8FOLD/ACRA: Jolt City # 23, "...Their Last Adventure!", Part 3 of 3

[Tom Russell]

Derek Mason, the Blue Boxer, has returned from his non-linear trip
into infinite alternate pasts, alone-- his mentor, Martin Rock, the
second Green Knight, has died, having sacrificed himself so that Derek
could live.


          "...THEIR LAST ADVENTURE!"

   EIGHTFOLD PROUDLY PRESENTS THE FINAL ISSUE OF
////////////// [8F-150] TOM RUSSELL'S
    ////  //////  /// //////  ////// /// ////// \  //
// ////  //  //  ///   //    ///    ///   //     \//# 23
//////  //////  ///// //    ////// ///   //      //PART 3


Mid-way through December, Bethany stays the night again. In the
morning, she makes them breakfast. Somewhat to his disappointment, she
is as terrible at cooking at Dani was. Miss your cooking, Pam, he
thinks.
   There's a knock on the door.
   It's a woman; she's either just above or just below thirty. Her
hair is brown-but-red, combed straight back. She wears a suit,
carrying an accordion folder under her left arm and a briefcase in her
right hand.
   "Excuse me," she says, "are you Derek Mason?"
   "Depends," he grins. "Good news or bad?"
   "It concerns Pamela Bierce."
   "Pam? Is she okay?"
   She bites her lip. "No. I'm afraid she was in Las Vegas."
   (I'm taking a vacation, she said; there's a mob war going on, and
I'd rather not be around to be caught in the middle of it. Going to
Vegas.)
   "Oh my God."
   "Her body was found and identified a week ago. I'm sorry for your
loss, sir. You are Mr. Mason?"
   He tries to answer, but the words won't come out. Frustrated,
frantic, he nods.
   "My name is Jennifer Straight, and I was her attorney. You'll be
getting a letter about this in the next few weeks, but she asked that
I inform you that you are the primary beneficiary for her life
insurance policy. In the amount of fifty thousand dollars. There is a
double indemnity clause covering... unusual circumstances, and this
qualifies under that clause. The total amount payable is one hundred
thousand dollars."
   He's flabbergasted. "It doesn't make sense. Why me?"
   "You must have mattered to her, Mr. Mason," she says softly. "Is
Mr. Rock present?"
   "No," he says. "He's... he was also in Vegas."
   "I'm so sorry," says Jennifer. Then, remembering herself: "I hope
they find him alive and well."
   "Me too," says Derek.
   "Miss Bierce had..."
   "Her name was Pam."
   "Thank you," she says gently. "Pam made a recording. She asked that
I play it for you, and that I then destroy it immediately after it had
been played. May I come inside?"
   "Sure," says Derek. He lets her in, explaining to Bethany who she
is and why she's here.
   "I'm so sorry, Derek," says Bethany. "I didn't know Pam..."
   "You would have liked her," says Derek. They sit down together on the couch.
   "The message is somewhat personal in nature," says Jennifer.
   "She can hear it," says Derek.
   It used to be the couch that Martin and the girls would sit on.
Derek, ever the odd man out, would sit on the chair across from the
couch, separated by the small glass table. After Pam and then Dani
left, Martin migrated to the chair, leaving Derek the couch to
himself.
   Jennifer Straight sits in Martin's chair, placing a small MP3
player on the glass table. It starts to play.
   "Hey squirt."
   Derek's voice cracks. "Hi Pam."
   "I bet you wish I was still alive. I don't know the circumstances,
but probably I wish the same thing. I like being alive."
   ("She sounds young," says Bethany. "She was twenty-five," says Derek.)
   "I know after I'm gone it's going to be tough for you."
   Bethany puts her hand on Derek's.
   "Jerking off, I mean."
   ("Oh my God, Pam.")
   "Come on, we all know you think about me when you do it, you skeevy
little pervert."
   Bethany and Jennifer stare at him. Derek opens his mouth so that he
can tell a lie. Then, Pam laughs. It's a private, inward laugh that
escapes involuntarily and spontaneously. Derek realizes that it's
probably the last time he'll hear it. His face scrunches up, red and
flush.
   "Don't laugh, old man," says her voice. "You're just as bad,
Martin. Do me a favor? Take care of Dani. I'm sorry I got between you
two. You two are good for each other. Be good to her. Be better than
you were."
   "When did she record this?" he asks.
   Jennifer doesn't know.
   "Boys, I want both of you to listen up. This is for both of you.
I'm putting it in Derek's name, because we all know Martin can't
handle money for shit. Derek, I always liked you, kid. You got a
bright future if you can stop playing with yourself for ten seconds.
At least try for nine. I know I gave you a lot of shit, so let me just
say this: I did it because you totally deserved it. Alright. Well,
that's all I got to say." She blows them a kiss, and then she's gone.

