Please keep in mind my Amazon e-book, and the fact that I need reviewers! So if you want to review the first four books in the Infected series there, I’d consider that a personal favor. Thank you.

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The Land of the Blind

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1 – Gimme Shelter

Roan knew he never should have taken Nadia Rubin’s case the moment he took it.

She couldn’t afford him, she’d know he was taking pity on her and would probably resent it, and it wasn’t his usual thing anyways. She was asking him to be a bodyguard as much as a detective, and that really wasn’t his thing.

Still, how did you turn down a fellow infected? Especially when they were being threatened by another infected. It almost felt like a duty.

What she was was a waitress who wasn’t wearing enough make up to cover all the broken blood vessels beneath her eyes, indications of past beatings. She was a cougar strain, in the midst of a divorce from her abusive husband, Mike Oliver, who been threatening her. The problem was, the threats were obscure and personal – leaving dead flowers inside her car, leaving dead mice on her porch, flooding her email with spam, putting dog shit in her mailbox, throwing red food coloring on her door – and to get him arrested she’d have to prove he did it. The cops had talked to him, but it had had no effect whatsoever, and she was sure he was going to ratchet things up, mainly because she finally got a restraining order. Right now she had no idea where he was living, as he’d been evicted from his last apartment, and all his family lived in Alabama or Virginia. What she wanted him to do was two fold: find where Mike was, and catch him in the act of vandalism. If she could prove something, she could get him arrested for harassment and violating the restraining order.

Oh, and he was cougar strain too. Apparently they met through the Church of the Divine Transformation. Sometimes Roan wondered if the universe took perverse pleasure in mocking him.

She couldn’t afford him at all. But he accepted her hundred dollars and lied and said that was his exact fee, and then did a little checking around. He called Gordo but got Seb, who told him Gordo was on vacation. A forced vacation, as Connie insisted he take it easier since his heart attack, and he had to play along if he didn’t want to spend the next few months sleeping in the guest room. (Roan totally understood.) Luckily, for all his Joe Friday stoic-ness, he was willing to help. No shock, Oliver was in the system, and one report had flagged him as a TI – total idiot. Great. Usually a guy marked TI was happy giving shit to cops or other authority figures, no matter how big their truncheons or tasers. They were usually also the first to sue, even though they generally caused their own problems. So yeah, it figured that Mike would be one of those. This guy sounded like a real gem. Why were any women straight? Seriously, if this was the class of guy available, why bother? Not that gay guys couldn’t be abusive dirtbags, Matt’s crackhead stalker proved that, but that just made him wonder why evolution even bothered with men. Maybe women would luck out and they’d become totally redundant one of these days.

Maybe humanity would become redundant. He suddenly remembered that weird conversation he had with Doctor Rosenberg, and immediately shoved it out of his head.

He couldn’t find Mike. He flashed Mike’s picture to many of the no-tell motels around town, but he just didn’t have time to cover them all, and sometimes the smells were so strong in certain offices (body order, cigarette smoke, and cheap, heavy aftershave) he couldn’t actually tell if they were lying to him. (He added Aqua Velva and Old Spice to his olfactory shit list, just beneath Axe.) He may have been a TI, but he knew enough not to use credit cards to rent a room.

Nadia lived in a trailer park, the oddly named Golden Bough, but luckily a trailer across the way from her was empty and abandoned. A heavy lock, chain, and hasp was attached to the front door to keep squatters out, so Roan just went ahead and forced a window open. (It was a trailer. None of the locks were especially sturdy.) The trailer was empty inside but hadn’t been long abandoned, as he could smell faint traces of old cigarettes, food, booze, dog, and diapers. A foreclosure? Probably, or people who just picked up and moved in the middle of the night, leaving behind a ratty old trailer and a mountain of bills.

One of the windows had a good view of Nadia’s trailer, so he settled down for a stake out, pulling out things he’d brought in his messenger bag. He called Dylan to let him know he was staking out a client’s place and explained the circumstances as he set up his digital camera on a tripod. Dylan was worried, mainly because nothing “domestic” (as in domestic violence) ever came out well. Like he had to tell him that? It was a domestic violence incident that torpedoed his career as a cop. He still had an extra special hatred for bullies, anyone who beat up someone weaker or smaller than them. But if he sat down and was completely honest with himself, he was a bully, because almost no one he fought was strong enough to compete with him. That was the problem with being a freak of nature.

