV to a rerun of Price is Right. Getting off his ass, Anderson fumbled into his kitchen to cook himself up a bowl of cereal. Opening the fridge, he smelled the milk, disappointed it had gone sour. Only a week after its best before date. He’d had milk last twice that long.
Pouring the Fruit Loops into the cleanest bowl he could find on a counter littered with dirty dishes, Anderson was just about to collapse back on the couch and enjoy the comedy stylings of Drew Carry when his phone went off. He almost spilled his bowl of cereal in his lap as the loud ringtone blared. He’d not heard the phone ring in weeks. Grabbing his cellphone from the table in front of him, he took one look at the number on the screen and answered it.
“Chief,” Anderson said into the phone before the person on the other end could talk. “Is it time?” He glanced to the detective badge still sitting in the display case it had been presented to him in. Untouched.
“I think two months is long enough,” Sergeant Chief Sue Harrington said on the other end. “I have a case I’m hoping will be perfect to ease you in.” She gave him an address.
“I’ll be right there,” he said, hanging up the phone. Getting off his couch once more, he made for the bedroom and opened his closet to the only clean outfit he had left. A three piece suit.
He sniffed himself. Probably best he washed up first. And shaved.
“Mmmf,” came her boyfriend’s muffled sounds from between her thighs. He replaced his tongue with two of his fingers, and stood up to kiss her passionately. She was tall, but he was taller, and she’d have had to go on her tippy-toes had he not sat her on the wooden bar of their favourite pub. His kiss was deep and passionate, and she could taste herself on his lips as she drew him into her embrace. She wrapped her long black boots around his torso, as he continued to play her like an instrument.
“Stop,” she whispered in his ear though she knew she didn’t want him to. And he didn’t seem to want to either. With a shudder, she felt an orgasm roll through her body, and felt her juices leak over the counter and off onto the floor.
“Oh my god!” she said with a laugh as she could feel her face turn red, and her boyfriend Cale laughed too, grabbing napkins and a towel to mop it up. “Look what you made me do.”
“I love you so much,” Cale said, kissing her even while he cleaned up her mess with his hands. She was about to say the same back at him, affectionately touching his large bare muscular arms protruding from his sleeveless shirt, but she was interrupted as the bartender came in from the back.
“You two are still here?” Carol asked, an older short round Asian lady who ran the bar and made a habit of putting up with them. She was like a mother figure to them, more than their mothers had ever been. Dakotah had met Cale in that very bar; Carol had been the one who had introduced them.
From the moment Dakotah’s eyes landed on Cale, and locked with his own dark wells, she knew that she loved him at first sight. She knew, before they’d ever even touched, that her spirit or soul would be forever entangled with Cale’s, at least for as long as they drew breath. It wasn’t long after that moment before they were entangling both in spirit and every other way they could come up with. He filled all her holes, both figuratively and literally.
“Did you spill a drink?” Carol asked, spotting the rag Cale had just been using. Crossing the bar he threw out the napkins and seemed about to correct the bartender.
“Yes,” Dakotah said quickly, glad Carol hadn’t caught what they’d been up to before she’d come in. She gave a warning look to her boyfriend.
He answered the bartender’s first question instead. “We’re waiting for a business associate,” he told her, “He’ll be by soon, and then we can help you flip the chairs.”
“Will your business associate be wanting a drink?” Carol asked with a raise of her eyebrow.
“I can take care of it,” Cale told her, flashing the woman a charismatic grin, a toothy smile that made Dakotah wanna reach out and kiss him. “You can go upstairs and rest, I’ve got things from here.”
“I love you,” Dakotah said, reaching her arms out to Cale from her place still on the bar. He came to her, and they re-embraced. His comforting warmth was like a safety blanket around her. As long as she had him by her side she no longer felt afraid.