They go on patrol that night, his first patrol since he got back. He
knows the point of it is to keep his mind off this morning, off Pam.
So of course it's the thing he keeps zeroing in on and circling back
to. It's more than mourning though, more than melancholy.
   "I feel like it's my fault," says Derek. "I know it's not," he taps
his head, "but it feels like it," he taps his chest.
   "Why? Because of the money?"
   "Yeah," says Derek. "For such a long time, I've been wanting for
things to turn around, for something to fall into my lap. But not
this. Not like this. Not. Not Pam." He sits down atop the roof and
hugs his knees to his chest. He looks out into the black, sparkling
sky. "I liked Pam."
   "I know." She sits next to him.
   It starts to snow.

The weekend before Christmas, Derek goes to Atlanta.
   "You look well," Dani says when she comes to the door.
   "You too," he says. She does, and she doesn't. He hasn't seen her
since she left Jolt City in July. She looks older than she did,
certainly sadder. More tired. Strands of gray spill out among the
black scraggles, and her sister's Southern cooking has plumped her
out. And yet, there's something about seeing her again that makes her
look warm and beautiful, and that reminds him that there was a time,
not too long ago, when they were something like good friends. By this
time last year, that was no longer really the case, and by the time
she left, he was secretly glad to be rid of her. He feels ashamed now,
and that shame is why he put this off for so long.
   "Well, come on in," she says, opening the door.
   Derek steps into the foyer and notices the shoes lined up with
their toes pointed against the wall. "Shoes off?"
   "Please," she says.
   He slides them off.
   "Let's not just stand here in the foyer," says Dani. "You want some coffee?"
   "Tea?" he counters.
   "Tea," she says, her voice dripping with disgust.
   "Can't stand coffee," says Derek. Especially not Dani's coffee.
   "You never would have made it as a cop," she says.
   "I think my record would have thrown that right out the window."
   Dani shrugs. "Maybe. Maybe not. But the tea would for sure. Cop
that doesn't drink coffee? Nope, not a thing. Let's see; Marsha drinks
tea, she should have some around here."
   "Marsha's your sister?"
   She nods. "She's not home much. She's at the hospital with her
daughter, Melody." [1]
   "Is she alright?"
   "She's sick," says Dani. "Doctors don't know with what, just know
that it's killing her. She's fourteen. Jesus, can you imagine? She's a
trooper, though. Just like her mom."
   "I'm sorry," says Derek. He doesn't know what else to say, and it shows.
   "Don't be. Not for that, anyway."
   He stares at her, wondering if she meant it the way it sounded. He
decides it doesn't matter. "I'm sorry for the way I acted, too. After
my dad died, I kinda went off the biscuits. I was angry at the time,
and I took it out on everybody. But you especially. You were just
trying to help me and I treated you like crap for it." He looks at the
floor. "I'm sorry."
   "You were eighteen," says Dani, as if that was an explanation.
   "And now I'm nineteen," he says, grinning. Closer to twenty now:
time travel. "Completely changed."
   "Must be the sainthood."
   "Roy told you?"
   "Yes, he's kept in contact," she says. "He was the only one who
did," she adds, a little sadly.
   "Martin wanted to."
   "Don't," she starts, and then she stops herself: she closes her
eyes and holds her breath, and then she opens them.
   "Well, he did," insists Derek gently. "That's, uh, he's why I'm
here. He asked me to give you something. To give you this." He takes
the little felt box out of his pocket, and sits it on her table.
   Dani sits down and stares at it. "I know what that is," she says,
her eyes welling up. She sniffles, hard and deep; it sounds almost
like a snort. "He tried to give it to me once before."
   "I know," says Derek.
   "It's not fair, he tries to give it to me again, and he's not even
here to look me in the face when I tell him no."
   "Well, that's him all over again," says Derek, smiling. "Stubborn
as a mule, and never where he's supposed to be."
   She laughs.
   "He made me promise to give it to you," says Derek. "He knew you
didn't want it, but he said there was no one else he would have given
it to. And that... that there never was."
   "Oh God," says Dani. "I'm gonna start crying." She already is.
