This Dark Garden

By Mick Sylvestre

Raymond Hemple's life as an undercover narcotics officer is in ruins. Unsettled by the gang-related shooting death of his undercover partner. After ten years of marriage, it ends. His ex-wife angrily rejects his request for joint custody. Through it all, Ray continues his path towards anger management as part of his sobriety program. Raymond seeks to change his life. A tranquil setting where he can start over. Because of this, he requests a transfer to a northern town looking for experienced officers. There, Raymond settles in and starts to find himself. But then something terrible happens in Bridgewater. A murder or cannibalism case sparks a deadly manhunt that his squad must solve. Meanwhile, the secretive Grimlord Society prepares to eradicate the city. To prevent an abomination from reaching the Crow Claw Mountains, where a demiurge slumbers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mick Sylvestre
• Release date: Aug 7, 2023
• ISBN: 9781988997025

Mick Sylvestre

Mick Sylvestre grew up in rural Saskatchewan, where he aspired to be an artist. As a young adult, he moved to British Columbia to attend college, where he became a graphic designer. After many years of being in the print industry, he expanded his passion to writing. He loves being creative and entertaining others with his stories and life anecdotes.

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This Dark Garden

by Mick C. Sylvestre

SYLVESTRE STUDIOS

Copyright © 2023  Mickey C. Sylvestre

All rights reserved

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

ISBN 978-1-988997-02-5

Cover design by: Mick C. Sylvestre

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018675309

Printed in USA & Canada

To everyone who writes, edits, writes again, edits again... Like solving the Rubik's Cube with the colour stickers scraped off.

Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

CHAPTER 1 ― THE LONG WALK DOWN

CHAPTER 2 ― TRANSGRESSIONS

CHAPTER 3 — SHAWN BLACKFOOT

CHAPTER 4 — THE GRIMLORD SOCIETY

CHAPTER 5 — RAYMOND HEMPLE

CHAPTER 6 — ARIOCH

CHAPTER 7 — NIGHTMARES

CHAPTER 8 — PROTEST

CHAPTER 9 — INVESTIGATION

CHAPTER 10 — DOCTOR ROUSE

CHAPTER 11 — GRASPING

Chapter 12 — BEFORE THE STORM

CHAPTER 13 — STORM WARNING

CHAPTER 14 — THE CEMETERY

CHAPTER 15 — GRENDEL

CHAPTER 16 — ASSUARE

CHAPTER 17 — STORM FRONT

CHAPTER 18 — CAR CRASH

CHAPTER 19 — FLED

CHAPTER 20 — MOURNING

CHAPTER 21 — TAKEDOWN

CHAPTER 22 — THE UNDERWORLD

CHAPTER 23 — WISH

CHAPTER 24 — MANHUNT

CHAPTER 25 — EVIL WORKINGS

CHAPTER 26 — CONDITION RED

CHAPTER 27 — THE IMPOSSIBLE

CHAPTER 28 — THIS DARK GARDEN

CHAPTER 29 — SITTING IN A TREE

CHAPTER 30 — GREY WOLF

CHAPTER 31 — GHOULAUH

CHAPTER 32 — THE DAMNED

CHAPTER 33 — LAST MINUTE

CHAPTER 34 — SALVATION

CHAPTER 35 — TIME STOOD STILL

CHAPTER 36 — IT’S ALL OVER

CHAPTER 37 — EPILOGUE

CHAPTER 1 ― THE LONG WALK DOWN

Worms and insects crawled their way around the wretched creature. They nestled into the clothing’s gaps and folds until even the tattered leather trench coat became a home for grubs, pupa, and many other critters and crawlers. For days, the transforming ghouling slept. Unstirred in the dark grave, he dug for himself with his own misshapen hands. Submerged deep beneath a layer of packed dirt, he trembled and twitched. He began to transform into something darker, twisted beyond any natural birth, and was totally devoid of being human.

