The first celebrity I ever saw was at a record store appearance. A late 20′s heavy metal brat who looked older, eyes behind a pair of round shades, hair long and disheveled. He was drunk, or stoned, or both, and mumbled something to me while he scrawled his initials on the CD I handed over to him. There may have been times before when I met someone famous and recognized them for who they were, but I don’t remember those times. I just remember the strange feeling in my gut as I watched the wretch struggle to sign his name. He wasn’t really a celebrity. A minor one, at best. A wanna-be, more likely than not, cast out of a bigger band to try and eke out a living on his own. To his credit, his new band wasn’t named after him. But he wasn’t THEM. He wasn’t someone to look up to with any measure of wonder, respect or envy. He was, despite his retinue and record sales, just some guy. A guy with a guitar who got real lucky.

The first celebrity I ever killed was Russell Crowe. Academy award winning actor, movie star, a true celebrity. That is, someone whose very existence is celebrated. By the media, by the public. By fans that yelled his name as he walked down the red carpet of award shows or movie premieres. By those that begged for autographs as he ate dinner. By those who sent frantic letters to his publicist, praising or cursing his name. He was important, famous, vital… his every movement charted and photographed in an attempt to sell shitting tabloid magazines. He was, yes, a celebrity. He was a celebrity and I shot him through the head.

Now, this is not true, of course. Everyone knows how and when and where he died. But in my mind I was the one who put the bullet between his eyes. His bold stare sighting me down the barrel as I sighted him. The pull on the trigger of the rifle, the “pop” of the gun as it spat out the bullet. The neat hole it left in the photograph pinned at the far end of the shooting range. It was quiet after that. I was the only one present, having tipped the attendant a twenty to let me stay after hours for a little while. The photo was one I brought from home, blown-up to a grainy, pixelated size from a low-resolution picture I downloaded from a website. I knew that if I was to save this man from fame, I’d have to get use to the fact that I, we had to kill him.

The deed was done while he was on set. A few months before he landed a role, the star role, of an action film based on a popular comic book character. He was in makeup, his hair white and thinning like it was in The Insider. A bit heavy, bulked up to fit into the black and grey costume he was required to wear for the role. It wasn’t flattering, but it wasn’t meant to be. Still, despite his size he was hardly soft or flabby. I knew from my research online and from reading the trades and watching entertainment news reports that a regimen of weights and boot camp-style training kept his bulk from turning to fat. He weighed a bit more than was healthy, his muscles blown up to an almost absurd degree. His costume was in ragged pieces for this scene, a line of red-colored glycerine swapped over his eye and up his nostrils. The big action scene. The finale.

This is why you should always research a part. To make sure it goes off without problems, to see it to the end. We knew we had one chance to make this happen and we waited and waited for the perfect moment. At this point, there was no turning back. Principal photography was complete. Just one more shot to go. The scene where he emerges from wreckage of a monstrous tank, actually a scene that occurs in the middle of the movie, but shot out of sequence. The rest would have to be completed with CGI or stunt doubles. It would be okay. We knew it would be released. We knew it would be a success. A defining moment in a long and celebrated career. He would not use a double. It was a point of pride. This was his genius. That was to be his legacy. Another demi-god, felled from hubris. A poetic end to a poet’s life.

The group had many discussions about the particulars of the assassination but in the end it was decided to look like an accident. A malfunctioning device that used compressed air to eject him from the vehicle would be prepped at the wrong pressure. The tank would release, pushing a piston that would tear through the catapult “sled” and puncture his heart and lungs. In the best case scenario, his death would be immediate, his spinal column sheared in half. Worst case, he would linger for days, weeks on life support. It would be tragic either way. It would be a glorious end. Yes, we agreed it was terrible. He may have years, decades of good work left in him. But why not go out on a high note? Why leave it to chance, to age, to the excesses that come with fame? Drugs or gambling or sex or illness. Scandals or addiction. Old age, shitting the bed or mumbling in senile dementia. Wasting away from colon cancer or emphysema. Dead at 60, at 70, at 80…

No, we decided. This would not do. Our heroes deserve to die on the battlefield, with honor, and in perfection of their craft.

