When Two Worlds Collide Read online

  S

  “Big boy, can I suck your cock?” Amy asks in her best sexy male voice. No answer. “Oh playing hard to get huh. Okay I’ll do it for…a cigarette.” She starts laughing at herself.

  TJ is mortified but unable to do anything. What happens next is his worst nightmare. Actually, it’s every man’s worst nightmare and TJ doesn’t have to be a rocket scientist to know what’s going on. Amy tugs TJ’s limp dick so it’s positioned in front of Darrel’s disfigured mouth and slams Darrel’s lower jaw upward, shattering his teeth and TJ’s jagged dick separates from his body. TJ’s eyes just about burst out of his head and his whimpers are so loud that they sound like full throttle screams. Darrel is brought out of unconsciousness from the new acute pain and like TJ is muted by the magic thread that sewed their lips together. She releases both of them and they collapse onto the ground wiggling and squirming like earthworms drawn out of the dirt by the rain.

  S

  While Amy was playing with her boys, Ryan found his guitar hero and sauntered up to her with his best solo Lambada moves shuffling his feet. He sits next to her on the curb and pretends to be enjoying her performance by swaying to her music with a big smile on his face, eyes closed. She ends her song and Ryan enthusiastically claps and says, “Encore, encore that was great.”

  At the same time, he’s thinking, You fucking shittin’ me. I’m going to bust that out-of-tune, piece-of-shit guitar.

  “Thank you, stranger. Did ya really like it? I mean I only been playin’ for a couple of years. I teached myself. Are ya from around here? I never see ya before. Where’s your bag? Ya have a tent or just a—?”

  Ryan holds up a hand still smiling, still pretending.

  “Wow, you talk a lot. You smoke a little crack?” He raises that same hand to his lips to mimic smoking a joint. “When was your last hit?”

  “How ya know?” she asks, trying to sound innocent. “Is it that readable?” Strumming the strings on her guitar, she’s looking down, more embarrassed than anything. She perks up and glances at Ryan. “Why? Ya got some? Do ya? I only need a lil bit. I’ll play ya another song.” Her eyes dart back down. “Or I can do somethin’ else if ya want, anything. Just tell me.”

  Ryan is repulsed but doesn’t show it. The girl’s clothes are filthy and he can smell her from where she is sitting and it’s not good. Her face is pocked from constantly picking at it and she is missing her right lateral incisor, long ago rotted away. She has a crew cut, but Ryan can tell it’s greasy and filthy.

  She catches Ryan looking at her hair and says, “I had to cut it on account I got lice. It was long and beautiful before.” Pretending to flick her long hair back with her hands, she giggles. “So, do ya?”

  “Do I what? Have some crack?” he asks as he leans back and pulls a small paper kite out of his front pocket. When the girl sees the folded paper, her eyes light up and she starts fidgeting.

  “Give me, give me, please,” she pleads with her voice and eyes. “I’ll do anything. Want to have a fuck? I’m horny. Let’s smoke some of that.” She points to Ryan’s hand. “Then we can do whatever you want.”

  She’s now standing in front of Ryan, swaying her hips trying her best to look sexy.

  Ryan pulls a small, glass pipe out of his jacket pocket. It’s a crack pipe with a little stem and a round bowl with a hole at the top. The bottom is black from the lighter and burnt impurities and there is a white residue trailing up to the tip. The girl gets really excited and sits down close to Ryan. Too close for comfort. Ryan slides over slightly but not enough to be noticed. He opens the kite and empties the contents into the pipe. It’s a small amount, maybe enough for two hits. He plans it that way. He has just enough to show his recruits that he has drugs so they will follow him back to the den.

  “Here. Hit this. I think you’ll like it,” he says, holding it up to her lips and flicks the Bic lighter for her. Her eyes get large as she watches the smoke build and swirl around inside the glass and then she heartily inhales and drops onto her back. She refuses to exhale, relishing the toxic concoction in her lungs, and suddenly she sits up straight and blows what little smoke is left out of her mouth.

