Hallelujah, Lock and Load.

listennomore @ 2009-06-01T21:00:00

2009-06-03T01:02:11Z

Jewel rode hard, the muggy night wind almost blasting at her skin as painfully as the sands of a desert in a far, far away place. Part of her longed for that far away land, that place where enemy and friend were clearly defined. A place where her gun was worn in the open, and she knew that death would come at her without the slightest provocation.

It was true that Lady Death could court a person just as easily in America as she did in the dunes of Iraq. But, unlike the seemingly innocent streets of Florida, at least in that war-torn country, Lady Death wore armor from head to toe and came at you from the front. She had a fighting chance there in the sand, and the end would come as swiftly as the beginning.

Here in America…

… she was dying slowly.

Jewel could feel it on her skin, taste it in the air around her. Back in Iraq, she had been a solider, had stared death in the face every moment of every day. It made sense that, now as a civilian, she chose a profession that allowed her to continue to stare Death in the face—and give Death the one-fingered salute each and every time she saved a life. But the question hovered around her: could she save her own?

She had thought that her cousin Solomon would be the answer to that question. However, he had shot her down when she’d asked to be part of his legacy.

“Soul-pretzeling isn’t something you do lightly. I’ve seen what happens when someone tries to undo it. It ain’t pretty.”

Fuck you, she had wanted to scream at him. Self-righteous bastard. Did he really think she was an idiot? That she hadn’t thought this whole thing through before she’d asked him? But the time and place hadn’t been right. They were sitting in the commonroom of Bonny and Bliss, drinking in memory to the fallen Lorcan. Punching her cousin in the face, while it certainly would have been in keeping with Lorcan’s memory, wasn’t going to do anything more than make her feel better.

Well, it would have felt good… for a second. Until Gypsy or Brigade hit her so hard she wouldn’t have come to in months. Fucking Obrimos.

Besides, that would have hurt Fee to no end. And as she had learned the hard way, funerals really weren’t for the dead. They were for the living. And she had gone to that place not to mourn a man she had met once and knew even less. She had gone there to support Fee.

So when he’d turned her down, she had walked away. Even when he’d taunted her about giving in too easily. What did he expect, honestly? For her to beg? To make with the Edgar Allen Poe-style prose and pour out her bleeding little heart? To simper like some of those other spineless power-seekers out there? Jewel snorted at the thought, swiping at her eyes in anger. Those tears were certainly from the sting of the wind and not from the despair whispering emo thoughts into her soul.

She was a gypsy. She would never beg. Never. Ever. Beg.

And so she rode hard into the night, not sure where she was going. Not sure what she was running from. Only that she had to ride tonight before the thoughts of dying slowly in a perfectly commonplace job in a perfectly commonplace town caught up with her.

Journal Entry #19

2008-03-07T23:56:33Z

Date: December 03, 2007
Location: Orlando, Florida, U.S.A.

Subject: The End of the Past

I think I’ve filled enough pages with the events that lead me to who and what and where I am now. Tiny details are all that are left. After Charisma’s death, I finished off my tour in the Navy without incident. My record was good but not perfect. My skills were great but not exceptionally noted. When my tour was over, I left. Tricks Charisma had shown me ensured all the above happened.

Translation: My paperwork got “lost” in the system, and they bounced me out without trying to drag me back in for another tour.

This pissed off more than a few in the Arrow. Though they accepted me as a member after Charisma’s death, they still wanted me to stay in the Navy. I could do a lot of good traveling around as I had been. It was a plumb assignment, they said. I just couldn’t do it, Cloud. It all felt hollow after he died. It was like I’d lost my family…

… and that was true, in a sense. Because I couldn’t go home to Tennessee now. The life of a cop wasn’t going to cut it for me, and trying to pretend that everything was fine in a small town wasn’t going to work, either. My family would know something was wrong with me. The Clark tribe always knew when something was wrong with each other.

Without Charisma, I had no place to belong. It was like watching my father die all over again. I was an orphan once more, a gypsy without a kumpiana.

So I did what I guess my biological father had done when Sarah had abandoned him. I got a bike and started riding the highways of the world. Anywhere the Dreams took me, I went. Guess I did some good here and there, but I never really found a place that I felt I could be happy. Searching for my heart, I guess. Always searching… Then I happened upon a wedding of two Awakened on a beach in Central Florida.

You know the rest.

Journal Entry #18

2008-03-07T23:55:08Z

Date: December 02, 2007
Location: Orlando, Florida U.S.A.

Subject: Death

There’s so much I could really say about Charisma. So much that I honestly want to just scream to the world. But I can’t. He wouldn’t have wanted it that way, and I agree with that. I’m as much of a private person as he was. I probably got that from him.

I miss him, Cloud. I may not be his blood, bit I miss him all the same.

He died while we were taking down a pylon of Seers. A single shot through the head that had somehow gotten through his magical defenses. I watched it. I tried to save him. I couldn’t.

We had two years together.

Did I love him? Yes and no.

Were we lovers? Yes, but not like you think. I don’t expect you to really understand it. It’s just something that happens when you are fighting a war. Some of the social rules of “civilized society” just don’t make sense in a combat situation. The best way I can describe it is this: when you see so much death, when your entire world becomes about one dead body after another—more than some caused by your own hands—you just need that crush of life. You need to be consumed by passions other than rage. You need flesh on flesh contact, the rush of adrenaline that has nothing to do with fighting and everything to do with living.

I guess it boils down to the fact that you need to remind yourself just exactly why you were doing what you were doing.

Fuck, this entry makes no sense. It’s all over the place.

No. I’m not over his death.

Fuck.
Fuck.
Fuck.

Journal Entry #17

2008-03-07T23:54:28Z

Date: December 01, 2007
Location: Orlando, Florida U.S.A.

Subject: Charisma

I’ve attempted this entry seven times now, and each time I keep starting it over. I know this is the main one that you and Gypsy want to read/know about more than anything, and probably the only thing you wanted me to write about, Cloud, but I couldn’t really explain what happened without the foundation of my past being laid out before you. I wanted you to know what motivated what I did and how I reacted, what passions drove me and what fears made me do what I did.

Christ, that was long-winded enough, wasn’t it? Anyway, this isn’t going to write itself, right? Get to the point…

Like I said before, I came out of the Mystery play in Russia. St. Petersburg, Russia to be exact. There was a dead body at my feet, and the sword I had been holding was suddenly a piece of discarded pipe damn near frozen to my numbed hands. That’s when the freak-out began to happen, when I really had no idea how I’d gotten there, or why the guy was dead, or why I had killed him. The last time reality and I had had a decent conversation had been when Angel hit the sand in Iraq.