We would save them from themselves. We would kill for them. Our shining, burning stars.

He walks down the alleyway to the chalk sigil scrawled on the wall. When he passes his hand over it, the symbol glows dull and evil, green phosphorescence like bile. He continues, his presence marked. A large man waits at the end of the alley. Hands in pockets, he stands shoulders slumped beside a black and chrome motorcycle.

They clasp hands, friends re-united.

“Mitchell. I don’t know what to say.”

Turtle hands him a leather satchel. “It’s all here like you asked, boss. And you don’t need to say anything. I’m just glad to see you.”

Rainer nods. ”It’s all different now. The city’s changed somehow. Safer? Better”

“Everything’s changed. You’re back. The Glassworks are a free-for-all again now that Ozerov is gone. Jack and Mary? Who knows?”

“Mary’s gone for good, I think. Jack was holding her back, trying to save her. She’s gotta save herself.” He climbs onto the bike.

“Jack’s gone over to Germantown, running a shelter or something. Hanging up the armor, the mask. The whole life.”

Agreement. “He’s a good man. Big heart. I’m going to miss him.” The sun blinks out behind the edge of the bricks. The pale amber of the streetlights wink on, the gargoyles leer from the roofs of King’s Gate. The bike’s engine growls, Rainer kicks the stand up, eases the big Harley back and points it into the alley, toward Out There.

There was one name Turtle didn’t mention. Rainer thanked him by not bringing it up. Uncomfortable silences are best left unbroken by uncomfortable words. Shadows like black serpents coiling and uncoiling, hissing along the walls. Imps and elementals creeping through the darkening skies, ghosts of memory and regret crying out for help. He shuts his eyes.

“Where you headed?” Turtle asks him. He knows, having made the arrangements. He’s just trying to steer clear of Her name.

“Down south. Head to Standout Pete’s. He’s going to put me up for awhile.”

“And your book? I didn’t pack it, like you said.”

Rainer rolls the bike forward and revs the engine. “Keep it. Burn it. Use it. Just learn from it. From what I’ve done.”

“Okay, boss.”

There was no goodbye.

Two old friends. The priest and the magician. “Here we are.” says the magician. His eyes are black, his hair is striped with newfound gray hairs.

“Most likely for the last time.” The priest shifts his massive frame and looks to the sky.

“Yeah, I figured.”

The sky is pink and white and yellow, turning to blue-purple as dusk approaches. Like something washed up on the beach, a shell glowing in the moonlight.

“Beauty of a night.” The moon shows her face behind a row of flat, dark clouds. The magician nods but is silent, watching the shadows play on the horizon. The city is black against that beautiful sky.

“You miss her?”

“Do you?”

They’re talking about different women, they just don’t know it. The answer’s the same, regardless.
The priest breaks the silence. He turns to his old friend and sighs, a sound of profound weariness and regret.

“Rainer. In all these years, did you ever wonder why it is I sat down next to you at Jenny’s, that first time we met?”

The magician, Rainer, is silent.

“It wasn’t your good looks, let me tell you. Nor your sparkling personality.” They both laugh. “Truth be told, that wasn’t the first time we met.”

Rainer looks away, his new face not able to hide his confusion. “Really.”

“Martha, your mother. She was worried about you. Asked me to keep an eye on you. You were delving into that dark stuff and she was concerned. I was too, and for good reason. But…”

“But?”

“But I went away. And you went your way.”

More silence.

“And here we are.” Rainer says.

“Yes.”

Rainer folds his hands together, fingers clasped. He stares down at those hands. “Jack, if you tell me you’re my father I’m going to throw up.”

People talking. I listen to them as they be talking. I sit here on a park bench, watching things happen.