Night settled uneasily, and he watched Nadia come home in her little Accord, dented and rust stained, and she looked around as she unlocked her door and went inside. She didn’t see him, but she wouldn’t – he was far enough away from the window that seeing him would be difficult unless you came right up to the window, and since he was both wearing all black and had no light source (he didn’t need one; he had the night vision filter on the camera), he was as good as invisible in the fading light. He allowed himself a schoolboy moment of thinking he was a ninja, then let it go.

He ate a sandwich he’d bought at a deli on the way here, quietly pining for the spicy angel hair pasta Dylan was making tonight (at least he’d leave him leftovers), putting enough mustard on the bread to cover up the taste of sub par turkey. He’d also bought a Mountain Dew and an energy drink, both of which tasted like Satan’s ball sweat with differing amounts of sugar, but he didn’t buy them for taste. He bought them for caffeine and sugar, stuff to keep him awake and alert. He listened to a Stephen King audio book on his iPod, only one earphone in so he could listen for exterior noises. He doubted he’d hear anything, but it was good to cover all the bases.

As he watched her trailer, watched lights go on and off in various rooms, his mind wandered to the problem of what he was going to tell Dylan. When he picked him up from Willow Creek, he told him Rosenberg had told him it would take a week or so for results to be known from all the testing, with the blood work possibly taking two. This wasn’t exactly true; some of the tests would take a week or so. But she’d given him some of the results before Dylan arrived, and he’d still been trying to process them as he packed up his small bag. The week was over, and they were into week two now. He was starting to get suspicious, and Roan couldn’t blame him. He was going to have to tell him something. Was it going to be the truth? He didn’t want to, but he couldn’t rely on Dylan’s willingness to play along forever. But what did he say? He wasn’t even sure he’d completely processed what she’d told him yet, mainly because he’d avoided thinking about it as much as possible. But on this dark and boring nightwatch, he had nothing but time to think.

She’d used technobabble and tried to be nice about it, but she was saying he wasn’t really human anymore, wasn’t she? The virus was doing something to his body, beyond what it had already done. He was becoming something else, which he should have known when his transformation began to happen so rapidly, when things began to shift without his knowledge. A Faith No More song lyric tripped through his mind like a accusation aimed at himself: He made us proud, he made us rich, and how were we to know he’s counterfeit.

He just wished he could’ve made Dylan rich.

About two hours after the last light went off in Nadia’s house, when his audiobook was done and he was listening to These Arms Are Snakes’ album Easter, he saw movement on the grass plot of the trailer next to Nadia’s, someone trying to sneak past, avoiding the gravel on the street and the porch lights on in front of most of the trailers. Was it some guy stumbling home drunk, or had Mike made his job easier by coming after her his first night on the job?

He couldn’t get a good look at his face, but the build looked similar. (He was wearing all dark clothes too, the bastard.) There was a glint of metal as he removed something from beneath his jacket, and Roan didn’t think it was a gun. A knife? Maybe a crowbar. But he didn’t like the fact that he was making a beeline for her trailer.

He ripped off his iPod and called 9-1-1 on his cell, using the ID number he had with the police department. Okay, it only identified him as a “consultant”, someone on the periphery of actual police work, but they’d act faster (at least in theory). He left the line open and dropped the phone on the floor after giving the address, climbing out the window and sprinting across the street towards Nadia’s trailer.

Mike was in his own world, he didn’t hear him or see him, so Roan pulled out his MagLight and twisted it on, shining it in his startled face. “Stop right there, Mike. Drop it.”

He turned towards him, his face already a mask of belligerence. He could smell beer on him, but not enough to call him drunk. “Who the fuck’er you?” he snapped. “Get off my property.”

“This isn’t your property. It’s Nadia’s, and you’re violating the restraining order. I’m giving you a chance you don’t deserve. Leave, now.” It was a crowbar, and currently he was holding it like a bat, the metal bar hanging down beside his leg.