Distorted memories haunted the ghouling’s mind as he recuperated deep within the earth. Past events of his old existence replayed repeatedly in his hibernating mind like an unavoidable nightmare. Terror oozed from his pours until there was nothing left of his humanity. Deep down in the core of his being, he became nothing but a primal vessel of paranoid fear. In the nocturnal hours, he’d awaken and crawl from his resting place. Shambling onwards in obscurity, searching for a sign to lead him to the Promised Land recalled so faintly upon awakening.

The wind greeted him with the fresh scent of an unsuspecting highway incident. Its pungent decomposed smell lingered in the air. Its scarped, treaded entrails were a spray of dried blood and mashed gore.

The smell of the rotting meal made the ghouling quickly shuffle, undeterred, to the fly-coated corpse. He sat by the roadside, stuffing his ravenous mouth. He fought off the flies for nourishment, while they fought for spawning ground. With each bite he took, the tiny voices grew stronger in his muddled mind. He tilted his misshapen head and looked around nervously as the disembodied voices became insistent on his purpose; they helped by soothing his lonely existence by directing him to the place he had dreamt about since his resurrection. Soon his energy would return, thus enabling him to continue the arduous journey ahead.

As early morning transcended into evening, he waited patiently in the shallow grachilly nightve for the sun to descend. The cold night permeated his limbs, causing them to stiffen up; thus hindering him from reaching the land of plenty before winter. His tattered leather jacket dangled from his trembling gaunt flesh, meekly hiding the dried blood stains and gore from any inquisitive eyes. The grotesque stranger continued his journey in blind faith that the ancient one would protect and look out for its own.

In the distance, the ghouling heard the other beasts falling prey to the night predators. In his delicately tuned hearing, he detected the unmistakable sound of tearing fur and flesh followed by the crunching of bones. After, his mind drifted back to the whispering voices that haunted his empty head. He could feel the urgent voices of the undead as they slept beneath the earth, listening attentively to their tales of misery, persecution, and of their violent demise. Then they’d revealed to him the dismal awakening to a vacant and meaningless afterlife (a true death for the dead).

The ghouling hadn’t a name. The one he had when he was human once upon a time, had rotted away, replaced by the disembodied and sometimes chaotic voices that echoed through his head like an empty hallway.

He was a man-made abomination, drawn to a distant place, foretold by the damned that whispered in his head. He couldn’t wait to kiss their dirt-encrusted lips and uncover the land of the dead. To enter a place where no mortal would ever tread, where blood and flesh were free, where the fruit of eternity lay.

◆◆◆

He had ignored the van’s fog lights from behind until it was too late to hide from view. He glanced up at the ominous steel beast as it roared down the road and into the night. The ghouling was deaf to the noise evoked by the chrome monster, nor flinched from the frigid funnel of whirling rain as it sped past.

An indisputable smell registered in the ghouling’s head. It was the undeniable smell of death and it came from the lime green van that had almost struck him down.

The sound of whispering spirits in the ghouling’s aching head was chatting up a storm. So much that it took great effort for a single thought to bubble its way up to the surface. Finally, as the chatter died away, an idea formed in the ghouling’s grim and primal mind. An idea so gruesome that had it smiling and drooled like a damned fool. With this revelation, he would have to change directions for a while until the fresh meal was his to hold and then he promised to the spirits (and to the silent, hungry god that sat patiently in his mind) that he would continue his way home.

The ghouling had more bounce in his shuffled walk. A flood of memories ignited in his tiny brain. His knotted pale hands flexed and longed to feel the yielding earth once more. With each staggered step, insects and worms dropped from the folds and crevices of his tattered leather jacket and worn out, mud-soaked clothes.

◆◆◆

Heavy rain pelted Francis Gleave’s supped up ‘87 lime green van with a fury. The highway was practically invisible beyond fifty feet because of the heavy rainfall. Francis Gleave switched on the customized fog lights. To his dismay, it helped little.

I can’t see shit! He cursed more himself than the storm overhead.

This time, he had been careless when he picked up the woman. She had been too perfect for Francis to pass up. It wasn’t enough that he was facing the worst storm of the season. He hadn’t expected he’d be driving around all night looking for an ideal spot to dump her body.