Love was everything. It was all encompassing and all consuming. When love grabbed hold of someone, good luck to any attempts at rationale. Good luck getting out alive. Like John Carpenter’s The Thing, love tears at a person, rips them to shreds. Murders the person they were. And then becomes them, or at least some facsimile that looks like them but doesn’t act quite like they used to.
And then one day it’s just gone. And then you’re alone.
*
She woke with a start, lifting her head off the bar where she must have passed out the night before. Her cheek had been resting on the very spot her butt had sat only one year earlier. She could still remember all of it, as if it had been yesterday. How he smelled, how he tasted. She could still feel his strong arms carrying her to their bed, she could still feel his warm body pressing against her, enveloping her. Smothering her under his weight, just the way she liked it.
“You’re awake,” Carol said, coming down the stairs from her loft above in a bathrobe.
“Did I sleep here last night?” Dakotah asked groggily, unable to remember anything from the night before as her head pounded with the king of all headaches. There was still half a pint of beer in a glass beside her, and she drank it down in one large gulp, feeling the warm flat alcohol slide comfortably down her hatch. Her stomach twisted, and her headache subsided slightly.
“Well if you’re trying to suggest that I took you home last night, undressed you, put you to bed, then redressed you in the morning with the same clothes you wore last night and repositioned you at my bar…” Carol trailed off as Dakotah looked at her expectantly. “I didn’t do that.”
“Well can I have another?” Dakotah asked, raising her glass to Carol. She looked around the large empty bar, where Carol had clearly cleaned up around her. Whatever insanity had happened last night, there was no sign of it now as the dingy old pub had been reset for the next night of drunken debauchery.
Carol got behind the bar to set a kettle to boil, and she crossed her arms as she looked disapprovingly down on Dakotah. “You still haven’t paid me for all your drinks last night,” Carol told her surrogate daughter. “Pay me for just one and you can have another.”
Dakotah slid her huge black purse from her arm, and started rummaging through it. “I’m gonna come into a little money any day now,” Dakotah insisted, pushing aside her Witchblade comic book and eyeliner. Her tazer. Empty change purse.
“Like trip over it on your way out the door?” Carol asked Dakotah with arms still crossed. “Dakotah. I love you. But I’m cutting you off.”
“Come on,” Dakotah said to herself, digging her hand deep into her purse. “I only need two toonies and a loonie.”
Carol turned on the TV as Dakotah continued searching every corner of her unwieldly large bag. The bartender switched it to the news where a reporter seemed to be doing a story out of their neighbouring town of Oakville.
“It was at the scene behind me here,” the reporter said into the camera, standing in front of a dock, “where sixty vampire children set sail in a large shipping barge off to a new world where they might live free from the risk of hurting others.”
“Vampires?” Carol repeated, with a shake of her head. “Fake news is getting worse and worse these days.”
“I believe in vampires,” Dakotah said, checking her coin purse for a third time in hopes she might find some coins she hadn’t seen any of the previous times. “People who feed off the social energy of others. They exist.”
“You also believe in witchcraft and every conspiracy theory you’ve ever read,” Carol said. “I remain unconvinced.”
Carol returned to her kettle as it whistled away. The reporter on screen was just finishing her story. “This is Isabol Teung of Voice News, Signing off. Back to you Brian!”
“Ah hah!” Dakotah exclaimed with excitement as her finger brushed against something metal. She pulled the coin from her bag as the door to the bar opened, and she lifted it to the light that streamed in from the open doorway.
“Damn,” she said. Just a quarter. She looked past the coin to see two of her friends entering the bar. Brienne and Alex. She’d gone to high school with them, so many years ago now. They were all about the same age, and Dakotah had just turned twenty. Brienne had long frizzled dreadlocks, and she was supporting her boyfriend Alex who seemed to be feeling unwell.
“Dee!” Brienne called into the bar as she helped her boyfriend through the doorway. “Help!”
“Brienne!” Dakotah said her name in greeting, getting up to join them. “Alex! Can I borrow five bucks?”
