Diane

Diane,

I’m sorry for contacting you this way. I know I should have talked to you after we had our falling out. I’m sorry I hounded you when we lived together. I did want the best for you, but I think I ended up sounding like a troll. I should have called you when I found out he died. I wanted to, but I was scared of what you would say to me. I didn’t really know what to think when I heard the news myself. We should have gone out for a drink when I got the call from his lawyer saying our father, Clarence Willis, had passed away.

It was a few weeks ago, when I got the call and flew out to the old farm house we grew up in. I wish I hadn’t taken the lawyer’s advice to collect any of his personal affects for “memories”. I didn’t want of them. However, I thought I could get some closure and maybe get a few bucks out of his junk laying around the house.

I was in the attic. It hadn’t seen attention in years, which made me wonder how long the lawyer waited to inform everyone of dad’s passing. Made me think he picked the place clean of anything of value. Everything in the room was hidden away in cardboard boxes or covered in a thick layer of dust. So, I spent the majority of my day splitting open boxes to find old sketchbooks, notebooks, and dozens of glass jars and vials. It was like something out of Frankenstein’s laboratory. He had jars of organs tucked away in different boxes. Others contained small vials filled amber liquid with tendrils of red or black pieces of flesh in them. I shudder to think the contents of these containers were attached something that was once alive.

Half of my day was spent looking through this stuff. I wasn’t sure what to make of it. It felt like looking through a stranger’s life. I had no idea whose life I’d been digging through for the past day but it didn’t look like the neglectful alcoholic we’d grown up with together… Like it was a final “fuck you” from Dad. I still can’t fathom how we didn’t notice any of this. Was this after we left? Or was he drinking away some kind of insane obsession?

It wasn’t until late at night that I made it toward the back of the attic. It was the white powder on the ground forming a circle around the mirror what caught my attention. It was so odd that this was still here after who knows how long. This section of the attic had dozens of books in a language I didn’t understand or recognize. After closer inspection of the books, the covers just felt… strange. Like the book covers were made out of old leathered flesh stitched together. Seeing how old and how strange the books appeared, I thought they might be worth something… same with the mirror. I pulled the sheet off of the mirror to get a better look at the frame and the quality of the glass. The frame was painted a golden colored with runes or something etched into the wood. It barely looked like it was touched at all, but what bothered me was my own reflection staring back. It ebbed like it was made of water, like I could touch it and wet my fingertips. I felt so uneasy looking at myself, but I felt like I was cemented into place. That’s where I saw him, Diane. I saw Dad.

It felt like he was right beside me, but I after a quick glance to the side I still found myself alone. The image of Clarence Willis wasn’t the picture of life. It was a skeletal perversion of him. His smooth skin melted away to sickly ecru bone. His hair stayed the same bristled and thick with grime. There’s a whiskey bottle in his hand, but I doubt he can taste the burn of liquor down his throat. Even without his baby blues resting comfortably in his sockets, I know he could see me. I stare at the reflection of myself beside him. I can see the horror in my face. I can hear his voice calling out my name from a mouth with no tongue. The more I gape into the mirror the more I see myself becoming like him. In the mirror, my skin was fading away like his and I swear I could taste the dust of the attic through the open slits of my cheek.

I don’t remember screaming, but I’m sure I was. He kept repeating my name with a voice that shouldn’t exist through bone alone. His free hand reached out to me in the mirror image. I shoved the mirror back against the wall and ran. I heard a shriek of a man’s voice and the loud clatter of the antique crashing to the floor as I ran to the front door. I peeled out from the house and didn’t look back. The image still haunts me and has since gnawed at the back of my mind.

I’m so sorry, Diane. I’m so sorry. I don’t want you to go there. If the lawyer calls you, hang up. He’s been calling me daily since I left the house, asking why I didn’t take anything or stay in the house. He keeps calling and leaving messages and calling again. He won’t leave me be. Do me a favor. Just one last favor. Change your phone number; shred your mail from this lawyer; move if you have to. There was something very wrong about that house and everything connected to it. There was something wrong with our father and it’s safe to say we probably knew nothing about him. I pray that I’m just crazy and I’m imaging all this nonsense. Imagining it in my head as I dream, I can’t shake the image I saw in the mirror. I don’t want this to be real. I hope it’s not real.