I had this brief memory of believing that the DB was some sort of warlock harboring a deadly potion in his pocket, and that the King of the Black Forest had charged myself and Sir Scary German Guy to go forth and stop him before he poisoned the kingdom. With swords in hand, we (Scary German Guy and myself) had tracked the Warlock across the kingdom and into the forbidden frozen depths of the NeverWinter Wasteland.

Sidenote: Scary German Guy (a.k.a SGG), apparently, was this German solider I had been paired with as part of a special assignment. It happened a lot. Don’t look at me that way. If you believe inter-governmental cooperation and/or conspiracies happened only in James Bond films or Tom Clancy novels, you really need to stop reading this journal. Let’s just say there was a reason I called him Scary German Guy, and no, I am not getting into those reasons right now.

Apparently Scary German Guy and I had succeeded in stopping the evil Warlock from poisoning the Kingdom, and SGG had grabbed the potion and hauled ass. Unfortunately that left me standing there pretty much with my non-existent dick in my hands. I had no idea where I was, or who I was, or why I’d just killed this guy with a pipe. Questions fired rapidly in the dull sludge I called my brain matter at the time. Where was my gun? Where was my back-up? Where was the check-point? What was the codeword?

Like in a bad B-movie plot, I simply dropped the pipe and took off running. I think I made it about four city blocks before Charisma dropped me like bad habit. Looking back now, I knew it was a sleep spell spun rather rapidly around my mind. At the time, I thought…. Well, I have no idea what I thought, but it wasn’t pleasant. The blackness of unconsciousness was a welcomed friend at that point.

~*~

Later, I learned that Charisma had been the man on the path. You know, the one I could always feel watching me, but never could see clearly? Yeah, that was him. He’d pegged me for a newbie running down that merry little gauntlet towards Awakening. Instead of putting me out of my misery, he’d followed and guided me as much as possible. It must have been like herding cats, I swear. If I had no idea what the freak was going on—and I was the one in the driver’s seat of that little hell-ride—how in the world could he have known?

It’s a question he never fully answered.

Regardless, he’d known me for what I was. He’d also seen a potential for a good Arrow in me, and so had stuck around as long as he could. He was about to give me up for a lost cause (six months in a mystery play usually indicated that the person was trapped forever between Asleep and Awake) when I’d come out of it. He’d cleaned up my mess and then laid down the law for me.

Next thing I knew, he’d become my mentor and I was working my way towards acceptance in the Adamantine Arrow.

Journal Entry #16

2008-03-07T23:53:44Z

i>Date: November 30, 2007
Location: Orlando, Florida U.S.A.</i>

Subject: Missing time.

Missing time is a bitch. It’s even worse when your Acanthus and Time is one of your major Arcana paths. No matter how much I pour into the spell, I still can’t figure out exactly what happened to me in those six months. The Dreams (yes, the capital “D” is there on purpose) aren’t any help, either, though they started after my six month Mystery Play.

I’ll try to put down the facts as I was able to gather them. One of the perks of living in a technological savvy society is that every action can and will be monitored, especially when you’re owned by the US military. It also didn’t hurt that I’m a scientist, either, and understand that everything leaves a transfer of some kind in its wake, be it passive or otherwise. There’s always a footprint to mark your passing in this world, even if it isn’t left by your actual foot.

It took me a while—not to mention a lot of favors and careful movements on my part—to gather the information about that missing time in my life. Nothing makes someone think “crazy” better than having to ask them what you did when they knew you were a.) awake and b.) stone-cold sober.

So… here go the facts:

Fact 1: I wasn’t AWOL during any part of this Mystery Play.
Yup, it’s true. Apparently, I performed my assigned tasks with a diligence and tenacity that far surpassed my previous record for said diligence and tenacity. Every assignment was carried out to perfection, no questions asked. They said Go. I went. They said Stay. I sat.

Fact 2: No one suspected anything was wrong with me.
Well, besides the fact that they all knew I’d watched my brother eat led. Most attributed my utter lack of emotion and near mindless fanaticism to my duties as a side effect of what I’d seen. No one likes to see their loved ones hurt. No one likes to know that the guy they were supposed to kill is the one that hurt said loved ones. Situations like that always leave you in “what if” scenarios that scar you more than the actual event, itself. “If I had been an hour faster, or the team an hour slower, then maybe possibly could be…”

Strangely enough, none of those thoughts passed through my mind during those six months.

Fact 3: I dreamed of thorns.
No matter where I was, there was always this hedge of thorns in the distance, just out of the corner of my eye. It wasn’t like I was inside them, or they were blocking me in. It was just that they were there, a constant presence that filled me with foreboding. I’ve been in some seriously fucking deadly spaces in my time on this dirtball planet, but nothing made me want to run from it more than those thorns. I just knew that if I touched them, or if they touched me, I was gone.

Notice I said “gone” and not “dead.” Not to be clichéd or anything, but I firmly believe there are much worse things than death. Those thorns were like a visiual representation of that belief. And yet, I wanted to go to them. Isn’t that just fucked up? It’s the truth, though. I wanted to go near those twisting thorns like a moth wants to go to a flame. You know it’s going to kill you, but you just can’t help yourself.

Fact 4: The Tower.
The closer I got to those thorns, the further the path towards them stretched away. I knew I wasn’t supposed to go to them, but towards the glittering tower off in the other direction. That tower saved my life, in all honesty. It was the one beacon of light, like a lighthouse burning against the fury of a hurricane at midnight. Though the path to the tower appeared to be a tougher climb than the one to the thorns, I chose to walk towards it.

Thank goodness for small miracles.

Fact 5: Trippin’ had nothing on the journey to that Tower
I felt like I was in an episode of that old TV show “Sliders.” It was like every step on that path put me in a different reality. One step left me in the reality I had known all my life, and I was fighting side by side with the Scary German Guy (more on him later). One step later and I was swinging a sword with the freaking Knights of the Round Table. The next step had me racing across the battlefields of the American Civil War, and then the next had me guest staring in a remake of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

The only commonalities in that whole acid flashback of an Awakening was: a.) each step brought me closer to the Tower, and b.) there was this guy I could always see watching me from the corner of my eye.

Further details on this are classified, Cloud. I learned a lot about myself in those six months that I really don’t care to understand at this moment. Hell, I don’t think I ever want to come to terms with a lot of it. You got the facts out of me, though, and I think that was the point of this journal, true?

Journal Entry #15

2008-03-07T23:53:08Z

Date: November 29, 2007
Location: Orlando, Florida U.S.A.

Subject: Hell

So like I said… Iraq was where things got all jacked up for me. The big “A” happened, and let me tell you, it took it’s sweet freaking time, too.

December 24, 2004 to be precise. Christmas Eve. Yeah, this explains why I’m normally not around during that time. It just creeps the hell out of me to think too much about it, or to be around people who are dancing and singing on this “festive” occasion. Besides, it’s so annoying to talk to other mages and tell them the date of my Awakening. They’re always like “Ohhhhh so your Obrimos, then, aren’t you?”