  “Damn dog, that’s sum good shit.” Her brown eyes have instantly dilated. Charlie keeps his grouplings supply of drugs constant and the purity the best in all of Chicago. “Ya got more? Pleeze gimme more. I know ya got sum.” She reaches over, feeling Ryan’s pockets.

  “Yeah, I got more, all you can smoke…or shoot,” he says looking down at her arm. “You gotta come back to my place. What do you say?” He’s leaning into her, bumping her shoulder with his.

  Holding her guitar by the neck, she jumps up from the curb and says, “Can I bring my guitar? I’ll play for you all night.”

  Ryan stands and stretches, listening for raindrops but unable to hear anything over the cars and the boom box. “Yeah, let’s go.” He thinks, I’m going to wreck that fucking guitar. A microexpression of disgust flashes across his face, too fast and subtle for the girl to notice.

  S

  Satisfied, Amy takes a second to admire her work. Both men lie on the wet ground, the rainwater diluting her life-size bloody canvas. To put them out of their misery, she rams the blade of her Benchmade knife into each of their ears, pushing upward into the brain, ceasing all electrical current. They are both dead and they will never be grouplings. She killed them in Adamah.

  Before she leaves the alley to locate Ryan, she decides to have some fun with whoever finds them. She’s in the mood to play hide-and-seek. She tears Darrel’s jaw the rest of the way off. When she pulls, the flesh rips down the neck to the collar bone exposing the larynx. She didn’t plan it that way, but to her it was a bonus. She summons her strength and flicks her hands upward and TJ’s body flies through the air, finally resting on the guardrail of the fire escape at the top of the building. His body drooped over at the waist, his pants still down at his ankles, he’ll be mooning whoever finds him. She looks around the alley and spots a dumpster that will be perfect for staging Darrel. She places his body between a wall and the big green receptacle and slides it back, pinning him in an upright position, resting his upper jaw on the filthy edge. Whoever finds him will have no idea until they move the dumpster. She giggles to herself proudly. Clutching TJ’s dick and Darrel’s jaw, she walks out of the alley and stages her final piece. She centers the lower jaw with its demented version of Billy Bob teeth at the entrance right before the sidewalk and places the severed dick to look like a tongue sticking out, mocking the world. She feels wickedly proud of herself as she leaves. Her game took too long and Ryan is already on his way back to the den with his recruit so she has to hurry and catch up empty-handed. Someday Amy’s luck is going to run out and someone will end her life in Adamah and she will be gone for good.

  S

  Ryan leads the guitar-playing junkie up to the back door of the den and pauses, glad that the small talk on the way over is done. Every night when he reaches the threshold, he gets an unusual feeling in his head that should mean something important but doesn’t. For a nanosecond, Ryan’s brain recalls his life before becoming a groupling. It’s a flash and he doesn’t actually visualize anything; it’s more of an emotion and then it’s gone and Charlie’s hold on him reaffirms itself. It’s like a missing puzzle piece that is needed to bring the rest of the puzzle into context so it can be finished.

  Ryan doesn’t know it, but Lance receives a vision of him crossing the threshold each time. It’s only a small shard of a kaleidoscope of fragmented dreams, but Lance knows he’s alive. The visions have been more frequent and vivid lately and Lance is even getting them while wide awake.

  Ryan opens the door at the same time Amy catches up to them. They acknowledge each other with a nod but don’t speak a word.

  The guitar player notices the blood on Amy’s clothes but does not say anything. The only thought running through her head is how good the next f
ix will feel.

  It’s pitch black inside and Ryan grabs his recruit’s hand so he can lead her through the maze. They go up to the second floor. She’s bumping and tripping like all the others before her. They arrive at a mattress pushed up against the corner of the walls. Ryan helps her sit and tries to take her guitar out of her hand.

  “Yo whatcha doin? That’s mine,” she says in the darkness, unable to see who’s pulling at her guitar. She feels different being here. It’s scary, dark, and smells, and she has a bad feeling, but her urge to get her next fix trumps her common sense and need for safety.

  “It’s me, Ryan. I’m just setting your guitar over here so it doesn’t get broken.” He flings it across the room. It lets out a blunt twang as it hits the floor. Before she can object or ask why he threw her guitar, he says, “You never told me your name, sweetheart.”