The fountain ahead is aflame with water and fire, it is a symbol. Of nature, of hope, of community. The sky is dark, the air is filled with smoke from another fire. A building set ablaze by corrupt owners claiming the insurance.

The poison runs through her veins as she sleeps on the bench a’fore me. She’s got straw hair and skeleton arms marked with needle tracks.

I sigh, feeling the weight of the world.

“See this, my friend? Everything that is good and bad, all filtering down to Germantown. Is like the drain of the city, where everything flows into the One.”

The man’s eyes is tired. He not be sleeping much, nor can he put his mind at rest. He is a dead man, walking.

I smell the ash on the wind and cast myself out into the rising flames. The damage is done, squatters caught on an upper floor, trying to stray clear of the police. They trapped. I whisper to the flames. They burn hot and fast, tasting air from a shattered window, they burst into blood. Deadly orange flowers. The shockwave knocks the squatters down and out as the flames consume their bodies. They won’t suffer none too much.

But the man who set the fire, oh I’ll see to him later. And oh, yes, suffer he will for what he done.

My mind returns a second after it been departed. The magician closes his eyes but I tell him, no. No time to do that, friend. Time now to see. To see the world and all of its rich misery.

You see, they say that He fell. But no, there be no falling. To fall, to sink, to descend… not true. Implies a lack of will, a foregone conclusion. An acceptance of misfortune. Of fate. But no, not a fall. A long walk down a dark road. You can’t see the end, but you know it be there. You know how it ends, don’t you? It just a question whether or not you reach it. But still, you can stop. You can turn back… oui?

But nobody does.

They just keep walking.

There’s a walk-up row home on a quiet, elm-lined street in the district called Germantown. That’s where I am now. Trying to find some answers. Trying to buy my way out of the mess that is my life.

The mayor isn’t there. Across the street is the stoop where he spends his days. It’s late and he’s old, probably went to bed hours ago. When the sun rises, so will he. But I’m on a schedule. Things have to be set to rights.

I’m waiting and watching. Thinking about the stiff-legged protectors standing guard at every doorway and every window. The house is a black, seething thing. No sign of movement from inside, no light. The street is as dead as I am.

Back when I was flush with power it’d be a simple matter to gain entry, to dispatch the guards, to rouse the old man from his dreams. Now I have to resort to cheap theatrics. I kick the gas can over and its contents splash out, running down the street to the storm drain. My fingers, clumsy and bloodless, manage to scratch out a wooden match on its striker. Fire and flame, flame and fire, give to me my heart’s desire. The incantation is meaningless in my current state, but the words don’t matter. I drop the match and the trail of gasoline whuffs alight, the flickering orange-blue wave racing down to the drain.

The house remains quiet and dark. But the flame stops racing, the trail turns from a straight line to a gentle curve, then coils into a spiral. Without additional fuel, it should go out. But it does not. Instead it flares with hot red and yellow tongues. The center of the coil rises up, swaying from side to side as coal-like eyes appear in its hooded face. The flame-weird’s blue-green tongues lick the air, the whisper of the old man’s voice issues forth, penetrating the death-haze of my mind.

…MAGE. SPEAK. YOU HAVE MY ATTENTION…

The weird dances, its eyes burn molten and evil, despising me and my disturbance.

I show the weird my bloodless hands and bow my head as a measure of respect to its master.

“I come here not as a practitioner of the Art but as a walking ghost. I beseech you to lend me refuge, as tradition demands.”

The serpentine form dies down to an ember for a moment, then blazes to life. A small inferno in the shame of a man. Chango extends his hand, which I accept without hesitation. When the smoke and heat subside I find myself in a small room, somewhere. Presumably the row home but that is unclear. It’s dark, but even my dull senses can make out the frail-looking man sitting before me.

The shadowy figure tips a non-existent hat. “Well, well. Monsieur Burroughs. I think we both reckon why you be coming round Germantown so late at night, and uninvited, oui?