“Give it a rest Dee,” Brienne said, as Dakotah took Alex’s other arm. “Something’s wrong with Alex.”
He doubled over against a table and Dakotah put down a chair for him to sit on. “I feel amazing,” he insisted smiling even as he was wincing in pain. “I mean except for my stomach.”
“He took something new,” Brienne told Dakotah.
“What?”
“Some kind of drug,” Brienne continued. “I told him not to. I swear to god. I was like ‘Don’t take it Alex. You gotta have scientists like tell us it’s okay first.’ But you know Alex and science.” Brienne rolled her eyes, obviously very concerned. Alex was more akin to Dakotah than Brienne. He was open to new experiences, and didn’t believe in the ‘conventional truths’ the government brainwashed society with.
“Carol,” Dakotah called to the bartender. “He needs some water.”
Alex groaned and doubled over in his seat, clutching desperately at his stomach.
“What can I do?” Brienne asked him in loud hysteria, crouching down beside him. “Tell me what I can do!”
“It hurts!” Alex barely managed to utter. “Feels like my stomach is burn’n up. Oh god it hurts! It hurts!”
Brienne clutched Alex’s hand, tears streaming down her face. She loved him, they were each other’s entire world. Dakotah had once had a love like theirs. But love burned like a fire, consuming everything, eating away until there was nothing left but ash.
Alex’s shirt caught fire. Dakotah couldn’t see where the flame had originated from, but it seemed to spread from his belly, quickly engulfing his torso. Brienne screamed, the bright orange flames lashing at her and forcing her to release Alex’s hand. Both women backed away from him, screaming as their friend spasmed and writhed in his seat. As loud as their screams were, it wasn’t enough to drown out his own, an agonizing wail the likes of which neither would hear quite the like of again.
It took less than a minute before his screams were nothing but a memory, and a smoking pile of ash was all that remained of Alex. There was silence in the bar, all except for Brienne’s sobs. Dakotah inhaled, gasping for breath though she hadn’t even realized she’d been holding it.
“What the hell was that?” she asked at last, as Carol picked up her phone. Dakotah heard her finger land three times.
* * *
▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁
AD SPACE FOR RENT (Text or Photo)
Go see Avenger's Endgame in theaters! It'll be good. Promise. *Fake Ad*
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▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁▁
Anderson woke up on his couch slowly, his hand clenching in pain. Remnants of a months-old wound. It was the joints, specifically the ones that had been broken. His other scars still ached as well. Two months of recovery, and he still didn’t feel quite the same. He didn’t think he’d ever feel completely the same again.
His apartment was a disaster. Dirty clothes littered the floor, mixed with empty potato chip bags and other junk food wrappers. He had nothing but a bath robe on, and couldn’t even remember the last time he’d showered. Or what day it was. He turned on the TV to a rerun of Price is Right. Getting off his ass, Anderson fumbled into his kitchen to cook himself up a bowl of cereal. Opening the fridge, he smelled the milk, disappointed it had gone sour. Only a week after its best before date. He’d had milk last twice that long.
Pouring the Fruit Loops into the cleanest bowl he could find on a counter littered with dirty dishes, Anderson was just about to collapse back on the couch and enjoy the comedy stylings of Drew Carry when his phone went off. He almost spilled his bowl of cereal in his lap as the loud ringtone blared. He’d not heard the phone ring in weeks. Grabbing his cellphone from the table in front of him, he took one look at the number on the screen and answered it.
“Chief,” Anderson said into the phone before the person on the other end could talk. “Is it time?” He glanced to the detective badge still sitting in the display case it had been presented to him in. Untouched.
“I think two months is long enough,” Sergeant Chief Sue Harrington said on the other end. “I have a case I’m hoping will be perfect to ease you in.” She gave him an address.
“I’ll be right there,” he said, hanging up the phone. Getting off his couch once more, he made for the bedroom and opened his closet to the only clean outfit he had left. A three piece suit.
He sniffed himself. Probably best he washed up first. And shaved.
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