  “Everyone just calls me Cat. Did you throw my guitar?”

  “Of course not,” he says, as he produces a syringe seemingly from thin air. It has a fatal dose of heroin. “You want to get high? I got a healthy bump right here.”

  Cat’s eyes have adjusted to the dark and she can faintly see Ryan standing in front of her holding the syringe. Her heart begins beating rapidly and she can taste the drug in her mouth and a feeling of euphoria comes over her even before she rides the lightning. For the first time, Cat realizes how handsome Ryan looks with his blonde hair and slender body. It could be the promise of the drugs or maybe her mind is trying to convince her he’s cute since she did promise him sex. She doesn’t know and right now she doesn’t care. All of the noise around her begins to fade as she concentrates on the needle, oblivious to the moans, and intermittent barks of pain as other grouplings turn their prey.

  “Fuck ya, let’s do it! But hit me in my feet my arms are pretty flat,” she says, holding her left foot up for Ryan.

  Ryan can see the track marks in between her fluorescent green toenails and kneels down thinking that at least this way she won’t suffer long. Ryan prefers to give fatal doses of heroin to his recruits to minimize their pain and suffering. He cannot control much of his new life but he can control this.

  The other grouplings prefer to make their recruits suffer as they are converted, and they kill them slowly, brutally. Ryan injects Cat and pushes the plunger deep, watching the emotion in her eyes go from pleasure to registered horror, realizing she just shook hands with the Grim Reaper.

  Cat nods out on the mattress and her breathing becomes shallow, a death rattle, as she steps out of her body and into her new role as a groupling. Ryan patiently waits for the last of her life to leave and lifts her hand to make sure. Her lips and fingernails turn blue from the lack of oxygen. Her life expires in pathetic fashion with drool and vomit covering her face and adding to the eclectic fluids already soaked into the mattress. When she rises, she will have crossed over and will begin her new life, a slave to Charlie.

  S

  Most mornings Lance wakes up in a cold sweat more tired than when he went to bed. So far his summer vacation has not gone as planned. Since the night he, Jeremy, and Joey survived their run-in with Charlie, nothing has been the same. That’s especially true with Ryan missing. Lance tries to remember his dreams from the night before and recently he has been writing what he remembers down as soon as he wakes. Lance never remembers much, but each morning he wakes with a feeling that Ryan is still alive somehow, somewhere. His notes are sparse. They’re usually one or two scrawled words, rarely a full sentence, but one common theme is the word: Ryan. Lance doesn’t even know if Ryan’s name comes up because he’s actually dreamed about Ryan or if he only wishes he did. Lance has not confided in anyone about his dreams. Who would believe him? He hasn’t even told Jeremy or Joey. In fact, he has not talked to either of them since the morning they woke up in Jeremy’s room after their journey to Sheol. It’s all too crazy and their adolescent brains cannot comprehend or refuse to understand what happened, but, it’s all true.

  Soon Emma, the guardian angel that aided Lance in his defeat of Charlie, will tell him that his dreams are actually visions of Ryan crossing over thresholds and that he is alive.

  CHAPTER 2

  Extra! Extra! Read All about It!

  For about a week after the incident, Lance has moped around his trailer house. His mom keeps asking if anyone has any new news about Ryan and also bugging him to go outside and get some sun. He knows he should, but he can’t bring himself to leave the safety and comfort of his home. He’s been spending his days on the sofa being a couch potato or in his room listening to cassette tapes of Led Zeppelin, The Doors, Eagles, and Mötley Crüe. In the last week, he’s showered zero times and brushed his teeth twice. Hell, he hasn’t even changed out of his pajamas: a pair of red shorts and a plain V-neck T-shirt.

  Ryan keeps swimming in and out of Lance’s thoughts and Lance can’t shake it. He knows Ryan is alive and, if it’s true, then they need to find him. But how can Lance know for sure? They watched Joey murder him. But was it in Adamah or Sheol? If it was in Sheol he can still be alive. What evidence does he have besides his notebook by his bed? Where would they even begin to look? He’s confused and depressed.