The body of the naked woman lay sprawled out in the back of the van. A tarp kept for suchslaughter, occasions partially covered her. A blue tinted arm exposed from the tarp as if she had been resting. Looking back into the mirror, he gazed upon her exposed arm. Her purple-blue fingernails caked with filth looked broken. She was all rigid and bruised by the struggle that played repeatedly in Francis’ incurable mind.

He had met her in some seedy bar where people go to forget. Lost lambs waiting for slaughter each choosing and way to welcome their death, either by drugs or by alcohol or even both. When he spotted his prey, she was high as fuck. All night she danced from bar stool to the washroom. Paying homage to the white powder she snorted across a little round mirror from her purse, and a rolled up twenty dollar bill. When she danced, it was more to the music in her head than the DJ’s choice of tunes. Francis knew what drove her from man to man, from bed to bed. She rode with the silver lined angels whose eyelashes were made of snow and breathed ashes.

That was when Francis had decided to liberate her. She was already half dead, and never even knew it. Every man in the bar gave her wide breadth when she passed by. Old lovers that would say the sweetest (or not so sweet things) to her for another sweat filled night, but when daybreak came their eyes would fog and not one word of encouragement could save her from another doomed romance.

Just like the steroid junkie, that was kicking her out of his sports car just around closing time.

You fucking bastard, She managed to keep her balance as she kicked the side of his car door.

Hey ya bitch are ya looking for a punch in the face? The steroid endorsed ape threatened halfway out of his car. The type of physical drama his kind lived for. The kind of brutes she went for like a moth to a flame.

Screw you, you fucking asshole. She limped quickly towards the bar entrance in attempts to escape another disastrous night. Her hands nervously searching desperately for the small can of mace in her purse. As she made it to the entrance to the bar, she heard her ex-lover’s car door slamming shut before he sped off into the night cursing her existence. In the door reflection, she spotted someone approaching her from behind.

You okay? Francis came up to her as she worked intently on her face from her small bag of tricks.

Not really, she huffed. who wants to know?

Well, Francis cleared his throat, I do. Looks like your boyfriend and you are having a little spat.

That asshole is not my boyfriend. In fact, the prick still owes me the money I lent him. Now what am I going to do to rent tomorrow? She passed a trembling hand through her hair. Her eyes were glassy and bloodshot, her face stained with black mascara that had trailed down her cheeks and faded into the surrounding shadows.

Look, if you need anything— he looked slowly up at her, I mean, seriously…

Oh, that’s so sweet of you but, it’s not like I know you. I mean,ean I’ve seen you around here but…

Well then I guess now is as good a time as any to introduce myself, he offered his hand. Hello, my name is Francis, Francis Gleave, nice to meet you. He gave her a warm, friendly smile he worked on for many months on in the mirror. The last thing he wanted was to blow this. He spent weeks watching her and he worked on his act to get her to feel safe and comfortable around him.

Nice to meetcha, I’m Della. Della Ann Randall. she nodded with a full smile, and limply shook his hand. I see that you’ve kept pretty much to yourself.

I-I’m not much of a people person, He shrugged dismissively. I’ve got too much overtime at work to have a social life. So I just come here every now and then for a beer or two. No one even bothers to notice me.

Ah hello, I see you, she waved at him. And so far you seem pretty decent, compadre.

Thanks, he nodded and gave her a shy smile.

You got any smokes on you? She tested him.

No but I do have a little something better, I mean if you’re interested? Francis tilted his head. The bait was set. Now all she had to do was…

She wiped at her nose with the back of her hand, Whatcha got on you? She sniffed. Ain’t got any money to give, you know that right?

Oh, no—no, it’s okay…I-I just hate doing this by myself—you know what I mean? No fun in that am I right? His hands held up the treat of the day. Now you see the little bag of white powder, and now — you don’t. A little sight of hand magic trick he learned from practicing the works of The Game. A pick-up artist’s manual on seducing woman, but the bogus bag of blow would act as a deal breaker.

