Dark Designs

by Flowers, Thomas S.

"I'm a friend, do you know where he is? Have you seen him?"

  The girl finally stepped forward into the light and pulled the hood away from her face. She looked him up and down, as if trying to decide if he was trustworthy. Finally she turned towards one of the apartment doors.

  "Come on," she said. "We need to get out of the hall."

  "Who are you?" Reynolds asked as the door shut behind them. The apartment was bare, with hardly any sign that anyone lived here. "What is this place?" he asked as he looked around.

  "Most the building is abandoned anymore," the girl answered as she stared up at him. "How did you—"

  "Who are you?" Reynolds asked again. "I'm sorry. I don't mean to cut you off but I've met Bronson's daughter so who are you?"

  The girl shrugged. "Friends call me Bug, I guess."

  Reynolds shook his head, wondering how the evening managed to get a little more bizarre with each passing moment. "Okay. Bug? How do you know Bronson?"

  The shrug again. "I'm from around the neighborhood. I'd get stuff for him when he needed it."

  "Stuff?"

  "Last few months. When he started staying up there in that gross apartment. Most of the time, he'd just pay me to bring him food or clothes but the last few times I saw him, things got kind of weird."

  "Weird, how?"

  "The place always smelled nasty. I don't know what he was trying to cook in there but something was wrong with him. I don't think he was sleeping and he was always acting crazy." She paused and went to the window, peering out at the street below as if afraid that someone was listening in or watching them. "All he would do is sit there on the floor and write in those notebooks. And I'm pretty sure he was sneaking away late at night to go somewhere."

  Reynolds nodded, looking around the place as the thunder started to get louder. He was tempted to turn on the lights but Bug was clearly the paranoid type and he guessed they likely wouldn't work regardless. He didn't know what he was expecting to find, coming up here. Every step he took closer to understanding Bronson's life just sent him further down a spiraling descent into depression. It was painful to see someone he respected and cared for becoming this kind of a person, a slave to his obsessions.

  "I'm sorry to take up your time," he said, turning towards the door. "I'm assuming you haven't seen him?"

  "No. And he still owes me like a hundred bucks if you track him down."

  There were no answers to be found here, in reality there were likely no answers anywhere. All he was doing was chasing down possibilities and half-truths. He reached for the door handle when he felt the slight bulge in his pocket, the key from the storage garage. Taking it out, he showed Bug the key-fob.

  "Do you know this place?" He might as well see this through to the end. At least, if nothing else, he would be able to look Bronson's daughter in the eye and truthfully say that he tried.

  She nodded.

  "Can you take me there?"

  Bug looked doubtful and shifted her gaze to the floor until Reynolds picked up on the suggestion. He took out his wallet and held up five twenty dollar bills. "You get it after you take me there."

  The light seemed to return to her eyes as she nodded. "Okay. fine, let's go."

  Back down on the street, the rain seemed to have gotten more intense as lightning forked above them, creating a sporadic jig-saw puzzle through the clouds. As he jogged to keep up with her, he cursed himself for leaving his umbrella behind at the lab. Someone lying down under one of the awnings they passed stuck a foot out, nearly tripping him in the process, but he managed to stay upright as he tried to keep up.

  After ten minutes, they ducked down an alley and cut over several blocks. While making their way, he heard the sound of glass breaking and shouting from somewhere up above. Fluid streamed down behind, carrying with it the foul stench of rot that seemed to underlie everything in this part of the city. Reynolds slipped several times on the pavement that was coated with either food waste or something else he didn't want to identify.

  Just as he was about to ask how much farther they had, Bug ducked around the corner and to the left. As he followed, she stopped short at the sight of a dozen large garage doors, sweeping away from them on the side of a giant metal warehouse.

  He noticed her hand held out for the cash.

  "How am I supposed to get in there?"

  "That's not my problem and that isn't what we agreed to."

  She did have a point. He produced the money and placed it in her hand. She turned to leave and then paused, turning back to speak again.

  "I hope you find him. Towards the end, he got kind of scary, you know? Like he might do something to himself? Anyway, I just hope you can help him out."

  "Thank you," Reynolds called out after her. The only acknowledgment he got was a head turned back in his direction and a slight nod.

  The door to unit number four towered up over him as thunder crashed over it all. As the rain blew in, he again considered calling the whole thing off and getting a cab but he ignored it. He was here, there was no point in dragging this out. Maybe getting into the garage and out of the rain would motivate him into figuring this out.

  The padlock on the door flashed at him in time with the lightning as he looked around for anything he could use to pry it open. Chances were slim that there would be anyone out here who would care enough to pay attention to what he was doing. This entire part of town was of the "see nothing" variety. Reynolds caught sight of something in the ground by the curb and ran over to find a long piece of rebar. He gripped it tightly as he made his way back to the door, slipping it through the opening in the padlock.

  Bronson might have been paranoid and protective of his work but he clearly hadn't thought to spend much money on keeping it secure. The lock popped open after only a few pulls. It skittered across the ground as the two pieces flew off in different directions and Reynolds stepped inside.

  It took less than a minute for him to regret his decision to come here at all.