I say nothing, letting my hands fall to my sides.

“Name your price, jinn. Name it and let us begin the negotiations.”

Chango laughs. “All in good time. Chango is thinking you not a man in any position to demand anything.”

He’s right. But I didn’t come to bargain. I came to beg.

All I say is this: “I want my life back.” And then I give the man what he wants from me.

He was never a sports fan but he’s wearing a Harriers cap now. In part from vanity, to cover his baldness. The other reason is to help conceal the baseball-sized vent in the back of his skull. That was from a sniper’s bullet fired from a block or two away one cold December night. The lack of hair is from his present state. Dead. The stuff is brittle and falls out at a moment’s notice. Nothing grows back.

The walk is a half mile but it takes an hour. He can’t move fast in his condition. Dead.

When someone stops and asks him which way to the Germantown Pier he finds himself without words, his tongue rolling in his mouth, lips pursed but not finding anything to say. When he gets to the bus stop his fingers are too numb to fish out the change in his front pocket. Everything muted. Everything gray.

Rainer stares at the driver, who has seen his share of strung-out junkies and winos and mental cases. The driver is an older woman, a no-nonsense look on her face that says, “Seven years mandatory if you lay a hand on me, motherfucker.” But she just waves him on and closes the door, pulling away from the stop and onto the street. His hands are shaking but he wouldn’t even know it. He mumbles something and she’s not having it.

“Sit down. Let you off at the bus terminal. Two stops, then you git.”

Cheek against the window. Eyes closed, he waits. The ride is over far too soon, the driver’s voice calling him back. “Central terminal. Mister, time to go.”

He mumbles and shuffles and exits.

He mumbles and shuffles and exists.

Is this what it’s going to be like? Maybe he should have stayed underground. For real, underground.

Jack, gone. His church burned, a charred stone castle left behind in the midst of Hell.

Mercy, gone (but perhaps for the best).

Samantha.

Samantha.

He let the name wander around for a while, let it come to rest on its own. No energy to keep it down, no desire to hold it back. She was gone, too.

The White Magus sits in the tower. The apprentice stands with sword and staff in hand. Death waits, the Devil laughs. The pale thought floats like mist and dissipates. Rainer looks up and sees a slender young man in street clothes checking him out from across the street. Unremarkable, save for the eyepatch. Unremarkable, except that he knows this kid.

You.

It’s his last thought before the boy vanishes like smoke. Like memories. Or was he even there?

When did my past become my companion? he thinks, then realizes he’s curled up on the floor of the washroom, clawing at the tile. It’s been too long, he knows. Too long without a fix. The next two hours are hell.

For a dead man, it can only get worse.

The Menagerie is an enclave out outcasts. Unclean, unloved, unknown. They gather here in the muck and the gloom under the orange hell-lamps. The steel skeleton holds up the earth, a spine of iron; zinc bars like vertebrae bolted to the infrastructure. They call these things “sacrificial anodes.” They are meant not to stave off decay, but re-direct it. Above, the Glassworks teeter on the edge of the pit. Not meant to thwart decay, but to re-direct it.

The energies of entropy is focused within. Friction, rust, disease.

The brown-skinned girl’s name is Rani. She’s not blind, but the scarf around her eyes serves a useful purpose. Without it, things suffer. Above, they might have called her Kali, the Destroyer. Here she’s a quiet girl held in the arms of friends and a family that chose her. They call her Rusty.

When the lamps brown out and the smell of ozone fills the air, they know that Corpselight is back. The glow gives it away, serves as their light. That sickly green aura that surrounds his gaunt body. Rani waves in his general direction, sensing the light behind her eyelids. His name, she knows, is Arthur.

A few stragglers follow. One of them, a stranger. But someone they all know. More on her later.

* * * * *
The police men wrench the manhole cover back over the gaping wound in the round. A man with a hardhat and some kind of wrench-like device seals it shut. Amber lights blink on and off, cones divert the sporadic stream of cars. The men know what goes on down there, but that doesn’t mean they have to like it.