   "He understood..." Derek begins. He pauses as Dani brings a tissue
to her nose, blowing hard with a loud honk. "He understood why you
said no. That he had screwed up, and that he hadn't done right by you.
He said that when we got back, you know, to the present, that he would
do every and anything he could."
   "Then he should have come back," sobs Dani.
   Derek's no good with this stuff. Being friendly, being amiable,
yes; but someone sitting there crying, he doesn't know what to do. He
decides a hug is best, but his hug is awkward and unreciprocated. "He
wanted to," says Derek as he sits back down. "He tried to."
   "How did he die?"
   Derek takes a deep breath. "We were split into a thousand different
timelines," he says. "The Martin I saw wasn't the only Martin, so as
to what 'really' happened..."
   "Tell me about the one you saw," she says. "Please."
   "There was a bridge," says Derek. Then, thinking this isn't the way
to begin, he starts again: "There was a village, and an army going
around the countryside, looting and killing and all that mess. And
this village, there were just women and children left, and old men.
All the able-bodied guys had gone out to join the king's army, to try
and find the other army. Left the village undefended.
   "We got them out. We were taking them to a castle about two miles
out. Really, just some walls, not really a castle. It was on the other
side of this river, not very wide but it was deep, and across the
river, there was a bridge." He stares at the table. "Big stone bridge.
Thick. Roman, probably. We had just crossed it when we saw the other
army closing in on us. And we were moving slow. There was no way we
could outrun them." He pauses, taking in a breath. "Martin went back
to the bridge to hold them off, buy us enough time."
   Derek looks up at Dani. He expects her to be angry with them. To
demand to know why he didn't stay and hold the bridge, why he didn't
fight with Martin, why he didn't argue. Why did Martin have to die so
that Derek could live? He expects her to ask those questions because
these are the questions he's been asking himself for the last two
months. But if any of these are swirling around in Dani's mind, she
doesn't give any sign of it. From the look in her eyes, it's as if
Martin did the most natural thing in the world.
   Derek looks at the table again. He points at the tiny felt box.
"Before he went back, he gave me this, to give to you. And told me
what I told you. Then he went to the bridge, and I led the people to
the castle as quick as I could. Then I ran back." He was out of
breath. The blood was pulsing in his skull and he felt like he was
about to vomit. He doesn't tell Dani that though; it's not his story.
It's Martin's. "He had held them for twenty minutes, on that bridge.
And just as I got back, just as I got close enough to make out who was
who, he fell. They..." He hesitates, wondering how much detail he
should give her. "They ran him through."
   "Oh God."
   "I must have fainted then. And then I woke up in Russia last
month." Derek looks up at her.
   She's smiling, soft and sad. "Thank you for telling me." She picks
up the box, opens it, looks at the ring.
   "He loved you," says Derek.
   "I know that," she says, almost offended. "I always knew. That's
how he brought me back."
   "Brought you back?"
   "When I was dead," says Dani. [2]
   "Oh," says Derek, surprised.
   "I know what you're going to say," says Dani. "That I wasn't really
dead, just trapped between dimensions. And that it was a fluke. That
the implant in Martin's neck keyed in to just the right frequency to
prevent me from getting lost. That once he got to the place where I
died, the implant brought me back to a physical body. But that. But
that's not what happened.
   "What happened was, Martin loved me so much that he brought me back
from the dead."
   "I agree," says Derek.
   "I should have said yes," says Dani. "God, I wanted to. But I was
so angry about him, about Pam."
   "Pam passed away," says Derek gently.
   "That's too bad," says Dani. "I liked Pam. Even with all the, all
the mess, all the times I wanted to kill her. We got along okay
sometimes. She couldn't cook for shit, though."
   Derek laughs.
   "Well, she couldn't," says Dani. She wipes the last tears from her
eyes with the side of her thumb. "I miss all of you."
   "I miss all of you, too," Derek says quietly.