Man, if I had a fucking penny for each time I’ve heard that…

No, dipshits. I’m not a walker of the Path of the Mighty. I did my hopscotch down the Path of the Thistle. That’s right. Acanthus all the way, baby. No matter how many times I say it, I just can’t get most of the Awakened to believe that the date of one’s Awakening isn’t a “sign” of the path they would walk. For supposedly having the most enlightened minds on the planet, some of our kind are incredibly shortsighted. But anyway, let’s end that rant…

Again, like I said, this happened in Iraq. Some of you readers might be confused about the fact that I was Navy, yet I was living in the sandbox like the rest of the Marines. Honestly, I can’t tell you why I was doing that. I’m not being a smartass when I say that that information is classified. Earlier in this journal, I alluded to the fact that I was selected for “Special Projects.” Well, this was one of them.

I was playing the part of the good ol’ military doctor (which was helped along by the fact that I had just graduated the military doctor’s program (yes, they have one). I was also assigned to the same unit as Angel. His job was to go around and… well… patrol and keep the peace. My job was to fix up the unit when necessary… and hunt down a specific target.

Unfortunately, this is when shit went south.

No one really knew who tipped the asshole off that I was there looking for him. Part of me always assumed it was an inside source, but I guess I’ll never know. What I do know is that he was there, waiting for me. And the fucker had researched me, too. Researched me enough to know that Angel was my fucking brother, and that taking him down would rattle my cage to no end.

I saw the tale-tell flash of sunlight off the scope a second after I felt the “barb” in my chest start to throb. There was no time to finish screaming for everyone to get down. Just one second I had opened my mouth to scream “DOWN” and the next thing I knew, the word “down” had turned into “NO!”

I watched Angel go down. I can’t explain what I felt in that moment. It’s like I remember it so clearly, and yet I can’t remember it at all. It’s a frozen second of blurry hell that waits for my weaker moments to sucker-punch my ass when I least expect it. Angel lay there in a sprawl of ruby-colored sand. I swear the fucking sand was GLITTERING! Glittering like someone had spilled crushed ruby-powder all around him.

Fucking Mystery Plays. Most Awakened get to forget theirs. But not me. I get to relive that moment in utter clarity for the rest of my fucking life. How’d that get fair?

But the moral of this story is this: I watched Angel get shot in Iraq, and when I blinked my eyes again, it was six months later and I was in Russia…

Journal Entry #14

2008-03-07T23:52:29Z

Date: November 28, 2007
Location: Orlando, Florida U.S.A.

Subject: Iraq

It was hot. There was sand. It got into everything. But then so did the place. There’s something about it that stuck inside each of our hearts, kind of like a barb that wasn’t entirely unpleasant and yet wasn’t a cause for celebration. Still, if you pulled it out, there would still be a hole there, a spot that couldn’t be filled and yet ached all the more for the absence. So you just leave that barb in place, massaging a hand over it now and again to both sooth and aggravate it at once.

XO Markie (yes, another fictitious name. Deal.) used to say that the barb was necessary. It was the one thing that kept a soldier alive, reminding him or her not to get comfortable because they don’t belong in that place. It made you sleep light and wake early, and gave a “sixth sense” while out on patrol. Whenever that barb started to ache, you hit the sand with weapon out and finger locked down on the trigger.

No one believed him at first. He said no one would… until that first time you came under live fire, or the first time you walked into a city and really saw the people and the culture.

And what Markie never told us was that once you were pricked with “the barb,” two things happened. Number 1: It never went away. You were barbed for life. Number 2: You no longer belonged anywhere. No one from back home could possibly understand what you’ve been through, and yet the people in Iraq weren’t your people, either. You had your Unit. You had your gun. You had you.

That was it. End of list.

I know, I know. It sounds all dramatic and shit, but it’s the truth. When you live it, it’s hardly drama at all. It’s real and it’s in front of you and it’s your whole universe wrapped in extremes of hot and cold and black and tan and blue sky so vibrant and vivid and you’ll never see it again any other place on earth. Petty shit like power bills and the neighbor’s dog stealing your newspaper or who’s wearing what to the neighborhood fucking picnic just no longer exists.

It’s very much like Awakening. Sometimes I think it’s only thing on earth that comes close.

The kicker of it, though, is that kind of freedom from “everyday” worry is like a drug. You crave it. You crave the emptiness and the heat and the football games on plains of sand that seem to go on forever. Laughter is as real as the fear and the tears when someone takes one to the chest. Like I said, you crave it… because once you go home to the power bills and neighborhood picnics, you realize just how much you don’t belong anymore.

Maybe that’s why Mary always had that far-away look in her eyes when I was growing up. Who knows? She never talked about it. Come to think of it, this is the first time I’ve ever “talked” about it, either.

I think I’m done with this subject… for now.

Journal Entry #13

2008-03-07T23:51:54Z

Date: November 27, 2007
Location: Orlando, Florida U.S.A.

Now here’s where everything gets all jacked up. Well, okay, not in the beginning. Bootcamp was …well… bootcamp. Got the shit scared out of me in several drills. Almost went psycho over one of the shelling exercises. Shelling is where they take you to the middle of nowhere, tell you construct a base camp, and then you have to defend that camp for three whole days. Sounds easy, right? Three days is nothing, right?

Yeah. Until the shelling starts.

After three days of no sleep and constant, random shells going off all around you, you tend to forget what is real and what isn’t. You learned to sleep, quite literally, with your eyes open. Let me tell you, I can catch enough sleep standing against a wall with a full M-16 in my arms now. By the time it was over and they told us to strike the camp, I almost freaked out. This was my home, I thought. My home. They couldn’t take my tent. They just couldn’t. I was ready to fight to keep it safe—even from my own XO.

Let’s just say that my whole squad passed with flying colors… and were given three days of recoup time afterwards. We needed it. Nuff said on that.

So, yeah, boot camp took the stars out of our eyes and slapped the “green” right off our asses.

To be honest, I’m really not sure how much more I can say on the topic of my military career and training. There’s so much that I haven’t come to terms with, and there is a metric fuck-ton of crap I can’t even bring myself to talk about, nevertheless write down for every Tom, Dick, and Retard to read one day. Family tradition or no, it’s just not safe.

What I will say is this: I was damn good at firing a gun, and the things I could do to a security perimeter made all my XO’s wipe away tears of pride. I got picked up after my first year of active duty and thrown into a “special program.” My job was to work with other operatives of other countries in joint missions necessary for the good of the United Nations. Publicly, I was selected due to my multi-lingual past. Figures that my time with Sarah and Jones would have given me one good skill, and that skill was instantly selected as an excuse for … stuff. (No, I’m not saying anymore about that.)