  The garage was large, about thirty feet square, and the scene before him came through in flashes with the lightning, like watching still images popping before him. The floor and walls were streaked with some kind of dark, tarry substance that, after a minute or two he realized was blood. Surgical equipment was scattered all over the floor and in the very center was a stark looking operating bed. The sheets looked like they had once been white but had long since given in to whatever bodily matter had stained it. Wind gusted in and caught the ends of frayed straps, blowing them back and forth under the bed. What the hell had Bronson been doing in here?

  Reynolds spotted another notebook on a workbench along the far wall. The last thing he wanted to do was venture farther into the place but now he had to know what was going on. Picking it up and leafing through, he found much of what was back at Bronson's apartment. More scribbled words that he could barely make sense of. Then, near the last page, he finally found something he could read:

  Got my first glimpse through to the far side. The blood was the key, what I needed to cross over. I can't say what I had to do to get it but coating myself was the missing component that let me get through the rip in one piece. I saw clearly and I saw through. Everyone told me I was crazy but there are armies over there, preparing to invade. If we don't find out a way to stop her, it will all be over for us. This is a species that does one thing, invades and destroys civilizations. I think they saw me before I could make the jump back but I don't think I left enough of a rift for them to follow. Still, it is more important than ever to be prepared.

  The child is coming.

  Lightning flashed, so brightly that Reynolds squeezed his eyes shut from the pain, his cry drowned out by the immediate crash of thunder that followed. The walls around him shook violently as he tried to re-orient himself. He had gone down to one knee without even realizing it. His hand was planted in the middle of a pool of some kind of dark fluid and he jerked it back, barely keeping from toppling over as he wiped his hand off on his pants. Lights
flickered in the nearby buildings as if a power outage was imminent. Reynolds turned to pull the garage door shut, his grip slipping and coming loose as he cried out and fell backwards.

  Bronson was standing in the middle of the garage.

  But that wasn't quite right. It was more like he was suspended, held up off the floor by unseen bonds. Blood trickled down from one partially exposed eye and there was no sign of consciousness or life from him.

  And he wasn't alone.

  Other bodies hung suspended from the ceiling along with him, in various states of decay and abuse. They swayed against each other in the wind, mouths gaped open in one last, inaudible cry. Reynolds scrambled back away from the garage, squeezing his eyes shut from another crack of thunder and when he looked again, the garage was empty.

  To hell with it. He wasn't even going to bother with closing the garage. It wasn't like there was anything in there worth stealing anyway. Reynolds clutched the notebook to his chest and began sprinting down the street. The rain streaked down his face but he no longer cared. Part of him wanted to wash off the essential offense of what he had just seen in that garage. Somehow those five minutes had managed to completely convey to him the extent to which Bronson had lost his once brilliant mind to the raging fires of madness.

  Reynolds continued to run, ignoring the shouts he now heard from people he shoved past on the way back to the only bus shelter he had seen on his way in. After pissing off one cab driver already, he didn't want to take his chances with another. Taking a seat on the bench, he looked down at the notebook he had held on to for some reason, seeing that his hands were shaking. Closing his eyes, he let himself relax back and with a conscious effort, managed to slow his breathing. A woman wrapped up in a ragged trench coat was sitting on the ground under the shelter, next to a shopping cart where a small radio was playing a static-laced news alert.

  "The national weather service has issued a record number of thunderstorm and tornado warnings across the greater United States this evening. Violent storms and straight-line winds have struck major metropolitan cities on the east coast and already, over thirty casualties nationwide have been reported. The weather service has denied claims that these storms are all part of a larger, unified cell. They state simply that increasingly severe events like this are to be expected now that the average mean—“

  Reynolds shook his head, trying to block it out. The last thing he needed was the doom and gloom of apocalyptic weather reports. After several drawn out moments of focusing on his breathing, he realized that the sound from the radio had cut out. Either it had lost its signal or the batteries had died.

  The air around him smelled like something was burning. Reynolds stood up and looked out through the tinted Plexiglas barrier of the bus stop. There was no sign of a fire that likely would have sent people scattering out into the streets. The nightlife moved around him as if nothing was out of order. Even the storm raging around them didn't seem to make anyone look up to take notice.

  He had bent down to sit again when the sound of an explosion from the next street over made him stumble against the side of the shelter. Bracing himself, he looked up and saw that finally, the people around him seemed to be shaken out of their routines, staring slack jawed in the direction of the blast. Lightning forked down out of the sky in four distinct strikes, all down into the street where he had heard the explosion. No longer giving it rational thought, Reynolds began to run down the alley to see if there was anyone hurt who might need help.

  As he passed, a heavy red metal door swung open and a small, dark figure stepped out, grabbing him by the arm.

  "Hey!" he called out as he skidded to a stop. "What the hell are—"

  "Shhh!" the voice hissed out at him as it hunched over, pulling him through the door and into the darkened hallway within. Reynolds resisted, sure that this was going to end with him dead inside this building but all his struggles ceased when he saw the face of the person who had grabbed him.

  "Bronson?" he said, incredulously.

  "Shhh!" Bronson hissed at him again. "Shut up, keep your voice down!"