Tuesday: the night before the night before Christmas. Blue Boxer
arranges to meet with Lacey Trimmer and Becky Glass at the FCL office.
   "Haven't seen you in costume for months," says Trimmer. "I was
beginning to think that you had retired." She sounds almost
disappointed that he's broken the streak.
   "It's nice to see you, too," says Derek.
   "Oh, I agree; it's always nice to see me. But I've got last-minute
shopping (and drinking) to do. So, why don't we get right down to
brass tacks?"
   "Fair enough," says Derek. "I think I know how to take down FEVER."
   "Okay," says Glass. "You have my attention, certainly."
   "The problem you've always had with them is that they're not like a
typical terrorist group," says Derek. "They're not political, near as
we can tell. They don't have any goals or manifestos. Nothing we can
anticipate or work against. There's no territory they're after. Maybe
even no base. Nothing we can bomb or attack. And the stuff they're up
to, it's more black cape stuff.
   "But they're not really black capes either," he says to Trimmer.
"You can't get them to put on their costumes, and we put on our
costumes, and we go and have a big fight somewhere. So you can't go
and throw the Seven Wonders at them."
   "Those are the problems," says Glass. "But what's your solution?"
   "A new team," says Derek. "Not just that, a new kind of team. They
don't appear to have any kind of centralized organization, so we won't
either. Not really a team, more like a social network."
   "Like, a Facebook for superheroes?" says Trimmer, crinkling up her nose.
   "It sounds dumb when you say it like that," says Derek.
   "That's because it is dumb," says Trimmer. "And redundant. We
already have a network. All the FCLs going through the DSHA. And the
DHS," she says with a nod to Glass. "We arrange team-ups already. We
even put together teams for special missions."
   "Would you ever put Dr. Metronome on a team?" says Derek.
   Trimmer looks peeved. "I know where you're going with this..."
   "Would you or anyone else ever have thought of her?"
   "...No," she says.
   "Dr. Metronome is the reason we still have a universe," says Derek.
"More to the point, the fact that Knockout Mouse was friends with Dr.
Metronome. And, not to toot my own horn too much, but the fact that
I'm friends with Knockout Mouse."
   "And she wouldn't have gotten Metronome if not for me," says
Trimmer pensively. "And that wouldn't have happened unless I needed
something from her. It's an awfully tenuous way to save the universe.
Any one of those things wasn't true..." She shudders. "It was an
accident."
   "I don't disagree with that assessment," says Derek.
   "And you want to base our strategy on that? On praying that just
the right stars come into alignment?"
   "Do you play backgammon?" says Derek.
   "Oh, Jesus," says Trimmer. "I'm not in the mood for some half-assed analogy."
   "All my analogies are full-assed," promises Derek. "If I roll a two
and a one, I can move one guy two spaces and one guy one space, or one
guy twice. But I can't move a guy into a space that has two or more
enemy checkers. if I roll a two but none of my guys can move two
spaces, then I can't do anything with that die. Basic strategy is to
force your opponent into positions where he can only use very specific
rolls, with the rest of the rolls being junk. It's called duplication.
He needs the stars to align to do anything. He rolls the dice and he
prays he gets something, anything, that he can use. And the same thing
goes the other way; you want to diversify, so that when you roll the
dice, there's always something that you can use.
   "That's what this is about," he continues. "The problem with a
team, with any team, even the Wonders, maybe especially the Wonders,
is that you have a fixed roster. You have only so many people who can
do only so many things. Some things they're really suited for, and
some things they're really not. There have been cases where they
handled things like that," he snaps his fingers, "and cases where it
came really close to going tits-up." He then realizes he's talking to
two women. "Sorry. The advantage to a team of course is that people
want to join teams. Doing it through FCLs isn't the same thing. It's
the difference between going on a raid with a random group and doing
it with your guild, and you have no idea what I'm talking about."
   Glass raises her hand. "I'm in a few guilds. Usually I play Alliance." [3]
   "Of course you do," says Derek.
   "I'm not a nerd," says Trimmer. "I'm too busy being a grown-up. But
I understand what you mean."
   "You're not convinced, though," says Derek.