Instead, I’ll focus on the people and my reactions to it. This is supposed to be about me, anyway. It’s not a manual on exposing government secrets. Next subject: Iraq.

Journal Entry #12

2008-03-07T23:51:18Z

Date: November 26, 2007
Location: Orlando, Florida U.S.A.

I graduated high school with honors in the summer of 1999. Graduation was a very big deal for the Clark family, and not for the reasons many would think. Oh, graduation meant the usual stuff: Yay, no more school. Yay, being certified as a productive member of society. Yay, running from college recruiters. Yay, Momma would now officially stay off your ass about homework and getting enough sleep for school.

It also meant that we could enlist. Yup, even me.

None of us had to think about it, honestly. The whole tribe caravanned to the recruiter’s office, and as a whole we listened to each and every spiel about this branch of service or the other. Most of my brothers and sisters were Marine material. Tall, strong, healthy, determined, gun-hugging, flag-kissing Americans. They had their hearts set on careers as officers or doing their eight years and going into law enforcement in the States.

Me? I had to be the odd-ball. I wanted Navy.

With my background in science and chemistry and mathematics, they did everything in their power to shove me headfirst into Nuke school. It was a pretty sweet deal. I’d do my boot camp, then go active duty until the semester began at the college of my choice. Uncle Sam’d pay four of my five years of school, then they’d put me into the Navy Nuke School. Then it was five years active duty with an officer commission, plus another three years inactive duty.

Like I said, not a bad deal. But it wasn’t for me. I wanted to be a doctor.

You see, I had this stupid dream ever since they second night of my abduction by Jones. I saw myself coming home to Grandma Piper and Grandma Jones, all grown up with a lab coat on and a stethoscope around my neck. I’d be driving a beamer, and everyone in the old neighborhood would gawk as I drove by. And when I pulled up in front of Grandma Piper’s old house, she’d greet me with tears in her eyes and tell me how proud she was of me.

I’d buy them both rich new homes with maids of their very own, and we’d eat lavish dinners together each night when I got home from work.

At eighteen years old, the dream hadn’t changed all that much. I still wanted to see Grandma Piper and Grandma Jones again, only this time I’d have Momma and my family with me. I’m not ashamed to admit that, as I was walking across the stage to get my diploma, part of me searched the audience like crazy in hopes of seeing their faces. Don’t get me wrong, I love my family with all my heart… but I also loved Grandma Piper and Grandma Jones, too.

I was determined to do right by them both. Determined to redeem Sarah and Jones by becoming what they never had been.

The American Navy could give me that chance.

PS: I never did find out what happened to Jones’s home in Montana, or if he really had one to begin with. Part of me believes that he did, and that it reverted to Grandma and Grandpa Jones. I often wonder if they are holding it for me, or if Sarah is living there now. But it’s only a passing wonder. That place wouldn’t be my home, and Jones was never my father. Still, the fact that I never learned about the Montana property is a fact worth mentioning, I guess.

Journal Entry #11

2008-03-07T23:50:28Z

Date: November 25, 2007
Location: Orlando, Florida U.S.A.

Okay, I know I said that the rest of my childhood was uneventful and shit. However, I would be remiss if I didn’t throw in a few little key points. For the sick voyeurs in the audience, I’ll get the “important” details out of the way first.

~First Crush: Angel. (Fuck you, it wasn’t like that. I was nine. He was eleven. Shesh.)
~First Kiss: Bobby Johnston.
~First Fuck*: Bobby Johnston (about six years after my first kiss).
* It bears mentioning that after said first fuck beneath the clichéd bleachers one sunny summer afternoon, all seven of my brothers found Bobby and beat him within an inch of his life. Two of them were arrested for it, the charges being dropped after the boys agreed to community service and counseling. It didn’t hurt that we also lived in a small town with a judge that knew EVERYBODY.

(And I was seventeen at the time. So was Bobby. Sick people, the lot of you. I swear…)

So, now that the Tour de Peep Show of Jewel’s First’s is over, we can get back to the real stuff.

The main point to this entry is guns. Yes, guns. Believe it or not, it was one of the reasons the Clarks accepted me as one of their own. We all grew up around guns, being on a farm and all. No one abused the notion of having them. No one touched a gun without real need or Dad’s permission and supervision to go target practicing out in the field. We all knew what guns could do, and we all had way more respect for life (our own and others) to go waving around firearms like some sort of shitty afterschool special.

None of us felt the need to “go gangsta” on each other, or anyone else for that matter.

Again, that being said, it bears mentioning that we learned how to care for guns right along side learning how to spell. It was a fact of life. Mary was a police officer, and Dad had been a huge collector before his passing. One day, while Mary was cleaning her gun before turning in for the night (it wasn’t uncommon for her to spend the night after a big family dinner or something), she rose to help Momma with something in the kitchen.

Considering how many times the members of the kumpiana would get drunk or decide to go fuck instead of finishing the assembly and cleaning of their firearms, it was ingrained in us kids to pick up the slack. So when Mary got up to help with the pies, instinct took over. She found me sitting on the floor with newspapers spread out to protect the carpet. Cross-legged with a look of concentration on my face, I was carefully and perfectly cleaning and assembling her gun.

Unbeknownst to me, this was apparently a sign from above according to the Clark tribe.

Mary got Tommy, who ran off and got Michael, who told Lily…ect… etc… until the whole of the tribe was watching me go about my business. When I was done, they watched me roll up the used paper carefully and pack up the cleaning kit. Without thinking much about it, I put the kit into the fridge right where it belonged and put the used papers in the trashcan.

It was when I was washing my hands that Angel started laughing.

We all had homemade apple pie and ice cream afterward. Hey, don’t roll your eyes or laugh at it. It was wonderful, and a memory that’s kept me going when it felt like the whole world was against me.

Is this fitting?

2007-12-08T16:18:26Z

Journal Entry #10

2007-12-06T01:43:10Z

Date: November 23, 2007
Location: Orlando, Florida

The rest of my childhood isn’t full of eventful crap like my previous entries had been. I won’t bore you with mundane crap every person goes through in life. Let’s just say that I eventually told Momma the name Grandma Piper had given me. After a year’s worth of searching for my school records and junk, they eventually gave up. I was a kid after all. It wasn’t like I could memorize the street plan of Tampa to tell them where “Grandma” lived.

Enough time passed and eventually the court decided to grant Momma’s petition. I legally became “Sophie Clark” of Tennessee, complete with a certificate of birth and all sorts of official documents. Child placement tests put me a year behind where I was in Tampa. Between the months with Jones and the months recovering from the months with Jones, a year had passed. Which meant I was right where I was supposed to be for my age.

My official birthday was the date of my official adoption. That was my choice.