“Freaky stuff, Lew.” says the thinner of the pair. He pulls on his blazer and straightens his tie. “So now what?”

Shrug. “Not much we can do, save call the exterminator.” The men sit on the hood of their car and watch traffic for a few minutes. “I mean, it’s an animal control issue now, right? She’s not exactly…”

Human.

They get in the car. Barbieri pulls out onto the street and they head to Jenny’s for an after-work brew.

En route, they talk about the case. Or rather, the lack of a case.

“Fact is, nobody is going to waste man hours or money to go after that freak. And it’s not a homicide, no matter what evidence we bring back to the lab. So what? That’s it, right?”

Lewis looks out the window, lines on his face growing deeper as he frowns. “Fuck it. We should just grab some shotguns and go fishing. And while we’re down there, clean up a bit. You know those tunnels are filled with weird shit.”

Uh-huh. They both do. But neither has the balls to actually, you know, go down there and do anything.

Glassworks keeps its own counsel, cleans its own messes.

Usually.

* * * *
Arthur is off in his chamber farther down in the tunnels. Without him there to gum up things, electricity flows. Someone rigged up some christmas lights, a few lamps, a hot plate. Here’s a beat-to-shit stereo receiver, power patched in from some exposed wires. Everyone knows not to touch it, even poor blind Rani. The monsters are having a welcome home celebration of sorts. The runaway is here, back among them. The girl.

You’ve never know it was her. Gone are the vestments, the fishnet stockings, the fetish garb, the weapons. She’s just another quiet girl in a sea of quiet, the only sound the rumble of a blown out speaker churning out some old fifties standard. Somehow, it’s appropriate.

“Mary, care for more bread?” Someone hands her a loaf of day-old rescued from the rats and roaches. The girl breaks off a crusty hunk and soaks up the remains of some stew. Nobody says where they got the meat but it looks, smells and tastes all right. She eats it and doesn’t complain. She doesn’t deserve their kindness so she doesn’t complain. Since coming back to Hamilton, this is the only thing she has left.

The monsters drove her away, the monsters called her back home. Somehow it’s appropriate.

The scuffed toe of a patent leather shoe drags a neat line across the dirt.

“See? See here, right?”

Sounds of water licking the edge. Drops of water hitting the fetid pool. Far-off, sounds of run-off.

He kneels down next to his partner. “Uh-huh.”

Tweezers in hand, the other one (Lewis) kneels down and plucks a shiny pink scale from the concrete.

“There’s more…” He looked around. Barbereri pointed the beam of his pen flash light to the left, right. “See?”

Now, the flash of a disposable digital camera. Something Lewis picked up en route to the crime scene. They didn’t bother to cordon off the area. Nobody came down here. Not really.

Occasionally.

Clucking, sucking through teeth, the light’s beam sweeps back and forth, up and down. “Heel marks… here. here.”

“Uh-huh.” Finger traces the two furrows down to the water’s edge. Lewis doesn’t move from his spot, just looks out over the murky gloom, the black water. “Down.”

“Back?”

“Yup.”

They switch places, Barbieri turns the flashlight around and follows the route from the edge to the water. “Uh-huh. Backwards.”

“Pulled?”

“Dragged.”

“Dead?”

The lines aren’t parallel. They’re not straight and true.

“Nope.”

Sucked air through teeth. “Damn. Poor bastard.”

They look out into the water.

“Poor fuck. She took him.”

Lewis coughs, takes a step back.

“Took him. Took him right down.”

They stared. Imagined what it was like. Couldn’t do it, didn’t want to.

“Fuck.”

Case closed.

There’s only so much room in the human body. That’s a serious design constraint. The doctor examining me whistles through his teeth beneath the paper mask. He’s peering inside at my cuts, gloved hands slick with blood. Something is poking and prodding me beneath the veneer of anaesthesia that’s keeping me from screaming in pain.