  Jeremy is in the same emotional state as Lance and pretty much mimicking what Lance has been doing: nothing. Jeremy’s big brother can’t get a rise out of him. He even tried to coax him into a fight, hoping to get some type of emotional reaction; he didn’t take the bait. His brother does not know what’s wrong with him, but he knows that Jeremy is not himself. He believes Jeremy is acting like someone that’s been traumatized by something, but he knows that can’t be true. Usually, Jeremy tells Brian everything significant that happens to him. But this is one secret he is keeping to himself. His big brother has no idea about his suicide in Sheol, or that his blood is one of the links needed by an evil demon to merge two worlds.

  Joey, on the other hand, has been living life to the fullest. He’s been swimming at Veteran’s Park, boogie boarding in the canal, and spending a lot of time with Larry and his buddies. His excuse for hanging out with Larry is Lance and Jeremy refuse to leave their homes; it’s a valid excuse. Joey has compartmentalized what little he remembers about his experience in Sheol. Plus, he’s just cut from a different cloth than the other two.

  Lance’s mom hasn’t noticed his fragile emotional state now that she has a new boyfriend, Mr. Nobody. Nobody knows his name and nobody cares. He’ll be gone in a month or two so why even learn what to call him?

  Lance is lying on the couch with Bear at his feet watching reruns of Knight Rider and waiting for Three’s Company to come on. He has a crush on Suzanne Somers, but who doesn’t? He suddenly has an epiphany, leaps to his feet, and races into his bedroom. Bear barks and follows closely behind, not sure what’s going on. Lance grabs his notebook and frantically flips through the folded and ripped pages and suddenly…

  “Aha!” His finger rests on Emma. A name, but what does it mean? It’s the only time it has come up in his journal writing and he doesn’t even remember why he wrote it down.

  “Emma, Emma, Emma…hmm,” he says out loud, looking at Bear while tapping his finger on the notebook and his foot on the floor. The name is familiar, but he can’t quite place who or why he knows it. Maybe its someone from school?

  “Big Bear, do you know Emma?” he asks, now tapping the top of Bear’s head and rubbing his floppy ear. “You’re no help, boy,” he says, still caressing his head.

  Bear looks up at Lance with the only look he knows: love and loyalty. Bear is a small, scraggly, wire-haired dog with big, floppy ears and an infinity for barking. Lance named him Bear because he wanted a dog as big as a bear to wrestle with when it got older. Even though Bear is not large in stature, in Lance’s eyes he’s a T-Rex.

  Lance leans back and falls onto his unmade bed and settles with his head resting against the wall and his feet dangling off the side. Bear starts licking the bottom of his feet tickling h
im.

  “Get up here, Big Bear. How are you gonna fight off predators if you’re a teddy bear?” Bear jumps up and settles under the crook of Lance’s knees. Lance lies there in his bed with the Eagles playing on his stereo, oblivious to the music, deep in thought. He wonders what Jeremy and Joey are doing right now and what the scribbling in his dream book means. He can’t put his finger on something that he knows is important. It’s just out of reach of his consciousness and who is Charlie?

  After about an hour, Lance gets out of bed hungry and thirsty. He walks into the small kitchen to see what he can find for himself and Bear. He sidesteps the piece of ripped linoleum in the center of the kitchen and the thought of ripping it up pops back in his head, but today is not the day.

  He hasn’t had much of an appetite lately and it’s good thing. There’s not an abundance of food in the house. He hooks his toes under the refrigerator door and swings it open: milk, eggs, a pack of bologna, and some condiments. He grabs the bologna and sits on the couch, alternating between him and Bear. When the bologna is gone, he gets up to throw away the package and get a drink of water. As he walks by the tiny glass kitchen table that his mom bought earlier in the year at the Salvation Army, he notices a newspaper still rolled and secured by a rubber band.

  He loves the rubber bands used on newspapers. They’re always the heavy-duty kind that last. They make great weapons when he sets up his Star Wars figures and has battles in his room, although he hasn’t done that in years.