Mike scowled at him. Roan could see every bit of his stubble, like tiny iron fillings driven into his pores. “You the guy she’s fucking, huh?”

Roan scoffed. “Why do you abusive assholes always say that? Just ’cause you’re cheating on her doesn’t mean she’s cheating on you.”

He took a step towards him, tapping the crowbar against his leg. “Get the fuck outta here before I shove this up your ass.”

Roan knew exactly what this comment would do, how Mike would react to it, but he made it anyways. Once a smart ass, always a smart ass. “Oh, so you’re gay now, are you?”

Mike charged, giving him a one handed shove to the chest that sent him back a couple of steps as he brought the crowbar up with his other hand, going for the head. If Roan was normal, he’d probably have had his skull pounded in. Luckily, he wasn’t.

He brought up his left arm to block the crowbar, and at the same time threw a right cross that he judged to be pretty soft, but hard enough to send a message.

And that’s where it went horribly wrong.

He heard the crack of bone on impact, and since he didn’t feel any unusual pain in his hand, assumed he’d just broken Mike’s jaw or cheekbone. But Mike dropped like a stone and started seizing the moment he hit the ground, back arching and limbs flailing like he was trying to fight off some invisible beast. Roan had two seconds to process what he was seeing, and realized, with a wrenching, stinging sensation in his gut, that he no longer had any ability to judge how hard he was hitting anyone.

He hadn’t broken Mike’s jaw. He’d broken his skull.

He dropped to his knees and confirmed Mike’s airway was clear, really the only thing you could do for a seizing person. He was aware that a light had come on in Nadia’s trailer about the time Mike tried to stave his head in with the crowbar, but he hadn’t paid any attention to it. Now he heard the door open, and without looking back, he told her, “Call 9-1-1 and tell them Roan McKichan requests an ambulance ASAP at this location. Got it?”

He saw a rectangle of light on the patchy square of ground that passed for Nadia’s “lawn”. She was in the doorway, a watching shadow, but she had yet to move. “Why?” she finally asked, and in it he heard the years of bitterness, the cold hatred aimed squarely at her soon to be ex (or late) husband, the type of hate you could really only have for someone you used to love. He wondered if Dylan would ever take on that tone while talking about him.

“Do it!” he snapped, not caring if she took some of his rage. The one person he really wanted to get angry at was himself, but he knew from having actually tried it that beating up yourself did no good at all, and was never as satisfying as it should have been.

She finally disappeared inside the trailer again, taking her sweet time about it, and he heard the sirens of a police car faint but growing louder.

This had been such a horrible mistake. After what Rosenberg told him, he shouldn’t even be around Humans anymore.

He closed his eyes and punched the ground until he felt a bone in his hand shift and break, and he had to swallow back a roar that was more anger than pain.

He always knew he was a freak amongst freaks, but after this, everybody was going to know.

You can get all four of the first books in the Infected series (Infected, Prey, Bloodlines, & Life After Death) in Kindle (or iPhone) form! Yes, you could read them here, but these are cleaned up, formatted, and have some author’s commentary to sweeten the pot, as well as a beautiful cover by James “Rex Libris” Turner!

Help a struggling author out! Go here to check it out!

P.S.: If you’d like a copy in an alternate electronic or PC form (PRC or PDF) e-mail me at andy-at-comixtreme – dot-com, and we’ll work that out.

23 – Drown With Me

Roan didn’t know if he handled any of this right. But he vacillated between being guilt ridden and too exhausted to care.

Dylan was upset and angry for a bit, but was relieved he was okay and was therefore willing to let a lot go. So he bought the car accident story, and while he had obvious reservations, he decided to buy it. Dylan was kind like that, and Roan was reminded that he probably deserved so much better than the shit Roan could offer him.

The burned down house in Eastern Washington was discovered (or at least reported) the afternoon he got home, and it was not only mentioned that it was considered arson but also a homicide scene. That made him pick up the phone and call Hatcher.

You never wanted to tell a parent their child was dead. He hated it as a cop, and he hated it even more now, especially since he knew how much Hatcher seemed to love his son. This was going to destroy him.