So I grew up as a member of the Clark tribe, granted the one dark child in the midst of the light haired/light eyed kids of my family. It didn’t matter to them, and eventually it stopped mattering to me. I had my comania now. Angel became my best friend… well, as much as a brother could be a best friend to a sister. We simply grew up picking on each other and saving each other’s asses at school when no one was looking. It worked for us.

You see, all the Clark kids were born in sets of twins. With the exception of Angel. So us two “exceptions to the rule” bonded on a deeper level than we bonded with the rest of our siblings. Not that we didn’t love them, or they didn’t love us. It was simply a… thing. I dunno. I couldn’t explain it then, and I can’t explain it now.

Let’s just call it yet another funny fact of the universe.

Journal Entry #9

2007-12-06T01:42:30Z

Date: November 22, 2007
Location: Orlando, Florida

Later on in my life, I learned Mary felt extremely responsible for what happened to my father. Even though she was cleared of any wrongdoing in the death of Jones, she still felt a responsibility for and to me. She knew better than to believe that if she hadn’t busted me, I’d have lived happily ever after with a loving and adoring father. Still, she was an imperfect human like the rest of us, and guilt played through her dreams in “what if” scenarios until she came to the most important decision of my life:

She was going to see to it that I survived. Four months into my incarceration in the Nashville Home for Children, I was sprung and brought to my new family.

We’ll call them the Clarks. Cuz, (you should know by now, Cloud) I ain’t giving away names like this.

Mary Clark was part of the massive clan of Clarks that had proudly called Tennessee home for generations. Papa Clark had died some years ago, but Momma Clark was still alive and kicking and raising a whole passel of kids. And by passel, I meant, like a baker’s dozen. Thirteen in all, including me.

My first impression of the farm was that of awe and sheer terror. Never before had I seen so many people working together and enjoying each other’s company without copious amounts of alcohol being imbibed first. Boys and girls from mid-twenties down to at least age 5 ran around the place like an anthill that had been stepped on. Shrieks of laughter or tears or any combination thereof filled the air.

I thought I was going to black out again. Mary seemed to think so, too, and took me quickly up to what would become my first room. She showed me where the bathroom was, and put my meager thread-bare clothing in the old dresser. Then she left me alone to get myself together, telling me dinner was going to be served downstairs in an hour or so.

The furniture was old and worn, but the mattress was good and the quilt on the bed handmade. It smelled of sunshine and soap and laughter. I curled up on that quilt and cried for the first time since Jones had kidnapped me. The place reminded me of Grandma Piper and the world I’d left behind in Tampa. I wanted her strong, tan hands to hold me and tell me it was okay. I wanted her to speak to me in romani and pick up where she left off teaching me Spanish.

I wanted. And I couldn’t have. And so I cried myself to sleep.

~*~

A knock on the door woke me. I opened eyes sticky from dried tears to peer at boy a couple of years older than me. We’ll call him Angel, because that was what he seemed like to me. He didn’t try to steal anything from the room like the boys in the compania had done. He didn’t try to pull my hair or hit me like the boys in Grandma Piper’s neighborhood would do to a “smelly girl.” He just stood there with eyes that were neither too compassionate nor too judging.

“Hi” he said softly. “I’m Angel. Momma said it’s time for dinner. C’mon, I’ll show you the way.”

My intention had been to curl up on the bed and lay there until I died. Yet I found myself nodding to him, rubbing the back of my hand over my nose and sniffling. He showed me first to the bathroom, washing his hands like it was no big deal that I was there. I did the same, mimicking him almost exactly and followed him down to dinner.

Spaghetti with meat sauce. Salad. Fresh-baked bread. I’ll remember that first meal for the rest of my life.

I sat next to Angel, tried not to cringe every time someone exclaimed loudly or reached rapidly across the table for salt or more bread or something. It was overwhelming, the buzz of their conversation. And yet there was no yelling, no spilling of food or food fights. We sat at a well-loved table with real chairs. We said grace before eating. They talked and interrupted and started again until their voices became one huge buzz that filled my head.

I screamed, I think. I remember looking up, not realizing that I was in the corner of the dining room with my hands pressed to my head and my chair overturned on the floor. They were all staring at me, frozen with looks of shock and surprise on their faces. I wanted to apologize. I wanted to scream again. I didn’t know what to do, didn’t know how to be like them or what to say. I was shaking and whimpering while in my head I was screaming two words over and over again.

I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.

It only took a minute for all that to happen, and yet it felt like forever. Momma Clark rose slowly to her feet and told Angel and Mary to clean up the mess. Then she simply walked over to me and took my hand in hers. I was crying. I couldn’t stop. I wanted to talk to her and yet I couldn’t.

She was gadja. But she was nice to me, and her hands were soft and rough at the same time. Like Grandma Piper’s and Grandma Jones’. Momma Clark smelled like them, too. Like starch and dishwashing soap and happiness.

I spent that night curled up on the sofa with Momma Clark, crying like my little heart had broken. “Ssshhh Judy. It’s okay. It’s going to be okay now,” my mother soothed me. “Nobody is forcing you to stay, darling. And nobody is going to hurt you here. It’s just you and me here. Go ahead and cry, dear. Let it out. It’s just you and me.”

Yeah, that’s right. I called her mother. Momma Clark became the most wonderful influence in my life. If you ask me what my name is, I won’t tell you the name Sarah gave me, or the name Grandma Piper called me. I’ll tell you its Clark. Because these people taught me what true family was, and I love them forever for it.

Journal Entry #8

2007-12-06T01:41:35Z

Date: November 21, 2007
Location: Orlando, FL

It’s also a funny fact of the universe that life can hand you a great big steaming pile of shit, yet hide the most rare and beautiful of gems in the middle of it. Some people call that irony. I think it’s something more profound than ironic, and yet not enough to be call substantially possible. It just is, a bit of fate that happened to twist into an unforeseen direction.

Fuck, I sound like a philosopher now, or some kind of bizarre Hallmark card writer. Guess I’m just nervous about this whole idea. Never liked talking about myself to anyone that wasn’t included in my circle. Liked even less talking about the bits of my past I ran half way around the world and back again to forget. But, much like the diamond in the pile of shit, the reality that I can’t run from myself is just another funny fact of the universe. Doesn’t mean I don’t try, though.

So anyway, the tale continues.

I was eight years old. I had just seen my father eat a plate-glass window and he wasn’t looking like dessert was anywhere in his future—ever. I was an orphan now, in a strange town and in a strange place that I liked less than Tampa.

The first thing I remember was the scent of alcohol and disinfectant. You know, that nose-drying reek that means nothing can survive in the environment. I was in the hospital, and Detective Mary was hovering near my bed talking to a social worker. They weren’t all that surprised that I wouldn’t talk to them, or that there were no records about me—anywhere. At first, given my coloring (dark brown hair, dark slightly tilted eyes, dusky skin), they thought I was an illegal immigrant.

