12 Days of Xmas

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ANYTHING AT ALL

Raymond Zebronski had been an aimless genius. He was born with a great ability to learn and he had done all the things he was supposed to do, but it had been a half-hearted effort at most.

He had been sleepwalking through his life. Filing patents, inventing things, buying a house and paying for insurance. He’d been doing all the things expected of him… and he’d been so unfulfilled.

Everyone around him would talk about how wonderful and happy his life was going to be. He was limitless possibility and that was supposed to make him have a fabulous existence.

It had felt like he was disappointing everyone’s expectations. His unhappiness was a burden he was forced to bear in silence because he was supposed to be happy. And he wasn’t.

His smile had always felt thin and painful. A baring of the teeth rather than a true expression.

He graduated high school and college early, and suddenly he was expected to do great things. To work and make money and wow the world with his brilliance and bring glory to his family.

And he did it. He changed the world of technolgy and those that ran the world knew his name. He made more money than he could ever spend in ten lifetimes.

And it was empty. Meaningless. Because he was just as unmotivated as he’d always been. Just as empty and unfulfilled.

He wasn’t sad. He wasn’t angry. He wasn’t murderous. He was simply unhappy.

And then he met Darkstar.

And suddenly there was something. There was music and light and food had flavor to it.

He was no longer an empty shell of a person slogging through every day.

He was filled with Darkstar. And it was good.

. *. *. *.

He knew that his feelings were because of Darkstar’s metability. His brain was being artifically stimulated and everything he felt was nothing but a lie.

And he didn’t care.

Because his brain was stimulated and for the first time in his life he could truly feel.

Darkstar wasn’t purposefully doing anything to him. Just by existing, he brought happiness into Raymond’s life. His presence, his smiles, his frowns, his voice… everything about him chased away the ennui.

By existing, Darkstar gave purpose to Raymond’s life.

So in the background of Darkstar’s life, Dr. Zee came into being. Smoothing the things that needed to be smoothed. Deleting videos and destroying evidence. Ensuring that while Darkstar received the attention he demanded, Vereint Georges was able to enjoy the anonymity he craved.

He arranged his first official meeting with Darkstar. Made himself an indispensable person in Darkstar’s life.

When Darkstar fell in love with Blue Ice, he thought he might feel jealousy, but he didn’t. His feelings for Darkstar were so pure and all consuming that they surpassed physical desire.

He would rather see Darkstar happy than fulfill his own desires. Would do anything in the name of Darkstar’s happiness.

He didn’t feel guilt over the laws he broke. Didn’t hesitate or experience regret as long as it was for Darkstar.

Before Darkstar there was nothing. He passed through his life like a ghost. Doing what was expected of him without having any dreams or desires of his own. Waking and sleeping, eating and pooping, every day passing one into the next without anything leaving a mark on his soul.

And after Darkstar, there was light and pleasure and when he touched things he could feel them.

Because he was real. Alive. Vital and full of the hope of life.

He was full of Darkstar and he would do anything for him. Anything at all.

=END=

Fortress in the Eye of Time at Amazon
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NOT SUITABLE

There was a time before jealousy. A time of happiness or at least quiet contentment.

And now there was this.

Looking around at everyone else wearing their Suits. Sleek, boxy, fitted, loose, every style and color and type worn with the unselfconscious ease of personal excellence. Of knowing they were wearing personal armor and strength and flight and immortality all tailored to their particular gene structure.

Even the ugliest eyesore Suits were beyond his reach.

“Bad genes.” That’s what he was told. Blunt and casually cruel. As though destroying dreams was just another everyday thing.

An Unsuitable. That’s what he was. Him and a handful of others. A minority segment of the population that were by turns pitied and reviled.

Cosmic rays. Contact with forever chemicals. Some terrible mix of events that happened pre-conception. All the different ways that a gene structure could be so damaged as to make someone forever Unsuitable.

He remembered lining up with the other Aged Tens. All excitedly describing what colors and styles they would turn their Suits once fitted. Planning where they would fly and what they would do. The Suit feats that they would accomplish.

Everyone secretly fearing that they would be found Unsuitable. Loudly boasting to cover up the sense of dread.

He’d been the only Unsuitable in his Sector that year. The only one hunching his shoulders under the weight of looks and whispers and unwanted notoriety.

It had been near unbearable but there was nothing he could do about it. His genes were what made him Unsuitable. But they were also what made up his body and being.

He’d looked at the research. A desperate and sad kid that suddenly had no friends as everyone else was exploring the wonders and joys of Suit life. He’d had plenty of free time on his hands to look things up.

There was no changing his Unsuitable status. Science had attempted to make changes. To rewrite genes, to splice in changes, to delete the bad and promote the good. A lot of people had volunteered to die in horrible ways before experimentation had been made illegal.