   "It could work, but there are obstacles," says Trimmer. "And I'm
not sure if you're taking all of them into account."
   "Go ahead," he says, smiling.
   She doesn't smile back. "Julie Ann's been doing something like this
with the Wonders. Diversifying. That's why she has all these auxiliary
members now. Pretty soon they're going to be the Seventeen Wonders.
Which is a problem. They're already costing us twenty-five billion a
year. But you're talking about something even bigger than that."
   "Bigger, but cheaper," says Derek. "Do you get paid to check your
Facebook? There's no salaries, no base, no trans-dimensional
thing-a-ma-what's-its. We'll need money for a secure server. Travel
expenses. That's pennies. We get a couple donors, maybe even some
advertisers, we can raise that in a week."
   "Then what do you need me for?" says Trimmer.
   "I don't," says Derek. "Not really. But you'll go along with it
anyway because it gets you what you want."
   "Oh, this ought to be good."
   "You're ambitious. Always on the lookout for opportunities. For
bigger and better things. Am I hot or cold?"
   "That's not all I am," she says carefully. "I'm damn serious about
my job and doing it well, because if I don't, people get hurt. But
sure, if I do it well, I want it to pay off."
   "That's why you went after KO Mouse," says Derek. "You want to
attract new talent to Jolt City, turn this hellhole around. Show them
what you can do, what you're capable of."
   "Not denying it," says Trimmer.
   "That way, when Whaley steps down, you'll be the obvious choice,
the only choice, to replace him."
   "There's a hole in that," says Trimmer. "Whaley's only going to
have a job for another two or three months. Then you get some other
asshole in there. If anything, I'm the one after that guy."
   "Glass?" says Derek.
   "The President-Elect is looking to keep on Whaley and Gates.
Stresses bipartisanship. Unless he screws up, which ain't likely,
Whaley is going to stay on for at least two more years." [4]
   "Two years is enough time to get this off the ground," says Derek.
   "Maybe," says Trimmer. "But what makes you think that this will be
the feather I need in my cap?"
   "Because they need something to replace the Seven Wonders," says
Derek. "There's no way it's getting renewed for another septennium.
Not with another depression looming. Hell, if the vote had happened
this year instead of last year, it wouldn't have gotten renewed at
all. The old way doesn't work, it's too expensive. Auxiliary members
and whatever, that's just trying to Frankenstein it into something
it's not, something it can't be." [5]
   Trimmer rubs her left eye, thinking. "It has legs. It can work. But
I assume you're going to be the big kahuna of all this? The leader?"
   Derek nods.
   "And that's where we run into a problem," says Trimmer.
   "You don't think I can do it?"
   "You don't have any powers," she says. "You're rubbish in a fight.
You're the guy that runs into telephone poles."
   "He's saved the world," counters Glass. "From the Gorgon. From the
Doc-Classers. From the Dyzen'thari."
   "The Architect," she holds up one finger, "Fay Tarif," another,
"Knockout Mouse and Dr. Metronome," a third. "They're the ones that
did the work."
   "You're not wrong," says Derek. "And that used to irk me something
awful. But you know what? That's not who I am. I'm not smart enough,
not skilled enough, to figure out exactly how to do a thing and to
pull it off. I'm not really the detail guy. And I'm okay with that,
because I'm smart enough to know who can do it. I'm not the guy who is
going to solve the problem. But I am absolutely the guy you want to
look at the big picture and notice that there's a problem that needs
solving in the first place."
   "Okay," says Trimmer.
   "Okay?"
   "Okay, I'm in," she says. "But this is a new idea. A weird idea.
We're going to have trouble getting people to buy into it unless we
get some top talent right off the bat."
   "I know," says Derek. "I have Knockout Mouse, and the Doctors
Metronome and Fay. The three women who just saved all of space and
time. Do you think they'll do?"
   "They'll do," says Trimmer. She rubs at her left eye again. "Sorry,
something in my eye. So, what are you calling yourselves?"
   "That's still being worked on," says Derek. "I was thinking
something like the Round Table."
   "Like, King Arthur?" says Glass, clearly not enamored.
   "It's for... for GK," says Derek.
   "It's corny and dumb," says Trimmer. "And not in a good way."
   "Mouse doesn't like it either. She wants to call it the Daylighters."
   "She has good taste," says Trimmer.
   "In men especially," says Derek.
   "Let's go with Daylighters."