That worked for me. I wasn’t going to talk to the stupid gadja. They could get all their answers from my father’s dead body. Surely they knew all about his drug habits by then, and based on my level of malnutrition, they probably thought I had a habit of my own. Plus, I’d just gotten busted lifting a wallet from a cop. Like anything I was going to say would help me.

Silence worked. I liked silence. And no matter what they said or did, I wouldn’t make a sound.

Half the doctors called it shock. The other half was certain the “dirty little alien” was faking it. Only Detective Mary seemed to believe I was scared. I didn’t want to admit it out loud, but I really was. I’d thought about making a break for it, but where would I go? What would I eat? I was too young to use stolen credit cards, and too young to rip cash from an ATM.

They named me and threw me into a temp orphanage while they attempted to find out anything they could about me. The name they gave me is another secret of mine. For now let’s say they called me Judith Nashville. So lil Judy Nash spent a couple of uneventful months in a home for abandoned kids. In utter silence. Alone.

Sounds like the plot to a Hemmingway novel, doesn’t it? Might have ended that way, too, save for Detective Mary and her super need to protect…

Journal Entry #7

2007-12-04T00:04:13Z

Date: November 21, 2007
Location: Orlando, Florida

What could I say about Tennessee? A lot, I assure you, and most of it is wonderful. But that first six months there was surreal. The lead about Sarah ended up being false. The kumpiana didn’t want anything to do with Jones or Sarah ever again, and that included me by default. They set Jones up, and when he got to Tennessee (the city of which I am not willing to state for reasons that will become apparent later), they rolled him hard.

They took every cent he had—including the stuff he’d hidden well, or so he thought—and stuck him with enough pure smack to keep him out of it for a good long while. What did I do? Honestly, what the fuck could I do? I was eight. I was filthy and hungry, and plunged back into a world where every stranger was an enemy, regardless of the uniform they wore. All I could do was drag Jones back into his motel room and wait. I didn’t call Grandpa Piper like I should have, because the kumpiana had done this, and I was operating under the old rules again. Rule Number One being at the forefront.

Jones looked like he had French-kissed a barbed-wire dolly when he came around, and then he sobbed like a child. He was hooked again, feeling that withdraw that had taken him a year to kick. He couldn’t go to the police with that amount of shit still in his blood stream. He couldn’t go to the hospital for the same reason. We didn’t even have the cash to make it to his house in Montana.

You get three guesses on what we did, and the first two don’t count.

Oddly enough, this was the turning point in my life, the one thing I can actually thank Jones for doing. We’d been in Tennessee for about three months when I lifted the wallet of an undercover cop. I got caught, of course, and Detective Mary (yes, again, another false name) was determined to bust my ass. Jones, hearing my cry of warning, kicked the bike to life and roared towards us. It was his intention to grab me back from the cop much like he’d snatched me from my friends in Tampa.

He was high as a kite. Mary was strong and determined.

Jones missed the backpack and grabbed my arm. Mary held onto my other arm.

Jones lost control of the bike, and over-compensated.

I watched him and his bike sail through the plate glass window of the shop behind us. Glass and blood sprayed into the bright summer sunshine like some mockery of candy coming from a piñata. Mary turned me away, buried my face against her side. She whispered “my god.” Other people screamed “he’s dead.” It was enough for me. Whether it was relief that this whole ordeal was finally over, or true grief that Jones was dead, I’ll never truly know.

I simply blacked out.

Journal Entry #6

2007-12-04T00:03:41Z

Date: November 20, 2007
Location: Orlando, Florida

”Don’t tell a Gypsy she has no home
For the land is wide wherever I roam
To a single place I need not return
For a Gypsy’s heart is where the heart will burn”

I’m pretty sure I screwed up that quote, but the exactness of it isn’t really necessary. It’s the message behind it that matters. Or so Jones said when he showed up to screw up my life once again.

Jones roared into my life again quite literally like a bat out of hell. I was walking home from school with my two best friends (a girl I’ll now call Candy and another girl I’ll call Mandy) when he drove his bike up onto the sidewalk along side us. One giant gloved hand grabbed me by the loop on the top of my She-Ra backpack and the next thing I new Candy and Mandy were screaming hysterically and Jones and I were riding off into nowhere.

What can I say? Old training had kicked in, as Jones knew it would. I was a child of the kumpiana. When grabbed in such a way, it was ingrained in us as kids to simply go docile to aid in the fast getaway. It’s what I did before I realized what was going on. It took less than a minute, and I let the fucker do it. I went all docile and shit and let him seat me in front of him. I knew to lean back and hug his arm when it went around my waist (better to hide me and my face, or so the training went).

We were already out of sight before I realized what was going on and started screaming. Jones pulled into a sleazy motel somewhere and hauled me into a room he had already rented. He let me sit in the corner and cry until my eight-year-old heart had it’s fill. Then he told me that everything was going to be okay now that we were a family again. We were going to look for Sarah and maybe start our own kumpiana .

He told me he loved me, and couldn’t bear being without me and Sarah anymore. He was clean now, he assured me. He was clean and wouldn’t touch the smack again. I guess he meant well, honestly. But you know what they say about best intentions. The road to hell is paved with ‘em.

Nothing I could say would change his mind. He was bound and determined to “do right” by us. He even had a house in Montana on a couple of acres that he knew Sarah would love. And he even had a lead on finding her again. The kumpiana had spotted her in Tennessee about a week ago. So that is where we were going.

Tampa was never my home, he said to Grandma Piper over the phone that night when we were somewhere in north Georgia. I was a gypsy kid, and gypsies aren’t meant to be tied to a tiny house in a swampy suburb in Florida. He knew what was best for his daughter. Grandma Piper would see in the end, he assured me. And then he sang that song I quoted above, and I lapsed into a silence I wouldn’t kick for a whole year later.

Journal Entry #5

2007-12-04T00:01:54Z

Date: November 19, 2007
Location: Orlando, Florida

We gypsy-types don’t trust easily. Oh, some might say that’s a load of bull considering the many illegal activities we, as a culture and as a people, allegedly involve ourselves in. Yet even that kind of trust isn’t as easy as middle-America would have you believe. It’s truly more a business arrangement than anything else. The verbal contract between dealer and buyer, or fence and fencer, is a matter of professional pride. Much like corporations, they trade on the strength of their “good name.” You could trust your fence to make good with the cash. You could trust your dealer to make good on the dope… so long as you held up your end of the bargain. The collateral in that contract is the promise made and kept.

That being said, on a social level—on a level that was simply one person interacting with one other person—we pretty much suck in the trust department.

