Ramblings into nothingness...

It snowed this morning, first in big fat flakes at a slow rate, then picking up into a TV static imposed over the air. When I looked out over the city, right before hopping in my car, I had that little adrenal rush, that excitement that snow always brings on its rare visits to Virginia.

I got my first paperback novel pitch sent off today, and I have no indication whether it will be picked up, until next week at the earliest. It may be relegated into that odd limbo that dozens of other pitches have gone into; the fact that this is a three to four pager makes me hope that it'll be my one big breakthrough...only time will tell.
I needed a sample chapter of anything, in order to sell my editor on giving a comic book journalist a crack at writing a 300+ page book. This started as a vampire story, but turned into something much, much more odd...

John hated waiting.

The street corner of 17^th and Main was an overpriced “French” café with outdoor seating, packed with people by the time dusk had set in. Sitting at a table in the spot determined by Garvin made him uneasy: if it was an abandoned corner down some quiet side street in the city, John could openly be an impatient wreck, but sitting here around a dozen people and an apathetic waitress, he was pressured to look more “normal” and less nerve-wracked. But, not knowing if he was being watched, he was glued to the spot like a ghost to its haunt.

He almost jumped out of his skin as the cell phone Garvin gave him finally came to life, vibrating and buzzing in his left pants pocket, and he stumbled around nervously until his long fingers wrapped around it. His thigh had been twitching for hours – a phantom reaction as he anticipated the call. A skull and crossbones flashed across the tiny monitor on its front, and he knew it was the call he’d been dying to catch.

“I’m here,” John took a deep breath after saying it, as if just answering the phone was enough to knock the wind out of him. Thank God the sweat forming on his brow couldn’t be seen from the other end.

“Good,” the creaky voice on the other end commented after an unbearable patch of dead air.

I swear, Garvin, John thought as he grimaced at the receiver, his eyebrows forming a v-shaped furrow over the bridge of his nose. When your games are finally over, we’ll see how much fun it is for you then.

“I’ve been waiting here like you told me. Now where is she?” John got up from his outside table at the café, first standing and stretching, and then slowly creeping away from other people, trying to not let on that a woman’s life depended on the outcome of this one phone call. Let them worry about their awkward, idle talk and catching their 7:00 movies in an hour: he had bigger things on his mind.

“Oh, she’s just jim-dandy fine,” Garvin quipped, all-too casually. “The question is whether she’ll still be that way by the time you get to her.”

“Dammit! I don’t have time for these—“

“You know the old news building? By the river?”

“You mean the one that’s been abandoned for five years? The one that would make a perfect trap?”

“Why, John, you insult me,” Garvin’s laugh sounded like a dying cough. “Of course, that one. Get here in an hour, alone, and come in the back door. That means no kid sidekicks with guns and knives.

“Not that they’d do you much good against me now, anyway.”

The Ford lurched to a stop in a cobblestone alley two buildings removed from the old York City Times building urban confetti made of litter and broken beer bottles lodged between cracks in the stones. The only light offered was the sparse moonlight from above, barely peeking out from behind thick, dense clouds. This was once the city’s cultural hub, the York City Times was the center of everything; old man Harris’ newsprint pride and joy churned out on huge presses, delivered to doorsteps the city over.

Then, Harris died, and his paper shortly after, left in the hands of an incompetent son who conveniently let a fire consume the entire operation. Not much longer after that, the whole area around it withered and died, too, becoming the husk of a once exciting part of the city. Paperboys and reporters were soon replaced with junkies and drug dealers, and the once-thriving spot hadn’t been the same since.

I could die right here, in this alley, and no one would find me for weeks.

John clenched his hands around the top of his steering wheel, and set his forehead against the cold, hard plastic. It was all so crazy: the alien DNA, the lab, Renee being taken away…whatever it was Garvin had let himself become…Was he even human anymore? Had the culture done something to him that took him beyond being a mere mortal? And, if so, could he even be stopped?