Some people couldn’t bear to live as an Unsuitable. They were a demographic with a high instance of suicide and drug and alcohol abuse.

He’d even had thoughts before. When he looked around the dinner table at his family in their Suits. When he went to school and no one wanted to get close to him. When those around him were warned about his “delicate constitution” and treated him as if he could be broken by a hard look.

From the time he was ten years old, he had felt as though all his dreams had died. Because in a world of wonder and joy, he was found to be Unsuitable for any of it.

He was a normal human in a world populated by gods. That’s how it had been described on the Not Suitable website. Gods and humans.

It wasn’t that he was defective. His genes were perfectly fine. Look at him. Two arms, two legs, a face, a body… he was completely and normally human.

It wasn’t his fault that his genes refused to accept fusion with a Suit.

It was something that had been done to him before he was born. Likely before he was even conceived. Some unlucky turn of events that resulted in the mutation of the cells that had become him.

He didn’t envy what he didn’t have. He was jealous of the opportunities that had been taken from him.

He was Unsuitable, but he was alive.

=END=

Fortress in the Eye of Time at Amazon
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VIGNETTE

The blood was black. Tar-like as it oozed from the shallow cut on his arm rather than the smooth up-welling of red from before.

It had been a gradual change. Painful at first until nerves became numb and dead.

Dead like me, he thought.

His vision had grown dim and narrow, as though a vignette filter had been snapped over his view of the world. His ears felt muffled, sound distant and directionless. His brain had become slow, his thoughts anchorless yet deep.

He’d thought that dying was terrifying and final. Instead, for him and others like him, it was a gradual transition from vibrancy to distant echoes.

There was an ache in his chest where his heart had once beat–thump thump–but had fallen to silence and stillness. It wasn’t pain, but loss. The realization that something that had always been had now ceased to be.

He was still moving. Still realizing. Still existing in some semblance of self.

But it was only a matter of time before he began to rot. When his skin would begin to slough off and the collagen between his bones would congeal and his flesh would fester and bugs would burrow into him.

He was dead, but he was still moving. He was a living soul trapped in a decaying flesh prison.

There was no treatment, no cure, no vaccine. Survivors out there, huddling in their hideaways, they could maybe be saved by some future medical science. But for those like him that had already been bitten–infected, killed–there was no turning back. No chance to return to normal.

There was only waiting for the inevitable loss of self that would culminate in mindlessness and the instinctive drive to consume human flesh.

He could already feel it. Not hunger as he once knew it, but something like it. The closest concept he could imagine.

Hunger had always been centered in the belly, but this was a whole body need for warmth and filling. A sense that if he didn’t fill himself, he would collapse empty and deflated after his body ate itself to nothing.

He was dead, but he was still dying. If he ate, he would taste warmth and life. He would be able to move and exist for a little while longer.

His mouth wouldn’t be so dry and shriveled. So tasteless and empty.

He walked toward the front door. Worked the locks and pulled the door open. And went out into the world.

To eat.

=END=

All Systems Red at Amazon
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ELEANOR

“🎶 Driving. Driving all night ’til the mornin’ come. Wanna see my bed, but first I’mma see the sun. Wishin’ you were here to whisper sweet things. Gonna close my eyes and visit you in my dreams.🎶”

He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel as he sang to fill the silence. The radio had been broken since before he bought the car.

He’d been driving since he left work. Had barely taken the time to change his clothes and wash the makeup off his face.

His eyes felt gritty and dry. He would stop for something to eat and drink but he barely had money for gas. There would be food when he got there, hopefully.

He’d gotten the call late and hadn’t hesitated to tell his boss he had to go. She’d been angry but understanding. He was grateful. It would have been hard finding a new job.

Things were hard all around. People were struggling. It made it hard to be kind even when kindness was the most necessary thing.

The car went over a bumpy spot in the road and he blinked hard to make sure his vision was clear.

It was a long dark stretch of road out there. An endless expanse of highway that seemed to go on forever, his headlights the only illumination.

There were tiny shiny eyes on the side of the road. Small animals darted here and there. Occasionally one would attempt to pass in front of the car.

He hoped he didn’t run any over. But there wasn’t time to stop. And there wasn’t anything he could do for them anyway. He was passing through their lives at close to 80 miles an hour.

“🎶I promise I’ll be there before you close the door. Hold on for me, my sweet Eleanor. Ohhh. Elea-nor. Ohhh oh oh-h ohhhh. Sweet Eleanor.

“🎶I’m drivin’ all night until the morning comes. All to see your face and hold you in my arms. My dreams are so sweet since I fell in love. With Elea-nor. Sweet, sweet, Eleanor.🎶”

eleanor.m4a

=END=