Alright, sounds good to me, She licked her lower lip and wiped at her nose. With a single nod of her head, they were on their way to his van. He was further from the bar’s parking lot than she liked it to be (in heels). But the promise of a little pick me up was well worth the trip.

Go on get in. He held the cargo door to the van open for her to climb inside. He gallantly took her hand in his. The overhead streetlight from the front side of the van gave its interior a yellowish tinge with a cast of looming shadows. However, it promised to be discrete and private.

Why is everything in here covered in plastic? Her eyes roamed over the dark interior and settled on the bare mattress in the back. A tarp folded up neatly by the driver’s seat. The guy was obviously some kind of a clean freak.

I—had some work done on it, he excused. Last owner didn’t take care of her.

She looked for lies in his languid eyes and without a word or complaint; she turned away and entered the back of the van. The mattress felt a little stiff, but at least it was better than the hard metal floor. She knew what men like him wanted: a little fun and attention. Then she’d be on her way again. And even if the sex turned out bad (which it usually was with loners like these), at least he had the sense to bring some blow. So that wasn’t so bad after all. But then, in the back of her mind, if she played her cards right this might actually work in her favor. He might be the one that brings her into his home, and then she wouldn’t have to worry (for a while–at least).

From behind, her Francis reached out to what looked like his deceased mother’s long brown hair, hidden behind a botched and fading blonde dye job. Maybe this time the urge would pass. Maybe this time…he’d be able to move on.

His mind drifted back in his mother’s room, reaching out to touch his momma’s long hair. He liked to just curl his fingers in and give it a little pull, sometimes, even give it a good hard yank.

Alright let’s see what you’ve got their Buster. She sat on the mattress and gestured to his pants while clucking the roof of her mouth.

His voice went soft and lost but his fist was furious and full of hate. She never had time to react. One punch had struck her square in the jaw and her head smacked hard against the side of the van.

Francis by then was excited as she fought to stay conscious and his hands went around her neck. She tried to push him away, but he was relentless, and struck her multiple times until she was more complacent and started to plead for her life. His hand went around her neck. He became more aroused as she struggled for breath. Mesmerized when her eyes bulged and her face flushed red from the pressure, then turning to a light cyan color. He liked the way her tongue pushed forward uncontrollably as she gagged and choked for air, her flailing, slashing hands, useless against his assault. Fantasizing his own anger slid silkily down his arms residing in her crushed throat. With his teeth clenched, he called her the most terrible, awful things. Things his Momma would’ve beaten him an inch of his life for saying. He even started to blubber and cry out.

Her body grew limp and nonresponsive.

Out of breath and spent, he gathered himself up abandoning the body upon the plastic covered mattress. It sucked at the corpse, keeping it from sliding off. Calm and methodical he undressed her, positioned her facing upright, closed her legs together, folder her arms over her breasts and then sat back to admire his handiwork.

Habitually Francis collected all the things of his lured victims and disposed of them by fire, all save the underwear: a souvenir to savior his damned soul.

No need in getting any evidence left behind for forensics. Or need any diseases from this cheap whore. Francis mulled over in his head all of the ideal places to dump the body and then the places he could later stop at to methodically clean up both himself and hose down the interior of his van.

He was sorely pissed when the rainstorm came down fast and furious, deciding against the idea of disposing a body during the storm for he didn’t need to get any filthier than he already felt. Francis glanced back to the broken body and the clothes he had neatly stacked on the side. Her underwear sat on top of the folded pile.

His count so far had exceeded twenty victims, stretching throughout the seedy areas of cities, communities and villages along Highway 16. His murderous rampage added to the score of missing female victims without an end in sight. So carefully self-assured, like many others that shared the same path would ever be caught.

Smirking as he drove in the direction of Bridgewater in search of a cheap motel for the night.

What’s one night? Francis talked aloud. It’s not like you’re going home any time now, hey there Della? He glanced back in the mirror at her body. No-no, you don’t have to thank me for saving you the trouble. It was no problem, He glanced in the mirror at the wild look in his eyes. No problem at all.