Megan

The Game

That night a few weeks ago seemed so innocent. I was in Blind Spot trying to recover some face after failing at too many jobs. Blind Spot is a great place to rub elbows with the best and worst people of the city. The best come to rub how amazing they are in the faces of the worst…but tonight I was on everyone’s shit list. I completely botched my last job and was the only surviving member to make it back and meekly ask for pay. The rest of my team had been killed while we were breaking into Comtech for some computer chip. Bucky, Calypso and Lockout were all decimated by the security force that caught up with us. I managed to escape, but my dignity and future career went out with a bloody mess.

I’m what this city calls a Stranger. Strangers are essentially hired help for whatever price for whatever job. You need to have some corporate secrets stolen for a hostile takeover? Someone can do it. You need to have your ex-boyfriend snuffed out for being a total sleaze? I’m sure someone would do it for the right price. Most of the Strangers hang out in places like Blind Spot picking up jobs while drinks are served. People will either call us or call people known as Familiars to get their jobs done. Familiars are the head honchos for finding work for Strangers. They’re the ones to find the better jobs by talking to corporations or senators or something. Having a Familiar gives usually gets you higher paying jobs and more security that you’re not getting set up by Feds or something. To hide our true identities and so the fuzz doesn’t pick up on what we’re up to, all Strangers give out bogus names to build a reputation on. To name a few; Raven, Armitage, Mad Maxxine are some of the bigger names that are tossed around frequently and are held in the highest regard in Stranger society.

Everyone knows about Strangers. The majority of the media makes us out to be crazed terrorists that will attack your family and corrupt your children for any kind of money. There are others that idolize us and try taking our jobs in hopes of finding the underground glory that some of us have. They make up stories, hang out at the places we do when we’re finding jobs, end up in prison for theft, or in the hospital (or morgue) after picking the wrong fight a guy with a bigger gun. Posers usually get what’s coming to them from actual Strangers that find out they’re taking our work just to look cool.

It had been an awkward night of mockery and embarrassing fumbles. Some bald headed broad loaded with tattoos and sparkling dermal piercings on her face kept giggling and whispering to her equally body modified friends while they looked in my direction. All I could do was hunch closer to the bar counter like it was trying to absorb me into its onyx marble finish. I would hate this place if I didn’t need it so much. God forbid I become a desk jockey. I welcomed an interruption from the club which came in the form of a vibrating cell phone with an enthusiastic, "Whathefug d'you want?"
My Familiar, Symtum… she’s a social darling and an absolute jewel of a woman for continuously hiring me for work. However, Symtum is a woman not to vex. She’ll rip you apart socially, and then send her grunts to finish off what’s left of your sorry nameless carcass. Personally, I’ve never seen her. But she’s obviously seen me and knows I’m hurting bad financially and also my reputation is somewhere at the bottom of the trash with an empty tequila bottle. She probably realizes I’m a little drunk too. She knows I’m dying to get off my losing streak and willing to do anything to get back the fame and funds. Anything than what she’s about to tell me.
Her voice was like a velvet ginsu knife as it cut through my eardrum and caressed my brain as she spoke smoothly, “Hun, I know times are tough,” She says like she was talking to a close friend and not someone she was, “I know you’re hurting, sweetheart, but I promise things’ll get better for you.”

“Yeahwull, they cant get ennyworse,” I snapped back with the classic comeback as the bartender filled my shot glass to the brim with golden liquid courage.

“See? That’s what I like about you, darling. You’re so positive.” I could feel her words like she was petting the side of my ear with her voice, “I have something for you that I know you can pull off. I know you can and there’s no one else involved but you, lovely.”