Hatcher was initially stoic, as if afraid to show a single scrap of emotion on the off chance he would shatter into a million pieces. But after a long and strained moment of silence, he asked in a low, emotionless tone. “Did you get them?”

What a nice, bloodless way of asking if he’d kill them all. He wanted to say no, he wanted to say that technically the lion took care of the ones that didn’t get away, but he decided on an uncomplicated, explanation free, “Yes.”

“Good,” Hatcher said, and hung up the phone.

The next day, the remainder of his fee and some extra money (expenses, presumably) was deposited into his account. This was an extra surprise, mainly because he had no idea Hatcher had his bank information.

A couple of days later, after the hard drive had made its way to the Feds (anonymously), he got an email of a news report, a small thing that couldn’t have taken up more than two inches of column space. It was all about a man named Conrad Maddux dying in a car crash in Ecuador. Car crash his ass.

Now why had Hatcher sent this to him? A couple possibilities came to mind: proof that he kept his word, and that he had indeed gotten the last of the men connected to his son’s murder. Or it was a threat of some kind, to let him know that if he passed on that he had something to do with the now defunct Tabu website (Holden had checked, although they both agreed that it had probably relaunched under another URL), he could end up as dead as Maddux. Roan was rather surprised he couldn’t even work up some anger about this. He just didn’t care. If Hatcher wanted to take his shot, he was welcome to try. Everyone had had one, why shouldn’t he?

Several truly weird things happened. The weirdest one was probably Tank and Fiona starting to date. Tank took Fiona out for a drink as a way of protecting her without her knowing he was, and as it turned out, they hit it off. Yes, he was off to the Bruins farm team soon, but Fi actually saw that as a plus, as she didn’t think she was up to a “proper relationship” right now. Weren’t goalies and dominatrices natural enemies in the wild? After all, he had a hundred pounds of protective gear, and she had a bullwhip. You’d think they were the opposite end of the spectrum. Still, they seemed to share a certain weirdness that made them almost perfect for each other.

Dylan sold three pictures in a row for good sums, but only one was bought by someone they knew (Scott). He was still unemployed, but his self-esteem was better.

The Falcons found out they were signing on to the domestic partnership registry and insisted on taking them out for a “bachelor party”, which was just an excuse to go bar hopping and drink. Which was fine with him, so they went out with the same crew as before, and Roan got the impression that Jeff could drink Charles Bukowski under the table. Every now and again, Dylan would give him a look, a look that said If I knew I was gonna get your crazy ass friends too, I’d have dumped your ass a long time ago. And he couldn’t really blame him, but weren’t these crazy jock assholes kind of fun? Or maybe he just liked not necessarily being the craziest guy in the room for a change.

Part of him expected to get arrested at any time, but he didn’t dwell on it, mainly because if he worried, Dylan would ask him what was up. The pills helped too.

The domestic partner registry thing was highly anticlimactic, although that was what he expected. It was just signing papers so if he keeled over, Dylan would get his stuff. (Oh, and he’d get Dylan’s stuff, but there was no way he was going to outlive Dylan, which he took as a perverse comfort.)

Hatcher himself left the country before it came out in the press that Jordan Hatcher’s body was one of those found in fire, and thanks to a leaked video, the press began to connect Jordan to a porn scandal. It was huge news even though they had random bits that didn’t quite fit together. It was probably a good thing Hatcher was in France, far away from the sensationalist and slightly wrong local coverage. Roan asked Holden if he leaked the video, and he swore he didn’t, but it was hard to believe. The porn/Jordan angle totally switched the line of investigation, and he had it on good authority that some people actually thought this was mob related (yes, the mob were in porn. Not in Eastern Washington, but far be it from him to discourage such thinking). The more days that went by, the more he knew it was unlikely they’d ever get nailed for it.

Roan got two new tattoos, mainly because he felt like it. If he could just cover every inch of his skin, would it hide the fur when he transformed? Would he be some weird tattooed lion? He liked to think so. Both were small, and one was on his left arm and one was on his right. The first was simply a paintbrush with a ribbon reading Dylan on it, and the second was a biohazard symbol. Dylan was touched by the first, but felt the second was far too derogatory. Why? He was a biohazard. His blood was toxic, full of a rotten virus that would break your bones and squeeze the life out of you more slowly than a boa constrictor. Much like his Leo astrological tattoo, he felt this was a way of warning the newbies how unclean he was.