“Mr. Millar,” he says, “did you realize you possess a non-standard physiognomy?”

I grit my teeth and shake my head yes. He grunts and pulls the last piece of the bullet from inside me and plinks it into a whiskey tumbler. I’m propped up on his couch. His name is Arnaud.

We talk while he sews me up. Not about why I had two bullets in me or about my profession but mostly about my atypical internal anatomy. He wants to hear all about It. So I tell him, leaving out the juiciest details… the ones that could get him killed real dead-like.

It takes up a goodly portion of my abdomen. The scientists called it the Spinneret Organ. It channels waste material and recycles it, altering its chemical makeup to form this stringy, sticky black stuff that I exude through my pores. The black gunk. The stuff that keeps me unhealthy and hungry all the time, a benevolent cancer of the soul. Arnaud asks if it can be removed, if anyone’s ever tried. I tell him no. It can’t. The thing itself could be cut out but that presents all kinds of problems. I need it. Maybe it needs me.

I don’t stay overnight. Putting Arnaud in danger wouldn’t weighh on my conscience but it would threaten my only source of decent medical care. It’s not like I can use the bratva’s retinue of underground surgeons. That particular golden goose is long in the oven.

The gunk is aseptic, strange considering how it’s made, and it bleeds out of my skin to form a sterile, waterproof seal around the bullet wounds. One in my stomach, one in my thigh. The train back to the Annex is quiet. It’s dusk but most of the commuters from this part of the city work late shifts as service workers. Not the typical 9-5 crowd. The trains are packed by 11. I wonder where the kid is. Idly curious, not concerned. It’s not like I care about him. Even though he saved my life. Even though he’s my lifeline.

How did I get here? I walk down the street under the sodium glare of the streetlights. Such an odd place, the Annex. Built as a super-modern tribute to efficiency and urban planning and everything is crumbling not thirty years down the road. I see rebar bones in decaying concrete. I see conduit wrenched apart, copper wires sparking and shorting in the misting rain. What a hellhole. A well-intentioned nightmare. A garden the politicians figured would weed itself. No such luck, people being who and what they are.

Me being who and what I am. A freak. A killer. A benevolent cancer of the soul.

The experimental program was funded by some covert government agency. Three stages: Chimera, Menagerie, Eden. I was part of the second group. The first is long over, the third is just a project on a whiteboard. At least it was when I left.

When the Cold War failed to turn hot and you could solve problems with a single bullet they turned to assassins and downsized their spies. Some old coot I remember hearing about… crazy CIA experiments turned him into a super-spook. Never needed to sleep. Always awake, surveilling, studying. Fuck, I need ten hours a day minimum.

There were others. I was just another stab at the dark. The gunk was meant to do something special and it turned out to be pretty damn useful, much more utilitarian than they first thought. But there were complications, of course. Lots of complications. So they turned me out, set me loose. But not before they taught me. Not just how to gauge wind speeds or sight a target a half-klick away. They taught me to hate.

Any institution that relies on hate can teach you how to hate. But first you have to learn to hate yourself.

The church is excellent, teaching you to strive to be more than human. The assassination schools teach you to be less. But both need you to feel a certain amount of self-loathing, of seeing the enemy as something to despise. Happy people don’t hate. They don’t kill. But show me someone filled with hate and I’ll send you back a killer. And where there’s hate and murder, there’s money to be made. That’s the world we live in, you know. A market of hate. That’s my world.

But sometimes there’s a light. Something else. Striving to be exactly human, even if you’re not. The difference between looking for something and looking forward to something is profound, I know that now.

Ozerov died in that explosion. Of that I’m pretty certain. But his brother is crazier and more dangerous to me than Victor ever was. If I’m going to be free I need to take him out of the equation. I need to cut that out of my life, that benevolent cancer of the soul. It must be excised before it kills me. Before it kills the boy. Then I’m out.