No answer from me indicated that I was listening like a good little girl.

“Excellent.” She said,

“Now listen. It’s an easy job and it would take a complete idiot to muck it up. I know you’re an idiot, but you’re my idiot, babydoll. All it takes,” she said, her voice lowering, like her mouth was dripping with raw sex, “is for you to pick up a something for me at the subway station; a little silver attaché case. That’s it, honey. It’s that easy!”

It’s never that easy. It’s never just picking up a case at the subway station. There’s always someone waiting with a bigger gun protecting that little silver case. There’s always something planted on the case for someone to find and kill you later. There is always something.

“Darling,” She said, her silken tongue spun the pet name around my earlobe and into my skull. “You need to go now, sweetie. You’re so close, doll. Go now. I’ll upload the directions to you now. Unless…” She paused, like she was waiting for an objection we both knew wouldn’t be coming up. The directions were uploaded into my cell phone. The subway in question wasn’t far from Blind Spot; maybe five minutes tops if I ran.

“Call me when you get it, babe. Just don’t open it.” The line goes quiet. I wanted to ask why she picked me. I wanted to ask why it was important. I wanted to ask her if I had pissed her off recently. But, what questions would she truthfully answer anyway?

I stuck my tab with the body modders and left Blind Spot with my stomach in knots. I knew something like this was destined to end up going wrong. Strangers that did jobs alone were either notoriously exceptional at what they did or they were dead. Although, I thought as I felt for my gun holstered at my chest, it is only picking up a case. The city was still alive even at two in the morning when I stepped outside. I hoped I would be as well in the next hour or so. The night air was cool and the streetlights gave the cityscape a soft yellow tint. I clutched my coat tightly to myself and started to jog across the street. It wouldn’t be far.

It was ten minutes and I was in the white and red sterile subway station. It was vacant and quiet even as I was heading down the stairs. Usually there was at least one poor wretch begging for my change. My paranoia, partnered with my heartbeat, skyrocketed as the stairs came to the boarding platform. I wasn’t alone anymore, but that didn’t set me at ease.

As I thought, the job of picking up a little silver attaché case ended up being something more complex. There were around two dozen men wearing matching black suits waiting at the subway station with guns in hand. Each of them smiled giddily when I gawked at them with a mixture of dread and stupefied terror etched in my face. When the bullets flew, so did I. I got lucky and dropped two of them with the first round of bullets. The remaining ten ducked started to knock over the benches for cover and started firing bullets rapidly. I would have made John Woo proud if I hadn’t fought so dirty. I ran on walls, blind fired at anything that moved. I shot them in the back. One of those goons nearly had me. He had me pinned down on the floor with a gun to my head, but then I started to cry about having children at home. When his face softened and gun lowered, I turned his face into pulp. It’s not to say that these gentlemen were complete moppets. I could feel bullets in my shoulder and a few lodged in my gut. Only when the three bodies were on the ground dead was when I started to feel the bullets in my body. I was sobbing as I stood in the subway that was painted in various blood types.

I’m spitting up blood. I wish I could say something beautiful about my bodily fluids being vomited out of my mouth and onto the ground in front of me. It’s not. Even when all is said and done, I still hadn’t seen anything of this mysterious silver attaché case. I slipped on my own blood that I just spat up and the ground quickly met up with my face. At this particular point in time, my body was already wracked with pain, so the fall only makes me wail like a banshee to match the oncoming sirens.

But there it was. There was the silver attaché case right under the bench closest to me. I slithered over to the case and ignore whatever the hell Symtum said earlier about not opening it up. I earned this. If it’s money, I thought, I’m buying off the cops that should be showing up here soon. If the case has a gun or something with a minor sharp edge, I’ll go hunt down Symtum and carve out her smug face. I propped my back against an overturned bench that was previously used for cover and I opened the case. I nearly threw up at what I saw.

Inside the case rested a single sheet white paper written in elegant black calligraphy, “Welcome back to the game, Princess.”