Dylan didn’t find that funny.

At the end of the week, Dylan brought up the therapist again, but this time suggesting he might want to talk to someone because he thought he was depressed. Really? Roan didn’t laugh in his face, but he wanted to. He’d been a depressive all his life, but he could handle it. He was just in a bad period right now. Maybe one of the people he ate at the snuff house disagreed with him. He thanked him for his concern, but told him he’d be okay, mainly because he couldn’t imagine what he would say to a therapist. “I really want my lion side to go away. Can you talk to it?”

Against his better judgment, as a sop to Dyl, he met with the reporter, Aidan Lambert, at a coffee shop downtown. He was one of those prematurely balding men, with curly black hair almost hiding the small crop circle at the back of his head, and retro geek chic thick black frames that he could have ripped off of Elvis Costello in the ’70’s. He had a pug nose, liquid brown eyes, and a scraggly, almost pubic goatee. He wasn’t handsome, so he went the opposite route, trying to play up the “quirky” angle that served some character actors so well in independent films but never quite played out the same way in real life. He looked like the love child of Abbie Hoffman and Steve Buscemi, and there was no way any good could come of that. To top it off, it was an unseasonably warm day, and here he was wearing layers and visibly sweating in them. (A button down blue shirt, with a grey hoodie and a worn brown leather jacket on top of it. He eventually shucked the jacket. He completed the outfit with khakis and red Converse sneakers that were probably part of the “quirky” aesthetic he was cultivating. This unleashed his inner flamer – he wanted to tell him, “You’re trying way too hard honey, you just look deranged”, but since he was wearing jeans, hiking boots, and a t-shirt with the words Now Panic and Freak Out on it – a gift from Paris, of course – he probably wasn’t qualified to give anyone fashion advice.) It was no guess at all to say Aidan was straight.

Right away, Roan told him that there were some questions he wouldn’t answer, and if he told him to move on, he’d better, or that was the end of the interview. To his credit, he agreed, and he was almost a little gushy, as he was apparently aware he’d never done a proper interview. (He’d made an occasional statement to the media, but that was about it.) His oddly boyish enthusiasm didn’t make this any less weird.

Aidan stuck to the basics at first, and Roan decided to be diplomatic and pass on making any comment about the Church, except when Aidan pointed out he’d had a long contentious relationship with Eli Winters, then he snapped, “It’s a fucking joke, but that doesn’t give any hater nutball the right to shoot the shit out of them.”

That made him sit back, and glance down at the microcasette recorder on the center of the table, as if afraid his language would cause it to spontaneously explode. Sadly, it didn’t.

Did this mean he couldn’t curse in this magazine? He mentally vowed to curse some more.

The interview went okay really, Aidan seemed to be aware there were boundaries he couldn’t get close to, but he eventually came to the topic he knew he would. “Are you aware of the videos of you on YouTube?”

Roan sipped his green tea lemonade as he played for time. Shit. “I’ve never posted any videos on YouTube.”

Aidan blinked at him, as if trying to figure out how to best continue. “The video of you punching out that lion went viral.”

“I’ve never punched out a lion.”

“It was you. It wasn’t the greatest quality video, but your hair color is pretty unmistakable, and a couple of cops came out and said it was you.”

He hadn’t heard that. Bastards. “I didn’t punch it out. It had been drugged. That was its final lunge before the drugs kicked in. It just happened I hit it and the drugs kicked in almost simultaneously.”

“You don’t actually believe that, do you?”

“I was there. I know what happened.”

Aidan consulted his notebook. It was an actual notebook, with chicken scratch handwriting scrawled haphazardly across the pages in blue and black ink. It was charming in its way. “This was the same incident where you pulled the lion off a person who was being attacked, and kicked it hard enough to leave a very sizable dent in a parked car.”

“Is there a point to these questions?”

He hesitated, clearly uncomfortable with having to spit it out. “There are … rumors that you have abilities above normal Humans.”

“Bullshit.”

“But you do have a superior sense of smell, which has been well documented -”

“Smell. That’s different than what you’re implying. Hell, what are you implying?”