Something in her eye! She doesn’t know how right she is, muses
Caracalla as he watches the meeting via the secret nanocamera imbedded
in the iris of Trimmer's left eye. But this musing, this secret glee,
isn't as gleeful as it should be; there's something sour about the
whole thing.
   It's not that the plan was thwarted. In retrospect, he sees that it
had to be thwarted, that it couldn't be hatched unless it was stopped.
If Derek hadn't taken his little sabbatical through time, the world
would never have known about the Dyzen'thari, and the Order of the
Aedifex would never have been founded. His father never would have
been approached by the order. And when his father died, the Order
never would have approached him to continue his father's work. And
then he never would have discovered who he was, who and what he really
was. The end was in the beginning, and the beginning in the end. Time
paradoxes! No thank you. That's just the sort of thing he always
wanted to stay away from. Maybe that was the source of his lingering,
lazy dissatisfaction.
   Cheer up. They're still in the dark about everything. They still
think that FEVER has been around, secretly plotting, for over two
decades, quietly laying the groundwork for their failed attack. They
still think it's a long game that he's been playing. Because this
victim disappeared for a day back in eighty-eight, they think that's
when the implant was installed, but they still can't figure out why
FEVER chose him or her in the first place. When the fact of the matter
is, Caracalla chose them because they disappeared all those years ago,
to give the appearance of the long game. The trickiest part was making
the disappearance of Kara Caller in 2007 look like just another
intricately-planned part of their scheme. But even that wasn't
especially difficult to pull off. It's a wonder how many problems you
can solve when you throw a few billion dollars at them. No one
suspects that he's been at this for only six months! The six greatest
months of his life. The only time he's felt truly alive since his
father died.
   There is a knock at his door. "Mr. Cradle? Your supper is ready, sir."
   "Be right down," says Anders.