  "What the hell is going on? Where have you been?"

  "Shut up, I don't know how long I have before I get pulled back over. You have to stop them before it's too late. The crossover is already happening. They're coming!"

  "I don't understand what that means, what—"

  "When I jumped back into our world, I left too much of a residual tear. I never should have gone over in the first place but it's too late. They're coming here and they're going to destroy everything!"

  Reynolds took a step back and looked his friend up and down. "How far around the bend have you gone? Do you have any idea how insane you sound right now?"

  "I don't care. You need to stop her. She is the key; you can't let her take full form in this world or everything will die. Do you understand me? Not just people. Everything."

  "Bronson, I don't know what you think I could even—"

  "She'll send her soldiers before her," Bronson said and against all reason, his entire body flickered. It was the best way Reynolds could think of to describe it. It was like looking at a digital image flashing on and off on a screen. "Don't let her—" he blinked out and in again, "You have to get the word out to the—" Before he could say anything else, he blinked out of existence, as if he had never been there in the first place. The sound of static filled his ears and through the sudden burst of sound, he could just make out Bronson's voice. ”...my fault! I'm sorry... my fault you have to fix..." That was all he heard before the static dissipated and he heard no more from his friend.

  From the alley outside he heard what sounded like screams. And people running.

  Reynolds ran to the door and stepped out into the alley. The night looked like it had switched to day, it was so bright. He heard explosive blasts as if the city itself was under attack. There was no way to see anything from the alley so Reynolds stepped up onto the fire escape stairway, running up the four flights until he was on the roof, looking out over the streets below.

  Lightning forked down all around, lancing from the sky to the ground without end. Heat seared out at him through the air from the repeated blasts and he heard concrete and earth being turned up with each concussive impact. There was the sound of cars crashing into each other, accompanied by horns and people screaming. Reynolds leaned down on the concrete ledge, mouth hanging open at the scene before him and it was the span of that moment when he decided that maybe Bronson wasn't so crazy after all.

  The roof of the building was now vibrating as a new sound began to mingle with that of the storm. It sounded like a wild animal, or animals, screeching a howl that ripped through the wind and made his skin stand up. Dark shapes moved through the streets now, sounds like metal scraping on metal and still the lightning continued to wage war on all of them. He heard something heavy and rhythmic, a sound he was only used to hearing in war documentaries.

  It sounded like soldiers marching.

  He needed to get away, needed to be somewhere else at that moment and a nearly submerged part of his mind cried out that it was already probably too late.

  Thunder rolled overhead and he looked up to see the clouds flashing with different colors as the forks of lightning had taken on a bright red color. The bolts cut through the night as if rending holes in the fabric of existence itself. The sound was like cheap cloth being torn into thin strips. Reynolds shivered and pulled his useless coat tighter around himself, out of habit. He could see water starting to fountain up out of the sewers, now unable to keep up with the onslaught from the rain. Somehow Bronson had opened a door that should have stayed shut. His ideas weren't crazy, just his determination to pursue them. Now it looked as if they all would be the ones to pay.

  His breath started to come in quick gasps as he felt a panic attack coming on. Black smoke crept out from underneath the cars on the street, blooming up into the air to take the world into its embrace. From below, he felt the earth shaking in time again w
ith what sounded like footfalls of what he still couldn't help but visualize as a massive army, marching down on them. The lightning forked from the clouds above to the newly forming clouds below and the only conscious thought he could form was that he wanted it all to be over.

  Then, his mind was filled with the sound of a voice, not his own. The voice spoke to him with a reasoning tone, as if trying to calm him for what was about to happen. He heard the voice in his head and with a start, realized that he was also hearing it coming from the speaker of the phone in his pocket. He heard it coming from the stereos in the cars below and part of him somehow knew that likely everywhere in the world at that moment, anything with the ability to broadcast sound was all speaking with one voice, saying the same thing.

  The Child, she has risen.

  DEATH RAY POTATO BAKE

  T.N. Kaylor

  A special kind of douchebag, Raymond Byrne was more than just a drunken twenty-one-year-old on summer break. An endless supply of self-righteous arrogance and indignation fueled his full-time assholery. As a freckled, ginger genius and a perfectionist, Ray nursed a seething inferiority complex. He overcompensated by wearing flip flops year-round and popping the double collars on his layered Hollister polo shirts. Also, he was a Vegas virgin (not sexually: he had racked up his share of clumsy, intoxicated coed encounters). But Ray had never been to Vegas before, and when he first started planning his trip, he fantasized about the liquor-fueled opportunity to bed honeys way out of his league. He had heard that a Vegas seven was like a Georgia Tech ten. Except as a closet nerd back home in Atlanta, Ray ranked, at best, a solid six.

  (Enter alcohol, the great equalizer.)

  But then his mother went and ruined everything by tagging along. As a hot, crimson-haired, single MILF, she cockblocked him everywhere on the strip. Last evening, when she finally disappeared from the casino for an escapade of debauchery, she chose a middle-aged, cologne-drenched guy in overpriced European jeans and an Ed Hardy shirt unbuttoned two buttons too low.