He shifted uneasily in his chair, and he was starting to smell his anxiety across the table. “Nothing really, I swear. It’s just that … while doing some research on you, I found some information that seems to indicate that you have some … gifts that aren’t average.”

His stomach sent out an extra pulse of acid. Luckily he was on Vicodin, and outer reactions were hard to muster. “Gifts? What, like the Archie McPhee inflatable toast that my secretary got me for my birthday?”

Aidan scowled at him. “No. You know what I mean.”

“So you’re a mind reader now? Awesome for you.”

“Why are you being hostile?”

“This isn’t hostile. Hostile would be throwing the table through the window. Which I’m considering if that emo bastard who bathed in Axe body spray walks by the table one more time. I swear, that stuff’s a chemical weapon; the U.N. should outlaw it already.”

He looked like he was tempted by the topic shift, but firmly stayed on topic. “There’s rumors of a security camera tape, circulated within the police department, that shows you doing something that would qualify as superhuman.”

Oh goddamn it, that convenience store tape? You’d think they’d have found something more interesting to watch by now. “There’s no such thing as superhuman, only well trained. Ask a stunt man or a karate teacher.”

He looked just a little confused. “So you’re saying you’re just well trained?”

“There you go. As a virus child I have to keep myself in shape anyways, so I’m probably in better shape than most.”

Aidan nodded, but in a strangely reflexive way, like he was hardly paying attention to what he said. He tossed his notebook down on the table and shut off the recorder. “This is off the record, okay? Won’t go in the article. Why won’t you come out and admit that you’re different in more ways than the obvious ones?”

“Obvious ones?”

He let out a very slight scoff, almost a hiss through his teeth. “Your hair color, your eyes, your sense of smell, your age and your mental faculties in spite of the fact that you’re a virus child. The fact that you’re an ex-cop and private investigator that looks like you could’ve been in a punk band in the ’90’s. None of this is normal.”

Punk band in the ’90’s? “Is it the tattoos? And hey, what’s wrong with my eyes?”

“Nothing’s wrong with them! They’re gorgeous. Even I think so, and I don’t notice things like that, and I’m straight. I mean, they’re like cat’s eyes or something.” He then grimaced at his own words, and quickly added, “Not  like that. I mean -”

“Don’t turn into a pussy on me, Lambert,” he said, smirking at his own pun. “What do you want me to say? That if I wanted to, I could break every bone in your body without working up a sweat? That I could fight everyone in the cafe right now and win? That in lion form shooting me probably wouldn’t be enough? That I could lion out at will?”

“Well, that’s a little extreme. What I’ve heard is -”

“I don’t care. I deny it all and will deny it all, no matter how true it is or isn’t. And no, that doesn’t mean I’m Republican all of a sudden, it means I know what’s best for me and the people around me.”

“Meaning ..?”

“Meaning super humans are fun from a movie and comic perspective, but think about it. What that makes you is super abnormal. And people sure are accepting of the abnormal, aren’t they? Do you need me to tell you how many websites are devoted to killing all infecteds? They’re not super anything, they’re just diseased, but people get all NIMBY on us all the time. Because we’re unclean, we’re freaks, we’re no longer Human. Add another level to that in your mind, Aidan. Add an infected who’s faster than you, stronger, better. They gonna get flowers thrown at them, endorsement deals? No. The Humanity Firsters will fall all over themselves trying to kill you and make themselves a savior or martyr  for their cause. Look at this white supremacist idiot who shot into my house and tried to light it up. My partner was in there, he could have been hurt or killed. I really don’t give a shit about me anymore, I can take care of myself – or should I say the lion can take care of me – but I’m not endangering my loved ones. I am not super anything; I’m diseased, like all other infecteds are diseased. My virus just expresses itself differently, that’s all. And I advise you to drop this line of questioning right now.”

His owlish eyes blinked rapidly behind his glasses, and after a moment, he asked, “Could you fight everyone in the cafe?”

He shrugged. “Give me a challenge why don’t you? These pasty faced English majors could be taken by a hyperactive sixth grader.”

“I’d put up a fight,” he pointed out, turning on the recorder again.