Christmas Eve, 2006. The first anniversary of Ray Cradle's death.
   They stand before his father's monument, tall and elegant and a
little too ornate. Kind of gaudy, really. But that was Ray.
   Martin looks at Anders. "It's okay to cry if you want to."
   "I'd like to," says Anders. "But I don't know how."
   Martin puts a hand on his shoulder. Anders coils up. Martin
withdraws his hand.
   The sun fades behind the headstone, and it gets harder and harder
to read the words. [6]

Christmas Eve, 2007.
   Last year, Martin stood here with Anders and measured himself
against the boy's father. Now, he stands here with Derek, and, to be
frank, he doesn't care what Ray would think.
   "Martin," says Derek.
   "Hmm?"
   "I think I should say this now. I've been thinking about... about
the test. Where I can't save both of them.
   "And... I can't do it. It's not that I can't decide. It's... it's
that I refuse to. There has to be a way to save both." His eyes burn
holes in the clouds. "There has to be a way. There's always a way...
if you can find it."
   Martin puts his hand on Derek's shoulder and squeezes him in a
sideways hug. "And we'll find it, together, if we can." [7]

Christmas Eve, 2008.
   Ray had reserved a plot for Martin between his marker and his
wife's. Derek assumed that their son would give him a lot of trouble
about putting Martin's marker there, but surprisingly, Anders was very
polite and understanding. He even offered to pay for it. Derek was
tempted, but decided it didn't feel right, and so he paid for it
himself.
   Martin's marker isn't as big as Ray's, nor as gaudy, and it looks a
little out of place: but that was Martin.

Christmas Day. Atlanta.
   Dani wakes up early in the morning to the pitter-patter of the rain
against her window. If she was in Jolt City, it'd be snow, and lots of
it: thick, white, and honest-to-gosh Midwestern snow coming down in
furious but silent sheets. But it's Atlanta, so it's rain. Snow is
magic, snow is childhood, but there's no magic in rain. Other than the
magic it works on the human bladder.
   On her way back from the bathroom, she looks in on her sister's
room. Marsha's snoring contentedly, dead to the world. She was at the
hospital until midnight, another long vigil at Melody's side. Ah well.
They'll do presents closer to noon, just before Marsha heads back to
the hospital. Dani considers going with her. It's not like she has
anything better to do with her day. Every other day, she spends it
looking for jobs, or at least pretending to, but it's not like she's
going to get any bites today. And really, she should visit Melody more
often. It's just depressing, is all, and Dani doesn't need any more
depression in her life.
   "Or any more rain," she says sourly to the window. As if in
response, it doubles up, coming down twice as fast and twice as loud.
   "Well, I'm not getting back to sleep." She gets dressed, then heads
downstairs and puts on a pot of coffee. Soon it is quietly popping and
gurgling in counterpoint to the rain.
   She sips the coffee and stares out the window. Gray, nasty day.
Atypical for Atlanta. "If I can't have snow, can't I at least have
some sun?"
   Apparently the answer is no. She was hoping she could at least get
a walk in this morning, but the rain's put a stop to that. Stupid
rain.
   She finishes her coffee. She's about to pour another cup when she
realizes that she left the necklace upstairs. Careful not to wake her
sister, she creaks back up the stairs, and finds it on her night
table.
   It's a little yellow necklace, the color of gold, clasped at the
back, from which hangs a small cross. It was her father's, and she's
worn it every day since he died.
   Next to the necklace is the little felt box. Almost without
thinking about it, she puts the ring on the necklace, and then wears
the both of them. It feels right. She's not sure why she didn't think
of it before.
   She looks out her window, Still raining, of course. Stupid rain.
Stupid, stupid, beautiful rain...
   Dani decides that rain or no rain, she'll go out for a walk this
morning. She finds an umbrella and heads outside.
   Oh no, says the rain, and it comes down like crazy. Not a sprinkle,
not a shower, but a storm, a deluge, like all the world's about to
end. Two seconds out there, umbrella or no umbrella, and she is well
and truly soaked.
   She is about to turn back inside when, almost as soon as it
started, the rain slows down to a canter, and the gray sky turns
orange and red. She feels something start to burn against her skin.
The ring...?
   And then she sees him, standing across the street, soaked
through-and-through. He smiles, that same sheepish cat-got-the-milk
grin he's always had. He stares at her for a moment, and she stares at
him, and then finally he starts to walk across the street.
   A truck comes by, barreling down the road and blocking her view,
and Dani wonders if he'll still be there when the truck passes.
   He is. Dani lifts her umbrella to let him in. "Hiya, hero." [8]


{<> - THE END - <>}

      Like everything I've ever done,
      JOLT CITY was for Mary,
      Who brought me back from the dead.

COPYRIGHT (C) 2015 TOM RUSSELL.