Whatever the case, John was damn glad to feel the reassuring weight of the revolver in his jacket pocket. Sure, he’d only fired it once before, and that was twenty minutes ago in another alley where no one would notice him. But it’s not like Garvin could read his mind and find out he was packing…

John scooped the flashlight off the passenger seat with a trembling right hand and painfully stood up out of the car. He was still smarting from the beating Garvin gave him before, but he couldn’t let him know it.

Or Renee. If she was still—

No, John thought as he crept down the alley with his left hand on the revolver in his coat pocket and the right tensely wrapped around the flashlight, his senses on edge. I can’t even go there right now.

The phone rang, and he jumped.

“I’m waiting…” Garvin said in a voice that sounded even further away than it did an hour ago. “You only have three minutes left.”

“That’s great, because I’m only half a minute away,” John forced the confidence in his voice and shut the phone.

Then, he ran the rest of the way.

The metal door on the back of the News Building had been spray-painted with a sloppy skull and crossbones, white paint still dripping down where it had been sprayed on too heavily, contrasting with the original green color of the metal and the red and brown rust. For a scientist, Garvin had too much of a flair for the dramatic.

John reached out with his left hand and tried the handle.

It opened with a creaky protest, into pitch black. John’s olfactory’s were assaulted with a damp and moldy breeze. It was the smell of abandonment.

His flashlight crept over a cement floor covered with patches of dirt, trash, and soot, illuminating the deadness of the place. Moving the beam up, John saw the shapes of skeletal, burned-out printing presses, their huge drums and conveyor belts warped into something useless. What had once been behemoths were now no more than shriveled corpses.

“Garvin!” He called out knowing surprise was irrelevant at this point. “Where is she!?”

In the pressroom, upstairs, he heard Garvin in his head, but knew that was impossible.

Easing his flashlight beam further down the floor and up the scarred brick walls, John spotted cement steps through a doorway that had a door hanging limply off a broken hinge. Rotting and yellowed newspapers littered the steps that ascended into darkness. There was a stink he didn’t even care to recognize.

John ducked as he stepped into the doorway, moving the light up the steps that ended in further darkness. Something scurried across, and John shook, the hairs on the back of his thin arms standing on end with a preternatural surge.

It was an alley cat, poking its glowing eyes down towards him, the light reflecting off the pupils demoniacally.

John walked up the steps, sidestepping scraps of newspapers and masonry, cold air blowing against him as he reached the top, in the newsroom. The newsroom was a graveyard of abandoned and burned desks, scrapped computers, and overturned melted chairs. The tall windows on the wall opposite were busted out; soot blackened what glass was left at jagged and sharp angles, as the strong, cold breeze blew in off the river.

A light was on in the Editor’s office at the end of the room, barely noticeable through the dingy glass. John clutched his pistol, keeping it in his coat pocket to maintain what little element of surprise was afforded him.

The damp carpet squished under his feet, floorboards creaking under those, as he narrowly walked around a hole in the floor.

When he was a kid, John’s dad brought him up to tour this place, back when it was alive with the hubbub of reporters and typewriters, and the hum of the downstairs presses gave a seismic feel to the floor above. But that was years before meeting the woman he loved, years before delusional scientists and cell phones and alien genetics.

For a minute, he felt like he was walking through the carcass of an old friend.

John stopped at the door that was open a fraction of an inch, and took a deep breath that just added to the machine-like pounding of his heart. His toes made contact with the bottom of the solid oak door, and he nudged it open.

The first thing John noticed were the sobs catching in Renee’s mouth, a gag kept them from escaping any further. She was tied to a desk chair, her arms behind her, flailing and fighting at John’s appearance.

John got to work on untying her, darting his head back and forth for a glimpse of Garvin. Shaky fingers wrapped around the white handkerchief gag, untying it.

“Get out, John!” Renee gasped out. “You don’t know what he’s—“

“Save it,” John said, keeping his eyes around the half-dark room while she shook loose from her ropes. “When I get you loose, run and don’t look back.”

“But, John, it’s a trap!”

Why not tell him something he doesn’t know? There was Garvin’s voice again.

Yes, John, I’m in your head.