I never spoke to anyone unless asked a question, and for the first few months of my time with Grandma Piper, everything I spoke (except with Grandma Piper or when answering a question about what I was learning in school) was a lie. I couldn’t help it. I simply didn’t know any sort of moral standards save those of my former kumpiana . And the number one rule was: Protect the kumpiana at All Costs. If that meant lying through your teeth, then so be it. Hell, some of us got mad props for fooling the Gadje idiots the best.

(On a sidenote, I tried that with Grandma Piper once. That was all it took for me to never do it again. Let me tell you, having to go outside and choose your own switch from the tree out back has a way of sticking with you. To this day, if I so much as hear the crack of a whip, my ass and the back of my legs tingle and my heart skips a beat.)

Let’s say I got into a lot of trouble and a lot of fights in school. For someone who had straight A’s in everything she applied herself to, I had the disciplinary record of a future-dropout. It took me about a year, but in 1985 I seemed to settle down. I didn’t really trust anyone, and I was always looking over my shoulder for members of the kumpiana to sweep down and pick me up with out a word. I honestly missed Sarah in that first year. She was the only mother-figure I knew until Grandma Piper and Grandma Jones. But even that slowly faded.

I grew to like my new life in Tampa, Florida. I made friends—eventually—and found an odd feeling in my chest for Grandma Piper and Grandma and Grandpa Jones. I even got to skip a grade because of my intelligence level (gawd, if my brothers get to read this, Cloud, I’ll get no end of shit for that one. And then I’ll revisit that shit on you, pal!). We celebrated my birthday on January 1st, since no one really knew the day I was born.

I took it all in stride, and began to develop a deep attachment to Grandma Piper’s home. It was the only place I’d ever lived that always stayed in one location…

Journal Entry #4

2007-12-04T00:00:34Z

Date: November 18, 2007
Location: Orlando, Florida

Yes, Grandma had a proper name. No, Cloud, I’m not going to write it here. Maybe one day I’ll tell it to you. But for now, be happy that I’m putting this to paper. For the purpose of this tale, the name “Grandma Piper” is sufficient. Grandma Piper lived in Tampa, Florida, a name that for a while I associated with the word “Hell.” It was hot. People were rude. People asked too many questions. And I was picked on for being “odd.”

Sarah cried on her mom’s shoulder about all her woes and how sorry she was for doing such bad things. Grandma Piper, bless her heart, wasn’t falling for any of it. She let her daughter and her grand daughter live in the house, but it would be under her rules. Sarah had to clean up and get a real job. I had to get into school. It was either this, or, as she put it, we knew where the door was.

Sarah tried, I think. She honestly tried. But the monkey on her back was stronger than her will, and one morning I received what I began to consider the “family trend” of abandonment. Just one morning I woke up and Sarah and all her things were gone. She’d left the clichéd note to Grandma Piper, a note she never did let me read. It was the last time I would ever see or hear from Sarah. She simply vanished from my life entirely.

The letter must have contained Jones’ name, because six months later I met Grandma and Grandpa Jones and realized how entirely screwed up my heritage really was.

Grandma Piper was as full-blooded Rom as one could get these days. Grandma Jones was Japanese. Grandpa Jones was American and Grandpa Piper was Cuban-American. Don’t ask me what kind of mutt that makes me. I have no idea, and it honestly and truly doesn’t matter to me. The point, I suppose, is that my Grandparents were good people, and they seemed as if they cared for me a lot. For the first time I could remember, I wore new clothing that was bought, not stolen or stolen-and-then-bartered. They called me “Sophie.”

I went to school—another first for me—but I’ll be damned if I knew how Grandma Piper managed that. Granted, it was a private school and she seemed to know almost every important person at the school. Without a birth certificate or even birth records for me, she’d had to have some sort of pull. Looking back now, I think she might have been “one of us.” It’s enough that she got me into school and I scholastically I did well for the one poor kid in the whole rich bunch. Socially… well, you don’t need to be freaking Sigmund Freud to realize I had more social issues and anxiety than a cat has hair.

Journal Entry #3

2007-12-03T23:59:30Z

Date: November 17, 2007
Location: Orlando, Florida

I’ll spare you the minor details from age two to age four. There wasn’t much there. The gist of those years is thus: I traveled around with Sarah and the kumpiana, watching Sarah bring man after man into the camper during that time. She slept with anyone that would give her money or the drugs she wanted. But it was never a permanent thing. When she was high, she’d be all loving and reminiscent of the times she spent with Jones. When she wasn’t, she curse him for leaving her with a child she didn’t want. It was evident that she really loved Jones, but loved herself and her drugs more. I was pretty much ignored.

Life went on in this fashion until I was about five and the kumpiana had had enough of Sarah’s habits. She was getting sloppy, showing up in places where the police were looking for her, getting speeding tickets that would lead the police to find her. She was a parole violator and had been since 1982. They finally did to her what she had done to Jones. One day she came back to the camp after scoring more drugs and found just her bags… and me.

We were in Ohio, I think. But anyway…

Sarah did what Sarah did best. She found an abandoned building and an old Aluminum trash can. She poked holes in the trashcan and stuffed me in it, with a large brick over the lid to keep me from getting out. It was her improvised version of a “Play pin.” Then she went out and whored or whatever to get what money she could. To this day I cannot stand to be locked up or confined. I prefer sleeping on a beach to even the inside of a house at this point. But I guess we all have issues…

Eventually she made enough money to afford two bus tickets to Tampa, Florida. It was then that I learned I had a grandma…

Journal Entry #2

2007-12-03T23:58:47Z

Date: November 16, 2007
Location: Orlando, Florida

You would think three to four years in lockup would have cooled the romance between Sarah and Jones. No such luck. Like a bad penny or a Highlander Sequel, they turned up together after their release. Sarah hadn’t even left the steps of the jailhouse before she was on the back of Jones’ bike and riding off into the sunset.

I really don’t know much about the year I was born. (From here on out, Cloud, you’re going to have to deal with the second-hand account I got out of Grandma Piper. Their first night together after prison was the night I was conceived. Yay for the crackbaby! If you thought their time in prison would have cleaned them up, then you really know nothing about addictions or the times of the early eighties. Coke was making it’s bid for the top spot on the Drug Of Choice charts, and Sarah was one of it’s biggest supporters. Her habit reminded Jones how much he missed the Heroine fairy, and they were right back where they started, plus one baby girl.

No birth certificate was registered for me. Hell, I don’t think I was born anywhere near a hospital for that fact. Due to their drug addictions, Sarah and Jones had to hide out. And what better place than the gypsy kumpiana that was Sarah’s people.

I got a name there in the kumpiana , a birth name that means nothing to me now. I kinda figure whomever is reading this will have figured that out by now. I don’t call Sarah and Jones my “mommy” or “daddy” because they aren’t. Donating genetic material to create me doesn’t give them the right to terms of love and endearment. Those are saved for others. But that’s later on in this chronicle.