“I’m still betting on the sixth grader. They’re small, but they’ll crawl ya.”

About the time the interview was wrapping up, the photographer arrived, a young woman with stringy blonde hair who was so mannish in her slender frame and way of dress (canvas jacket, hiking boots, flannel shirt) that he would have thought she was a male if he couldn’t smell the estrogen on her. She didn’t wear make up either, had a slight overbite, and almost startlingly clear blue eyes. Her accent when she spoke was very faintly German. She crouched down and took a few photos of him with the cafe window as the background, and said very little, except near the end, when she was taking the last of her shots. “The camera loves you,” she told him. “You look haunted.” Was that a compliment? He had no idea, but didn’t care enough to ask.

Aidan thanked him, paid for the drinks, and told him he’d make sure he got a copy of the magazine when it came out. He hesitated by the table as Gerta (or at least that’s what he called the photographer) led the way out. “I understand, you know. But I’m a little surprised someone like you would play it safe.”

Someone like him? Rather than ask, he simply replied, “Lose someone you loved more than life itself and get back back to me. Becoming the world’s most famous freak isn’t worth what little I have left.”

He didn’t know if he’d ever understand, or indeed if he understood it himself.

Only one day later, he checked into Willow Creek, so Rosenberg could scan the shit out of him.

He stayed off pills for the drawing of his blood (and they seemed to take a pint, the bastards), but as soon as that was done he went back to his room and popped a few codeine. It was weird being here, because the last time he was here was when he checked Paris out of the place. He remembered dropping off books for him, sneaking in sandwiches, getting to know the only tiger strain he’d ever met. It wasn’t bittersweet to be here, more like melancholy. He would dream about him tonight, wouldn’t he?

And he did. They were sitting on a hospital bed, and Paris was shuffling a deck of cards. Right. Paris had tried to teach Roan how to play gin rummy one day, because Roan didn’t know. “How can you be so smart and yet not know how to play a kid’s card game?” Paris asked as he shuffled like a card sharp. His hair was shorter, as once he was hospitalized here he got rid of his shaggy, overgrown “homeless guy hair” (as he called it).

“’Cause I was a foster kid and I missed out on a lot of things. They do what they can for you at some of the group homes, but mostly you learn shit from the other kids. None were interested in card games beyond the three card variety.”

“Shall I start playing my violin?”

“Quiet, you middle class suburban bastard,” he snapped, and that only made Paris grin at him.

As he dealt the cards, he said, “Congrats, by the way. Good of you to make an honest man out of Dylan. Like the ring too.”

Once again, Roan had to point out he wasn’t for traditional rings, and once again he’d ended up with a guy who was of the same opinion. So  their commitment rings – or whatever the fuck you called it; the “not marriage, ’cause that’s icky and gross” rings – were silver bands with a tiny black silhouette of a cat on it. Roan wanted to go with the skull, but Dylan refused. The cat seemed like an ironic compromise. “It’s not a snake eating its tail, but it will do.” He picked up his cards, looked at them, and knew he was dreaming since the cards made no sense: all face cards, Kings, Jacks, and Jokers (what, no Queens?), some in suits that were unheard of, such as clover, tree, frying pan, and lion. He put the cards down and admitted, “I still miss you.”

“Well, you’d better.”

“I think I’ve fucked up very badly.”

“Not with Dylan?”

“No, with everything else. I don’t think I like what I’m becoming.”

“And what’s that?”

Looking at Paris’s sweet face was so hard it brought tears to his eyes. God, he was so beautiful. It was the tragic kind of beauty too, the kind you knew was doomed from the start. A face that launched a thousand ships and dug a million graves. “I don’t know. I’m so fucking scared I hate myself for it.”

“You hate yourself anyways,” Paris told him, then enfolded him in a hug that Roan realized he was desperate for as soon as he felt his arms around him. He leaned into Paris and breathed him in, aware he was dreaming and not really caring. “Change is inevitable. Just let it come.”

“And let it wash me away?” Actually, come to think of it, that wasn’t a bad idea. To reach total oblivion, an inner space where he just didn’t care anymore.

He always thought happy endings were for dead people. Maybe one of these days, he’d find out for himself.