As Francis drove closer to the small town, he noticed in the distance, a lone figure staggering through the storm on the side of the road. Closing the gap Francis gasped at the abhorrent appearance of the stranger through the headlights. A deformed face shadowed with muck and bits of gore: like the poor bastard had lost to one Hell of an ass whooping. In that brief second the freak passed from view and Francis felt a shiver go down his spine. The van sped past created a freezing vortex of wind and rainwater around the loathsome stranger. The man on the highway spooked Francis more than he wanted to admit. His face was gaunt, boney, dressed in a long trench coat and had long wet black hair that clung to his pale scalp. Francis craned his neck in the side mirror to see if the stranger was a hallucination or not. His curiosity was unanswered when the night enveloped the pariah from view.

There’s just too many Goddamn freaks in this world, Francis screamed above the radio tunes, as he blared the van’s horn and howled.

◆◆◆

Before the sun peaked through the horizon, a lone figure shuffled along the deserted highway. Overnight, a glitter of frost coated the pavement and crunched underfoot. The stranger wasn’t prepared to travel through the autumn transformed mountain regions of British Columbia. His breath came out with forced purpose. He was not to be detoured. In the distance, he heard a car approaching and he had to exit the highway. From his hiding spot, he observed the cars and diesel trucks as they accelerate passed. After a while of hiding, the lone figure stepped out from the shadows to continue his journey down the vacant highway.

The highway route was easier for the stranger to travel than it was to take the rough trek over the mountain range. He was still weak from the journey that even the miraculous discovery of the occasional road kill was barely enough to keep him going.

He was edgy and nervous.

Constantly looking over his shoulder, waiting, fearing his creator would rush up from behind at any moment to torment him once more. The only thing to see was the cold sprinkle of rain and the obnoxious buzzing and creepy yellow light cast by the overhead streetlights.

His piercing blue eyes made him seem so hauntingly innocent, but it certainly was the combination of dried dirt, blood and gore that stained his exposed leather stitched chest and chiseled hands that said different. Only a fool would make the mistake of pulling over to stop for him. For from him came the sweet pungent odor of death and the other funky smells. Like the stink of exotic drugs and herbs that waft from his sweaty, exhausted body. His scent was a warning to those that dared approach him on this dark and numinous night.

The stranger continued his trek down the desolate highway to a place he had never been or seen (but the voices in his head had called home), drawn to that irresistible place deep in the mountains, like a coho salmon in the spawning season. Instead of a place to mate, for him it was a sanctuary for the undead.

He ignored the deepening cold that numbed him until his lame body uncontrollably shook and teeth chattered noisily. Slowly he was transforming into a subhuman creature: something that abstained from morality but lingered in the deep dank underworld of immortality.

He knew that theoretically he could still die. He could still feel pain and the permeating cold. But even all of that was changing from the way he had remembered when he was a human. With every second, he was shedding his mortality in exchange for something deeper, something far darker.

No more fixes, no more addictions, and no more monkeying around the weak points of his soul. His screaming and demanding tastes for drugs were dying to a mere gasp. It wasn’t until another hunger drove through him.

His senses started to hone for survival. The phantoms that haunted his mind like a possessed house cried out the answers he needed to hear.

Under the occasional break of moonlight through the storm clouds, his gaunt skin transmogrified and his tired flesh was reborn. He could feel its rays upon his face, bathing and blessing him in its luminous light.

He moaned in discomfort as the bones on his face shifted, and his tissue twitched and pulled into unnatural locations. The fire of the afterlife crawled its way through his body like a rampant disease. Fallen in the dark shadows of the night he trembled at the painfully overwhelming transformation.

With his scarred and growing hands, he dropped and gripped into the rich clay earth where the undead had called their home and cried out. In the solemn night stirred the sound of nocturnal animals fleeing through the enveloping darkness, as the stranger’s bemoans echoed through the woodlands. With every unnatural pulse of sluggish blood that coursed through his body, he started to descend to the level of a ghoulish creature, whose direct link to humanity had dissolved away eons ago.