So the first two years of my life was spent with a group of traveling gypsies. My education began the moment I could crawl. I learned early what happens when you crawl into someone else’s camper, or what gun oil tasted like when someone had passed out drunk still wearing their sidearm. By the time I was two, I knew how to cry on command and how to play the game “pretend to the rich man and woman that mommy and daddy are dead and you need help in an shadowy corner.”

The only thing of significance that I partially remember was Jones getting a call from his father. Something had happened to someone, and he was needed at home. They’d forgive everything if he just came home. Sarah was against the whole idea, knowing this was a trap or some kind of “Family intervention” to trap and clean him up. For all his faults, Jones did have a soft spot in the calcified drug-abused muscle in his chest he called a heart. On that soft spot was the name “Family.”

Before he left, he had a tattoo put on my left shoulder blade. It was the symbol of his family, I’d learn later. Some part of him knew that Sarah was going to cut and run after he left. He wanted his baby girl to have some tie to him.

Sure as shit, the day his dust from his bike settled on the highway, Sarah and her people packed up and left. When he returned six months later, the kumpiana was nowhere to be seen.

Journal Entry #1

2007-12-03T23:57:49Z

Date: November 15, 2007
Location: Orlando, Florida

History.

I always thought it was a funny word, and not for the usual joke of it being “his story” or anything like that. To me, it was funny because of the amount of stock people put in it. For a race of beings renowned for being imperfect, the idea of basing everything you are on the writings of someone who “most likely” got it “right” struck me as freaking hysterical. How could you claim absolute truth in a book penned by a man who—like every other man—added his own colorful take on events?

Then I met Cloud. And somehow he convinced me to pick up this spiral notebook and start to writing the story of my life. He said it was a tradition his—in our family. He said that so many have been lost, with no way to remember them, that it should be put down for the sake of honor. I still don’t agree with it, honestly. I mean, why would anyone want to read the events of my life? Why not enjoy the memory of times spent together? And what would the events of my life mean to someone who hadn’t lived them with me?

And yet, instead of calling “Bullshit” on this whole idea, I’m sitting on my ass out in Maitland Park with pen and paper. I can’t believe I’m writing this. If my brothers caught me doing this… shit, I’d never hear the end of it.

And, of course, I’m rambling. Never been comfortable talking about myself to someone who wasn’t family. Never been comfortable talking to myself about myself for that matter.

Okay. Enough stalling, freak. Get on with the tale so Cloud will get off your ass about it.

We figure I was born sometime in 1982, the product of a druggy lowlife named… Jones. (I’m not stupid enough to plug in the real names of the people, being what I am an all. Cloud assures me that this notebook will never see the light of day in the wrong hands, but Cloud is also a imperfect person. Anyone who reads this with the right smarts will know the real names anyway.) So… Jones got together with this woman named “Sarah.”

It was love at first crime… or sight, I guess. Sarah was a gypsy girl with a taste for disco and coke. Jones was a biker trying to relive the glory days of the sixties, complete with an addiction to smack. Saran and Jones got caught applying two separate cons on the same mark. Individually, they would have soaked the poor bastard for everything he had. Together, well… the holes in one con just expounded on the holes in the other until both stories were blown out of the water.

Sarah and Jones ended up getting arrested in the glorious spring of 1978.

listennomore @ 2007-11-13T22:55:00

2007-11-14T04:02:35Z

Date: September 2007
Location: Mississippi, USA
Time: 14:23

It all started with a phone call.

I was supposed to meet my friend Darkness for lunch, if you could really call us friends. Truth was, Darkness and I weren’t really friends in the typical sense of the word. We were more comrades in arms, two former government assassins that seemed to keep running into each other. It was a mutually beneficial relationship, to be honest. We had worked well together since I was nineteen and he was …older. But that didn’t mean I trusted him. While a panther would be a beneficial pet for home security, that didn’t mean it wouldn’t take your head off one day if it wanted to.

I felt that way about Darkness.

I felt him enter the restaurant almost before the door opened. It was always that way, a feeling of tenseness in my shoulder blades, like I had walked into a place that I wasn’t certain I would leave on my own two feet. But there he was, looking as innocent and nondescript as always. Long black duster on his five foot seven wiry frame, classic goatee framing an average face with soft shoulder length brown hair. He flashed me an easy smile, holding his arms up as if to give me a hug from far away, and even that seemed casual and relaxed. It was his eyes that gave him away, though. Those eyes belonged in that before-mentioned pather’s face, feral and filled with the knowledge that he could kill me and not think twice about it.

I eased off the trigger when he raised his arms in that friendly lil hug gesture, slipping the gun comfortably into my lap. It was a code between us, a signal that he didn’t have his hand on his weapons, that he hadn’t come here to kill me. He was here to talk. I was here to listen. That was about as far as our peace treaty went for the day. What happened after he stopped talking was something else entirely.

“Hello Jewel,” he said, voice full of British cheer.

“Darkness,” I acknowledged him with a slight nod of the head. “Hope you don’t mind. I ordered your drink already.”

“Excellent,” He replied, sliding into the booth across from me. “You do know how much I adore the sweet tea you have in the American south. Such a change from everything in the old country.”

I nodded. “Yeah, I know. So… why are you here?”

He had the grace to actually look offended. “On to business already? Can’t two old friends have a drink together and enjoy each other’s presence?”

My expression didn’t change. If anything, it got colder. “No, we can’t. And we’re not friends.”

Some of the charm faded from his face, replaced with something that pricked the hairs on the back of my neck. “Fine,” he said quietly, watching as the waitress placed the tea in front of him. “You know, I didn’t believe them when they said that you had gotten out of the game, Jewel. Do you honestly think you can stay away?”

I took a sip of my own tea, never taking my eyes off of him. He was still the most dangerous man I had ever known, no matter if he was acting like we were best buds. “Who knows? But frankly that is none of your business.”

“Come now, Jewel,” He chuckled. “You’re still not pissed about that last job in Rio? I knew you could handle it alone.”

“Bullshit. You cut your losses and left because you wanted to. It had nothing to do with my welfare,” I signaled the waitress. “But if you are here to talk about my retirement, I’ve said all I’m gonna say on the matter. This meeting’s over.”

His hand flashed out, lightning quick, grabbing my wrist and bringing it back down to the table. My other hand had the gun under the table pointed at him again. I flicked back the hammer, the sound muted to anyone that wasn’t trained to listen for such things.

“You’ve got three seconds,” I said softly, coldly. We both knew what I was taking about. Either his hand left mine, or he was going to be missing his two “best friends.”

“Dammit, Jewel,” he growled softly, apparently ignoring the weapon aimed at him. “This isn’t about your retirement or about any job we pulled in the past. This is about the Tin Soldier.”

That made me pause, made all sarcastic statements leave me in a rush of dread…