The flashlight exploded with a loud pop as plastic and metal exploded outward, and they were shoved to the floor by the same invisible surge.

The room was bathed in a noxious green glow that pulsated and dimmed every three seconds like something alive. John picked himself up off the floor, grabbing his bleeding hand, and looked for the source.

I’ll spare you all the old clichés, Garvin said, his voice resonating in John’s skull again.

“Renee, get out of here. Now,” John was reminded of how much he loved her as he shoved the keys in her hand. “Parked two alleys down.”

“No way,” she protested as he closed her hand around the keys. “I’m staying here with you. This ends tonight.”

You’re wrong, Garvin said in their thoughts again. It’s just beginning.

Then, John and Renee noticed him. Garvin was the green glow coming from the corner of the office, standing with his hands clasped behind him, against the small of his back. He was wearing his usual black turtleneck and gray slacks, but his head had become something ungodly. The dull green glow emitted from his temples and forehead, and his cranium had expanded to accommodate a mutated brain. Veins pulsed out of his hairline, pushing his jet black hair even further back on his head. Garvin’s eyes glossed over black as if they were one enormous pupil, staring out of a face that was more skeletal and angular than when he was human. His thin, reptilian lips pushed together into an obscene sneer, set over his almost-absent chin.

“What do you want?” John asked, his hand gripping around the handle of his revolver.

“If that’s a stall tactic so you can shoot me with the pistol concealed in your coat, it won’t work,” Garvin smirked. I’m far above explaining myself to anyone.

John pulled his gun and, holding it in both hands, aimed it straight at Garvin’s overdeveloped head. Clutching it tightly, he pulled the trigger one, two, three times…and the shots went around wildly.

Garvin smiled a crooked smile, exposing teeth that had already started to rot and recede into dark green gums.

Your aim’s a little off, John. Why not try again? You still have two bullets left.

John fired once, and the shot struck the wall two feet from the unflinching thing that had once been Garvin the scientist. Defeated, John lowered the pistol.

“Saving the last bullet for yourself?” Garvin croaked out.

“I don’t get this,” John said. “Why would anyone do this to themselves?”

“Evolution,” Renee chimed in, and John noticed how soft her face was in the dimming green light. “He thinks he’s made himself the future of the human race.

“Or some shit like that.”

Garvin laughed, and it sounded like someone dying. Then he lowered his blackened eyes at Renee.

“But why bother with this trap, Garvin?” John asked. “If you’re going to kill me, just get it over with.”

Ta, ta, John. No clichés.

A force suddenly hit John square in the chest, knocking him back into the metal cabinet and making him drop the gun. Renee screamed as he crumpled to the floor and she was thrown against a wall hard enough to make a dent in the drywall. John looked up and, out of nowhere, Garvin’s lean figure was looming over, hands calmly clasped behind him.

Then, John’s back was slammed against another wall and he was sliding upward, his head hitting the rotting ceiling.

I won’t kill you. At least not until I’ve gotten some practice in first.

Gritting his teeth, John tried to stifle a scream as he felt things moving in side of him, pressure on his ribs causing cracking sounds he didn’t want to think about.

I’m still learning, John. There’s so much to learn when you’ve been given a new power like this. Do you know about power?

John screamed in agony.

Of course you don’t, John. Power lets you kidnap your enemy’s girlfriends and draw them into an obvious trap.

Power lets you become something more than human.

“What…are you…gonna do?” John gasped out.

Oh, something wonderfully awful, Garvin’s eyes narrowed as he stated it in John’s head. You won’t be around to see it, but I’ll make sure your girlfriend is.

As a crack split the air, John fell off the wall and onto the floor, crumpled at the feet of Garvin. John looked up with blurry eyes, the room rotating around him, as Garvin winced at the bullet that grazed his left temple, dark green blood oozing from the wound and down his sharp cheekbone. His brow furrowed and Renee went flying out what was left of the office window, dropping the gun.

The last thing John saw when he looked up was Garvin, staring down at him with nothing less than sheer contempt in his glossy eyes. But all he could think about was Renee broken on the sidewalk below, and how he had to survive long enough to kill Garvin.