He effortlessly burrowed into the frozen earth. The freezing ground broke easily in his grip and soon he was nestled in an earthen womb, awaiting the first of many transformations to complete. The subterraneous world around him had a rhythm he could tap into and harmonize with, a unifying bond with the primal earth mother. The caretaker of those had lost their way.

He was becoming an abomination of the night.

In a deep meditative state, his disturbed mind flickered with raw images and visions revealed past events that lead to his own creation. Piece by piece, strips of his humanity started to peel away. Memories that once had precedence in mortal world had no place in the underworld. Memories flashed through the slumbering creature like a sudden and frightening lightning storm. Falling from his consciousness like wilted autumn leaves. The ghouling watched, disconnected to the whole event as if the previous life were just a somber dream.

◆◆◆

He felt the sluggish heaviness of his own body as he slumped down the wall, crashing and spilling into the floor. With eyes all aflutter, he felt the hot liquid in his veins and ignored the tiny trail of his own blood trickle down the recycled needle. His friends were all here. Pox, James and Cory were the only ones left in his life. They would be all that he would need in his transition from life into the hereafter. He didn’t worry about the triviality of heaven and hell. For him his scratched surface existence received pardon by a new God his entire being craved.

With his good buds, he didn’t have to wallow in hunger or pain. The loss of his wife and child was enough to make him stay. The fatherless widowed man was broken and more lost than he had ever been before. His friends understood his pain. Or at least they found a new method of keeping it at bay.

It’s just a little you need and then the pain just fades away.

Doug used to be an accountant, before some piss-headed drunk sent his family (excluding him) to an early grave. He knew he shouldn’t have been on the highway on that rainy night. If only he knew then what he knew now, then he wouldn’t be here in the abandoned house, abandoning the pain and guilt of his own miserable existence.

God laughs on fools, his head drooped back. Absent of all strength and will power. He could almost feel the strings of his own life force severed by an invisible God. Doucette barely could remember any of his dreams, but one time he had clear recollection. In one dream, he was laughing and playing with his daughter, Krista. He should still vividly remember the golden fleece of her hair clinging to his stubble whenever he kissed her face. Whenever he was in darkness, she was his beacon of light. He tossed her into the air as she giggled at the sensation of free falling, knowing that she was landing safely into her father’s protective arms.

Dinner time, stop horsing around and get in here. Margaret called out from the kitchen. Come on you two, she scolded.

Yes, they were good times.

But then he would recollect the accident, like a cicatrix that traced itself across his face, cut by a razor sharp blade. He would feel the transition of bliss to utter grief when he awoke to discover that he had been nodding off on a cold hard floor of an abandoned house or building. Around him, he apathetically registered the broken, boarded up windows, the rank smell of vomit, piss and excrement. A weary icy chill would fill his aching head and heart.

With every needle prick, another part of him began to wither away.

Doug Doucette played at the verge of death’s door and he held up to the challenge with high regard. At first, it was the painkillers that he became addicted to, and then came the street drugs after the foreclosure, and eventually, the firing of his job and eviction from his dilapidated apartment.

The streets had become his new abode. All of which he had forsaken in the past became no more than a distant memory.

Over the past few months, Doucette’s body had broken down into something unrecognizable, even to his own eyes. He would scorn and look upon the luck of others with distrust. He looked at everything good and kind with mockery, and disgust. He just lost all touch with the real world in such a short time. He would scoff the Lord’s name when mentioned by the bible twaddling beseechers, as they would bring him word of their Lord and savior. Doug would find the will to mock. He would look at them all through accusing eyes and speak his blasphemy of their great forgiving god. Spat out the words like poison until they left him to wallow in his own self-loathing and hatred of all things beautiful and innocent. After all, didn’t this great and loving god allow the very wife and daughter he loved to have their lives extinguished by the misjudgments of a drunken fool?

At night, he’d wander off in mourning. Until his mates would find him passed out in the cemetery, sleeping beside the two graves of those he had lost. Sometimes in an inebriated state, he’d kissed the soft soil, believing that in doing so he was kissing his wife and child. These grounds where the fallen solace to his lovelorn heart.

In time, the people he associated with were beginning to rediscover themselves again. Abandoning their wretched and drug endorsed existence and reassemble themselves from the ashes. While Doug himself remained true to his quest for self-destruction by denying, defiling and insulting their every step to recovery. But in secret, he longed to change, but he had gone so deep into the maw of Hell that he found it far easier just to continue.

◆◆◆

One day, while Doug made his usual stomping grounds from Granville, to Hastings Street, in search of something to fix his troubled mind he noticed a sleek black limo following alongside. The tinted passenger window showed the outline of someone there. Doug shuffled over and kept at pace to the limbo until it came to a spot to stop. Winded, he knocked on the back window, in desperation from having to suffer through another withdrawal alone.

Sometimes, he noted, wealthier addicts would travel around looking for company, or to score. Doug Doucette knew this practice all too well and welcomed any chance to ease the pain. He could read the signs of the jittery little stance, the fast-talking and twitchy reactions of a zonked out addict. It was as if everything was turned high in their brains and everything they said or did had only one purpose and that was to get a little higher than the last time. Which for many never did come around, that is unless you excluded those that managed to overdose and died.

Hey. Doug leaned on the roof as the car window on the passenger side lowered. The inside of the car was shadowed and all he could smell was a faint sweet odor of incense and narcotic smoke. A cherry ember glowed in the distance and a sigh came from the dark interior.

An old Asian man with a rough voice spoke from within the dark limo. Welcome Doug Doucette. This is your fateful day. The indistinctive sound of the limo door lock clicking off followed. Come in, come in. Don’t be a stranger. The man chuckled and waved the addict in.

How do you know my name? His hands were animating by themselves. Doug had the car door opened and was inside, even before he had the will to act against it.

I know many things of you—and your fate. Smoke blew out from the mouth of the shadowed passenger. It was pungent and foreign to Doug’s nose and he found himself fighting to stifle a cough.

Have you been following me? I swear I keep seeing this limo everywhere I’ve been.

Let’s just say that we have an avid interest in your disposition.

Doug’s eyes narrowed, the fuck does that mean?

In the shadows, the host cackled and a shiver ran down Doug’s spine. His eyes rolled back and his mouth opened in silent torment. He felt the iron grip of withdrawal, stabbing him through the body, into his very soul. Until all he could think about was the next great escape.

I have something you need, that can take it all away. The man cooed. Something to help you forget all about this painful world, but of course—there’s a price. There is always a price.

Doug’s body started to hunger in a way that one forgets to eat, and then realize that they are starving for nourishment. His breathing and body language started to change, he started to sweat and tremble. I’ll do anything. Doug tried to grip the shadowed man’s arms. But all his hands found were loose cloth and thin flesh. What you got, then? Damn the consequences, he thought.

His strange host withdrew from the shadows and laughed at him, clearly enjoying Doug’s little predicament. Doug watched on, as the oldest man to memory said nothing but shoved a small ornately wood carved box into his hands. Doug gave the man his rotten-toothed smile and then strange fellow returned the favor. He didn’t have to open its’ lid to know what was in it. Sides of the box looked ornately decorated with carved wisps of smoke, and spirals of trailing fiery dragons. It could be opium, heroin or some other narcotic mix that would get him through the rest of the day. That’s was all that he needed to know.

So? He looked up dumbfounded, you and me going to do this?

Not exactly, His host’s laughter starts to rise in pitch, enough to make Doug squint in both discomfort and in pain. The host’s hand then shot out and locked upon Doug’s arm as a sharp blade slash across his exposed palm. Blood welled onto the floor and the cackling lunatic directed Doug’s hand towards an iron basin that held hot coals and incense. Something he hadn’t noticed when he entered the limbo. But there it sat in the back of a goddamn